Abstract
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.
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Lillehammer, H. Moral Realism, Normative Reasons, and Rational Intelligibility. Erkenntnis 57, 47–69 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020172330222
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020172330222