The book develops, defends, and applies an account of weighing reasons to resolve various issues in ethics. It tells you everything you ever wanted to know about weighing reasons and probably a lot of stuff you didn't want to know too. The excerpt provided here is the Table of Contents, the Introduction, and Chapter 1.

Why should moral philosophers, moral psychologists, and machine ethicists care about computational complexity? Debates on whether artificial intelligence (AI) can or should be used to solve problems in ethical domains have mainly been driven by what AI can or cannot do in terms of human capacities. In this paper, we tackle the problem from the other end by exploring what kind of moral machines are possible based on what computational systems can or cannot do. To do so, we analyze normative (...) ethics through the lens of computational complexity. First, we introduce computational complexity for the uninitiated reader and discuss how the complexity of ethical problems can be framed within Marr’s three levels of analysis. We then study a range of ethical problems based on consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, with the aim of elucidating the complexity associated with the problems themselves (e.g., due to combinatorics, uncertainty, strategic dynamics), the computational methods employed (e.g., probability, logic, learning), and the available resources (e.g., time, knowledge, learning). The results indicate that most problems the normative frameworks pose lead to tractability issues in every category analyzed. Our investigation also provides several insights about the computational nature of normative ethics, including the differences between rule- and outcome-based moral strategies, and the implementation-variance with regard to moral resources. We then discuss the consequences complexity results have for the prospect of moral machines in virtue of the trade-off between optimality and efficiency. Finally, we elucidate how computational complexity can be used to inform both philosophical and cognitive-psychological research on human morality by advancing the moral tractability thesis. (shrink)

Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: (...) reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally, reasons for concept use have been sought either in timeless rational foundations or in concepts’ inherent virtues, such as precision and consistency. Against this, the book advances two main claims: that we find reasons for concept use in the conceptual needs we discover when we critically distance ourselves from a concept by viewing it from the autoethnographic stance; and that sometimes, concepts that conflict, or exhibit other vices such as vagueness or superficiality, are just what we need. By considering not what concepts are absolutely best, but what concepts we now need, we can reconcile ourselves to the contingency of our concepts, determine the proper place of efforts to tidy up thought, and adjudicate between competing conceptions of things,—even things as contested as liberty or free will. A needs-based approach separates helpful clarification from hobbling tidy-mindedness, and authoritative definition from conceptual gerrymandering. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of the generalism-particularism debate and related issues concerning the relationship between normative reasons and moral principles.

This comprehensive volume features the proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Logics for New-Generation Artificial Intelligence and the International Workshop on Logic, AI and Law, held in Hangzhou, China on September 8-9 and 11-12, 2023. The collection offers a diverse range of papers that explore the intersection of logic, artificial intelligence, and law. With contributions from some of the leading experts in the field, this volume provides insights into the latest research and developments in the applications of logic in (...) these areas. It is an essential resource for researchers, practitioners, and students interested in the latest advancements in logic and its applications to artificial intelligence and law. (shrink)

This entry discusses the notion of a unit of normativity. This notion may be understood in two distinct ways. One way to understand a unit of normativity is as some particular type of assignment of normative status, e.g., a requirement, an ought, a reason, or a permission. A second way to understand a unit of normativity is as a measure of a quantity of normativity, perhaps associated with the numerical assignment given to the strength of reasons. This entry outlines some (...) basic differences among units of normativity in the first sense, noting that they vary slightly depending on whether one is talking about normativity in a more general or more robust sense. This entry also discusses in more detail the question of whether there might be a unit of normativity in the second sense. It discusses the relevant metaphysical questions. It also provides an explanation of why reasons can be assigned numerical strengths, even if there are no units of normativity in the sense of measurements of quantities of normativity. (shrink)

Volume 23, Issue 2, June 2020, Page 146-159.

