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)

Can quite different values be rationally weighed against one another? Can the value of one thing always be ranked as greater than, equal to, or less than the value of something else? If the answer to these questions is no, then in what areas do we find commensurability and comparability unavailable? And what are the implications for moral and legal decision making? This book struggles with these questions, and arrives at distinctly different answers.".

By integrating Bernard Williams’s internalism about reasons with his later thought, this article casts fresh light on internalism and reveals what wider concerns it speaks to. To be consistent with Williams’s later work, I argue, internalism must align with his deference to the phenomenology of moral deliberation and with his critique of ‘moral self-indulgence’. Key to this alignment is the idea that deliberation can express the agent’s motivations without referring to them; and that internalism is not a normative claim, but (...) an example of sense-making from ‘the ethnographic stance’. This leaves a worry over whether moral conviction can coexist with an internalist understanding of reasons. Here too, however, Williams’s later thought provides an answer. Differentiating corrosive from corroborative sense-making, it elucidates how internalism, though not normative, can nonetheless affect our confidence in reason statements, thereby informing how we deliberate and how we address those whose motivations differ from our own. (shrink)

According to the received view in metaethics, a Neo-Humean theory of rationality entails that there cannot be any objective moral reasons, i.e. moral reasons that are independent of actual desires. In this paper, I argue that there is a version of this theory that is compatible with the existence of objective moral reasons. The key is to distinguish between (i) the process of rational deliberation that starts off in an agent's actual desires, and (ii) the rational principle that an agent (...) employs in such a process. I maintain that it is the latter which explains why it is rational for an agent to have a certain desire, not the former. As a result, there might be two types of principles. The second type of principle leaves room for objective moral reasons. (shrink)

In this paper I present an argument for the claim that you ought to do something only if you may believe that you ought to do it. More exactly, I defend the following principle about normative reasons: An agent A has decisive reason to φ only if she also has sufficient reason to believe that she has decisive reason to φ. I argue that this principle follows from the plausible assumption that it must be possible for an agent to respond (...) correctly to her reasons. In conclusion, I discuss some implications of this argument (given that some other standard assumptions about reasons hold). One such implication is that we are always in a position to be justified in believing all truths about what we have decisive reason (or ought) to do. (shrink)

This entry is composed of three sections. In §1, we survey debates about what structural rationality is, including the emergence of the concept in the contemporary literature, its key characteristics, its relationship to substantive rationality, its paradigm instances, and the questions of whether these instances are unified and, if so, how. In §2, we turn to the debate about structural requirements of rationality – including controversies about whether they are “wide-scope” or “narrow-scope”, synchronic or diachronic, and whether they govern processes (...) or states; as well as examining various forms of skepticism about structural requirements of rationality. In §3, we turn to the debate about the normative significance of structural rationality, surveying central challenges for the view that structural rationality is normatively significant and the theoretical options that arise in light of these challenges. (shrink)

Internalists about reasons following Bernard Williams claim that an agent’s normative reasons for action are constrained in some interesting way by her desires or motivations. In this paper, I offer a new argument for such a position—although one that resonates, I believe, with certain key elements of Williams’ original view. I initially draw on P.F. Strawson’s famous distinction between the interpersonal and the objective stances that we can take to other people, from the second-person point of view. I suggest that (...) we should accept Strawson’s contention that the activity of reasoning with someone about what she ought to do naturally belongs to the interpersonal mode of interaction. I also suggest that reasons for an agent to perform some action are considerations which would be apt to be cited in favor of that action, within an idealized version of this advisory social practice. I then go on to argue that one would take leave of the interpersonal stance towards someone—thus crossing the line, so to speak—in suggesting that she do something one knows she wouldn’t want to do, even following an exhaustive attempt to hash it out with her. An internalist necessity constraint on reasons is defended on this basis. (shrink)

Sentimentalism comes in many varieties: explanatory sentimentalism, judgment sentimentalism, metaphysical sentimentalism, and epistemic sentimentalism. This encyclopedia entry gives an overview of the positions and main arguments pro and con.

