Kieran Setiya, Reasons Without Rationalism

Transcription

1 J Value Inquiry (2009) 43: DOI /s BOOK REVIEW Kieran Setiya, Reasons Without Rationalism Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2007, 131 pp. ISBN-10: $ Hb Iskra Fileva Published online: 12 August 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V This is a remarkably thoughtful book. The main ideas are new, the arguments for them are dense, the details are quite frequently insightful. As can probably be expected in the case of original work, many readers are likely to find some of the basic claims advanced in Reasons without Rationalism controversial; but everyone will discover a good deal to think about, this much is beyond contention. The book is a must for students of action, practical reasoning and moral psychology and a highly recommended reading for ethicists, metaethicists, philosophers of mind and everybody else who would like to experience the pleasure of going through a truly stimulating piece of philosophy. Reasons without Rationalism is a book about practical reason although, as the reader will see below, it also contains a distinctive theory of intentional action. The guiding questions are, What is it to act well or to do what one has most reason to?, What are the standards of practical reason and where do they come from? The answers come by way of an alternative to moral skepticism, an alternative dubbed by Setiya the virtue theory of practical reason. As the label suggests, Setiya s proposal contains an argument for the claim that good practical reasoning and virtues or goodness of character are connected. What kind of connection is at stake and which version of skepticism is under attack? Taking the latter question first: moral skepticism comes in many varieties as uncertainty concerning the possibility of moral knowledge, or the existence of moral facts, or of moral reasons, or else as doubts regarding the rational authority of moral principles. Setiya s conception is best understood, and phrased by Setiya himself, as an alternative to skepticism about moral virtues. Still, skeptics about virtues fall into two different camps and only one of these is taken on target in Reasons without Rationalism. Prominent persons in group number one include Nietzsche, Callicles I. Fileva (&) Department of Philosophy, University of Nevada Reno, Edmund J. Cain Hall 108J, Mail Stop 102, Reno, NV 89557, USA indi_aira@yahoo.com

2 522 I. Fileva from Plato s Gorgias and John Mackie. They question the status of alleged moral virtues like justice, benevolence and kindness and ask whether and why such things as justice and benevolence count as genuine virtues. Those who fall in the second camp, on the other hand, agree that justice and benevolence are real virtues but wonder what reason, if any, a person has to be virtuous. Hume s sensible knave and Hobbes s fool belong here. The question raised by the knave and the fool is not, Does anything ever count as a genuine virtue? or, Is benevolence a virtue? but, rather, Why should I be moral or virtuous? This sort of skepticism begins with the assumption that reasons for action can be properly grounded only in desires or self-interest and proceeds to query what self-interested or desire-based reasons, if any, there are for a person to comply with morality s precepts. It is this second version of skepticism that Setiya, in Reasons without Rationalism, undertakes to oppose. Modern moral philosophy contains a number of attempts to deal with the latter skeptic, surely; but Setiya s account is not just one more attempt. Setiya does not deploy any of the strategies for dealing with the problem so far known the book actually contains a critique of all strategies so far known: all of them, in Setiya s view, share a common flaw. In one group of accounts, those fashioned à la Hume or Hobbes, crucial ground is ceded to the opponent: such accounts are premised on the assumption that all reasons for action are, indeed, traceable back to desire or self-interest and the task is to demonstrate that there are self-interested reasons to be moral, or such as stem from desires everyone can be assumed to have. The proponents of another group of proposals, roughly Kantian in spirit, purport to derive morality and moral reasons from the nature of rational agency: moral reasons, on such views, are not reducible to self-interest yet do belong to the subjective motivational set of every rational agent in virtue of his or her being a rational agent. Setiya s quibble with both Kantian and, broadly, instrumentalist approaches concerns a basic assumption present in the skeptic s question, Why should I be moral? as well as in all attempts to answer that question, namely, that the practical should, and the moral should are two distinct things to begin with, that the question What should I do? understood as a demand for reasons for action can, in principle, be successfully answered without an appeal to moral considerations. It is only on this assumption that an argument which brings the two shoulds back in line seems to be called for. It is Setiya s contention that this assumption is an error, the idea that there are standards of practical reason apart from or independent of good character is a philosophical mirage (p. 1). And also, The argument of this book is directed not only against those for whom the contrast between reason and virtue amounts to actual divergence, but also to many of those who hope to see them coincide. The question is whether the standards of practical reason can be so much as understood apart from ethical virtue (p. 4). The right way to respond to the skeptic is not to offer him a reason to be moral, be it a self-interested one or such as can be derived from his rational nature; rather, it is to point out that the very question, Why should I be moral? rests on an untenable premise. Insofar as modern moral philosophy has granted that premise,