David Lewis is widely regarded as the philosopher who introduced the concept of common knowledge. His account of common knowledge differs greatly from most later accounts in philosophy and economy, with the central notion of his theory being ‘having reason to believe’ rather than ‘knowledge’. Unfortunately, Lewis’s account is rather informal, and the argument has a few gaps. This paper assesses two major attempts to formalise Lewis’s account and argues that these formalisations are missing a crucial aspect of this account. (...) Therefore, a new reconstruction is proposed, which explicitly discusses ‘reasons’ and uses a logic inspired by justification logic. (shrink)

Presenting the first comprehensive, in-depth study of hyperintensionality, this book equips readers with the basic tools needed to appreciate some of current and future debates in the philosophy of language, semantics, and metaphysics. After introducing and explaining the major approaches to hyperintensionality found in the literature, the book tackles its systematic connections to normativity and offers some contributions to the current debates. The book offers undergraduate and graduate students an essential introduction to the topic, while also helping professionals in related (...) fields get up to speed on open research-level problems. (shrink)

Sarah McGrath argues that moral perception has an advantage over its rivals in its ability to explain ordinary moral knowledge. I disagree. After clarifying what the moral perceptualist is and is not committed to, I argue that rival views are both more numerous and more plausible than McGrath suggests: specifically, I argue that inferentialism can be defended against McGrath’s objections; if her arguments against inferentialism succeed, we should accept a different rival that she neglects, intuitionism; and, reductive epistemologists can appeal (...) to non-naturalist commitments to avoid McGrath’s counterexamples. (shrink)

Every adequate semantics for conditionals and deontic ought must offer a solution to the miners paradox about conditional obligations. Kolodny and MacFarlane have recently argued that such a semantics must reject the validity of modus ponens. I demonstrate that rejecting the validity of modus ponens is inessential for an adequate solution to the paradox.

Many philosophers have been attracted to the view that reasons are premises of good reasoning – that reasons to φ are premises of good reasoning towards φ-ing. However, while this reasoning view is indeed attractive, it faces a problem accommodating outweighed reasons. In this article, I argue that the standard solution to this problem is unsuccessful and propose an alternative, which draws on the idea that good patterns of reasoning can be defeasible. I conclude by drawing out implications for the (...) debate over pragmatic reasons for belief and other attitudes and for one influential form of reductionism about the normative. (shrink)

Enkratic reasoning—reasoning from believing that you ought to do something to an intention to do that thing—seems good. But there is a puzzle about how it could be. Good reasoning preserves correctness, other things equal. But enkratic reasoning does not preserve correctness. This is because what you ought to do depends on your epistemic position, but what it is correct to intend does not. In this paper, I motivate these claims and thus show that there is a puzzle. I then (...) argue that the best solution is to deny that correctness is always independent of your epistemic position. As I explain, a notable upshot is that a central epistemic norm directs us to believe, not simply what is true, but what we are in a position to know. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of the generalism-particularism debate in ethics.

Besides pure declarative arguments, whose premises and conclusions are declaratives, and pure imperative arguments, whose premises and conclusions are imperatives, there are mixed-premise arguments, whose premises include both imperatives and declaratives, and cross-species arguments, whose premises are declaratives and whose conclusions are imperatives or vice versa. I propose a general definition of argument validity: an argument is valid exactly if, necessarily, every fact that sustains its premises also sustains its conclusion, where a fact sustains an imperative exactly if it favors (...) the satisfaction over the violation proposition of the imperative, and a fact sustains a declarative exactly if, necessarily, the declarative is true if the fact exists. I argue that this definition yields as special cases the standard definition of validity for pure declarative arguments and my previously defended definition of validity for pure imperative arguments, and that it yields intuitively acceptable results for mixed-premise and cross-species arguments. (shrink)

Jörg Hansen, John Horty, and Xavier Parent and Leendert van der Torre have all recently described some sort of nonmonotonic logic to model reasons and their interactions. Horty’s framework is broader in scope than the other two, encompassing both reasoning about the relative strengths of reasons and reasoning about which reasons to consider in the first place. Hansen discusses a plethora of approaches and examples, including Horty’s, arguing that his preferred system best captures our intuitions. And Parent and van der (...) Torre present a family of systems of input/output logic, which are in some ways the most flexible. In this paper, I aim to combine these features. Without attempting to answer the question of which intuitions are the best to capture, I first argue that there are good reasons to explore systems that behave more like Hansen’s than Horty’s. I then show that Parent and van der Torre’s framework of input/output logic can exactly duplicate Hansen’s system but is flexible enough to produce other results as well. Finally, I extend their framework to include the additional kinds of reasoning Horty discusses, showing that the resulting theory can handle a wider range of cases than Horty’s. (shrink)

