Properly understood, the instrumental rule says to take means that actually suffice for my end, not, as is nearly universally assumed, to intend means that I believe are necessary for my end. This alternative explains everything the standard interpretation can—and more, including grounding certain correctness conditions for exercises of our will unexplained by the standard interpretation.

What role do the first principles of morals play in Reid's moral theory? Reid has an official line regarding their role, which identifies these principles as foundational propositions that evidentially ground other moral propositions. I claim that, by Reid's own lights, this line of thought is mistaken. There is, however, another line of thought in Reid, one which identifies the first principles of morals as constitutive of moral thought. I explore this interpretation, arguing that it is a fruitful way of understanding much of what Reid wants to say about the role of moral first principles and drawing some connections between it and recent work on moral nonnaturalism.

The possibility of error conditions the possibility of normative principles. I argue that extant interpretations of this condition undermine the possibility of normative principles for our action because they implicitly treat error as a perfection of an action. I then explain how a constitutivist metaphysics of capacities explains why error is an imperfection of an action. Finally, I describe and defend the interpretation of the error condition which follows.

In a 1981 letter to H .L. A. Hart, John Rawls sketches a view of moral objectivity that substantially differs from that of contemporary constructivists. The view he describes does not rely on constitutive features of agency as Korsgaard's does, and it does not bottom out in a form of realism as Scanlon's moral theory does. Instead, Rawls's view grounds objectivity on the fundamental conceptions that could be shared in wide reflective equilibrium. Constructivism grounds objectivity in a kind of intersubjectivity, and Rawls finds the relevant kind of intersubjectivity in the alignment between fundamental convictions. This article develops this Rawlsian view of objectivity and highlights its strengths.

There are several senses in which Kant’s moral law is independent of sensibility. This paper is devoted mainly to Kant’s account of ‘physical conditions independence’, or the idea that the moral law can compel us to pursue ends that might be impossible to realize empirically. Since this idea has received little attention from commentators, this paper addresses both its textual basis in Kant’s writings and its overall philosophical viability.