Love, Friendship, and the Self presents a reexamination of our common understanding of ourselves as persons in light of the phenomena of love and friendship. It argues that the individualism that is implicit in that understanding cannot be sustained if we are to understand the kind of distinctively personal intimacy that love and friendship essentially involve. For love is a matter of identifying with someone: sharing for his sake the concerns and values that make up his identity as the person (...) he is. Moreover, in friendship the friends share not only a concern for each other but also their activity, their lives, and even potentially their selves. By providing a detailed analysis of these notions, Bennett Helm argues for an understanding of persons as essentially social. (shrink)

One phenomenon arising in epistemic life is allegiance to, and break from, a tradition. This phenomenon has three central features. First, individuals who adhere to a tradition seem to respond dogmatically to evidence against their tradition. Second, individuals from different traditions appear to see the same evidence differently. And third, conversion from one tradition to another appears to be different in kind from ordinary belief shift. This paper uses recent work on the nature and rationality of faith to show that (...) these features can all emerge from individuals acting rationally—in particular, from individuals rationally having faith in the core assumptions of their traditions. One upshot is that we don't need to employ the idea of incommensurability to explain these features. (shrink)

The motivational constraint on normative reasons says that a consideration is a normative reason for an agent to act only if it is logically possible for the agent to act for that reason, or at least to be moved so to act. The claim figures Zelig-like in philosophical debates about practical reasons: on hand, occasionally prominent, but never the focus of discussion. However, because it is entailed by a number of prominent views about normative reasons—including various forms of internalism and (...) some views that closely connect reasons to good practical reasoning—its truth or falsehood has important implications. Mark Schroeder (2007) and Julia Markovits (2014) have recently criticized the Motivational Constraint on the grounds of so-called “elusive reasons”: reasons for some agent to act that are such that it is logically impossible both that they are normative reasons for that agent and the agent is moved to act for those reasons. In response, a number of philosophers (Sinclair 2016; Ridge and McKeever 2012; Paakkunainen 2017) have attempted to reconcile blindspot reasons with the motivational constraint. My aim in this paper is to show that these conciliatory strategies fail to overcome the challenge posed by elusive reasons. First, I examine each strategy and argue that it unsuccessful on its own terms. Second, I adduce another type of elusive reason not heretofore discussed in the literature, and I argue that these strategies also cannot make this kind of reason consistent with the motivational constraint. Finally, I defend the existence of this kind of reason against an important objection. (shrink)

One of the most important disputes in the foundations of ethics concerns the source of practical reasons. On the desire-based view, only one’s desires provide one with reasons to act. On the value-based view, reasons are instead provided by the objective evaluative facts, and never by our desires. Similarly, there are desire-based and non-desired-based theories about two other phenomena: pleasure and welfare. It has been argued, and is natural to think, that holding a desire-based theory about either pleasure or welfare (...) commits one to recognizing that desires do provide reasons for action – i.e., commits one to abandoning the value-based theory of reasons. The purpose of this paper is to show that this is not so. All of the following can be true: pleasure and welfare provide reasons; pleasure and welfare are to be understood in terms of desire; desires never provide reasons, in the relevant way. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1979, Bernard Williams' "Internal and External Reasons" has been one of the most influential and widely discussed papers in ethics. I suggest here that the paper's argument has nevertheless been universally misunderstood. On the standard interpretation, his argument—which he subsequently elaborated and defended in further discussions—is perplexingly weak. In the first section I sketch this Standard (or, more provocatively, "Supposed") argument, and detail just how terrible it is. The badness of the argument itself may not be (...) a conclusive reason not to ascribe it even to a great philosopher—perhaps every philosopher is guilty of having offered some terrible arguments—but Williams himself seems to point out blithely the very flaws that make it so terrible, making the standard reading difficult to justify. The second section proposes an interpretation on which he offers an Alternative (or, more provocatively, the "Actual") argument, one which is immune to the objections that seem fatal to the Standard argument. On this interpretation, better supported by the textual evidence and the principle of charity, Williams' conclusion seems to follow validly from defensible premises, including a substantive and interesting analysis of the concept of a normative reason. (shrink)

This paper examines some recent arguments for internalism that (i) appeal to an analogy between practical and theoretical reasons, (ii) look toward our practices of reasoning with others, or (iii) tie reasons to good deliberation. The conclusion of this paper is a skeptical one: none of these new arguments gives us sufficient reason to think that internalism is true.