3 Book Review 523 modern moral philosophy rests on a mistake. Reasons without Rationalism can be read as an attempt to demonstrate that there is, indeed, a mistake here and to trace the consequences of rejecting the assumption containing it. Those lead to a new theory of practical reason the virtue theory. The virtue theory is the only alternative to moral skepticism we are left with, according to Setiya, when ethical rationalism is thrown overboard. And ethical rationalism is Setiya s common denominator for all accounts which assume that the standards of practical reason can be derived from the nature of agency in one way or another. The term rationalism is usually and most readily applied to accounts that descend from Kant. But understood in a broad and schematic way the term rationalism covers not only Kantian but instrumentalist alternatives as well. Instrumentalists place desire-satisfaction where Kantians place either success in action or reflective endorsement as that special element, central to action done on reasons, which provides a basis for a standard of practical reason or of what rational agents have most reason to do. The hopes of ethical rationalism are overly optimistic. It is impossible, in Setiya s view, to draw conclusions about what it is to act as one has most reason to from an account of what it is to act on a reason. The twist is that what follows from the failure of rationalism is not skepticism about practical reason but practical reason without rationalism. The title of this book is thus apt for the content: Reasons without Rationalism offers an account of reasons for action such as does not fall in the ethical rationalism category. What is the account? Setiya is actually in accord with those he calls ethical rationalists in that a theory of practical reason has to begin with an account of reason-based action generally. The question whether standards of good action can be derived from the nature of action cannot be prejudged. The first problem he takes, consequently, and the topic which occupies him in the first of the two chapters of the book is the problem, What is action? The first chapter will be of interest to anyone concerned with the topic of reasonbased action, regardless of whether or not this topic is seen in relation to ethics. Readers familiar with Setiya s earlier article Explaining Action will see that the first chapter of Reasons without Rationalism is largely based on the material from the earlier piece with some additions and revisions. The argument is complicated and hard to summarize and those interested are well-advised to study the actual text. The following is but a sketchy though, to the extent possible, accurate rendition of it. Setiya begins with a critique of the currently dominant in action theory beliefdesire model of action. On the belief-desire model, an agent acts on a reason when motivated by a desire for an end and a belief about how to achieve that end. Setiya argues, in opposition to the belief-desire model, that an agent can be properly motivated by a desire and a belief without thereby acting on a reason. Here he draws on Velleman who, in turn, retells an autobiographical story told by Freud. In that story, Freud s sister comments on the inkstand on Freud s desk. She says that Freud s beautiful desk is marred only by the presence of Freud s old inkstand. Later, Freud sweeps the inkstand in a particularly clumsy way. He does so motivated by the desire to get a new inkstand and the belief that his sister will buy him one should the old one get broken.

