Perspectives and good dispositions

Abstract

In some cases we can only conform to norms like Choose the best! by luck, in a way that is not creditable to us. According to the perspectivist diagnosis, the problem with such norms is that they make reference to facts that may lie outside our perspectives. The first aim of this paper is to argue that the perspectivist diagnosis of the problem of luck is not ultimately correct. The correct diagnosis, I argue, is feasibilist: in some situations it is not feasible to choose, act, or believe in ways that conformity to objectivist norms robustly depends on. The same, I argue, is true of perspectivist norms: sometimes it is not feasible to track facts about our own perspectives. This shift in focus from the limits of our perspectives to limits on feasible ways of acting, choosing and believing has deep ramifications for normative theory. My second aim is to sketch an alternative, feasibilist way of thinking about a more subject‐directed kind of normativity that takes into account our limitations as human agents. The result is a normative picture that unifies the practical and theoretical domains.