Let us give voice to this new demand: we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values should itself, for once, be examined. -Friedrich NietzscheAnyone who, stimulated by education, has come to feel the force of the various obligations in life, at some time or other comes to feel the irksomeness of carrying them out, and to recognize the sacrifice of interest involved; and, if thoughtful, he inevitably puts to himself the question: “Is there really a reason (...) why I should act in the ways in which hitherto I have thought I ought to act? … Should I not really be justified in simply trying to have a good time?” -H.A. Prichard. (shrink)

Often, when there is a reason for you to do something, it is the kind of thing to motivate you to do it. For example, if Max and Caroline are deciding whether to go to the Alcove for dinner, Caroline might mention as a reason in favor, the fact that the Alcove serves onion rings the size of doughnuts, and Max might mention as a reason against, the fact that it is so difficult to get parking there this time of (...) day. It is some sign—perhaps not a perfect sign, but some sign—that each of these really is a reason, that Max and Caroline feel the tug in each direction. Mention of the Alcove's onion rings makes them feel to at least some degree inclined to go, and mention of the parking arrangements makes them feel to at least some degree inclined not to. According to some philosophers, reasons for action always bear some relation like this to motivation. This idea is variously known as ‘ reasons internalism’, ‘internalism about reasons ’, or ‘the internal reasons theory’. According to other philosophers, not all reasons are related to motivation in any of the ways internalists say. This idea is known as ‘ reasons externalism’ or ‘externalism about reasons ’. (shrink)

These days, just about every philosophical debate seems to generate a position labeledinternalism. The debate I will be joining in this essay concerns reasons for action and their connection, or lack of connection, to motivation. The internalist position in this debate posits a certain essential connection between reasons and motivation, while the externalist position denies such a connection. This debate about internalism overlaps an older debate between Humeans and Kantians about the exclusive reason-giving power of desires. As we will see, (...) however, while these debates overlap, the new debate is importantly different from the old debate. (shrink)

I defend the relatively orthodox view that reasons for action are premises in good practical reasoning, against recent counterexamples that suggest that, like “government house” moral justifications, some reasons are to be ignored in deliberation. I also explain, positively, what is right about the orthodoxy. Unless reasons are premises in good practical reasoning, reasons cannot be normative in the way they are usually taken to be, and relatedly, are unfit to play certain familiar theoretical and related everyday roles that give (...) many appeals to reasons their distinctive point. (shrink)

Argues that practical irrationality is akin to moral culpability: it is defective practical thought which one could legitimately have been expected to avoid. It is thus a mistake to draw too tight a connection between failure to be moved by reasons and practical irrationality (as in a certain kind of "internalism"): one's failure may be genuine, but not culpable, and therefore not irrational.

This article challenges the individualism and neutrality of modern moral conscience. It looks to the history of the concept to excavate an older tradition that takes conscience to be social and morally responsive, while arguing that dominant contemporary justifications of conscience in terms of integrity are inadequate without reintroducing these social and moral traits. This prompts a rethinking of the nature and value of conscience: first, by demonstrating that a morally-responsive conscience is neither a contradiction in terms nor a political (...) absurdity; second, by suggesting how a morally-responsive conscience can be informed by the social world without being a mere proxy for social power or moribund tradition. (shrink)

There is perhaps no more widely shared conviction in contemporary metaethics, even among those who hold otherwise divergent views, than that practical normativity must be capable of being naturalized (i.e., captured fully within a metaphysically naturalist worldview). My aim is to illuminate the central reasons for skepticism about this. While certain naturalizing projects are plausible for very limited purposes, it is unlikely that any can provide everything we might reasonably want from an account of goodness and badness, rightness and wrongness, (...) and unqualified reasons for acting—at least if we are unwilling to accept certain deflationary or bullet-biting moves. Some naturalizing views can be shown to fail outright to capture the relevant normative facts or properties, while others have more promise but can also be seen to have certain limitations and costs, failing to capture elements that some of us take to be important to an adequate theory of practical normativity. There are, of course, far more naturalizing moves than can be considered here, so the aim is not to establish the truth of nonnaturalism through a process of elimination. But I hope to say enough to bring out the central worries about naturalizing projects and to pose some challenges that apply more widely, with the aim of showing that ethical nonnaturalism remains an attractive and well-motivated option at least for those of us who reject both nihilism and various forms of ethical deflation. (shrink)

