Okay.

Previously, I attempted to motivate a certain view of the grounds of ethically significant action.

Integral to this view is the claim that what makes a certain action ethically significant

is not whether it has been efficiently caused by some sort of psychological mechanism internal to an agent

independently of outside influences. I am not denying that freedom in that sense is possible

or that it isn't a necessary condition for ethical action. My concern is that the emphasis on that

sort of condition for ethically significant action disposes us to miss what is really important in this vicinity.

Whether or not our wills operate as independent, efficient causes makes no difference for how we

raise our children, train our future colleagues, or plan our lives in deliberation with our

neighbors. Rather, an ethically significant action is a

performance that has a special sort of relationship to a form of life. Specifically, an ethically

significant action is justified by a commitment to a certain set of goods that together

constitute the good life, or it is something that the doing of which

commits one to such a view of what really matters. Ethically significant actions are those

doings for which one can give reasons, wherein reasons are justifications in terms of goods

of ultimate concern, acting in accord with a vision of what really

matters most in a human life.

The perceptive member of the audience will have already noted that I am suggesting that we worry

less about something pushing us from behind as an efficient cause and instead wonder about

what exactly pulls us toward it as a final cause. What we want from our children, colleagues,

and neighbors is that they be motivated by certain goods that constitute our shared form of life.

I also tried to show you how our relationship to these reasons for our ethically significant

...