Constructivism, Agency, and the

Problem of Alignment
Michael E. Bratman

1
According to Bernard Williams, a characteristic context for my judgment that you have
a normative reason to act is the context of "advice in the 'if I were you ... ' mode." 1
The idea, I take it, is that normative reasons for an agent are considerations that have
force from the "perspective" of the agent herself. 2 And this idea is built into important
versions of constructivism that are offered as a general account of normative practical
reasons. But what is the perspective of the agent? One lesson of work in the philosophy
of action is that there are hard questions here, including questions about alienation,
identification, depth, and commitment. The use by a constructivist of the idea of the
agent's perspective needs to be responsive to these complexities in the theory of
agency. 3 But it also needs to be responsive to the pressures that derive from the general
ambitions of such a constructivism. This leads to the question of whether, and if so
how, a constructivist theory can meet both kinds of demands-whether the pressures
from the general constructivism will align with the pressures from the theory of agency.
Call this the problem of alignment. The problem of alignment is a problem at the
intersection of philosophy of action and systematic reflection on normative practical
reasons;• and my hope is that it can be an occasion for increased understanding in both
areas. Toward that end, my plan here is to think in a preliminary way about this
problem by focusing on a specific essay of Sharon Street's: "Constructivism about

1 (Williams 1995, p. 36) This passage is emphasized by T. M. Scanlon in his "Appendix: Williams on
Internal and External Reasons" in Scanlon 1998, p. 372.
2 Talk of the agent's "perspective" is from Williams's next sentence. This is offered by Williams, in its

official version, as a necessary, but perhaps not a sufficient, condition for a normative reason. See Williams
1995, pp. 35-6. Williams also famously appeals to a connection between normative reasons and the potential
motivational explanation of action. I see the cited connection between normative reasons and what has force
from the agent's perspective or standpoint as a related but deeper consrraint on normative reasons.
' Harry Frankfurt connects these questions about alienation with issues about the nature of reasons for
action in Frankfurt 2006, pp. 8-13.
' Nadeem Hussain discusses related issues in Hussain 1999, pp. 151-90.
82 MICHAEL E. BRATMAN

Reasons." 5 I do this both because this essay is clear in a way that helps advance the
discussion, and because this essay at least implicidy involves many of the ideas that are
my intended focus.

2
Street distinguishes between two kinds of constructivist views. The first she calls a
"restricted" constructivist view, versions of which she fmds in Rawls's political con-
structivism and Scanlon's contractualism (210). Such a view:

specifies some particular, restricted set ofjudgments about reasons, and says that the correctness of
a judgment about reasons falling within that set is constituted by the judgment's withstanding a
certain (specified) procedure of scrutiny from the standpoint of some (specified) set of further
judgments about reasons. (209-1 0)

Street here talks about reasons quite generally, but her focus is specifically on normative
practical reasons; and that will be my focus as well, though to save words I will
sometimes just talk about reasons. Such a constructivism about practical reasons in
the restricted set takes as given the correctness of the further set of judgments about
reasons from which the restricted set is to derive-to be, in this sense, constructed-by
way of "scrutiny." The purported correctness of these further, grounding judgments
about reasons is not seen as itself explained by way of such a construction.
The relevant procedure of scrutiny is a kind of function from some judgments about
reasons to other judgments about reasons. (Street also calls these judgments about
reasons "normative judgments," and I will follow her in this regard.) Street labels the
latter judgments the "target set" and the former judgments the "grounding set."
Street contrasts such a restricted constructivism with what we can call a non-restricted
constructivism. A non-restricted constructivist view sees the correctness of all judg-
ments about practical reasons as a matter of their construction from "a standpoint
constituted by some further set of normative judgments" (220). Because such a non-
restricted constructivism purports to provide, quite generally, "truth conditions of
judgments about practical reasons" (239), Street labels it "metaethical constructivism."
Street goes on to offer a specific formulation of such a non-restricted constructivism:

According to metoethica/ constructivism, the fact that X is a reason to Y for agent A is constituted by
the fact that the judgment that X is a reason to Y (for A) withstands scrutiny from the standpoint
of A's other judgments about reasons. (223)

This "metaethical constructivism" is a thesis about what constitutes facts about norma-
tive reasons: such normative facts are constituted by the fact that the corresponding
judgment stands in an appropriate relation to other relevant judgments of the agent's.
This thesis retains the idea, central to restricted constructivist theories, of grounding

' Street 2008. Parenthetical page references in the text are to this essay.
 CONSTRUCTIVISM, AGENCY, AND THE PROBLEM OF ALIGNMENT 83

judgments about reasons that are in a target set in judgments about reasons that are in a
grounding set. But now the target set potentially includes any judgment about reasons
that is up for consideration. Given any such judgment, the grounding set "is the set of
all of the relevant agent's normative judgments, minus the normative judgment whose
correctness is in question" (226). 6 The idea of a constructivism that applies to all
judgments of reasons, and appeals in each case to scrutiny from other judgments
about reasons, involves in this way a Neurath's-boat structure: each judgment of
reasons,], is to be derived, by way of scrutiny, from a background, B, of judgments
about reasons that do not already include]. But given any particular judgment in B-
eall itj*-there is to be a similar construction in its support that draws on a background
that may include both] and many elements in B but does not include]*.
Street's view adds to this Neurath's-boat structure a special role for nonnative
judgments that are judgments of, in particular, the agent. On Street's view, that
there is a reason for agent A to act in a certain way is constituted by a construction
from a background that is characterized by two features:

(a) it is a background that is provided by the standpoint of the agent A; and

(b) this standpoint is constituted by, in particular, A's nonnative judgments.