The concept of second nature plays a central role in McDowell's project of reconciling thought's external constraint with its spontaneity or autonomy: our conceptual capacities are natural in the sense that they are fully integrated into the natural world, but they are a second nature to us since they are not reducible to elements that are intelligible apart from those conceptual capacities. Rather than offering a theory of second nature and an account of how we acquire one, McDowell suggests that (...) Aristotle's account of ethical character formation as the acquisition of a second nature serves as a model that can reassure us that thought's autonomy does not threaten its naturalness. However, far from providing such reassurance, the Aristotelian model of second nature actually generates an anxiety about how the acquisition of such autonomous conceptual abilities could be possible. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that if and only if agents are motivated to act by good reasons for acting, they flourish, since, in so doing, they consciously act in accordance with their nature through virtuous actions. I offer an account of what good reasons for acting consist of reconsidering Aquinas’ natural inclinations. Based on a critical analysis of Anjum and Mumford’s work on dispositions in analytic metaphysics, I argue, contra Hume’s law, that Aquinas’ natural inclinations show (...) that metaphysics is foundational for ethics. I claim that agents flourish as human beings if and only if they consciously act in accordance with natural inclinations. Natural inclinations naturally tend towards goods that depend on the metaphysical structure of human nature, by virtue of which agents have some powers that they should actualise in order to flourish. Intellect and will are the rational powers that distinguish human beings from other living beings. The will naturally desires what is good. If the will, through the input of the intellect, desires what is genuinely good for human beings according to their nature, it also directs the other powers to their own actualisation. Natural inclinations do not strictly necessitate agents to act in accordance with them, because, by virtue of their rational powers, agents should also recognise that they have a reason for acting in accordance with them. Thus, I will suggest that we can best appreciate the importance of natural inclinations from the first-person perspective. (shrink)

I begin by distinguishing two general approaches to metaethics and ontology. One in effect puts our experience as engaged ethical agents on hold while independent metaphysical and epistemological inquiries, operating by their own lights, deliver metaethical verdicts on acceptable interpretations of our ethical lives; the other instead keeps engaged ethical experience in focus and allows our reflective interpretation of it to shape our metaphysical and epistemological views, including our ontology. While the former approach often leads to deflationary views, the latter (...) may lead us to enrich our metaethical picture as needed to capture robust objectivity and categorical normative authority for ethics. Assuming, as I have argued elsewhere, that this requires positing irreducibly evaluative or normative properties and facts, the question I take up here is what ontological implications this has. I argue against quietist non-naturalist views, which maintain that positing such properties and facts either has no ontological implications or has only domain-specific ontological implications that likewise imply nothing about what the world contains. Against these views, I advocate a worldly, dual-aspect view, locating irreducibly evaluative or normative properties as features of relevant worldly things. But while I have previously defended this view as a form of non-naturalism, I here explore the possibility of instead seeing it as a new, more expansive form of naturalism—what might be called “Non-Scientistic Naturalism”—inspired by parallel attempts in the philosophy of mind to accommodate irreducibly phenomenal properties within a more expansive physicalism. (shrink)

In this paper I argue on two fronts. First, I press for the view that judging is a type of mental action, as opposed to those who think that judging is involuntary and hence not an action. Second, I argue that judging is specifically a type of non-voluntary mental action. My account of the non-voluntary nature of the mental act of judging differs, however, from standard non-voluntarist views, according to which ‘non-voluntary’ just means regulated by epistemic reasons. In addition, judging (...) is non-voluntary, I contend, because it is partially constituted by the exercise of a non-reason-governed skill. This skill, which I call ‘critical pop-out’, consists of an unreflective, often unconscious, ability to detect the kind of situations in which the reflective abilities that also partially constitute our acts of judging should be deployed. We are responsible for our judgments, I conclude, because in identifying such reflection-inviting situations, we reveal the kind of epistemic agents we are. (shrink)

According to Bernard Williams, if it is true that A has a normative reason to Φ then it must be possible that A should Φ for that reason. This claim is important both because it restricts the range of reasons which agents can have and because it has been used as a premise in an argument for so-called ‘internalist’ theories of reasons. In this paper I rebut an apparent counterexamples to Williams’ claim: Schroeder’s example of Nate. I argue that this (...) counterexample fails since it underestimates the range of cases where agents can act for their normative reasons. Moreover, I argue that a key motivation behind Williams’ claim is compatible with this ‘expansive’ account of what it is to act for a normative reason. (Published with Open Access.). (shrink)

