2007年春天的一个星期天，我和约翰走进KALW的后屋，发现肯正在唱歌。Back then I was both Ken’s PhD student and the director of research for中国伊朗亚洲杯比赛直播, so it was always a treat to catch my advisor and boss being playful. He was coming up with different lyrics for Sinatra’s classic “Love and Marriage.” He sang:

Norms and Nature!

Norms and Nature!

Go together like a…

Ken, who had a lovely singing voice, was keeping his alive for the promos we were about to record. (Ben Manila, then producer of中国伊朗亚洲杯比赛直播, was insistent on such things.) But Ken was also, in his way, announcing the theme of a book project that would occupy him on and off for the next twelve years.

那本书会讨论一些重大问题。Normativity—along with us humans steeped in it—does not fall metaphysicallyoutsidethe natural order; rather, it falls squarely within it. There may appear to be a conceptual chasm between nature, governed by physics and chemistry, and the normative orders of meaning, rationality, value, and ultimately morality. But Ken wished to argue that that chasm isnot在概念上是不可能跨越的。We just have to get the details right and understand what natural structuresconstitutemeaning and value. Once we clear away certain philosophical obstacles—erroneous assumptions about language, etc.—the right theoretical bridge can be built.

In 2007,中国伊朗亚洲杯比赛直播was still young. So at that time, Ken had two fledgling intellectual projects that were dear to him: his radio show with John, and his nascent book. Both went on to grow over the years—the radio show publicly and his book project privately. But after multiple drafts of chapters and various practice articles, he just recently settled on a title that he liked for the progressing book:A Natural History of Normative Consciousness.

Most academic philosophers know Ken for his technical work on language and mind. But it always seemed to me that this project on norms and nature, which ranged from metaphysics to metaethics, was closest to his heart. Somehow, all that other stuff—cool as it was—was a prelude.

Here’s an example. Ken’s latest book in philosophy of language,Meaning Diminished: Toward Metaphysically Modest Semantics,今年由牛津大学出版社出版But theMeaning Diminishedmanuscript really started out its life as aprefaceto hisNatural History. It was meant to clear up some metaphysically burdensome views about language in order to make way for a realistic portrait of normativity. Just the work was so substantial that the preface became its own book.

Convinced of the importance of Ken’s normativity project, and with the support of my departmental chair Eddy Nahmias, I invited him to Georgia State for an extended visit this past September. At about twelve years in, the book as a whole had become an adolescent and was thus ready for a workshop. So on September 13, the project that Ken sang about all those years ago saw an introduction to the world—or at least to a motley collection of philosophers from around Atlanta, along with Axel Mueller of Northwestern and Ram Neta of UNC, whom we had invited as commentators.

It would be futile for me here to try to describe in any detail the systematic structure and argumentation of Ken’s manuscript. Still, I want to give a taste of his approach, of how he thought that from this “vast and layered labyrinth of nature” something extraordinary could emerge, which he called “norm mongering creatures engaged in a dialectic of ratification and resistance.” In other words: humans.

所以肯的项目是有建设性的。第一部分(两章)概述了如何利用相对基本的信息响应能力和逻辑句法来构建一种生物，这种生物具有某种形式的理性、自我以及为自己规定规则的准康德式能力。第二部分(三章)将这些理性的生物构建成一个相互联系的社会，在这个社会中，这些规范贩子不可避免地进入团体和个人冲突，必须协商哪些权利应该得到认可和批准，哪些不应该，以及由此产生的东西如何在自然世界中被恰当地称为规范。第三部分接着探讨了第一部分和第二部分的道德和元伦理后果。它的两章将讨论两件事:(i)如何成为一个相对主义者(ii)如何“征服久已死去的上帝挥之不去的阴影”。

All that will strike most readers here as dense and theoretical, and it is. Yet in the workshop itself, Ken managed to outline and discuss his project with, as Axel later put it, a sense of “liberty, air, and creative-while-rigorous exploration of profound matters among equals.”

I have often wondered why this project, of all things in philosophy, was so dear to Ken. I don’t think I can say. But a story that Ram told me from the night of Ken’s manuscript workshop will give a sense. Ram, Ken, and Axel were taking an Uber from dinner back to the hotel, and as Ram puts it:

That same day, it was reported that the California state legislature had just voted in favor of a bill that would require Uber and Lyft to provide full-time employee status for all of their drivers. As soon as we got into the car, Ken mentioned this fact without editorial and then asked the driver what he thought of the measure. The driver didn't approve of the measure, and Ken proceeded to ask why. Soon, all four of us were talking animatedly with each other about the personal and social benefits and costs of employment versus freelancing. For that brief period of his life, the Uber driver had become a philosopher at Ken's invitation.

Thus, in the back of an Uber, Ken was putting into practice the rational dialectic of ratification and resistance that he so eloquently portrayed in his never-to-be-finished writing.

Norms and nature. . . go together like a . . . what? After fishing around for the right word all those years ago, Ken never finished the rhyme to his song. Life moved on and we had to record promos. I am filled with sadness every time I think that he will never finish his great book project either.

I’d like to thank Rachel Lehmann, Axel Mueller, and Ram Neta for their help with writing this piece. Photo byMelanie Fan, Georgia State University College of Arts & Sciences.