4 524 I. Fileva It seems that Freud in this case, albeit motivated by a desire to have a new inkstand and the belief that his sister will get him one, does not break the inkstand for a reason. But we don t take behavior whose motivation can only be uncovered by means of psychoanalysis or, for that matter, by means of a careful post factum self-scrutiny, to qualify as reason-based action. So the standard belief-desire model must be false (p. 33). The question is, what is missing from Freud s action such as makes it fall short of a reason-based act? The most obvious reply would be: intention. Freud does not decide to do what he does and he does not intend, at least not as we normally use the word intend, to achieve a particular end. This is not the reply Setiya favors, however, and readers familiar with Setiya s earlier piece on intentional action will see that his view on this score has changed (Cf. Setiya, K., Explaining Action, Philosophical Review, Vol. 112 (2004), p. 370), because there are cases of performing an action intentionally and while motivated by a belief which are not, for that matter, cases of acting on a reason. He illustrates the claim with the following sketch, Suppose I am convinced that I ought to be a lawyer, but only because I am pressured into it by my parents. As I go through law school I truly believe that I am suited to this kind of work. I do not respond to the clues that indicate otherwise: the fact that I spend much less time working than my peers, that I often feel lethargic, that I never get good grades. I would never act on these reasons as grounds on which to quit. Still, I might decide to quit, and be moved to do so, unconsciously, by beliefs that correspond to these facts finding my own decision both capricious and hard to explain (p. 35). Such an action would be intentional but not, in virtue of this, performed on reasons. If intention is not the missing ingredient, what is? A second possibility is to suggest that the guise of the good is what Freud s action lacks and the element which will do the job here one might argue that an agent can only be said to act for a reason if he sees his reason as a good one and as a sufficient justification of his action. This idea is traceable back to Plato; many persons remember that Anscombe argued for a weak version of it; and, more recently, it has been defended by Joseph Raz (Raz, J., Agency, Reason and the Good, in his Engaging Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). If tenable, the suggestion will help explain why Freud doesn t count as acting on a reason: he has not taken breaking the inkstand in order to make his sister buy him a new one to be a good reason for action. But Setiya joins discussants such as Michael Stocker in the view that it is possible to act on a reason one considers bad: adopting an example of Burnyeat fashioned for another occasion Setiya argues that, perhaps, just like Burnyeat s philosopher who enjoys philosophy for the sense of power it gives and does philosophy for this reason without seeing it as good, Freud in the inkstand case knocks down the inkstand intentionally in order to make his sister buy him a new one and that is his reasons but he does not see that reason as good (Stocker, M., Desiring the Bad, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 76 (1979), pp and Burnyeat, M., Aristotle on Learning to be Good, in A. Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle s Ethics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980, pp ). The rebuttal of the so-called guise of the good view of reason-based action, the

5 Book Review 525 idea that a person acts on a reason only if he sees the considerations on which he acts as good reasons, is central not only to the argument in the first chapter but to the book as a whole Setiya s dismissal of ethical rationalism hinges on letting go of precisely that idea. Going back for a moment to the question what it is to act on a reason, Setiya s own reply is that what distinguishes actions with purely psychological explanations, such as those of Freud or the willy-nilly-about-to-become-a-lawyer person, from actions done on reasons is that when we act on reasons we know why we act, there is a consideration which we take to be our reason for action. What is important is that: Taking something as one s reason is taking it to be a reason that explains what one is doing, not a reason that justifies it (p. 67). Therefore, questions of motivation and justification have to be pulled apart, One s motivation in acting need not be understood through its resemblance to what is good in practical thought (p. 67). What are the ethical implications of this split? The implications are not, to be sure, that practical reason is undermined. Practical reason, in Setiya s words, does not collapse for lack of action-theoretic ground. Instead, it is pulled by the gravity of ethical virtue (p. 67). Setiya formulates the basic claim of his so-called virtue theory of practical reason thus: The Virtue Theory: Being good as a disposition of practical thought is being a disposition of practical thought that is good as a trait of character (p. 69). The expression practical thought stands for something quite general. It is meant to encompass both the cognitive component of acting the reasoning which precedes an action, and an agent s dispositions to act as he or she has decided. Setiya subsumes dispositions to act under the category practical thought in an attempt to capture the intuition that a disposition to execute one s intentions is relevant to the assessment of an agent as a practical reasoner. If practical thought is taken, contrariwise, to refer exclusively to the reasoning which precedes actions, it will follow that a person who is disposed to form very good intentions automatically counts as a good practical reasoner regardless of whether or not he executes any of his intentions. What is the argument for the virtue theory? Why should good dispositions of practical thought be a matter of ethical virtue and vice and not, for instance, a matter of what will help accomplish an agent s final ends or promote her long-term interests or something along these lines? The first thing to note here is that dispositions of practical thought are always traits of character understood as dispositions to see certain considerations as relevant to one s actions and to be moved by them. To be disposed to be moved by thoughts about material possession is to be greedy, to be disposed to be moved by thoughts about the feelings of others is to be kind. Now if dispositions of practical thought are always traits of character then, if there is a difference between being good as a disposition of practical thought and being good as a trait of character, there must be something about dispositions of practical thought specifically which can help underwrite a distinctive evaluative standard applicable to the latter but not to the former. This point is really quite general and Setiya gives it the following formulation dubbed by him the Difference Principle: The Difference Principle:

