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Reasons, Reason, and Context

In Errol Lord & Barry Maguire (eds.), Weighing Reasons. New York, NY: Oxford University Press USA (2016)

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  1. Factivism Defended: A Reply to Howard.J. J. Cunningham - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.
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  • The Stuff That Matters.N. G. Laskowski - 2024 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies of Metaethics 19. Oxford University Press USA.
    On one way of talking about a traditional metaethical topic, realists accept that some items appear on the list of what exists in the moral or more broadly normative domain of inquiry. They then divide over whether those items are like what science and experience suggest that all other items on the list of what exists across all domains are like – naturalistic and secular. Reductive naturalists answer this further question affirmatively. Why don’t nonnaturalists? I explore the answer that it’s (...)
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  • The Weight of Reasons.Daniel Fogal & Olle Risberg - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (9):2573-2596.
    This paper addresses the question of how the ‘weight’ or ‘strength’ of normative reasons is best understood. We argue that, given our preferred analysis of reasons as sources of normative support, this question has a straightforward answer: the weight of a normative reason is simply a matter of how much support it provides. We also critically discuss several competing views of reasons and their weight. These include views which take reasons to be normatively fundamental, views which analyze reasons as evidence (...)
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  • The Reasons Aggregation Theorem.Ralph Wedgwood - 2022 - Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 12:127-148.
    Often, when one faces a choice between alternative actions, there are reasons both for and against each alternative. On one way of understanding these words, what one “ought to do all things considered (ATC)” is determined by the totality of these reasons. So, these reasons can somehow be “combined” or “aggregated” to yield an ATC verdict on these alternatives. First, various assumptions about this sort of aggregation of reasons are articulated. Then it is shown that these assumptions allow for the (...)
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  • The matter of motivating reasons.J. J. Cunningham - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (5):1563-1589.
    It is now standard in the literature on reasons and rationality to distinguish normative reasons from motivating reasons. Two issues have dominated philosophical theorising concerning the latter: (i) whether we should think of them as certain (non-factive) psychological states of the agent – the dispute over Psychologism; and (ii) whether we should say that the agent can Φ for the reason that p only if p – the dispute over Factivism. This paper first introduces a puzzle: these disputes look very (...)
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  • Practical reasons for belief without stakes☆.N. G. Laskowski & Shawn Hernandez - 2021 - Analytic Philosophy 63 (1):16-27.
    Analytic Philosophy, Volume 63, Issue 1, Page 16-27, March 2022.
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  • Explaining Normative Reasons.Daniel Fogal & Olle Risberg - 2023 - Noûs 57 (1):51-80.
    In this paper, we present and defend a natural yet novel analysis of normative reasons. According to what we call support-explanationism, for a fact to be a normative reason to φ is for it to explain why there's normative support for φ-ing. We critically consider the two main rival forms of explanationism—ought-explanationism, on which reasons explain facts about ought, and good-explanationism, on which reasons explain facts about goodness—as well as the popular Reasons-First view, which takes the notion of a normative (...)
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  • Ambidextrous Reasons (or Why Reasons First's Reasons Aren't Facts).Nathan Robert Howard - 2021 - Philosophers' Imprint 21 (30):1-16.
    The wrong kind of reason (WKR) problem is a problem for attempts to analyze normative properties using only facts about the balance of normative reasons, a style of analysis on which the ‘Reasons First’ programme depends. I argue that this problem cannot be solved if the orthodox view of reasons is true --- that is, if each normative reason is numerically identical with some fact, proposition, or state-of-affairs. That’s because solving the WKR problem requires completely distinguishing between the right- and (...)
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  • Which Reasons? Which Rationality?Daniel Fogal & Alex Worsnip - 2021 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 8.
    The slogan that rationality is about responding to reasons has a turbulent history: once taken for granted; then widely rejected; now enjoying a resurgence. The slogan is made harder to assess by an ever-increasing plethora of distinctions pertaining to reasons and rationality. Here we are occupied with two such distinctions: that between subjective and objective reasons, and that between structural rationality (a.k.a. coherence) and substantive rationality (a.k.a. reasonableness). Our paper has two main aims. The first is to defend dualism about (...)
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  • A “Good” Explanation of Five Puzzles about Reasons.Stephen Finlay - 2019 - Philosophical Perspectives 33 (1):62-104.
    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 (...)
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  • Who’s on first.Daniel Wodak - 2020 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 15.
    “X-Firsters” hold that there is some normative feature that is fundamental to all others (and, often, that there’s some normative feature that is the “mark of the normative”: all other normative properties have it, and are normative in virtue of having it). This view is taken as a starting point in the debate about which X is “on first.” Little has been said about whether or why we should be X-Firsters, or what we should think about normativity if we aren’t (...)
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  • Reasons and Normativity.Jakob Green Werkmäster - 2019 - Dissertation, Lund University
    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 (...)
