PHIL 440: Study Questions on Korsgaard, Prologue and Lecture 1.

1. What is the normative question? Keep track of the places where Korsgaard says what it is and be prepared to discuss them in class.

2. What is a theory of moral concepts (TMC)? What are the practical and psychological effects of moral ideas (PPEMI)? What constraints do the PPEMI place on a TMC?

3. Why does Korsgaard think that violating at least some moral obligations must be understood to involve a loss of identity?

4. Use the examples of Grotius, on the one hand, and Puffendorf and Hobbes, on the other hand, to explain the normative question. Hint: Explain why Korsgaard thinks that the latter two addressed the normative question and the former did not.

5. What is voluntarism? Why does Korsgaard classify Puffendorf and Hobbes as voluntarists? Explain the distinction between the content of morality and the source of obligation? According to Puffendorf and Hobbes, what is the source of obligation? What is the "fatal flaw" in their answer, according to Clarke (and Korsgaard)?

6. What is procedural realism? Give examples. What is substantive realism? Give examples.

7. Korsgaard says that substantive realism is a "metaphysical position"(33). What does she mean? Why does she think that her procedural realism is not a metaphysical position? Explain your answer by reference to her discussion of means-end rationality (36).

8. What does Korsgaard mean when she says that "Pritchard's way of approaching the matter leads us to confuse the question of correct application with the question of normativity"(39)? [Explain the two questions.] How would Pritchard reply?

9. What is Korsgaard's response to Nagel? How would Nagel respond?

10. Is the normative question a request for knowledge? What is the substantive realist's answer to this question? What is Korsgaard's answer to this question?