I want to reflect on this appeal to (a) and (b).

Begin by stepping back a bit. Street's proposal involves a general idea, and a view
about how further to specify this idea. The general idea can be expressed roughly as
follows:

General idea: the correctness of a claim that X is a reason to Y for agent A depends on
facts about (1) a relevant, psychologically real standpoint, together with (2) the
outputs of "scrutiny" from that standpoint.

This general idea is motivated by Street's background conjecture that the existence of
practical reasons depends on the contingent existence of creatures whose psychic
economies involve thoughts about reasons, thoughts that help shape what the creatures
do (22o-3). And the hope is that by developing this background conjecture we can
carve a path between a realism that sees reasons as existing independendy of our
practical thinking, and skepticism about reasons.
As Street notes, this general idea can be developed in different ways depending on
whose standpoint is privileged by the account. Is what is basic the standpoint of the
agent? Or is what is basic the standpoint of the person making the judgment that X is a
reason for that agent? Street argues for the former. In her development of the general
idea she appeals not to the attitudes of the person making a judgment about reasons but,

6 There are puzzles about how to interpret the phrase "minus the normative judgment whose correctness
is in question." For example, if the judgment at issue is a judgment that X is a reason to Y for A, what should
we say about the judgment that ifgrass is white X is a reason to Y for A? or about the judgment that either X is
a reason to Yfor A or Cis a reason to D for A? I put matters aside here.
84 MICHAEL E. BRATMAN

rather, to relevant attitudes of the agent for whom the cited consideration is purported
to be a reason for action. That is, in developing the general idea, Street further specifies
(1) (in the general idea) along the lines of:

la. The relevant standpoint in (1) is the standpoint of the agent, A.

This is where Street's appeal to (a), noted earlier, appears in the theory.
Let me register a concern at this point. Even given the general idea, I would want also
to retain some form of the idea that when we judge that you have a reason, R, we
ourselves are in some way endorsing the significance of R. This is why, to use an
example from Allan Gibbard, we find it strained to suppose that given Caligula's
"horrendous" standpoint of judgments about reasons, he has normative, justifying
reasons to inflict suffering on many. 7 In giving the standpoint of the agent an exclusive
role in her non-restricted constructivism, Street's theory seems to be at least potentially
in conflict with this plausible reticence.
Street's explicit reasons in this essay for focusing exclusively on the agent's stand-
point do not seem sufficiently forceful to me. She says that "it accords much better
with our overall usage" (224). In reply, it does seem to me plausible that our ordinary
thinking about reasons for action supports Gibbard's denial that Caligula has a norma-
tive reason to torture even ifCaligula's standpoint wholeheartedly supports torture and
does not involve relevant and false non-normative belie( Street also says that "the
function of normative judgment is to get us to respond to our circumstances in ways
that are adaptive" (230), and she seems to think this argues for the exclusive focus on
the standpoint of the agent. But it does seem plausible to me that among the functions
of normative judgment are also the kinds of social coordination of thought, feeling, and
action that are highlighted by expressivists like Gibbard.
That said, I want to grant that there is something attractive about la insofar as it is
motivated by the Williams-friendly thought, noted earlier, that reasons for an agent are
considerations that have force from the agent's own perspective. To keep my discus-
sion manageable, then, I will focus here not on whether this exclusive focus on the
agent's standpoint is justified, but on how we are to understand the agent's standpoint
given that it plays, at the least, an essential role in normative reasons for action. 8 And
now we need to note that this Williams-friendly rationale for the move to la has an
important implication. When Williams considered what "the 'if I were you ... 'mode"
of thought appeals to, he settled for a broad idea of the agent's "motivational set." As he
said, this set can include "dispositions of evaluation, patterns of emotional reaction,
personal loyalties, and various projects ... embodying commitments of the agent." 9

7 Gibbard 1999, p. 145. For Gibbard's expressivist account ofjudgments about reasons see Gibbard 1990,
p. 163.
• I am, then, putting aside for another occasion the question of how we might coherendy bring together
the insights of Williams with those of an expressivist like Gibbard.
• Williams 1981, p. 105.
 CONSTRUCTIVISM, AGENCY, AND THE PROBLEM OF ALIGNMENT HS

But there is philosophical pressure here for fmer-grained discriminations. The agent
may be in various ways alienated from certain elements in her motivational set; and
some of these elements may more deeply help constitute where that agent stands than
do others, and in that sense more deeply speak for the agent. 10 The thought that reasons
must have force from the perspective of the agent points to the need for a more
articulated understanding of what precisely constitutes that perspective. So if the cited
Williams-friendly thought is a basis for the move to la, we will want to see the
elements in the agent's psychology to which the non-restricted constructivism appeals
as the elements that constitute where-to return to Frankfurt's phrase-the agent
herself stands. This is a version of the problem of alignment.
I think Street would agree that there is a need for such alignment. 11 Consider her
insistence that "an agent A is, in an important sense, to be identified with her most strongly
and centrally held values" (235, n. 45). In talking of"values" here Street means to refer to
the agent's judgments of reasons. So this remark involves the idea in (b), an idea to be
challenged below. But here I just want to emphasize why, as it seems to me, this
identification matters to Street. It matters, I think, because her constructivism aims to
capture reasons that have force from, in particular, the perspective of the agent. So she
needs to be sure that what is at the bottom of her constructions of reasons is, indeed, the
perspective of the agent, and not merely some wiggles in the agent's psychic stew. And if
this is right then a defense of a non-restricted constructivist view along the lines proposed
by Street will also need an explanation ofwhich attitudes constitute where the agent stands.
Now, in talking about an agent's standpoint we need to avoid a picture of a little
person inside-a homunculus-who steps back, reflects, and adjudicates. What we
want, rather, is a non-homuncular model of the agent's psychic economy such that we
can plausibly argue that certain elements in that economy constitute where the agent
stands. And Street supposes that this standpoint is constituted by, in particular, the
agent's judgments about reasons. This is to develop the general idea and la by adding the
yet further thought that:

1b. The standpoint of the agent is constituted by that agent's normative judgments
about practical reasons.

What are these normative judgments, anyway? Street distinguishes them from
desires and from beliefS (23Q-1). Normative judgments "are by their nature motivat-
ing," in contrast, as Street sees it, with belie£ And, on Street's view, normative
judgments have certain constitutive features-features to which I will turn below-
that distinguish them from ordinary desires. What about other attitudes that also

10 See Harry Frankfurt's reflections on "where (if anywhere) the person himself stands" in Frankfurt
1988c, p. 166.
11 In addition to the passage to be noted in the main text, see also her appeal to issues about which

"standpoint is most deeply" the agent's (235), and her remark that the features of the agent's psychology that
are central to her constructivism shape "who we are" (245).
86 MICHAEL E. BRATMAN

diverge in important ways from ordinary beliefs and desires-for example, intention or
certain emotions? Street's view, I take it, is that such attitudes help constitute the
agent's standpoint only insofar as they involve judgments about reasons. 12
Let's locate this view more explicidy within the debate about agency to which
I have already alluded. A classic moment in this debate occurred in the early 1970s in an
exchange between Harry Frankfurt and Gary Watson. 13 In the terms of our present
discussion, Frankfurt's proposal was that the agent's standpoint is constituted by certain
higher-order desires, whereas Watson's proposal was that it is instead constituted by the
agent's evaluative judgments. The details of these views shifted in important ways over
the years. Watson came to talk about valuing rather than value judgment-though
(with some qualifications) he saw valuing as tied to value judgment. Frankfurt came to
talk about what the agent cares about and loves. 14 But an important contrast remained.
This is the contrast between a view like Watson's that understands the agent's
standpoint in terms of attitudes that essentially involve judgments about values, and a
view like Frankfurt's that sees as fundamental certain conative commitments that are
not, at bottom, judgments about values (though they can affect one's reasons, and
thereby one's judgments about reasons). And on a natural reading, Street is opting for a
Watsonian view, though without the value realism that is also a part ofWatson's overall
view. This is a kind of Platonic psychology without the Platonic value realism.
Frankfurt's original concern was with acting of one's own free will. And Watson's
initial concern was specifically with free agency. So I think it is best to think of the
present issue about the agent's standpoint not as an issue about agency in general but,
rather, as an issue about a strong form of agency. Street does see the structures of
valuing that are central to her story as essential to agency itself (238). But we can
interpret this as a view of what is essential to a specific kind of agency, namely: one that
involves agents who have normative reasons to act. 15

12 And Street briefly indicates that she thinks that nonnative judgments have certain constitutive relations

with certain emotions (242, n. 57).

13 Frankfurt 1988b, Watson 1975. I discuss these essays further in Bratrnan 2007c.

14 Watson 1987, p. 150, Frankfurt 2006.

15 Street's Watsonian view about strong agency also shapes her approach to practical conflict. If we are

going to appeal to the standpoint described in la and 1b to say what reasons A has for action, we are going to
need to say !IOIIlething about cases in which the agent's standpoint includes judgments that conflict, at least
with respect to a particular case. Perhaps A judges that there is reason for her to pursue philosophy, and also
judges that there is reason for her to pursue financial independence. Given certain non-nonnative facts, these
normative judgments support different judgments concerning a reason to go to graduate school in philoso-
phy. Street's resporue is that "the standpoint that determines what reasons (an agent] has is whichever
standpoint is most deeply hers" (234-5). Further, she avers that such depth "is a function of how strongly [the
agent] holds the nonnative judgments in question and how close to the center of her total web of nonnative
judgments they lie" (235).
Thilltrategy for treating conflict of judgments about reasons is an aspect of the idea that the attitudes that
ground reasons on the constructivist view are, as well, attitudes that constitute where the agent stands. And
Street here identifies depth within the psychology of agency with centrality within a web of normative
judgment. Since centrality within a web of judgment is a matter of relations of entailment and support
among those judgments (see p. 235), thi.• appeal to centrality is a kind of intellecrualism about such depth.
 CONSTRUCTIVISM, AGENCY, AND THE PROBLEM OF ALIGNMENT 87

Let's now reflect more carefully on the nonnative judgments cited in 1b. One worry
is that, even granting the coherence of a Neurath-type interdependence in justifica-
tion, appeal to such nonnative judgments at the bottom of the construction threatens a
vicious circularity in the non-restricted constructivist story about reasons. After all, we
seem to be appealing, at the bottom of the construction, to the very idea of a reason in
explaining what constitutes facts about reasons. One idea here might have been to try
to understand the idea of a reason, as it appears in the contents of the judgments in 1b,
in terms of characteristic roles in practical thinking. 16 But this is not Street's strategy.
On her view the concept of a reason, as it appears in the contents of the judgments in
1b, is a concept we grasp by way of our experiential "knowledge of what it is like to
have a certain unreflective experience-in particular, the experience of various things
in the world as 'counting in favor of or 'calling for' or 'demanding' certain responses
on our part" (240). So we can say what the content is of the judgments cited in 1b prior
to our constructivist theory of what reasons there are. So there need be no criticizable
circularity. So we can add to the theory:

1c. Our understanding of the concept of a reason, as it is involved in the content of

the judgments in 1b, is given by our "nonnative experience" (240).