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  • Reasoning First.Pamela Hieronymi - 2020 - In Ruth Chang & Kurt Sylvan (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 349–365.
    Many think of reasons as facts, propositions, or considerations that stand in some relation (or relations) to attitudes, actions, states of affairs. The relation may be an explanatory one or a “normative” one—though some are uncomfortable with irreducibly “normative” relations. I will suggest that we should, instead, see reasons as items in pieces of reasoning. They relate, in the first instance, not to psychological states or events or states of affairs, but to questions. That relation is neither explanatory nor “normative.” (...)
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  • Rational Requirements and the Primacy of Pressure.Daniel Fogal - 2020 - Mind 129 (516):1033-1070.
    There are at least two threads in our thought and talk about rationality, both practical and theoretical. In one sense, to be rational is to respond correctly to the reasons one has. Call this substantive rationality. In another sense, to be rational is to be coherent, or to have the right structural relations hold between one’s mental states, independently of whether those attitudes are justified. Call this structural rationality. According to the standard view, structural rationality is associated with a distinctive (...)
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  • Moral Constraints on Gender Concepts.N. G. Laskowski - 2020 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (1):39-51.
    Are words like ‘woman’ or ‘man’ sex terms that we use to talk about biological features of individuals? Are they gender terms that we use to talk about non-biological features e.g. social roles? Contextualists answer both questions affirmatively, arguing that these terms concern biological or non-biological features depending on context. I argue that a recent version of contextualism from Jennifer Saul that Esa Diaz-Leon develops doesn't exhibit the right kind of flexibility to capture our theoretical intuitions or moral and political (...)
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  • The Metaphysics of Moral Explanations.Daniel Fogal & Olle Risberg - 2020 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 15.
    It’s commonly held that particular moral facts are explained by ‘natural’ or ‘descriptive’ facts, though there’s disagreement over how such explanations work. We defend the view that general moral principles also play a role in explaining particular moral facts. More specifically, we argue that this view best makes sense of some intuitive data points, including the supervenience of the moral upon the natural. We consider two alternative accounts of the nature and structure of moral principles—’the nomic view’ and ‘moral platonism’—before (...)
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  • The Formulation of Disjunctivism About φ-ing for a Reason.J. J. Cunningham - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 69 (275):235-257.
    We can contrast rationalising explanations of the form S φs because p with those of the form S φs because S believes that p. According the Common Kind View, the two sorts of explanation are the same. The Disjunctive View denies this. This paper sets out to elucidate the sense in which the Common Kind Theorist asserts, but the Disjunctivist denies, that the two explanations are the same. I suggest that, in the light of the distinction between kinds of explanation (...)
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  • Normative Reasons as Reasons Why We Ought.Jacob M. Nebel - 2019 - Mind 128 (510):459-484.
    I defend the view that a reason for someone to do something is just a reason why she ought to do it. This simple view has been thought incompatible with the existence of reasons to do things that we may refrain from doing or even ought not to do. For it is widely assumed that there are reasons why we ought to do something only if we ought to do it. I present several counterexamples to this principle and reject some (...)
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  • Introduction.Daniel Star - 2018 - In The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
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  • There Are No Reasons for Affective Attitudes.Barry Maguire - 2018 - Mind 127 (507):779-805.
    A dogma of contemporary ethical theory maintains that the nature of normative support for affective attitudes is the very same as the nature of normative support for actions. The prevailing view is that normative reasons provide the support across the board. I argue that the nature of normative support for affective attitudes is importantly different from the nature of normative support for actions. Actions are indeed supported by reasons. Reasons are gradable and contributory. The support relations for affective attitudes are (...)
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  • Deflationary Pluralism about Motivating Reasons.Daniel Fogal - 2017 - In Veli Mitova (ed.), The Factive Turn in Epistemology. New York: Cambridge University Press.
    This paper takes a closer look at ordinary thought and talk about motivating reasons, in an effort to better understand how it works. This is an important first step in understanding whether—and if so, how—such thought and talk should inform or constrain our substantive theorizing. One of the upshots is that ordinary judgments about motivating reasons are at best a partial and defeasible guide to what really matters, and that so-called factualists, propositionalists, and statists are all partly right, as well (...)
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  • The Pitfalls of ‘Reasons’.Ralph Wedgwood - 2015 - Philosophical Issues 25 (1):123-143.
    Many philosophers working on the branches of philosophy that deal with the normative questions have adopted a " Reasons First" program. This paper criticizes the foundational assumptions of this program. In fact, there are many different concepts that can be expressed by the term 'reason' in English, none of which are any more fundamental than any others. Indeed, most of these concepts are not particularly fundamental in any interesting sense.
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  • Normative metaphysics for accountants.Barry Maguire & Justin Snedegar - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (2):363-384.