Moral particularism, on some interpretations, is committed to a shapeless thesis: the moral is shapeless with respect to the natural. (Call this version of moral particularism ‘shapeless moral particularism’). In more detail, the shapeless thesis is that the actions a moral concept or predicate can be correctly applied to have no natural commonality (or shape) amongst them. Jackson et al. (Ethical particularism and patterns, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000) argue, however, that the shapeless thesis violates the platitude ‘predication supervenes on (...) nature’—predicates or concepts apply because of how things are, and therefore ought to be rejected. I defend shapeless moral particularism by arguing that Jackson et al’s contention is less compelling than it firstly appears. My defense is limited in the sense that it does not prove shapeless moral particularism to be right and it leaves open the possibility that shapeless moral particularism might attract criticisms different from the ones advanced by Jackson et al. But at the very least, I hope to say enough to undermine Jackson et al’s powerful attack against it. The plan of this paper is as follows. Section 1 glosses the view of moral particularism and why it is taken to be essentially committed to the shapeless thesis. Section 2 examines a Wittgensteinian argument for the shapeless thesis. I shall argue that the Canberrans’ counter-arguments against it on grounds of disjunctive commonality and conceptual competence do not succeed. Section 3 explicates Canberrans’ predication supervenience argument against the shapeless thesis. Section 4 offers my criticisms of the Canberrans’ predication supervenience argument. In view of the above discussions, in Sect. 5, I conclude that there is no compelling argument (from the Canberrans) to believe that the shapeless thesis fails (as I have argued in Sect. 4). In fact, there is some good reason for us to believe it (as I have argued in Sect. 2). If so, I contend that moral particularism, when construed as essentially committed to the shapeless thesis, still remains as a live option. (shrink)

The Little Nell Problem was formulated by Drew McDermott in 1982. It reveals unexpected complexities in the interaction of the beliefs and intentions of a planning agent. This paper discusses the problem and proposes a solution.

This paper makes the non-monotonicity of a wide range of moral reasoning the basis of a case for particularism. Non-monotonicity threatens practical decision with an overwhelming informational complexity to which a form of ethical generalism seems the best response. It is argued that this impression is wholly misleading: the fact of non-monotonicity is best accommodated by the defence of four related theses in any theory of justification. First, the explanation of and defence of a default/challenge model of justification. Secondly, the (...) development of a theory of epistemic status and an explanation of those unearned entitlements that accrue to such status. Thirdly, an explanation of the basis of epistemic virtues. Finally, an account must be given of the executive capacity of rational decision itself as a ‘contentless ability’. This overall set of views can accommodate a limited role for generalizations about categories of evidence, but not such as to rescue a principled generalism. In particular, the version of particularism defended here explains why one ought not to accept the principled holism that has proved to be a problem for Dancy’s form of particularism. Ethics certainly involves hedged principles. However, principles cannot be self-hedging: there cannot be a that’s it operator in a principle as Richard Holton has claimed that there can be. Practical reasoning is concluded by the categorical detachment of the action-as-conclusion itself. (shrink)

It is undeniable that human agents sometimes act badly, and it seems that they sometimes pursue bad things simply because they are bad. This latter phenomenon has often been taken to provide counterexamples to views according to which we always act under the guise of the good. This paper identifies several distinct arguments in favour of the possibility that one can act under the guise of the bad. GG seems to face more serious difficulties when trying to answer three different, (...) but related, arguments for the possibility of acting under the guise of the bad. The main strategies available to answer these objections end up either undermining the motivation for GG or failing to do full justice to the nature of perverse motivation. However, these difficulties turn out to be generated by focusing on a particular version of GG, what I call the “content version”. But we have independent reasons to prefer a different version of GG; namely, the “attitude version”. The attitude version allows for a much richer understanding of the possibility of acting on what we conceive to be bad. Drawing on an analogy with theoretical akrasia and theoretical perversion, I try to show how the attitude version can provide a compelling account of perverse actions. (shrink)

