Commitment, Reasons, and the Will

In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 8. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 74-113 (2013)
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Abstract

This paper argues that there is a particular kind of ‘internal’ commitment typically made in the context of romantic love relationships that has striking meta-normative implications for how we understand the role of the will in practical normativity. Internal commitments cannot plausibly explain the reasons we have in committed relationships on the usual model – as triggering reasons that are already there, in the way that making a promise triggers a reason via a pre-existing norm of the form ‘If you make a promise to x, then you have a reason to x’. Instead, internal commitments are that in virtue of which one has the special reasons of committed relationships; they are the grounds of such reasons. In this way, the will is a source of practical normativity.

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Ruth Chang
University of Oxford

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