6 526 I. Fileva If Fs are a kind of G, and being a good F is not simply a matter of being an F that is a good G, there must be something in the distinctive nature of Fs to explain or illuminate the difference (p. 83). Consider an analogy: all parents and all teachers are persons. Yet, being a good parent or a good teacher is not simply a matter of being a good person. This is because there is something about the role of a parent or a teacher which is distinctive and does not apply to people generally. By contrast, it would make no sense to talk about being a good-person-with-blue-eyes. Not, because there is nothing about the color of a person s eyes which can underwrite a distinctive evaluative standard such as does not apply to people generally. What can ground an evaluative standard applicable to dispositions of practical thought qua dispositions of practical thought but not qua traits of character? Is there something about the nature of practical dispositions which can help meet the Difference Principle? Setiya considers and, one by one, rejects all conceivable alternatives. The first option to go by the board is what Setiya calls the recognitional view of practical reason. On this view practical reason figures explicitly in practical thought: dispositions of practical thought are dispositions to both form beliefs about what one has most reason to do and to be moved by those beliefs. So good dispositions of practical thought are those which involve good thinking about what one should do plus success in executing one s intentions. But if Setiya s theory of action as developed in the first part of the book is right, practical reason is not necessarily the subject matter of practical thought: we do not always aim to act on reasons that we see as good. So, It follows that the standard of thinking well about what one should do and acting on one s beliefs cannot apply to practical thought as such (p. 88). So good dispositions of practical thought are not the dispositions which meet that standard. Kantian constructivism of the kind developed by Korsgaard and internalism as argued for by Nagel are rejected on like grounds: they each rely on a mistaken conception of reason-based action. For Korsgaard reflective endorsement plays the role which the guise of the good plays in the recognitional view: rational agents are, in the constructivist story, assumed to be committed by default to the aim of reflective endorsement. A disposition of practical thought is good when it is a disposition to be moved by reasons an agent can endorse upon reflection. But reason-based action does not entail a commitment to reflective endorsement, In acting for a reason one takes something as one s reason in an explanatory, not a normative sense. One need not believe that it is a good reason to act; one need not endorse one s response to it (p. 93). So reflective endorsement is not the basis of a standard applicable to all dispositions of practical thought. So a good disposition of practical thought is not a disposition which meets the standard in question. With Nagel s internalism, a requirement for intelligibility grounds the standard applicable to all reason-based action. Good practical dispositions are, consequently, dispositions to act in intelligible ways. Nagel maintains that we cannot distinguish rational motivation from causal deviance except by supposing that motivation corresponds to good practical thought. This is what makes it intelligible for me to put a dime in what I take to be a vending machine when I want a drink, but

7 Book Review 527 unintelligible mere causal deviance when I am led to put the dime in my pencil sharpener (p. 97). This project too is misguided on Setiya s reckoning. It is not true that motivation cannot be distinguished from causal deviance except in normative terms: there are cases in which a person is motivated and not merely caused to act in ways that do not correspond to principles of practical reason. So a practical disposition is not good just in case it is motivated, rather than caused; not, because a practical disposition can be motivated yet be entirely bad. Internalism is a failure. Two more rationalist, as Setiya uses the term, strategies remain. The first one is that pursued by the instrumentalist. For the instrumentalist practical thought takes place not under the guise of the good but under the guise of desire, for him, the object of practical reason is the satisfaction of our final desires ( ) Hence, the standard of good practical thought is that it promotes the general satisfaction of one s desires in light of one s beliefs (p. 100). The problem with this argument is that it relies on the assumption that all dispositions of practical thought are triggered by desire, at least partly never by belief alone. In Setiya s view this is false. Suppose I have been heretofore a proponent of capital punishment. Today, upon reflecting on the conditions on the death row, I form a desire to abolish capital punishment. The disposition to form this desire might be thought of as a desiring of sorts; but it is not itself triggered by a prior desire it is triggered simply by a belief. But if a disposition of practical thought can be triggered by belief alone, then it cannot be true of that disposition that it is good just when it promotes the satisfaction of a desire I already have. So means-ends efficiency is not the standard of practical reason. The last strategy considered is the one developed by Velleman. Here, selfknowledge is assumed to be a constitutive aim of all action and good practical dispositions are supposed to be those which help achieve the goal of selfknowledge. But this proposal does not work either. This time because the standard postulated is somewhat promiscuous: we succeed in achieving self-knowledge each time we succeed to act as we intend. But we can very well form an intention to act badly and execute that intention. So bad dispositions of practical thought meet the requirement for self-knowledge. So self-knowledge is not a proper basis for a standard of practical reason. Once all alternatives have been eliminated, Setiya concludes, there is no way to satisfy the Difference Principle no way to explain how standards of practical reason come apart from those of ethical virtue. The idea that dispositions of practical thought are subject to different modes of assessment as dispositions to reason well and as good traits of character is an illusion fostered by ethical rationalism (p. 115). If ethical rationalism in all its forms fails, then the virtue theory of practical reason must be true there is simply no other game in town. This book deserves a much more careful treatment than it is possible to offer within the current space limits. The following remarks are, consequently, intended to serve merely as an invitation for further reflection. Those who subscribe to one of the theories from the ethical rationalism group as discussed by Setiya might wish to look for a way to resist the arguments mounted

