Emese Havadtői
Central European University
In this talk, I examine a metaethical approach that locates normative truth within agents while rejecting the Kantian attempt to ground morality in rationality alone. The leading example of such a view is Sharon Street’s Humean constructivism, which offers an agent-relative account of normative truth, grounding it in psychological states. According to Street, what an agent has reason to do is a function of their particular, contingently given, evaluative starting points. This position faces a central challenge: if there are no categorical reasons, can it still account for the universality of morality? Without categorical normative truth, the only condition morality must fulfill is coherence – which can be achieved by many different sets of moral norms. Following Hume, I argue that many moral reasons are universal because they arise from shared human traits – most notably empathy, and our disposition for social cooperation. However, opposing Hume, I concede that not all moral reasons can be grounded in such universal human dispositions. For example, neither of them entails anything about whether to prioritize e.g. familial duties or duties to the whole of humanity. Such universal human features constrain moral reasons without fully determining them. They limit an agent’s moral nature, but also allow for some non-universal moral reasons that arise from individual circumstances. Thus, the result is not an argument against relativism, but a case for why a limited form of moral relativism need not be morally or philosophically threatening.
Chair: tba
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SOPhiA 2026 