Keynote 1, Peter Railton

Peter Railton

https://lsa.umich.edu/philosophy/people/faculty/prailton.html

Thursday 28th June, 5-6.30pm Grimond Lecture Theatre 2

What normativity cannot be

Contemporary work on normativity often conceives the normative realm in terms of requirements or obligations, with something like necessary authority for rational beings.  However, it is possible to act in accord with requirements or obligations, even to do so with a sense of their necessity, without finding in this the kind of purpose, value, or ideal that would give such behavior meaning.  Our understanding of normativity, therefore, needs to broaden to give a more important role to evaluative experience and thought—not as a judgment of worth, but as an active appreciation of it and its ground.  Indeed, Kant marked the distinction between mere “legality” and genuine “morality” not in terms of complying with the “moral law”, but in terms of just this sort of appreciation of the value such law embodies, grounded in the worth of persons.  We would do well, as our thinking about normativity goes forward, to attempt to integrate this evaluative and appreciative element into it, seeing this not as an appendage, but as lying at the core.  This includes giving greater importance to the kinds of mental states that constitute recognition and appreciation of value, and that give it force in thought and action—states of affect.