8 528 I. Fileva against their own preferred accounts. Below are two possible forms such resistance might take. A Humean may argue that even if there are practical dispositions which can be triggered by belief alone, the goodness of practical dispositions cannot be spelled out merely in terms of beliefs: a disposition to abolish capital punishment, even when prompted solely by belief will, on such reckoning, be good just in case it succeeds to promote an agent s final desires and will be bad or neutral otherwise. An argument along these lines will, no doubt, require a modification of traditional instrumentalist accounts since the goodness of dispositions on this picture will be to a certain extent severed from and, hence, not derived from the nature of practical dispositions as such. But the modification can probably be made: it can, likely, be argued that every practical disposition, whatever its origin, is good to the extent that it promotes the satisfaction of an agent s final desires and the achievement of her aims. It would then take a normative argument coupled with a theory of motivation to rebut the instrumentalist; but that is not the route Setiya wishes to pursue. A Korsgaardian, on the other hand, might contend that a commitment to reflective endorsement is an ineradicable part of human rationality and remains so regardless of whether or not an agent aims, in any particular instance, to act for reasons she can endorse. It can be claimed that even if it is possible for an agent, in a given case, to act for reasons she does not care to approve of, everyone always remains subject to the test of reflection regardless: the agent who acts on reasons she does not see as good remains so too in the light of reflection she is bound to see her reasons for action and her disposition to act on them as deficient; and there is no way to exempt oneself from reflection s light, since to do so would be tantamount to changing the structure of one s own consciousness. Reflective endorsement as a constitutive aim of rational action will then be vindicated: the contention would be that every action performed on non-endorsed and non-endorsable reasons is, upon reflection, bound to be perceived as a rational failure. That would be the case even if at the time of acting the agent performing such an action has been completely indifferent to evaluative considerations, event if, in fact, her aim in performing the action has been precisely to do something bad, silly or in some other way rationally blameworthy. Again it would take a different sort of objection to resist the Korsgaardian here. For instance, it can be argued that reflective endorsement and morality are not two sides of the same coin, that there s no easy transition from freedom to the moral law and that an agent might, upon occasion, reflectively endorse bad reasons. But that is not the route Setiya wishes to pursue either. Considering further the possibility to salvage any version of ethical rationalism from Setiya s arguments, as well as a possible response which can be given on behalf of Setiya, will be here left to the reader. What follows are brief sketches of two slightly different sets of concerns. The first is this. The question can be asked, what makes a trait of character good. This question should not be heard as an objection to Setiya s account so much as a necessary query into what lies outside that account: as mentioned in the beginning of the present review, Setiya does not take it as his goal to rebut the sort of skeptic who doubts that character traits such as kindness and justice qualify as virtues.