It is important here to distinguish two related but different issues. There is the worry
that the appeal to the very idea of a reason in specifying the contents of the judgments in
1b makes the constructivism circular. This is the worry to which 1c is a response. But
there remains a second, fundamental issue. We need to know what it is to judge that there
are certain reasons-in contrast, say, with merely having a thought or experience whose
content involves the concept of a reason. Not just any normative thought or "normative
experience" is a judgment about reasons. 17 We need to know what else-over and above
the appearance in the content of the idea of a reason-is involved in such a judgment.
Here Street's response is that this further idea of a judgment about reasons is
"supplied ... by our recognition of what is constitutively involved in the attitude of
judging something to be a reason" (241-2). In particular, Street proposes that what is
constitutive of normative judgment-and distinguishes it from ordinary desire even
though both can motivate-includes certain relations among such judgments. One of
Street's main examples involves relations between normative judgments about ends
and normative judgments about means:

[I]t is constitutive of taking oneself to have conclusive reason to Ythat one also, when attending
to the matter in full awareness, take oneself to have reason to take what one recognizes to be the
necessary means to Y. (228) 18

16 An idea in the spirit of Gibbard 1990.

17 Street is alive to this point. For example, in Street 2006, p. 110, Street explicitly contraSts "consciously
or unconsciously beld evaluative judgments, sucb as judgments about what is a reason for wbat" with an
"unreflective ... tendency to experience X as counting favor of or demanding Y."
" "Taking oneself to have" a reason is judging that one has that reason. Seep. 228, n. 37.
88 MICHAEL E. BRATMAN

Note that Street is not appealing here to a connection between intending ends and
intending known necessary means. Street's appeal here is, rather, to connections
between judgments about reasons for ends and judgments about reasons for means.
And Street offers analogous constitutive claims concerning the relation between
judging X to be a reason to Y and judging X not to be a reason to Y, as well as the
relation between judging that only facts ofkind X are reasons to Y, recognizing that Z
is not of kind X, and judging that Z is not a reason to Y. Street offers these as "purely
formal statements about what is involved in the very attitude of taking something to be
a reason" (229). So we can add:

1d. The features constitutive of normative judgment include certain formal rela-
tions among normative judgments (including the cited trio of relations). 19

Now, Street's view involves a kind of relativism: whether or not I have a reason to Y
depends on my own set of normative judgments; and even if I do have a reason to Y it
will not follow directly that you too have such a reason, for your relevant set of
normative judgments may diverge from mine. Might there be certain reasons any
reason-judging agent has? Such "universal" reasons would need to be "'legislated'
from within the standpoint of every creature who takes anything at all to be valuable"
(225). And Street is skeptical that there are such universal reasons since, on her view,
"depending on one's starting set of values one could in principle have a reason for
anything" (244). This is why she calls her view a "formalist"-in contrast with a
"substantive"-constructivism20 (244 ).
Return now to the general idea; and consider in particular (2), the appeal to the
outputs of scrutiny from the agent's standpoint. What is scrutiny? Scrutiny is not free
association: scrutiny is a norm-guided mode of thinking. But what are these norms, and
why should the agent be guided by, in particular, those norms? These questions seem
to be asking for reasons to shape one's thinking in accordance with these norms. But
how should a constructivist think about such reasons? One idea is that these reasons for
these scrutiny-constituting modes of thinking are themselves at the bottom of the
constructivist story, and not themselves explainable along constructivist lines. But then
the constructivist proposal fails as a general, non-restricted account of practical reasons.
Street's specification of (2) (in the general idea) aims to block this objection by
drawing on 1d. Here is what she says:

To decide whether a given judgment withstands scrutiny from the standpoint of A's other
normative judgments, we need not ourselves presuppose any substantive normative judgments;
we need only ask what further normative judgments are constitutively entailed by A's actual

" Street notes (n. 57) that there may well be other features that are constitutive of nonnative judgment.
This is a matter to which we will return.
.. Street, this volume, calls her view "Humean constructivtsm". In contrast, Aaron James builds it right
into the defmition of a constructivism about practical reasons that it supports such universal reasons. See James
2007, p. 303.
 CONSTRUCTIVISM, AGENCY, AND THE PROBLEM OF ALIGNMENT 89

nonnative judgments when we take into account the non-nonnative facts as we know them.
(232)

A central example is the purported end-means constitutive entailment noted earlier:

roughly, it is constitutive of a judgment about conclusive reason that it entails judg-
ments about reasons for known necessary means. So we are to add:

2a. Scrutiny is a matter of determining "what further normative judgments are

constitutively entailed by [the agent's) actual normative judgments when we
take into account the non-normative facts as we know them."

