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The Department of Philosophy is pleased to present the Lorne Maclachlan Lecture on Kant:
Hannah Ginsborg, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley

"Oughts without reasons: a defence of primitive normativity"

Thursday, March 12, 2026
4-6pm
Dunning Hall, Room 10

Many philosophers understand the notion of normativity in terms of reasons.  What I ought to do, on this conception, is what I have reason to do.  I argue against this conception by appealing to 鈥減rimitive normativity鈥�: a kind of normativity whose recognition is required for the acquisition and possession of concepts.  In order to grasp the concept dog I must be able to recognize of any individual dog that it ought to be sorted with other dogs.  But that 鈥渙ught鈥� must be independent of reasons, since my recognition of it is a prior condition of my grasping reasons.  Although I will present the argument without direct reference to Kant, it is Kantian in origin, deriving from Kant鈥檚 idea that we have a faculty of judgment鈥攆or 鈥渢hinking the particular as contained under the universal鈥濃�攖hat operates without dependence on reasons and which is independent of the faculty of reason.

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