Weak particularism about reasons is the view that the normative valency of some descriptive considerations varies, while others have an invariant normative valency. A defence of this view needs to respond to arguments that a consideration cannot count in favour of any action unless it counts in favour of every action. But it cannot resort to a global holism about reasons, if it claims that there are some examples of invariant valency. This paper argues for weak particularism, and presents a (...) framework for understanding the relationships between practical reasons. A central part of this framework is the idea that there is an important kind of reason-a 'presumptive reason'-which need not be conclusive, but which is neither pro tanto nor prima facie. /// [Richard Holton] Should particularists about ethics claim that moral principles are never true? Or should they rather claim that any finite set of principles will not be sufficient to capture ethics? This paper explores and defends the possibility of embracing the second of these claims whilst rejecting the first, a position termed 'principled particularism'. The main argument that particularists present for their position-the argument that holds that any moral conclusion can be superseded by further considerations-is quite compatible with principled particularism; indeed, it is compatible with the idea that every true moral conclusion can be shown to follow deductively from a finite set of premises. Whilst it is true that these premises must contain implicit ceteris paribus clauses, this does not render the arguments trivial. On the contrary, they can do important work in justifying moral conclusions. Finally the approach is briefly applied to the related field of jurisprudence. (shrink)

This paper concerns a prima facie tension between the claims that (a) agents have normative reasons obtaining in virtue of the nature of the options that confront them, and (b) there is a non-trivial connection between the grounds of normative reasons and the upshots of sound practical reasoning. Joint commitment to these claims is shown to give rise to a dilemma. I argue that the dilemma is avoidable on a response dependent account of normative reasons accommodating both (a) and (b) (...) by yielding (a) as a substantial constraint on sound practical reasoning. This fact is shown to have significance for the contemporary dialectic between moral realists and their opponents. (shrink)

Historically, the most persuasive argument against external reasons proceeds through a rationalist restriction: For all agents A, and all actions Φ, there is a reason for A to Φ only if Φing is rationally accessible from A's actual motivational states. Here I distinguish conceptions of rationality, show which one the internalist must rely on to argue against external reasons, and argue that a rationalist restriction that features that conception of rationality is extremely implausible. Other conceptions of rationality can render the (...) restriction true, but then the restriction simply fails to rule out external reasons. (shrink)

This chapter discusses how we should think about experiences that threaten to radically transform our understanding of the world. While it can be rational to treat the “doxastically transformative” potential of an experience as a reason to choose against it, such a decision must be based in something more than the fact that this experience would alter one’s current beliefs. It only in light of knowledge of how things are that a person can choose rationally against transformative processes that would (...) destroy this knowledge. (shrink)

What is the connection between reasons and motives? According to Reasons Internalism there is a non-trivial conceptual connection between normative reasons and the possibility of rationally accessing relevant motivation. Reasons Internalism is attractive insofar as it captures the thought that reasons are for reasoning with and repulsive insofar as it fails to generate sufficient critical distance between reasons and motives. Rather than directly adjudicate this dispute, I extract from it two generally accepted desiderata on theories of normative reasons and argue (...) that a new theory can satisfy both. The new theory locates part of the meaning of normative reason statements in their role in normative discussion. It generates a view of the connection between reasons and motives that is distinct from Reasons Internalism, yet distinctively in its spirit. (shrink)

Argues that Hume was a sceptic about practical reason only on a rationalist account of what it would have to be. (This version differs substantially from the published paper.).

Error theories about morality often take as their starting point the supposed queerness of morality, and those resisting these arguments often try to argue by analogy that morality is no more queer than other unproblematic subject matters. Here, error theory (as exemplified primarily by the work of Richard Joyce) is resisted first by arguing that it assumes a common, modern, and peculiarly social conception of morality. Then error theorists point out that the social nature of morality requires one to act (...) against one's self-interest while insisting on the categorical, inescapable, or overriding status of moral considerations: they argue that morality requires magic, then (rightly) claim that there is no such thing as magic. An alternate eudaimonist conception of morality is introduced which itself has an older provenance than the social point of view, dating to the ancient Greeks. Eudaimonism answers to the normative requirements of morality, yet does not require magic. Thus, the initial motivation for error theory is removed. (shrink)