And the claim is that 2a allows us to understand the relevant kind of scrutiny without
appealing to further, substantive normative judgments as essential to scrutiny in a way
that would undermine the completely general ambitions of Street's non-restricted
constructivism.
A problem here is that even such an apparently uncontroversial principle as the cited
end-means principle can turn out to be difficult to formulate and defend. Mter all,
different philosophers have offered different versions of such an end-means principle.
Joseph Raz, for example, highlights sufficient rather than necessary means. And John
Broome suggests that it is not clear that a reason for an end transmits to a reason for a
necessary means for that end in cases in which one knows one is not going to achieve
that end even if one pursues the cited necessary means. 21 Indeed, Street herself at times
seems unsure just what the relevant principle is: in formulating it she sometimes appeals
to a "conclusive" reason for the end, sometimes only to a reason for the end (229, 232).
So there is reason to be concerned that the mere appeal to what is "constitutive" of
normative judgment is not going to setde these issues, and that to setde them we will
need to engage in normative reflection; but that might threaten to undermine the idea
that these principles are formal in Street's sense.
For present purposes, however, I will put this concern to one side, though we will need
to continue to focus on related issues about the purported formality of scrutiny. What
I want to focus on now is the structure of the scrutiny to which the theory appeals.
We can think of scrutiny as an inference with psychological inputs and outputs. On
Street's picture the relevant inputs include normative judgments of the agent, taken
together with "the non-normative facts as we know them"; and the relevant outputs
are other normative judgments of the agent. And this picture of the judgment-infused
inputs and outputs of scrutiny seems deeply embedded in Street's non-restricted
constructivism.
Consider first the idea that the outputs of relevant scrutiny are, in particular, the
agent's normative judgments. This is an aspect of the parallel, highlighted by Street,

•• Raz 2005, p. 6 and Broome 2007, p. 176 (though Broome's remarks are explicitly aimed at the
somewhat different question of whether you ought to perform the necessary means). For an examination
of these issues see Kolodny unpublished. My own approach is sketched in Bratman 2009.
90 MICHAEL E. HRATMAN

between restricted and non-restricted versions of constructivism--an aspect of what

Street sees as "the central distinguishing feature of all constructivist views in ethics"
(208). In each case, according to Street, the correctness of a normative judgment is a
matter of whether that very judgment withstands a relevant "procedure of scrutiny"-the
correctness of that judgment "is constituted by the fact that it withstands this scrutiny"
(208-9, second emphasis mine).
The next point is that if scrutiny is indeed to issue in normative judgment as an
output, without itself involving some substantive normative judgment internal to the
very process of scrutiny, then it seems that the scrutiny will need to begin with
normative judgment as an input. After all, suppose that the scrutiny were instead to
involve, as R. Jay Wallace might say, normative judgment out without normative
judgment in. 22 It seems that such scrutiny would itself need to invoke either some
substantive normative claim connecting non-judgment input with judgment output,
or a meta-normative view connecting non-judgment input with judgment output. 23
The former would compromise the generality of the constructivism: we would now be
appealing to a substantive normative claim in explaining what scrutiny itself is, and so it
would not be clear how to extend the constructivism to that substantive claim itsel£
The latter would involve appeal to a meta-normative thesis that would itself need a
defense, a defense that would then be prior to the constructivist story.
Let me briefly elaborate this last point. Consider a purported case in which there is
normative judgment out but not normative judgment in. Suppose that the input to
scrutiny were the agent's second-order volitions: desires that certain desires motivate. 24
And suppose the output of the scrutiny were a judgment about normative reasons. The
scrutiny would then involve a transition from second-order volition to a judgment
about reasons. What would support this transition? Well, we might try to appeal to a
substantive normative claim that when you have such a second-order volition you have
a normative reason. But then it will be unclear how the constructivism can apply to
that very normative claim. Could we say that it is constitutive of second-order volition
that if you have such a volition and, as Street would say, you attend "to the matter in
full awareness," you will have the cited normative judgment? Well, this seems prob-
lematic. It seems that one could have such a second-order volition and still wonder
whether one has a corresponding reason for action. Could we nevertheless insist that
the metaphysics of reasons, or the relevant concepts, ensure that if you have that
second-order volition then you have the corresponding normative judgment and/ or a
corresponding reason? But then we would be defending the constructivism by appeal
to a yet more basic meta-normative claim. In none of these cases does the constructiv-
ism clearly survive as the completely general and foundational theory Street seeks. And
it seems plausible that this will be a problem whenever the scrutiny has a nonnative

" Wallace 1990.

" For di.ocu..sion relevant to this Schroeder 2007, section 3.4.
,. Frankfurt 19KHb.
 CONSTRUCTIVISM, AGENCY, AND THE PROBLEM OF ALIGNMENT 91

judgment as an output but no relevant nonnative judgment as an input. This is why it is

natural for Street to suppose, as she does, that the relevant scrutiny that issues in
nonnative judgments involves an input that includes nonnative judgments.
That, anyway, seems to me to be a structure of ideas that supports the assumption-
an assumption built into Street's account in this essay-that the relevant agential
scrutiny must begin with the agent's normative judgments and issue in "target"
normative judgments.25 But we have also seen that in the background there is also
the agency-theoretic thought that the ground from which the scrutiny proceeds must
itselfhelp constitute the standpoint of the agent. The appeal to nonnative judgments in
1b amounts, then, to part of a purported, unified solution to a pair of interrelated
problems: how should we think about the standpoint of the agent, and what can serve
as the basis for a non-restricted constructivist view of practical reasons? In this way, lb
involves an optimism that the pressures fiom the non-restricted constructivism will
indeed align with the pressures fiom the theory of agency. And we need some such
alignment if our non-restricted constructivism is going to tie reasons to what has force
from the agent's standpoint.
Now, as Nadeem Hussain has emphasized in conversation, if we were to make a
broadly Kantian assumption that an agent's standpoint is the standpoint of Practical
Reason, then we would have an alignment between the agent's standpoint and a
potential basis for the construction of reasons. (Though we would then need to worry
about how much can be derived simply from practical reason.) But Street rejects this
picture and sees the agent's standpoint as involving, inter alia, myriad and sometimes
idiosyncratic substantive elements. So we need to take seriously the question whether
what we need to appeal to in order to articulate a non-homuncular theory of agential
standpoint is what is needed by Street's non-restricted constructivism.