Some authors have called into question the normativity of logic, using as an argument that the bridge principles for logical normativity (MacFarlane, In what sense (in any) is logic normative for thought, 2004 )? are just by-products of general epistemic principles for belief. In this paper, I discuss that suggestion from a formal point of view. I show that some important bridge principles can be derived from usual norms for belief. I also describe some possible ways to block this derivation (...) by modifying the epistemic norms or weakening the bridge principles. Finally, I discuss different philosophical interpretations of these results. (shrink)

We translate unconstrained and constrained input/output logics as introduced by Makinson and van der Torre to modal logics, using adaptive logics for the constrained case. The resulting reformulation has some additional benefits. First, we obtain a proof-theoretic characterization of input/output logics. Second, we demonstrate that our framework naturally gives rise to useful variants and allows to express important notions that go beyond the expressive means of input/output logics, such as violations and sanctions.

Objective standards for justification or for being a reason would be desirable, but inductive skepticism tells us that they cannot be presupposed. Rather, we have to start from subjective-relative notions of justification and of being a reason. The paper lays out the strategic options we have given this dilemma. The paper explains the requirements for this subject-relative notion and how they may be satisfied. Then it discusses four quite heterogeneous ways of providing more objective standards, which combine without guaranteeing complete (...) success. (shrink)

The paper is motivated by the need of accounting for the practical syllogism as a piece of defeasible reasoning. To meet the need, the paper first refers to ranking theory as an account of defeasible descriptive reasoning. It then argues that two kinds of ought need to be distinguished, purely normative and fact-regarding obligations. It continues arguing that both kinds of ought can be iteratively revised and should hence be represented by ranking functions, too, just as iteratively revisable beliefs. Its (...) central proposal will then be that the fact-regarding normative ranking function must be conceived as the sum of a purely normative ranking function and an epistemic ranking function. The distinctions defends this proposal with a comparative discussion of some critical examples and some other distinctions made in the literature. It gives a more rigorous justification of this proposal. Finally, it starts developing the logic of purely normative and of fact-regarding normative defeasible reasoning, points to the difficulties of completing the logic of the fact-regarding side, but reaches the initial aim of accounting for the defeasible nature of the practical syllogism. (shrink)

The paper is motivated by the need of accounting for the practical syllogism as a piece of defeasible reasoning. To meet the need, the paper first refers to ranking theory as an account of defeasible descriptive reasoning. It then argues that two kinds of ought need to be distinguished, purely normative and fact-regarding obligations (in analogy to intrinsic and extrinsic utilities). It continues arguing that both kinds of ought can be iteratively revised and should hence be represented by ranking functions, (...) too, just as iteratively revisable beliefs. Its central proposal will then be that the fact-regarding normative ranking function must be conceived as the sum of a purely normative ranking function and an epistemic ranking function (as suggested in qualitative decision theory). The distinctions defends this proposal with a comparative discussion of some critical examples and some other distinctions made in the literature. It gives a more rigorous justification of this proposal. Finally, it starts developing the logic of purely normative and of fact-regarding normative defeasible reasoning, points to the difficulties of completing the logic of the fact-regarding side, but reaches the initial aim of accounting for the defeasible nature of the practical syllogism. (shrink)

Many take the claim that you cannot ‘get’ an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ to imply that non- moral beliefs are by themselves incapable of justifying moral beliefs. I argue that this is a mistake and that the position that moral beliefs are justified exclusively by non-moral beliefs—a view that I call moral inferentialism—presents an attractive non-sceptical moral epistemology.

Salience reasoning, many have argued, can help solve coordination problems, but only if such reasoning is supplemented by higher-order predictions, e.g. beliefs about what others believe yet others will choose. In this paper, I will argue that this line of reasoning is self-undermining. Higher-order behavioral predictions defeat salience-based behavioral predictions. To anchor my argument in the philosophical literature, I will develop it in response and opposition to the popular Lewisian model of salience reasoning in coordination games. This model imports the (...) problematic higher-order beliefs by way of a ‘symmetric reasoning’ constraint. In the second part of this paper, I will argue that a player may employ salience reasoning only if she suspends judgment about what others believe yet others will do. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSeveral authors have claimed that indicative conditionals are sensitive to the epistemic perspective of agents. According to this sort of view, the truth of an indicative conditional depends on the background evidence of some relevant agent or group of agents. In this paper, I argue that the context-dependence of indicative conditionals goes beyond this. Indicative conditionals are not only sensitive to the evidence of agents, but also to contextual factors that determine what is inferable from such background evidence. More specifically, (...) my proposal is that when the inference associated with a conditional is defeasible, the truth of that conditional is sensitive to practical stakes. (shrink)

