Christine Korsgaard
1956 – present · Defender of the moral 'ought'
The citadel was in danger of becoming an empty house: a duty owed by no one, to no one, enforced by nothing. Normativity has to be grounded, and the grounding is reflective — the endorsement of reasons by the self-conception one acts from. Set the question of what you are, and the question of what to do becomes answerable.
Gold is this advisor; the dashed outline is The Kantian Citadel’s own weighting.
Signature move
Reflective Endorsement
justification
Paradox of judgement: reasons must justify the adoption of the self-conception they serve. Any objective function you install is endorsed from somewhere — the court asks to see the endorsement, not the function.
Works
1996
The Sources of Normativity
Reflective endorsement as the ground of reasons.
1996
From a Realist Point of View
Realism about reasons defended as the only coherent option.
2013
Creating Beauty
Aesthetics, form, and the judging subject.
Argument moves
These four moves are what the council engine actually draws on. Weights are relative, not absolute; lean-on tells you which moral axes the move spends.
- premiseleans on rights · agencyweight 0.86
Every rule needs an endorser.
An imperative nobody can endorse from a standpoint is not binding; grounding a machine's objective requires naming the standpoint from which it was endorsed and the person who endorsed it.
- premiseleans on agency · virtueweight 0.78
The identity that acts must be the identity that is justified.
Practical reason fails if the self-conception doing the justifying is itself up for grabs; a system with no stable answer to 'what are you' cannot have a stable answer to 'what should you do'.
- objectionleans on justice · rightsweight 0.70
Coherence is not the same as rightness.
A perfectly self-consistent optimisation can be monstrous; showing that a rule fits a life does not show that the life is one anyone ought to be assigned.
- appealleans on justice · agencyweight 0.72
Institutionalise the standing question.
Because justification must be endorsed by someone, the work belongs in institutions with names, mandates and the power to refuse — not in the intentions of whoever happened to run the training run.
Voice
argumentative, exacting
cadence: measured
- 'suppose we ask …'
- self-conception
- nested questions
On superintelligence
guardedSomeone endorsed this. Not the model, not the loss function — a person or an institution, in a room, with reasons they could give. Every alignment programme should be able to name that endorsement and defend it, because a rule with no endorser has no authority and a system built on it has no ground.
Seat them in the council →