3
There are two kinds of considerations that point to a difficulty here. One is that we can
be alienated from certain normative judgments, just as we can be alienated from certain
desires. This is one way to understand, for example, Huck Finn's judgment that he

25 Drawing on Williams, Street says that her view is "Humean in that it understands each person's reasons

ultimately to be a function ofhis or her 'subjective motivational set' "(244). But she goes on to insist "that the
'elements' in that set are most profitably characterized first of all not as desires, but rather as ncmnative judgments
(and unreflective versions thereot)" (245). This is a difference between Street and Williams concerning the
inputs that are essential to relevant scrutiny or deliberation. There is also a difference about the outputs.
Williams says that "A has a reason to phi only if he could reach the conclusion to phi by a sound deliberative
route from the motivations he already has" (1995, p. 35). Williams allows that in some cases reaching a
"conclusion to phi" is deciding to phi, or merely being motivated to phi (1981, p. 109). So Williams does not see
nomtative judgment as essential to the outputs of the relevant deliberation or scrutiny.
This is why Williams, in insisting that all practical reasons are "internal," could agree with the general idea,
and with 1a, but still reject 1b. Street, in contrast, seems conunitted to saying that the output of the relevant
is a relevant normative judgment, and so she is under pressure to see the inputs as essentially involving
nom1ative judgments if she is to retain the merely formal character of scrutiny.
92 MICHAEL E. BRATMAN

should tum in the runaway slave, Jim.26 If we were to say what constitutes Huck's
perspective-the perspective to which advice in "the 'ifl were you ... ' mode" should
appeal-it seems plausible that we would not include his judgment that he should tum
in Jim, but rather his attitudes in favor of protecting Jim. So not all normative
judgments help constitute the agent's relevant standpoint.
A second consideration is that much of what constitutes the agent's standpoint
involves attitudes other than normative judgment. In particular, a central Frankfurtian
idea is that what in large part constitutes an agent's standpoint are attitudes like caring
and love, and that these attitudes are not, at bottom, a matter of judging there to be
reasons. Given that the agent cares about or loves certain things he is, according to
Frankfurt, in a position to infer that he has certain reasons for action (though this
inference seems to depend on a substantive normative principle). But the ground of
these reasons is not itself a judgment of reasons but, rather, a distinctive kind of conative
commitment. 27 In many cases what we care about and what we love have a ground-
level role in shaping where we stand, and this role goes beyond the role of any
normative judgments that are not themselves grounded in these attitudes. The role
of my love for my children in constituting my standpoint is not exhausted by judg-
ments about reasons that are not themselves grounded in my love. And this challenges
the idea in lb that the agent's standpoint is constituted by her normative judgments.
I will focus primarily on this second, Frankfurtian challenge. To assess this challenge
we need to reflect on how we might, consistent with the constructivist approach,
defend a specific story of the agent's standpoint. Of course, we cannot say, within such
a constructivist approach, that it is because normative judgments track independent
truths about reasons that they have the authority to constitute where the agent
stands: the constructivist does not countenance such independent truths. What then
can we say?
Well, one plausible approach here is to say that what constitutes the agent's practical
standpoint are those attitudes that play major roles in stably organizing the agent's
temporally extended life, including the motivation of action and the structure of
practical reasoning. There are threads in Frankfurt's work that point to something
like this strategy, and I myself have pursued a version of it in other work. 28 This strategy
could be developed in different ways. But the point to make now is that in its broad
outlines it seems to support the Frankfurtian challenge.
This is because it is plausible that much of the structure ofa life is commonly induced
by commitments that go beyond judgments about reasons or value that do not
themselves depend on those very commitments. Return to Frankfurt's example of
Jove. My love for certain people (or ideals) shapes my life in fundamental ways. My

.. Arpaly and Schroeder 1999. For the general point about the possibility ofbeing alienated from one's
own value judgments see VeUernan 2000, p. 134.
n Frankfurt 2006, esp. pp. 25, 4D-2.
21 Frankfurt 1911!k, p. 175. This is a theme in many of the essays in Bratman 2007a.
 CONSTRUCTIVISM, AGENCY, AND THE PROBLEM OF ALIGNMENT 93

