In this paper, I concentrate on the notion of default valency, drawing on some of the distinctions made and thoughts given in my Introduction. I motivate why the notion is important for particularists to have up their sleeves by outlining a recent debate between particularists and generalists. I then move to the main aim of the piece which is to discuss how anyone, particularist and generalist alike, might seek to distinguish reason-generating features into different types. My main aim is not (...) to argue for a specific way of dividing such features into types but to present various taxonomical options. Key Words: ethics • features • generalism • particularism • valency. (shrink)

This paper presents a dilemma for the additive model of reasons. Either the model accommodates disjunctive cases in which one ought to perform some act $$\phi $$ just in case at least one of two factors obtains, or it accommodates conjunctive cases in which one ought to $$\phi $$ just in case both of two factors obtains. The dilemma also arises in a revised additive model that accommodates imprecisely weighted reasons. There exist disjunctive and conjunctive cases. Hence the additive model (...) is extensionally inadequate. The upshot of the dilemma is that one of the most influential accounts of how reasons accrue to determine what we ought to do is flawed. (shrink)

In a series of papers, Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star defend the following general account of reasons: R: Necessarily, a fact F is a reason for an agent A to Φ iff F is evidence that an agent ought to Φ.In this paper, I argue that the reasons as evidence view will run afoul of a motivational constraint on moral reasons, and that this is a powerful reason to reject the reasons as evidence view. The motivational constraint is as follows: (...) M: For some consideration C to be a moral reason for an agent to Φ it must be possible for C to figure as part of the agent’s motivation for Φing without thereby undercutting (either partially or wholly) the positive moral evaluation of the agent in acting as she does.M presents a problem for Kearns and Star’s view because there will be cases where some consideration is evidence that an agent ought to Φ, but where if an agent was motivated by that consideration the agent’s action would thereby be worse from a moral perspective for that very reason. Further, I argue that this problem will likely arise on any moral theory that evaluates the motivation of an agent as a component of assessing the moral status of acts. (shrink)

Adherents of particularism draw rather strong implications of this view. However, particularism has never been stated in a canonical way. We locate the core of particularism as a claim about how different reasons combine to generate the Tightness or wrongness of an action. Using the notion of an ordering of alternatives containing separable factors, we show that particularism can be stated more generally as the denial that there exist separable factors.With this definition in place, we show that, once subjected to (...) a number of clarifications, particularism largely does have the implications often associated with it. However, we find the various arguments that have been given in support of particularism to be very poor. We conclude that particularists do have a point when they claim that some form of generalism cannot simply be taken for granted. But no particular reasons in favour of being a particularist have been offered. (shrink)

Barry Maguire has recently argued that the nature of normative support for affective attitudes like fear and admiration differs fundamentally from that of reasons. These arguments appear to raise new and serious challenges for the popular ‘reasons-first’ view according to which normative support of any kind comes from reasons. In this paper, I show how proponents of the reasons-first view can meet these challenges. They can do so, I argue, if they can successfully meet some other well-known challenges to their (...) view: distinguishing between right and wrong kinds of reasons, distinguishing between reasons, enablers, and defeaters, and providing an account of the relation between reasons and rationality. Whether proponents of the reasons-first view can meet these other challenges remains controversial. I do not try to settle these questions here, but rather show that the debate about the nature of normative support for affective attitudes is not going to be settled in isolation from them. (shrink)

ABSTRACT : According to the most popular version of virtue ethics (Hursthouse, 1991; Zagzebsk,i 1996), the right action in a given situation is the action that a fully virtuous agent would do given the circumstances. However, this criterion raises two objections: in some situations, it does not determine the right action correctly, and in other situations, it does not determine any right action at all. In this article, we argue that these objections stem from either simple imaginative resistance or a (...) question-begging stance. We propose thereby to modify the criterion in such a way as to exclude the character of the non-virtuous agent from the morally relevant circumstances. Finally, we examine the implications of our proposal for the issue of moral development. (shrink)

Background conditions are thought to explain how objects can have value in virtue of certain features and how reasons can consist in certain facts. The following paper provides an account of what background conditions are and what effect they have on normative features. It defends the idea that if values depend on reasons, then there is nothing really surprising or mysterious about the presence of background conditions in normative explanations. Background conditions turn out to be a natural and predictable result (...) of normative hierarchies that treat reasons as metaphysically fundamental relative to other normative features. The account is also shown to have advantages over competing accounts in that it is able to capture the functional criteria that characterize background conditions while remaining theoretically parsimonious. (shrink)