9 Book Review 529 So in Reasons without Rationalism, a certain notion of virtue is taken more or less for granted. However, a comprehensive virtue theory of practical reason would have to have an answer to this question especially given the fact that some ethical rationalists do or, at least, could give an answer to a like question raised apropos their own accounts. For instance, an instrumentalist might hold that it is not only individual actions, but traits of character and rules of action too which should be deemed rationally acceptable, just in case they help promote an agent s final desires and aims. Similarly, a Korsgaardian might claim that traits of character are good and practical norms acceptable to the extent to which either could be justified upon reflection. If a virtue theory of practical reason is to fare better, all things considered, than its ethical rationalism alternatives, it will have to have answers to all the important questions which the alternative theories answer. A final point in closing: it could be maintained that the goodness of practical dispositions simply cannot be spelled out in terms of virtues of character: this on the ground that it is possible for a disposition to manifest a virtue of character yet not be a good practical disposition or not be the best practical disposition. There is an intuitive difference between being good as a matter of character traits and being good at practical reasoning. Consider the following case by way of an illustration. Sara and Megan are two sisters. Sara studies Chinese and is right now listening to a recording of a dialogue in Chinese. Megan is at her computer trying to work on a paper but cannot focus on it because of the noise coming from Sara s room. Knowing that Sara has a Chinese language test tomorrow, Megan decides to leave the house and work on her own paper late at night, after Sara s gone to bed. Megan takes this decision despite the fact she herself has a paper due tomorrow. Having decided this, Megan goes out and meets a friend. While having coffee she shares with her friend the story of how and why she s not been able to stay home and work. Her friend says, I and my brother had a similar problem. I decided to get for myself ear-plugs. They really work. Here is a pair for you, and hands to Megan a pair of ear-plugs. What is the proper assessment of the two girls practical dispositions? Megan has been disposed to resolve a clash of interests by means of sacrificing her own interests. There is an intuitive sense of good in which a disposition of this sort is good and virtuous, perhaps, in some sense, a paradigm instance of virtue. But there is an equally plausible sense good as applicable to practical dispositions in which Megan s friend has shown herself to be a better practical reasoner, though not necessarily a better person, than Megan has. Instances like this could be multiplied. A person can usually resolve an interpersonal clash of her interests with the interests of someone else or an intrapersonal clash between some and others of her own values if she constrains herself in some way. But many a conflict can be resolved if the conflicted agent works on finding a solution such as does not entail forsaking anything of import. Thus, if you want to have coffee after dinner but you also want to go to bed at a reasonable hour, you can exhibit the virtuous disposition of abstaining from a present urge for the sake of a future and greater good. But it can also occur to you to work on inventing decaffeinated coffee. You would be virtuous if you abstain; but you ll be a better practical reasoner if you think of a solution to the problem so that abstinence and, in some sense, virtue itself becomes unnecessary.

10 530 I. Fileva There are two ways in which goodness of character diverges from excellence in practical reasoning. The first has to do with what a person is disposed to do, what considerations he or she is disposed to take into account: Megan is disposed to forego her own interests and the moderate person is disposed to counteract a present urge. Megan s friend is not equally disposed to forgo her own interests and the person who decided to wok on inventing decaffeinated coffee is, likely, not as disposed to be moderate as the moderate person. Secondly, Megan s friend and the inventor of the decaffeinated coffee, besides having a disposition to seek a non-altruistic or non-self-restraining solution to practical problems show, in addition, the ability to find a solution. This ability is not simply a matter of virtues of character it is a matter of excellence in reasoning. It is possible to reply on behalf of Setiya, and the reply can be found in the text, that the virtues he has in mind are all the virtues, that is to say, not only moral but non-moral virtues as well: Setiya s claim is that the perfection of practical reason goes hand in hand with virtue full virtue. It could be maintained further that if this is kept in mind then Megan s friend and the inventor of decaffeinated coffee will appear more virtuous or more fully virtuous; so that it should come as no surprise that their practical dispositions are better than those of Megan and the moderate person Megan s friend and the inventor but not Megan and the moderate person exhibit an ability of problem-solving and thus show themselves to be more fully virtuous. Virtue of character and goodness of practical reasoning will then be brought back into line. This reply is fine so far as it goes. Still, two further problems remain. First, persuasive examples can surely be given in which a person shows herself to be a better person precisely because of a stable disposition to sacrifice her own interests rather than seek a way to accommodate them. There is a sense in which the virtuousness of a person s character is much more strongly tied to moral than to non-moral virtues. The goodness of practical reasoning, on the other hand, isn t so. Finally, what is the proper measure of the balance of virtues? Here we come to the point raised earlier: if we don t have an answer to the question, what constitutes virtue, neither can we answer the question what constitutes full virtue. Some versions of ethical rationalism may have suggestions to make in this regard: thus a Korsgaardian or an instrumentalist might hold that resolving a conflict of interests or a clash of values through creating new options for action rather than through sacrifice is the practical solution which withstands reflection or that which better serves an agent s desires and aims. The virtue theory of practical reason says that the better options will be better because the dispositions to take them will be more fully virtuous. But the notion of full virtue, like that of virtue, is more or less taken for granted we don t know why option A and not option B is the more fully virtuous. Even if skeptical doubts are put aside, as Setiya wishes, an answer to this question remains due. For the problem is not simply whether the commonly accepted virtues are indeed virtues, or, whether, full virtue, if there is a clear enough common notion of that, is in fact full virtue, but why? What makes them so?