The paper aims to give an account of practical knowledge by outlining a hylomorphic and conceptualist account of intentional action in analogy to McDowell's conceptualist account of experience. On this view, practical concepts provide the ideal or formal structure that unifies a manifold of bodily movements into a single intentional action, and hence intentional actions are structured conceptually. -/- - §1 sets out the basic features of this view in contrast to a common dualistic or two-component view of practical knowledge, (...) as an "inner" mental state with propositional content that functions as the efficient cause of some bodily movement in the "external" world, and introduces the claim that practical knowledge is the constitutive form of intentional action. - §2 illustrates the hylomorphic unity of concept and movement in action, and thus (contra Dreyfus) the corporeality of practical reason, by means of an account of practical concept formation, on which both the formation and tradition of practical concepts take place in bodily movement iself. - §3 elucidates the concept of a self-conscious disposition or rational capacity for action, actualizations of which are characterized by a syllogistic structure that accounts for both the explanation and the justification of action and thereby renders intelligible in what sense practical judgment is internal to acting itself. - Skillful exercises of such capacities express a knowledge-how that manifests itself in practical representations. §4 characterizes representations of this kind as a perceptually situated recognition of a practical pattern that amounts to the imaginative anticipation of a movement form by which the agent determines their next steps; a practical perception of the agent's particular situation that is both normative and motivational for them. - §5 starts by developing an identity theory of practical truth, on which the conceptual content of a (true) practical judgment is numerically identical with the formal structure of a (good) action, and concludes with explaining the unity of four features commonly attributed to practical knowledge, viz. that it is at the same time descriptive, normative, causally productive, and non-observational (or self-conscious). (shrink)

Kieran Setiya begins Reasons Without Rationalism by outlining and arguing for a schema in terms of which he thinks we best understand the nature of normative reasons for action. This is: " Reasons: The fact that p is a reason for A to ϕ just in case A has a collection of psychological states, C, such that the disposition to be moved to ϕ by C-and-the-belief-that-p is a good disposition of practical thought, and C contains no false beliefs. " As (...) Setiya points out, Reasons contrasts with both the ‘advice’ model of normative reasons , which is the view that I myself prefer , and the ‘imitative’ model , preferred by the likes of McDowell .The intuitive idea behind Reasons should be clear enough. Insofar as normative reasons are normative, they are considerations that would justify an agent's acting in a certain way in certain circumstances: there is, thus, a justificatory dimension. But insofar as they are reasons, they are considerations on which the agent might act in those very circumstances: there is thus an explanatory dimension as well. Part of the attraction of Reasons is that it tells us why the considerations that are normative reasons have these two features: a consideration is a normative reason only if, given other things that the agent believes and desires, the disposition to be moved by a belief concerning that consideration is itself a good disposition of practical thought .Reasons is, however, just a schema. …. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the problem of scientific change as an explanatory problem, that is, as a philosophical problem concerning what logical forms of explanation we should employ in order to un...

Under what conditions do you have a reason to perform some action? Do you only have reason to do what you want to do? Reasons-motives internalism is the appealingly simple view that unless an agent is, or could be, motivated to act in a certain way, he has no normative reason to act in that way. Thus, according to reasons-motives internalism, facts about an individual’s motivational psychology constrain what is rational for that agent to do. This article canvasses several ways (...) of formulating the view and considers some advantages and disadvantages of each. (shrink)

In this article I will consider how loss of affect in our intellectual lives, through depression for example, can be as debilitating as loss of affect elsewhere in our lives. This will involve showing that there are such things as intellectual emotions, that their role in intellectual activity is not merely as an aid to the intellect, and that loss of affect changes not only one’s motivations, but also one’s overall evaluative take on the world.

What is the philosophical role of an historical account of how someone, or some people, came to believe or value as they do? I consider some proposals, due to Bernard Williams and David Wiggins, according to which such an account might either vindicate or subvert our believing or valuing as we do. I suggest some reasons for scepticism about those proposals, at least when construed as providing a fundamental means of assessing cases of believing or valuing. The main problem raised (...) for the proposals, when so construed, is that they conflate reasons that now support believing or valuing with reasons for coming in the first place to believe or value. (shrink)

According to advocates of internalism about reasons for action, there is an interesting connection between an agent’s reasons and the agent’s present desires. On the simplest version of this view, an agent has a reason to act a certain way at some time if and only if acting that way would promote his present desires. Let us call this the sub-Humean model.1 The sub-Humean model is widely regarded as too simple on the grounds that there are adverse conditions, such as (...) massive confusion, in which desires are irrationally possessed or acquired, thereby failing to provide reasons for action.2. (shrink)