This paper champions the view (REG) that the concept of a normative reason for an agent S to perform an action A is that of an explanation why it would be good (in some way, to some degree) for S to do A. REG has numerous virtues, but faces some significant challenges which prompt many philosophers to be skeptical that it can correctly account for all our reasons. I demonstrate how five different puzzles about normative reasons can be solved by (...) attention to the concept of goodness, and in particular observing the ways in which it—and consequently, talk about reasons—is sensitive to context (ends and information). Rather than asking simply whether or not certain facts are reasons for S to do A, we need to explore the contexts in which it is and is not correct to describe a certain fact as “a reason” for S to do A. These five puzzles concern: (1) reasons for attitudes of the “right kind”, (2) evidence as reasons, (3) normative facts as reasons, (4) subjective reasons, and (5) attitudes as reasons. (shrink)

The main aim of this thesis is to defend moral realism. In chapter 1, I argue that moral realism is best understood as the view that moral sentences have truth-value, there are moral properties that make some moral sentences true, and moral properties are not reducible to non- moral properties. Realism is contrasted with non-cognitivism, error-theory and reductionism, which, in brief, deny, and, respectively. In the introductory chapter, it is also argued that there are some prima facie reasons to assume (...) that non-cognitivism and error-theory are erroneous. In chapters 2 and 3, I suggest that the two main forms of reductionism, analytic and synthetic reductionism, are mistaken. In chapter 4, I argue that the considerations in the previous chapters in relation to non-cognitivism, error-theory and reductionism provide support to moral realism. It is also suggested that these considerations make it plausible to hypothesise that moral properties depend on non- moral properties in a way I refer to as ‘the realist formula’. The realist formula confirms moral realism since it implies that moral properties are not reducible to non- moral properties. In chapters 5, 6 and 7, I argue that moral realism, much owing to the realist formula, is able to explain significant meta-ethical issues regarding moral disagreement, moral reason and moral motivation. Among other things, externalism concerning moral motivation is defended. The explanatory value of moral realism in relation to these meta-ethical issues is taken to suggest that this view is preferable to non-cognitivism, error-theory and reductionism. Some of the meta-ethical issues discussed in these chapters, particularly moral disagreement and motivation, have been thought to provide support to non-cognitivism and error-theory. I maintain that since realism, unlike reductionism, is able to counter these arguments, it justifies us in upholding the view that moral sentences have truth-value and the view that there are moral properties. In chapter 8, various objections against realism with regard to the dependence of moral properties on non- moral properties are responded to. In chapter 9, I consider an influential argument to the effect that moral properties are not involved in causal explanations. I maintain that this argument fails and that it therefore is reasonable to assume that moral properties are natural properties. However, the discussions in chapters 8 and 9 also suggest that moral realism might face problems that cannot be thoroughly discussed in this thesis. (shrink)

You are creditworthy for φ-ing only if φ-ing is the right thing to do. Famously though, further conditions are needed too – Kant’s shopkeeper did the right thing, but is not creditworthy for doing so. This case shows that creditworthiness requires that there be a certain kind of explanation of why you did the right thing. The reasons for which you act – your motivating reasons – must meet some further conditions. In this paper, I defend a new account of (...) these conditions. On this account, creditworthiness requires that your motivating reasons be normative reasons, and that the principles from which you act match normative principles. (shrink)

This thesis is about what a normative reason is and how reasons relate to oughts. I argue that normative reasons are to be understood as relational properties of favouring or disfavouring. I then examine the question: What is the relation between reasons, so understood, and what we ought to do, believe, or feel? I argue that the relation is an explanatory one. We should explain what we ought to do in terms of reasons, and not the other way around. This (...) view faces a number of difficulties, in particular in accounting for supererogatory acts and the distinction between an action being required and an action being recommended. The analysis that I provide explains how we can solve these problems. In providing such an analysis, this thesis aims to be a contribution to the discussion of how we might elucidate the structure of what is sometimes called normativity. (shrink)