    We use normative reasons in a bewildering variety of different ways. And yet, as many recent theorists have shown, one can discern systematic distinctions underlying this complexity. This paper is a contribution to this project of constructive normative metaphysics. We aim to bring a black sheep back into the flock: the balancing model of weighing reasons. This model is threatened by a variety of cases in which distinct reasons overlap, in the sense that they do not contribute separate weight for (...)
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  • (1 other version)Contextualism about Epistemic Reasons.Daniel Fogal & Kurt Sylvan - 2017 - In Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism. New York: Routledge.
    This paper surveys some ways in which epistemic reasons ascriptions (or ERAs) appear to be context-sensitive, and outlines a framework for thinking about the nature of this context-sensitivity that is intimately related to ERAs' explanatory function.
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  • Confusion of Tongues: A Theory of Normative Language, by Stephen Finlay. [REVIEW]Daniel Fogal - 2016 - Ethics 127 (1):281-288.
    Stephen Finlay’s Confusion of Tongues is a bold and sophisticated book. The overarching goal is metaphysical: to reductively analyze normative facts, properties, and relations in terms of non-normative facts, properties, and relations. But the method is linguistic: to first provide a reductive analysis of the corresponding bits of normative language, with a particular focus on ‘good’, ‘ought’, and ‘reason’. The gap between language and reality is then bridged by taking linguistic analysis as a guide to conceptual analysis, and conceptual analysis (...)
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  • What the Cluster View Can Do for You.Daniel Fogal & Alex Worsnip - 2024 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies of Metaethics 19. Oxford University Press USA.
    Despite myriad controversies about reasons, two theses are frequently taken for granted: (i) reasons are sources of normative support for actions, attitudes, etc; and (ii) reasons, at least in simple, paradigmatic cases, consist in atomic facts. Call this conjunction “the atomic view.” Against this, we advocate what we call “the cluster view,” on which even in the simplest cases, the normative support for an action or attitude is typically provided by a whole cluster of facts. Moreover, many of these facts (...)
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  • On the Normativity of Rationality and of Normative Reasons.Clayton Littlejohn & Julien Dutant - manuscript
    This paper is an early draft of something that we've polished up and posted above: n-1 Guilty Men. Check that one out, if interested.
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  • Reason versus ought.John Broome - 2015 - Philosophical Issues 25 (1):80-97.
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  • Do you see what I know? On reasons, perceptual evidence, and epistemic status.Clayton Littlejohn - 2020 - Philosophical Issues 30 (1):205-220.
    Our epistemology can shape the way we think about perception and experience. Speaking as an epistemologist, I should say that I don’t necessarily think that this is a good thing. If we think that we need perceptual evidence to have perceptual knowledge or perceptual justification, we will naturally feel some pressure to think of experience as a source of reasons or evidence. In trying to explain how experience can provide us with evidence, we run the risk of either adopting a (...)
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  • Contrastive Reasons. [REVIEW]Alex Worsnip - 2019 - Philosophical Review 128 (3):367-371.
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  • Reason Holism, Individuation, and Embeddedness.Peter Shiu-Hwa Tsu - 2018 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (5):1091-1103.
    The goal of this paper is to promote what I call ‘the embedded thesis’ as a general constraint on how moral reasons behave. Dancy’s reason holism will be used as a foil to illustrate the thesis. According to Dancy’s reason holism, moral reasons behave in a holistic way; that is, a feature that is a moral reason in one context might not be so in another or might even be an opposite reason. The way a feature manages to switch its (...)
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  • Reasons to act, reasons to require, and the two-level theory of moral explanation.Jörg Https://Orcidorg Löschke - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (1):169-185.
    Deontic buck-passing aims to analyse deontic properties of acts in terms of reasons. Many authors accept deontic buck-passing, but only few have discussed how to understand the relation between reasons and deontic properties exactly. Justin Snedegar has suggested understanding deontic properties of acts in terms of both reasons and reasons to require: A is required to φ iff A has most reason to φ, and there is most reason to require A to φ. This promising proposal faces two open questions: (...)
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  • Toward a Reasons-First View of Normative Background Conditions.Andrés G. Garcia & Jakob Green Werkmäster - 2020 - Philosophia 48 (3):981-992.
    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 (...)
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  • Partial Reasons.Federico L. G. Faroldi - 2024 - Ratio Juris 37 (1):83-103.
    Partial reasons are considerations in favor of something that, taken individually, are not sufficient to establish an obligation. I consider the extent to which partial reasons are reasons, and why they cannot be reduced to or identified with pro tanto reasons. I lay out two approaches to the content of reasons, the flat theory and the structured theory. I argue that parts of reasons are not partial reasons, by showing that natural ways to represent parts of reasons in the flat (...)
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  • The Stability of Belief: How Rational Belief Coheres with Probability.Igor Douven - 2019 - Philosophical Review 128 (3):371-375.
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