employs the notions of correctness to whole propositional attitudes such as
desires, preferences, and beliefs. I suggest that we can also assess the correctness
of sub-propositional objects. I offer for consideration the following: aconcept,
which, as Kant told us in thefirstCritique, is a predicate of a possible judgment,
is correct to the extent that it is a concept of something fully real.^11 In general, one
might hold that any sub-act of a propositional attitude that has content is correct to
the extent that the object of that act is fully real. The mostfit objects of our thoughts
are those that are fully real.
This is not to say that every object-oriented attitude is correctonlyto the extent
that its object is fully real. Some emotions are directed towards objects rather than
propositions or states of affairs; one kind of love is directed towards objects. One
might love Hitler; perhaps Hitler, like all persons, is fully real; and yet one’s love of
Hitler is not clearly thereby correct. But there is one object-directed attitude that is
maximally correct if and only if its object is fully real: the attitude of attending to. On
this way of thinking, some objects arefit for attention and others are not. Beings by
courtesy are not cognized by God because a perfect being attends only to those
objects that are mostfit for attention.
If we are mere beings by courtesy, then we are not ourselvesfit objects for our
thoughts. There is a sense then in which our self-conceptions are irredeemably
flawed. Moreover, if we accept that there is a connection between correctness and
value across the board—which I am also inclined to do, even without accepting that
this connection amounts to a reduction—then there is also a sense in which being is a
kind of value: it is metaphysical goodness. Fully real beings enjoy a certain kind of
metaphysical goodness that beings by courtesy lack. If we are beings by courtesy, we
are less good qua beings than we might have hoped to be.
I have stressed the importance of our full reality to our evaluative self-
conception. However, perhaps our self-conception is something we should give
up. In section 5.5, we discussed the philosophy of Nāgārjuna, who held that
everything—which includes us!—isempty. I tentatively suggested that we might
takeemptinesseither to be or to imply lack of full reality. According to this tentative
interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s philosophy, our ignorance of our own ontological
status is one of the barriers to achieving liberation from suffering.^12 And more
generally, the doctrine of“no-self”has been taken to be central to various strands of
Buddhist philosophy.^13 One way of interpreting the doctrine of no-self is that there
are two kinds of existence: conventional existence, the kind had by ordinary things
including ourselves, and fundamental existence. Various strands of Buddhism
(^11) See Kant (1999a: 205, A69/B94).
(^12) Fenner (1990: 37) says that, for Nāgārjuna, a necessary condition of liberation is recognizing the
emptiness of everything; according to Fenner (1990: 42),“intrinsic existence”is what empty things lack.
Westerhoff (2009: 157) says that no longer thinking of oneself as substantial is essential to liberation. 13
See Siderits (2007: 26–7, ch. 3).