Which unity this is about
The record keeps four unities apart (ADR-024). This account is about the
unity of agency, and it locates that unity in self-governance:
self-determination by principles the agent takes as law. It explicitly
denies that the unity is behavioral-integration, the causal unity of
control systems acting as one. It also separates it from phenomenal-unity.
Korsgaard grants that a natural individual is “the seat of a unified
consciousness”, and says that this unity “sets you the task” of building a
unified agency and does not supply it (LIT-587, ms. p. 40). So on this
account phenomenal unity and unity of agency are different things, and the
first does not entail the second. Narrative unity plays no part.
Source
- Korsgaard (2014), LIT-587, read in NOTE-455 in the author’s manuscript. Page references are to that manuscript’s PDF pages.
- Korsgaard (1992), LIT-564, read in NOTE-465: the reflective structure of consciousness, and the relation of authority between the thinking and the acting self.
What was actually shown
Agency needs unity. An action is “a movement, or the effecting of a change, that is backed by the agent as a whole”, attributed “not just to his eyebrow like the twitch, or to his feet like the slip, but to the agent himself” (ms. p. 8). Attribution carries two implications: the agent was active, and the action expresses who she is, which is why love, gratitude and resentment are fitting responses to it (§1.2; NOTE-455, C1).
The unity is made by following norms. “To act is not just to cause an end, but to make yourself into the cause of the end.” Conforming to the categorical imperative makes one self-determined, and conforming to the hypothetical imperative makes one efficacious. Together they give action “the form of genuine activity” (ms. pp. 15–18). The material of the maxims chosen under that form makes one “an effective friend, teacher, parent, citizen”, which is one’s practical identity (ms. pp. 18–19). The activity half does not depend on origin: “It is the content of the principles we follow, not the metaphysical story about how we came to follow them, that explains the activity implication” (ms. p. 17).
The given unity is lost and rebuilt. Animals perceive “teleologically”, things “to-be-eaten” and “to-be-fled” (ms. pp. 29–31). Humans are aware of their own attitudes as attitudes, and that awareness leaves “a kind of heap of desires and fears and impulses”, so “it is up to us to put ourselves back together” (ms. p. 35). The laws of reason “are the laws of mental activity” (NOTE-455, C5). The Tanner Lectures give the same structure as the “reflective structure” of the mind, which “needs a reason” and so needs a law the agent takes as her own (LIT-564, Lecture III).
Groups. “The unity of agency is not given with the unity of the mind of the natural individual.” Since a unified mind is not the only thing that sets the task of unification, and talking and acting together set it too, “we constitute ourselves the joint agents of the enterprise by observing the rules of normative unification together”. “Unification is an achievement, not a given”, so “nothing … prevents people from acting together in the most literal sense of the word” (ms. p. 40).
The chapter argues each step but borrows its central premises. That the categorical imperative has determinate content is supposed “as Kant supposes we can” (ms. p. 17). The account of reason as unification is compressed from other papers. The collective conclusion is one paragraph, and how a group observes the rules together is not worked out.
What this does not say
- It does not say how a natural mind is unified. Korsgaard declines to “advance a view” about that (NOTE-455, Limitations). The account is about agency only, and is compatible with any account of behavioural integration or of phenomenal unity.
- It does not say a group has a mind or experiences. The collective claim is about agency, achieved by members’ joint conformity to norms. It needs no group mind and says nothing about group consciousness.
- It does not say manipulated agents are inactive. By design, a manipulated agent who follows the right principles is active. Korsgaard concedes that for “deep” responsibility “it does matter how (and whether) it comes about that we think thoughts about self-determination”, and concludes “responsibility is not that deep” (ms. p. 19, n. 15). This is the choice THEORY-040 describes, taken for activity and declined for deep responsibility.
- It does not escape the problem of bad action. If activity is conformity to the categorical imperative, wicked conduct is less than fully action. The chapter treats a deviant success as a failure of agency (NOTE-455, Assumptions). Self-Constitution, unread, is where the “defective action” reply is said to be.
Connections
- The natural conception, and Bratman. The rival the chapter names is
the natural conception of agency, action as movement caused by the right
mental state. No THEORY in the record states it. Korsgaard measures it
against her view through Bratman (§1.4). She reports asking him whether an
intention installed by post-hypnotic suggestion would be any less the
person’s own, and that he said no (ms. p. 21), which reads him as a
naturalist. But she also reads his Lockean claims as saying that “by
conforming to the norms consequent upon intention, we constitute our
identities” (ms. p. 23), and concludes that the naturalist can explain the
identity implication only by “adopting the self-constitutionalist view”.
So against Bratman’s account of self-governance over time
(THEORY-076) the disagreement is narrower than a rivalry. It is
whether activity needs conformity to the categorical imperative, a
question about agency at a time, and it is not a disagreement about what
links an agent’s times. No
rivalsis declared, and the converse reading is in that account’s Connections. - THEORY-043 (minds of agents, built downward and upward). That account finds that the readings agree on agency in both directions: Block, List and Levin all grant a whole made of agents its agency, on functional grounds. This account grants collective agency on different grounds. What makes a group an agent is joint conformity to norms, not functional organisation, and it draws no conclusion about experience, which is where THEORY-043 locates the dispute. It agrees with THEORY-043’s verdict on agency and gives a reason that does not turn on architecture.
- THEORY-029 (the regress). The stopping point here is not an attitude but conformity to norms that constitute agency. That is specified by the norms of agency themselves, so it is a candidate for THEORY-029’s second horn. THEORY-029’s Connections take it up.
- THEORY-075 (obligation and practical identity) is the Tanner Lectures’ half of the same view: there, practical identity is the source of obligation; here, it is what the content of chosen maxims constitutes.