The DAPRECO knowledge base is the main outcome of the interdisciplinary project bearing the same name. It is a repository of rules written in LegalRuleML, an XML formalism designed to be a standard for representing the semantic and logical content of legal documents. The rules represent the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation, the new Regulation that is significantly affecting the digital market in the European Union and beyond. The DAPRECO knowledge base builds upon the Privacy Ontology, which provides (...) a model for the legal concepts involved in the GDPR, by adding a further layer of constraints in the form of if-then rules, referring either to standard first order logic implications or to deontic statements. If-then rules are formalized in reified Input/Output logic and then codified in LegalRuleML. Reified Input/Output logic is an application of standard Input/Output logic for legal reasoning, in which Input/Output logic is combined with the reification-based approach in Hobbs and Gordon. The DAPRECO knowledge base is then a case study for reified Input/Output logic, and it shows that the formalism indeed appears to be a good candidate to effectively formalize, via uniform and simple representations, complex linguistic/deontic phenomena that may be found in legal texts. To date, the DAPRECO knowledge base is the biggest knowledge base in LegalRuleML and Input/Output logic freely available online. (shrink)

Bipolar argument graphs represent the structure of complex pro and contra arguments for one or more standpoints. In this article, ampliative and exclusionary principles of evaluating argument strength in bipolar acyclic argumentation graphs are laid out and compared to each other. Argument chains, linked arguments, link attackers and supporters, and convergent arguments are discussed. The strength of conductive arguments is also addressed but it is argued that more work on this type of argument is needed to properly distinguish argument strength (...) from more general value-based components of such arguments. The overall conclusion of the article is that there is no justifiably unique solution to the problem of argument strength outside of a particular epistemological framework. (shrink)

Reasons rationalize beliefs. Reasons, when all goes well, turn true beliefs into knowledge. I am interested in the relationship between these aspects of reasons. Without a proper understanding of their relationship, the theory of knowledge will be less illuminating than it ought to be. I hope to show that previous accounts have failed to account for this relationship. This has resulted in a tendency to focus on justification rather than knowledge. It has also resulted in many becoming skeptical about the (...) prospects for an analysis of knowledge. The skepticism is misplaced and the tendency can be fixed without sacrificing any insights. The solution is to see how good reasons (in a sense to be articulated) are apparent (in a sense to be articulated) to the knowing subject. Once this claim is unpacked, we see that it is an illuminating analysis of knowledge in terms of distinct but intimately related aspects of epistemic assessment. It helps us see the value of knowledge (over and above true belief) and it affords us a unified, “reasons-first” metaepistemology. The resulting picture is neither a familiar kind of internalism or externalism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to strengthen the point made by Horty about the relationship between reason holism and moral particularism. In the literature prima facie obligations have been considered as the only source of reason holism. I strengthen Horty’s point in two ways. First, I show that contrary-to-duties provide another independent support for reason holism. Next I outline a formal theory that is able to capture these two sources of holism. While in simple settings the proposed account coincides (...) with Horty’s one, this is not true in more complicated or “realistic” settings in which more than two norms collide. My chosen formalism is so-called input/output logic. A bottom-line example is introduced. It raises the issue of whether the conventional wisdom is right in assuming that normative reasons run parallel to epistemic ones. (shrink)

In Gärdenfors and Makinson :197–245, 1994) and Gärdenfors it was shown that it is possible to model nonmonotonic inference using a classical consequence relation plus an expectation-based ordering of formulas. In this article, we argue that this framework can be significantly enriched by adopting a conceptual spaces-based analysis of the role of expectations in reasoning. In particular, we show that this can solve various epistemological issues that surround nonmonotonic and default logics. We propose some formal criteria for constructing and updating (...) expectation orderings based on conceptual spaces, and we explain how to apply them to nonmonotonic reasoning about objects and properties. (shrink)

