There is something to this argument even though it is unclear whether it is
ultimately successful. But let’s set this aside and grant that recognition of the funda-
mentality of some moral properties is essential to the felt importance of our moral
practices. This by itself does not provide the basis of a practical argument for our full
reality, since we need further premises to establish that among these fundamental
moral properties there must be some that have persons as their bearers. Note that the
“cosmic significance”of our moral practices might be secured by anchoring them in a
fundamental property of intrinsic value instantiated by states of affairs; this is the kind
of meta-ethical position favored by those in the Moorean tradition, for example.^43 In
short, the practical reason to believe in fundamental properties provides a practical
reason to believe in the full reality of their bearers, but this does not by itself provide a
further practical reason to think that those bearers are persons.^44 We would need
additional arguments here. This is not to say that none could be made, but to
investigate them now would take us deep into the axiological and meta-ethical forests,
and we might forget our way back to the territory I wish to discuss!
Let’s turn to the second“practical argument”for our full reality. Here is a concise
statement. A necessary condition for our moral practices to survive critical examin-
ation is our positing that we possess transcendental freedom. Since our moral
practices must survive critical examination, we must posit that we possess transcen-
dental freedom. But our possessing transcendental freedom ensures our full reality.
Transcendental freedom is a kind of spontaneous causality that persons in them-
selves putatively possess. It is also, for Kant, an intrinsic feature—for Kant, a property
can be both an intrinsic property and a power.^45 In this context, to say that a feature
is spontaneous is to say that its presence and its activities are not determined by
anything else. I do not think that Kant simply means that it is not causally deter-
mined, but rather that there are no other fundamental features upon which its
presence and activities supervene. Rather, it is part of Kant’s practical-based meta-
physics that our exercises of transcendental freedom appear in the ground-floor
account of what gives rise to the phenomenal realm.^46 So, if we have transcendental
freedom, we have a feature that fails to supervene on all other perfectly natural
properties and relations.^47 By the principle articulated in sections 5.7 and 6.5,
(^43) See Moore (1993). It is arguably part of the Moorean tradition that other forms of intrinsic value,
including those that can be ascribed to persons, are derivative forms of value—and that from which they
derive is a kind of impersonal intrinsic value. For an illustration of this claim and a defense of one aspect of
it, namely, the reduction of prudential value to the intrinsic value of states of affairs, see McDaniel (2014c). 44
Rashdall (1924: 206) argues that it is part of our moral psychology that persons are at least as real as
any physical thing posited by the sciences; see also Mander (2011: 404) for commentary. 45
See Kant’sfirstCritique(Kant 1999a: 535–46, A538/B566–A558/B586) for a discussion of transcen-
dental freedom. See Pereboom (2006: 544–7) for a discussion of fundamental yet intrinsic causal powers,
and for the claim that transcendental freedom would be one of them. Langton (1998: 117) worries whether
causal powers can be intrinsic. 46
47 See, for example, Kant (1999a: 545, A556/B589).
O’Connor (2014: 30–1) argues that some proponents of“libertarian free will”are committed to a
form of emergentism in which“our mental states and capacities”are“ontologically basic.”Also of