Normative reasons are of constant importance to us as agents trying to navigate through life. For this reason it is natural and vital to ask philosophical questions about reasons and the normative realm. This thesis explores various issues concerning reasons and normativity. The thesis consists of five free-standingpapers and an extended introduction. The aim of the extended introduction is not merely to situate the papers within a wider philosophical context but also to provide an overview of some of the central (...) research questions concerning reasons and normativity. The introduction is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces and outlines the dissertation. Chapter 2 concerns the issue of what a reason is and what different types of reasons there are, such as pro tanto reasons and overall reasons. Chapter 3 discusses the frequently employed weighing metaphor, i.e. that reasons have a certain weight and can be weighed against the weight of other reasons. Chapter 4 covers how reasons relate to other normative notions such as ought, value, and obligation. For example, it discusses whether it is the case that for something to be valuable just is for there to be reasons to favor it. Chapter 5 concludes the introduction by briefly exploring how it all relates.The thesis can be said to be embedded in a recent research trend within philosophy of normativity that has a distinguished focus on reasons.The five papers deal with various issues concerning reasons and normativity. Paper I argues for a novel and theoretically parsimonious way to understand background conditions for values and reasons. Paper II explores an interpretation of the distinction between subjectivism and objectivism about reasons and value so as to accommodate that the distinction does not commit either party to certain first order claims about what reasons there are or what makes objects valuable. Paper III discusses the dictum ‘ought implies can’and how to properly interpret the ‘can’. Paper IV defends principles according to which what we ought and have reasons to do transmit from ends to the necessary means of that action. Paper V analyzes how the Fitting Attitudes analysis of value should best understand degrees of value. (shrink)

This work is an investigation into philosophical method and rational argument in moral philosophy. It makes an original contribution to human understanding, by taking some of the tools and techniques that Gordon Baker identifies in the later work of Wittgenstein, and using them as a way of fending for oneself in an area of philosophy that neither Baker, nor Wittgenstein, wrote on. More specifically, a discussion of some different aspects of the contemporary literature on Dancy’s moral particularism is used as (...) a vehicle for illustrating how Baker’s therapeutic conception of philosophy offers alternative possibilities for how we can do philosophy, and what counts as rational argument in moral philosophy. I maintain that, by considering some indicative ways in which Baker’s therapeutic approach to philosophy can dissolve, rather than solve, the kinds of perplexities found in the existing literature on Dancy’s moral particularism, we can liberate ourselves from the traditional/theoretical view of how we ought to do philosophy, and an understanding of rational argument in moral philosophy, to which we need not be committed. (shrink)

This is an early draft of a joint critical notice I am writing of Jonathan Dancy’s Ethics Without Principles and Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge’s Principled Ethics, for Noûs.

I vindicate the thrust of the particularist position in moral deliberation. this purpose, I focus on some elements that seem to play a crucial role in first-person moral deliberation and argue that they cannot be incorporated into a more sophisticated system of moral principles. More specifically, I emphasize some peculiarities of moral perception in the light of which I defend the irreducible deliberative relevance of a certain phenomenon, namely: the phenomenon of an agent morally coming across a particular situation. Following (...) on from Bbernard Williams, I talk of an agent’s character as a factor that contributes to fixing what situations an agent comes morally across. A crucial point, in the debate, will be how an agent confronts the normatively loaded features of his own character when he is engaged in first-person deliberation. (shrink)

In this paper I will be investigating the possibilities involved with and the consequences of accepting a particularist approach to ethics. Such particularist approaches that reject the use of principles in moral decision making are becoming more popular in contemporary ethical debates underlining modern care ethics, feminist relational ethics, contextualism, and Maclntyre's virtue ethics among others. I will argue that extreme particularism that utterly rejects principles as defended by Jonathan Dancy is an untenable position that does not capture how humans (...) make moral decisions and moreover would remove any hope of being able to discuss morality meaningfully. In order to do this I will look at Dancy's arguments for particularism from his conception of a holism of reasons, and compare them with the arguments by Brad Hooker, Rodger Crisp and Martha Naussbaum that aim to show why particularism is doomed to failure. While I believe Dancy cannot defend his position I will argue that a softer conception of particularism as can be seen in relational ethics, one that accepts some principles that enforce a situational attentiveness and sensitivity to context and narrative, can be a viable alternative that keeps the advantages of particularism while avoiding Dancy's failings. (shrink)