love may be in part a response to, and even involve judgments about, reasons and
values; and once I do love these people (or ideals) I will, normally, have reasons I did
not have before. But the Frankfurtian challenge is that the role of my love in
constituting my practical standpoint, and grounding further reasons, goes beyond the
role of judgments about reasons that do not themselves depend on my love.
Sartre's case of the boy who must choose between the Free French and staying with
his mother points in the same direction: once the boy settles on one of these two
possible ways oflife, he has a commitment that is central to his practical standpoint but
that goes beyond his judgments of reasons that do not themselves depend on that
conunitment. 29 Less dramatic examples along such lines come from career decisions
between options no one of which the agent antecedendy judges to be uniquely best. In
all these cases there is a commitment that is not itself a judgment about reasons though
it seems normally to be a ground of further reasons.
If this is right then what constitutes the agent's standpoint is not limited to the
agent's judgments of reasons. (And, as we have noted, it may not include all such
judgments.) Central to that standpoint will be commitments that go beyond judgments
of reasons that do not themselves depend on those commitments.
It follows from this that the Williams-friendly thought that reasons must be con-
siderations that have force from the agent's standpoint does not yet lead to Street's idea
that reasons must have force from the standpoint of, in particular, the agent's other
normative judgments. So the assumption of a convergence of considerations about
strong agency with the purported role of the agent's normative judgments as the
fundamental inputs to constructivist scrutiny is challenged by these Frankfurtian
thoughts about the commitments that help constitute the agent's standpoint.

4
What are these commitments? Well, they do not simply motivate us: they shape our
practical lives in large part by shaping our practical reasoning. And this seems to involve
shaping what we at least treat as a reason in that reasoning. So perhaps we can see these
conunitments as essentially involving not judgments about reasons but, rather, com-
mitments to treat certain considerations as reasons-to give these considerations
weight-in one's relevant practical reflection. My love for my children constitutively
involves a conunitment to treat their interests as having weight in my deliberation. And
when the boy in Sartre's story settles on a life of aiding his mother his new commit-
ment is in large part constituted by a conunitment to treat certain considerations as
reasons-as having weight-in his relevant deliberation.
The idea here is not the idea that these commitments provide a ground for a
substantive inference to a further judgment about reasons. The present idea is, rather,

29 Sartre 1975, pp. 354-6.

94 MICHAEL E. BRATMAN

that these commitments consist, in large part, in commitments to think and reason in
certain ways-in particular, to treat certain considerations as reasons, as having
weight. 30 But these commitments to treat as a reason need not themselves be judg-
ments that there are these reasons.
Why not? If you are committed to giving certain considerations weight-to treating
them as a reason-why does it not simply follow that you hold the corresponding
judgments about reasons? Here we need again to reflect on constitutive features of
judgment.
What distinguishes judging that p from merely supposing that p, or taking it for
granted that p, or relying on the assumption that p? Here I think it is plausible to appeal
to an idea that goes beyond Street's appeal in ld to relations among the agent's
judgments. This is the idea that in judging that p one sees one's judgment as subject
to correction by relevandy situated thinkers (including, but not limited to, oneself at
other times)-as subject, in particular, to some sort of standard of inter-subjective
convergence.31 And the crucial point here is that you can have a commitment to treat a
consideration as a reason without seeing that commitment as subject to, or conforming
to, relevant demands of inter-subjective convergence. 32 Indeed, you need not even
think of your commitment as entering into a social dialogue that seeks such conver-
gence. So such a commitment to treat as a reason may not be a corresponding
judgment about reasons. The boy in Sartre's case, for example, can be committed to
giving overriding weight to aiding his mother without seeing this commitment as
subject to a standard of inter-subjective convergence. He need not think that someone
who in such a situation arrives at an alternative commitment in favor of the Free French
makes a mistake; and he need not aim at achieving social convergence on this decision.
The idea is that in loving or caring about something we are committed to giving
certain weights--to treating certain considerations as reasons-in deliberation. And
these commitments help structure our own practical thinking and thereby our practical
lives, and so help shape our agential standpoint. We can think of these commitments to
weights as a kind of valuing, as I have in other work. 33 Indeed, this may be a good way
to understand Street's own conception of valuing in her essay for this volume (though
her official view identifies such valuing with normative judgment).34 But the important
point is that if we see judgment as subject to an associated constraint of inter-subjective

30 Frankfurt himself may be skeptical about this distinction when he writes: "Insofar as a person loves
something, he necessarily counts its interests as giving him reasons to serve those interests. The fact that his
beloved needs his help is in itself a reason for him to provide that help ... " (2006, p. 42).
" There will also be issues about intra-subjective, diachronic convergence; but for present purposes we
can put these issues to one side.
•• I discuss this idea in Bratman 2007b, esp. pp. 151-4. /'u I note there (n. 47) there is a parallel here with
Allan Gibbard's distinction between an ''existential conunitment" and acceptance of "a nonn as a require-
ment of rationality" Gibbard 1990, pp 166-70. In Bratman 2006 I discuss closely related issues about
Gibbard's theory of normative judgment as developed in Gibbard 2003 .
., See Bratman 2007d, pp. 295-!!.
•• Street. this volume. section 2.
 CONSTRUCTIVISM, AGENCY, AND THE PROBLEM OF ALIGNMENT 95

accountability, we should say that these commitments to weights need not themselves
be normative judgments since they need not be seen by the agent as subject to demands
of inter-subjective convergence or even as contributions to a social dialogue that aims
at such convergence.
Of course, we could coin a term-"weak judgments," say--and say of such
commitments that they are weak judgments. But the issue is not the word
but the idea that the ordinary judgments about reasons which are the "target" of non-
restricted constructivism-the judgments whose truth conditions the construction aims
to articulate-are not weak in this sense, but are rather tied to relevant demands of
inter-subjectivity. And what we have seen is that there is pressure from the theory of
agency to resist the idea that what speaks for the agent consists solely in such ordinary
judgments. The agent's standpoint may well involve commitments to weights that are
not, strictly speaking, judgments about reasons.
Can we say more about the nature of these commitments? Well, we have available a
concept that seems well suited to help us here, the concept of intention. These
commitments to weights, we can say, are intentions to give these weights in relevant
deliberation, or-as we might say, in light of the normal generality of such commit-
ments-policies of giving such weights. 35 And such intention-like commitments to
treating as a reason need not themselves be judgments about reasons.
So the situation is this. According to lb, the standpoint of the agent that is needed for
non-restricted constructivism is constituted by that agent's normative judgments. But
reflection in the philosophy ofaction supports the idea that the agent's standpoint typically
involves intention-like commitments to treating as a reason, commitments that are not
themselves judgments about reasons. So there is a problem of alignment. What to say?

