Robert Audi

Robert N. Audi (born November 1941) is an American philosopher whose major work has focused on epistemology, ethics (especially on ethical intuitionism), rationality and the theory of action. He is O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and previously held a chair in the business school there. His 2005 book, The Good in the Right, updates and strengthens Rossian intuitionism and develops the epistemology of ethics. He has also written important works of political philosophy, particularly on the relationship between church and state. He is a past president of the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers.

Audi's contributions to epistemology include his defense of fallibilistic foundationalism. Audi has expanded his theory of justification to non-doxastic states, e.g. desires and intentions, by developing a comprehensive account of rationality. A mental state is rational if it is "well-grounded" in a source of justification. Justification can come directly from experience (e.g. perception) or indirectly from other mental states that are themselves justified. Rationality is relative to a person's experiences, so what is rational to believe for one person may be irrational to believe for another. Audi has also developed an account of autonomy, which he characterizes as the self-governing power to bring reasons to bear in directing one's conduct and influencing one's propositional attitudes. Self-legislation is necessary but not sufficient for autonomy since it lacks the power to govern by itself. Autonomy involves responding to reasons in a principled way by endorsing commitments to projects and practical principles.

Life Audi earned his BA from Colgate University and his MA and PhD from the University of Michigan. He taught initially at the University of Texas at Austin, and then for many years as the Charles J. Mach University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln before moving to University of Notre Dame as Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Management, and the David E. Gallo Chair in Ethics. In 2009 he vacated the Gallo Chair and took a chair as John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy. He has served as General Editor of the First Edition (1995) and Second Edition (1999) of The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. He has also served as the general editor for "Modern Readings in Epistemology", as well as for "Modern readings in Metaphysics".

In an interview for the Brooklyn Friends School of which he's an alumnus (year 1959), he revealed that his interest in philosophy came from his father, a businessman and Lebanese immigrant with an interest in philosophy and history. His mother, a medical doctor and faculty at NYU Medical School, was also an influence. "'Both liked to explain and comment on things,' Robert mused, 'and they often entertained people from the diplomatic world and medicine who argued about politics, religion and ideas in general.'" Audi was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.

Philosophical work Epistemology Audi has defended a position he calls "fallibilistic foundationalism." He thinks that the foundationalist response is the only tenable option of the epistemic regress argument. This states that if every belief has to be justified by some other, then the only options are four: infinite regress, circularity, stopping at a belief that is not knowledge, and stopping at a basic belief that is itself justified. If the only alternative is the fourth, then if one has knowledge, one has foundational knowledge. Audi considers that foundationalism is usually taken to be infallible. That is, it is normally associated with the view that knowledge is founded on basic beliefs that are axiomatic and necessarily true, and that the rest of knowledge is deduced from this set of beliefs. Audi thinks that foundationalism may be fallible, in the sense that the suprastructure of beliefs may be derived inductively from the basic beliefs, and hence may be fallible. He also thinks that basic beliefs need not be necessary truths, but merely have some structure which makes epistemic transition possible. For example, the belief that one is in the presence of an object arises causally from visual perception.

Rationality The main account of Audi's theory of rationality is laid out in his book "The Architecture of Reason: The Structure and Substance of Rationality". He develops a comprehensive account of rationality that covers both the theoretical and the practical side of rationality. Theoretical rationality concerns beliefs and counts towards truth while practical rationality covers desires, intentions, and actions and counts towards goodness.

Ground The notion of a ground plays a central role for rationality: a mental state is rational if it is "well-grounded" in a source of justification. For example, the perceptual experience of a tree when looking outside the window can ground the belief that there is a tree outside. A ground can psychologically support a mental state. Mental states may be supported by several grounds at the same time. Audi compares such a mental state to a porch that is supported by various pillars. Audi's foundationalism is different from what he terms "Cartesian foundationalism" in the sense that all justification, including justification from basic sources, is defeasible. The main basic source of the rationality of desires, on the other hand, comes in the form of hedonic experience: the experience of pleasure and pain. So, for example, a desire to eat ice-cream is rational if it is based on experiences in which the agent enjoyed the taste of ice-cream, and irrational if it lacks such a support. Because of its dependence on experience, rationality can be defined as a kind of responsiveness to experience. This apparent consequence of Audi's account is opposed to the common-sense view that most people are rational at least some if not most of the time.

Autonomy Robert Audi characterizes autonomy as the self-governing power to bring reasons to bear in directing one's conduct and influencing one's propositional attitudes.

Self-legislation Autonomy is often equated with self-legislation in the Kantian tradition. Self-legislation may be interpreted as laying down laws or principles that are to be followed. Audi agrees with this school in the sense that we should bring reasons to bear in a principled way. Responding to reasons by mere whim may still be considered free but not autonomous. This motivation may be inherent in the corresponding practical judgment itself, a position known as motivational internalism, or may come to the practical judgment externally in the form of some desire independent of the judgment, as motivational externalism holds. Given this outlook, autonomy would be the "capacity to subordinate one's conduct to one's strongest desire(s)" with the goal of satisfying as many desires as possible. One of the problems of instrumentalism is that it lacks the resources to distinguish between good and bad intrinsic desires. For example, if someone finds himself with an intrinsic desire to hurt others, instrumentalism recommends that he should try to do so as efficiently as possible. Audi suggests that we should adopt a position known as axiological objectivism in order to avoid this counterintuitive conclusion. The central idea of this outlook is that objective values, and not subjective desires, are the sources of normativity and therefore determine what we should do. Reason can, through rational reflection, arrive at ideals of conduct in the light of these objective values, for example, to promote pleasure and to impede pain in oneself and others. The autonomous person would endorse the ideals arrived at and realize them in her behavior.

Selected bibliography

Monographs Belief, Justification, and Knowledge: An Introduction to Epistemology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1988. Action, Intention, and Reason. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. The Structure of Justification. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge. London: Routledge, 1998. Second edition: 2002. Third edition: 2010. Religious Commitment and Secular Reason. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. The Architecture of Reason: The Structure and Substance of Rationality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Practical Reasoning and Ethical Decision. London: Routledge, 2006. Moral Value and Human Diversity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008. Business Ethics and Ethical Business. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009. Reasons, Rights, and Values. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Co-authored books and edited volumes Rationality, religious belief, and moral commitment: new essays in the philosophy of religion (with William J. Wainwright). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Second edition: 1999. Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Public Debate (with Nicholas Wolterstorff). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. Rationality, rules, and ideals: critical essays on Bernard Gert's Moral Theory (with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.