According to a guiding idea in metaethics, there is a necessary link between the concept of normative reasons and the concept of practical rationality. This notion brings up two issues: The exact nature of this link, and the nature of rationality. With regard to the first issue, the debate is dominated by a certain standard claim. With regard to the second issue, the debate is dominated by what I will refer to as ‘subjectivism’ and ‘objectivism’ about rationality, where the latter (...) is assumed to be a necessary condition for the existence of categorical reasons. In this paper, it is argued that subjectivism is able capture an ordinary, non-technical, sense of ‘rational’ whereas objectivism is not. The basic reason is that objectivism fails to account for the essential connection between rationality, malfunctioning, and rational criticism. This means that we face a puzzle: While objectivism appears to be a necessary condition for the existence of categorical reasons, it fails to capture a central sense of ‘rational’. It is finally argued that this puzzle can be solved by abandoning the standard claim about the link between reasons and rationality. (shrink)

According to a common thesis about normative reasons for action, you have a reason to perform a given action only if you can act for that reason. This thesis has long had broad appeal and i...

What makes a subject''s motivationrational is its originating in her practicalreasoning. I explain the appeal of this thesisabout rational motivation, and explore itsrelation to recent discussions of internalismabout reasons for action. I do so in theservice of clarifying an important meta-ethicaldebate between Humean motivational skeptics andtheir Kantian opponents. This debate is oneover whether, as this skeptic contends andKantians deny, considerations about ourmotivational capacities, together withinternalism, restrict genuine reasons foraction to merely instrumental ones. I arguethat properly adjudicating this debate requiresidentifying one (...) particular way in which thethesis about rational motivation has beendeveloped – namely, as a part of what I term``the traditional conception'''' of themotivational efficacy of practical reason. Onthis conception, rational motivation consistsin choosing some course of conduct out of one''scognitive appreciation of the way its relationto one''s practicable good gives one reason todo so. And I side with Kantians against theHumean motivational skeptic in part on groundsthat Kant himself – though not all Kantians –would find congenial: namely, that we shouldaccept the traditional conception. (shrink)

It is common, in current literature on the topic at hand, to distinguish two kinds of reasons for action: justificatory reasons, which answer questions about what we ought to do, and explanatory reasons, which explain what we actually do. Internalism is a thesis about justificatory reasons—that is, the kind of reasons we are in search of when we deliberate about what to do or advise others about what they ought to do. Of course, since internalism traces justificatory reasons to the (...) subjective motivations of those to whom the reasons apply, and since these motivations play a central role in explaining actions, the doctrine implies that there is a close relation—perhaps even a relation of identity—between justificatory and explanatory reasons. Still, the main proponents of internalism have presented it, in the first instance, as a thesis about justificatory reasons. What I hope to show is that internalism cannot be accepted as a limitation on justificatory reasons because it cannot coherently be accepted in the course of first-person deliberation; and it ought not to be accepted when offering advice. To think otherwise, I will argue, is to reverse the ‘direction of gaze’ appropriate to deliberation, mistaking the psychological states that shape our view of justificatory reasons for the justificatory reasons they bring into view. The upshot of this reversal is to make justification far too easy to come by, and to render it obscure what we are doing when we pause to consider whether we really have the reasons that we are disposed to think we have. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that an agent has a reason to do a certain action? Does it mean that she would desire to do the action, or that there is some external consideration, which she ought to follow? Or is there a third alternative? The debate between Humean affective (i.e., desire-based) and classical Kantian cognitive theories has seemingly ended up in a theoretical standoff, and so most of the contributors have recently focused on the conative attitude of motivation (...) - either preceded by affective or cognitive attitudes. Accordingly, they contend that an agent has a reason to f only if, on some occasions, she would be motivated to f: call this Conative Reason Internalism. I argue, first, that even the most qualified version of this weak conative condition obtains only contingently. Secondly, that a cognitive contextual attitude, derived from the agent’s capacity of Reasons-Understanding, necessarily obtains. Therefore, necessarily, if an agent has a reason to f, it follows that, were she contextually rational, she would make evaluative sense out of the propositional content of f-ing or would understand why f-ing is considered as a right action in the relevant context: I call this De Dicto Cognitive Reason Contextualism. (shrink)