5
One response might be to be more liberal about the outputs of scrutiny. We agree that
an agent's standpoint typically involves commitments to weights that are not judg-
ments about reasons. But we also allow that the outputs of relevant scrutiny need not
themselves be judgments but can also be such commitments. We thereby support a
modified non-restricted constructivism along the lines of:

(Modified) The fact that X is a reason to Y for agent A is constituted by the fact that
either the judgment that X is a reason to Y (for A) or the commitment to treat X as a
reason to Y (for A) derives, by way of scrutiny, from the standpoint of A's other
normative judgments and commitments to treat as a reason.

The relevant scrutiny will not involve a direct transition from a non-judgment
commitment to treat as a reason to a judgment about reasons. It will instead involve

35 Bratman 2007c.
96 MICHAEL E. BRATMAN

transitions either from nonnative judgment to nonnative judgment, or from non-

judgment nonnative commitment to non-judgment nonnative commitment. So the
scrutiny to which (Modified) appeals promises to respect both a judgment-out,
judgment-in principle, and an analogous commitment-out, commitment-in principle.
And, according to (Modified), there can be cases in which the fact that X is a reason to
Y for A does not consist in the fact that the judgment that X is such a reason is the
output of relevant scrutiny on the part of A. The fact that X is a reason to Y for A might
instead consist in the fact that a commitment to treat X as such a reason is the output of
relevant scrutiny.
It seems to me, however, that this would be a fairly fundamental revision in the
theory. We could no longer say, as Street does say, that "correctness of a judgment
about one's reasons must be understood as a matter of whether that judgment withstands
scrutiny from the standpoint of one's further judgments about reasons" (243, emphasis
added). But this idea-the idea that the correctness of a judgment about reasons is a
matter of whether that very judgment is the output of relevant scrutiny-seems central
to Street's theory and to the purported parallel between her metaethical constructivism
and the restricted constructivist theories from which she begins.
An alternative strategy would be to insist that a commitment to weights helps
constitute where the agent stands only if the agent herself judges that because of this
commitment she has a corresponding reason. And once that judgment about reasons is
an element in the agent's standpoint, the constructivist can appeal to it to explain how,
by way of formal scrutiny, the agent can arrive at relevant judgments of reasons. For
example: I love my children. So I have a policy of giving their interests great weight.
But if this love, and this policy about weights, is really to help constitute where I stand,
I must judge that they do indeed give me reason to promote the interests of my
children. But then this judgment about reasons is in a position to ground, by way of
formal scrutiny, other judgments about reasons. It is, once again, normative judgment
in and normative judgment out.
One might worry that the possibility of being alienated from one's judgments of
reasons will arise here, with respect to the judgment that one's commitment gives one
reasons. But the concern I want to highlight is not about the sufficiency of such a
background judgment about reasons for ensuring that the conunitment is an element
in where the agent stands, but its necessity. It seems that a person's standpoint can
include various personal commitments-commitments that shape her practical think-
ing-whether or not she herself goes on, strictly speaking, to judge that those
conunitments provide a reason, where this judgment of a reason is inter-subjectively
accountable. Perhaps she is too diffident--and/or too aware of disagreements about
such matters-to make such inter-subjectively accountable claims. Nevertheless, this is
still a part of her practical standpoint, where she stands.
The idea of the agent's standpoint is the idea of the agent's fundamental practical
conunitments. Such commitments may include but need not be limited to judgments
about reasons. A diffident agent with certain commitments to weights might not
 CONSTRUCTIVISM, AGENCY, AND THE PROBLEM OF ALIGNMENT 97

herself be prepared to make corresponding inter-subjectively accountable judgments

about reasons. Yet these commitments may still be a central element in her practical
standpoint.
Further, once we acknowledge this point about the diffident agent's standpoint, it is
a short step to the substantive claim that such an agent can in fact have reasons for
action that are grounded in such personal commitments even if she herself is too
diffident to hold this judgment about reasons. But that is a substantive claim about
reasons that is difficult to bring within the ambit of Street's constructivism.
A final response might be to say that the relevant inputs to scrutiny can simply be
commitments to weights even though the outputs of the scrutiny are judgments about
reasons. But the problem here, as we saw in section 2, is that it seems that the scrutiny
will then need to bring to bear substantive normative judgments or meta-normative
principles of a sort that will prevent the scrutiny from being appropriately formal.
My tentative conclusion, then, is that once we try to do justice to the problem of
alignment, and take seriously the cited Frankfurtian challenge, a non-restricted con-
structivism, along the lines sketched by Street in this essay, faces a trilemma. It seems to
need to settle on one of the three modes of response just outlined; but no one of these
responses seems fully satisfactory. 36

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