Volume 15, Number 2
June 2019
ARTICLE

New Shmagency Worries

Volume 15, Number 2, June 2019, Pages 121–145
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v15i2.573
PDFPDF

Abstract

Constitutivism explains norms in terms of their being constitutive of agency, actions, or certain propositional attitudes. However, the shmagency objection says that if we can be shmagents—like agents, minus the norm-explaining features of agency—we can avoid the norms, so the explanation fails. This paper extends this objection, arguing that constitutivists about practical norms suffer from it despite their recent attempts to solve it. The standard response to the objection is that it is self-defeating for agents to become shmagents. I agree, but the response ignores the possibility of shmagents who consider whether to be agents while already standing outside agency. Another response says that we ought to be agents because agency is, in some sense, normatively valuable, and if so, we can explain norms in terms of this valuable form of agency. But then the norms that our constitutions are supposed to explain are underdetermined because it is unclear how much we ought to care about this value. I conclude that the shmagency objection has yet to be answered.
Copyright © 2019 Olof Leffler
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
|

Rationality, Shmationality: Even Newer Shmagency Worries

Olof Leffler

Inescapability and Normativity

Matthew Silverstein

Desire Satisfaction and Temporal Well-Being: Time for a New View

Frederick Choo

Does Initial Appropriation Create New Obligations?

Jesse Spafford

What’s New About Fake News?

Jessica Pepp, Eliot Michaelson, and Rachel Katharine Sterken

The Failure of Brown’s New Supervenience Argument

Erik J. Wielenberg

A Challenge for New Defenders of the Doctrine of Double Effect

Mark McBride

A New Theory of Humean Reasons? A Critical Note on Schroeder’s Hypotheticalism

Matthew Bedke

Portico