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 (...) ways of understanding "ought" so that the principle is compatible with my examples. I conclude with a hypothesis for when and why the principle should be expected to fail. (shrink)

Contingent negative existentials give rise to a notorious paradox. I formulate a version in terms of metaphysical grounding: nonexistence can't be fundamental, but nothing can ground it. I then argue for a new kind of solution, expanding on work by Kit Fine. The key idea is that negative existentials are contingently zero-grounded – that is to say, they are grounded, but not by anything, and only in the right conditions. If this is correct, it follows that grounding cannot be an (...) internal relation, and that no complete account of reality can be purely fundamental. (shrink)

The paper proposes a revised logic of rights in order to accommodate moral conflict. There are often said to be two rival philosophical accounts of rights with respect to moral conflict. Specificationists about rights insist that rights cannot conflict, since they reflect overall deontic conclusions. Generalists instead argue that rights reflect pro tanto constraints on behaviour. After offering an overview of the debate between generalists and specificationists with respect to rights, I outline the challenge of developing a logic of rights-reasoning (...) that is compatible with generalism. I then proceed to offer a new logical framework, which utilizes a simple non-monotonic logic of practical reasoning. Both generalist and specificationist interpretations of the logic are explored. The revised logic shows that traditional characterizations of the debate between specificationists and generalists obscure other relevant philosophical positions. (shrink)

What makes the difference between good and bad reasoning? In this paper we defend a novel account of good reasoning—both theoretical and practical—according to which it preserves fittingness or correctness: good reasoning is reasoning which is such as to take you from fitting attitudes to further fitting attitudes, other things equal. This account, we argue, is preferable to two others that feature in the recent literature. The first, which has been made prominent by John Broome, holds that the standards of (...) good reasoning derive from rational requirements. The second holds that these standards derive from reasons. We argue that these accounts face serious difficulties in correctly distinguishing good from bad reasoning, and in explaining what's worthwhile about good reasoning. We then propose our alternative account and argue that it performs better on these counts. In the final section, we develop certain elements of the account in response to some possible objections. (shrink)

According to a widely shared generic conception of inferential justification—‘the standard conception’—an agent is inferentially justified in believing that p only if she has antecedently justified beliefs in all the non-redundant premises of a good argument for p. This conception tends to serve as the starting-point in contemporary debates about the nature and scope of inferential justification: as neutral common ground between various competing, more specific, conceptions. But it’s a deeply problematic starting-point. This paper explores three questions that haven’t been (...) given the attention they deserve, that complicate the application of the standard conception to cases, and that reveal it to be underspecified at the core—in ways that aren’t resolved but inherited by more specific (extant) versions of it. The goal isn’t to answer the questions, but to articulate them, explain what turns on them, and invite a critical re-examination of the standard conception. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed characterisation of some ways in which our preferences reflect our reasons. I will argue that practical reasons can be characterised along two dimensions that influence our preferences: their balance and their weight. This is analogous to a similar characterisation of the way in which probabilities reflect the balance and weight of evidence in epistemology. In this paper, I will illustrate the distinction between the balance and weight of reasons, and show (...) how this is crucial for an adequate account of preference and choice. The upshot is a more complete picture of a particular kind of decision, labelled by Isaac Levi and, more recently, Ruth Chang as ‘hard choices’. These are choices in which one option is better than another in some ways, the other is better than the first in some ways, but neither seems better overall. The distinction between the balance and weight of reasons presents a new way of understanding how hard choices vary by degree and what it is that makes them so hard. (shrink)

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 (...) or against an option. Our response is to distinguish between derivative reasons and load-bearing reasons, only the latter of which contribute non-overlapping weight to an option. This distinction is close at hand for analyses of reasons in terms of the promotion of significant outcomes. But we also develop an account of this distinction for fundamentalist theories of normative reasons. (shrink)

