Normative Competence and Ambivalence

AbstractWhat is well-functioning agency? This chapter argues that a necessary condition on well-functioning agency is normative competence. According to this understanding, normative competence involves three essential capacities: being sensitive to normatively significant facts, being attuned to the degree to which those facts bear on the agent’s practical situation, and being disposed to regularly act on the basis of such facts in accordance with their weightiness. The chapter argues that in the face of many practical conflicts, normative competence on the part of the agent will require her to be responsive to competing reasons, and for that responsiveness to be present in how she executes her choice. An upshot of this, the chapter concludes, is that normative competence sometimes requires agents to be ambivalent.