You are irrational when you are akratic. On this point most agree. Despite this agreement, there is a tremendous amount of disagreement about what the correct explanation of this data is. Narrow-scopers think that the correct explanation is that you are violating a narrow-scope conditional requirement. You lack an intention to x that you are required to have given the fact that you believe you ought to x. Wide-scopers disagree. They think that a conditional you are required to make true (...) is false. You aren’t required to have any particular attitudes. You’re just required to intend to x or not believe you ought to x. Wide-scope accounts are symmetrical insofar as they predict that you are complying with the relevant requirement just so long as the relevant conditional is true. Some narrow-scopers object to this symmetry. However, there is disagreement about why the symmetry is objectionable. This has led wide-scopers to defend their view against a number of different symmetry objections. I think their defenses in the face of these objections are, on the whole, plausible. Unfortunately for them, they aren’t defending their view against the best version of the objection. In this paper I will show that there is a symmetry objection to wide-scope accounts that both hasn’t been responded to and is a serious problem for wide-scope accounts. Moreover, my version of the objection will allow us to see that there is at least one narrow-scope view that has been seriously underappreciated in the literature. (shrink)

Defending The Importance of Being Rational: Replies to Bedke and Guindon, Hazlett, and Way By LordErrol.

Over the course of more than two millennia the philosophical school of Mīmāṃsā has thoroughly analyzed normative statements. In this paper we approach a formalization of the deontic system which is applied but never explicitly discussed in Mīmāṃsā to resolve conflicts between deontic statements by giving preference to the more specific ones. We first extend with prohibitions and recommendations the non-normal deontic logic extracted in Ciabattoni et al. from Mīmāṃsā texts, obtaining a multimodal dyadic version of the deontic logic \. (...) Sequent calculus is then used to close a set of prima-facie injunctions under a restricted form of monotonicity, using specificity to avoid conflicts. We establish decidability and complexity results, and investigate the potential use of the resulting system for Mīmāṃsā philosophy and, more generally, for the formal interpretation of normative statements. (shrink)

Many moral theories are committed to the idea that some kinds of moral considerations should be respected, whatever the cost to ‘lesser’ types of considerations. A person's life, for instance, should not be sacrificed for the trivial pleasures of others, no matter how many would benefit. However, according to the decision-theoretic critique of lexical priority theories, accepting lexical priorities inevitably leads us to make unacceptable decisions in risky situations. It seems that to operate in a risky world, we must reject (...) lexical priorities altogether. This paper argues that lexical priority theories can, in fact, offer satisfactory guidance in risky situations. It does so by equipping lexical priority theories with overlooked resources from decision theory. (shrink)

Non-Consequentialist moral theories posit the existence of moral constraints: prohibitions on performing particular kinds of wrongful acts, regardless of the good those acts could produce. Many believe that such theories cannot give satisfactory verdicts about what we morally ought to do when there is some probability that we will violate a moral constraint. In this article, I defend Non-Consequentialist theories from this critique. Using a general choice-theoretic framework, I identify various types of Non-Consequentialism that have otherwise been conflated in the (...) debate. I then prove a number of formal possibility and impossibility results establishing which types of Non-Consequentialism can -- and which cannot -- give us adequate guidance through through a risky world. (shrink)

Formalising deontic concepts, such as obligation, prohibition and permission, is normally carried out in a modal logic with a possible world semantics, in which some worlds are better than others. The main focus in these logics is on inferring logical consequences, for example inferring that the obligation O q is a logical consequence of the obligations O p and O. In this paper we propose a non-modal approach in which obligations are preferred ways of satisfying goals expressed in first-order logic. (...) To say that p is obligatory, but may be violated, resulting in a less than ideal situation s, means that the task is to satisfy the goal p ∨ s, and that models in which p is true are preferred to models in which s is true. Whereas, in modal logic, the preference relation between possible worlds is part of the semantics of the logic, in this non-modal approach, the preference relation between first-order models is external to the logic. Although our main focus is on satisfying goals, we also formulate a notion of logical consequence, which is comparable to the notion of logical consequence in modal deontic logic. In this formalisation, an obligation O p is a logical consequence of goals G, when p is true in all best models of G. We show how this non-modal approach to the treatment of deontic concepts deals with problems of contrary-to-duty obligations and normative conflicts, and argue that the approach is useful for many other applications, including abductive explanations, defeasible reasoning, combinatorial optimisation, and reactive systems of the production system variety. (shrink)