Normative requirements are often overlooked, but they are central features of the normative world. Rationality is often thought to consist in acting for reasons, but following normative requirements is also a major part of rationality. In particular, correct reasoning – both theoretical and practical – is governed by normative requirements rather than by reasons. This article explains the nature of normative requirements, and gives examples of their importance. It also describes mistakes that philosophers have made as a result of confusing (...) normative requirements with reasons. (shrink)

This articles concerns the compatibility of orthonomy (making the right choices) and autonomy (making one’s own choices). On the one hand we have the experience that we do not just want to govern ourselves, but that we want to do so rightly. the other hand, it seems that the very fact that our choices are responsive to reasons is insufficient to explain why making these choices adds up to leading a life of one’s own. Iit is argued that we can (...) develop a viable view on the co-realisation of autonomy and orthonomy by using the concept of a concern which is closely linked to the concept op caring. (shrink)

GE Moore vehemently defended the view that what actually happens and not what we, even reasonably, expect to happen, determines what we ought to do. ‘The only possible reason that can justify any action’, Moore writes, ‘is that by it the greatest possible amount of what is good absolutely should be realized’. Moore is an objectivist about reasons and duties: The world and not our view of it gives us reasons to act; the way the world is, and not the (...) way we think it is, determines what we ought to do. In his new book Jonathan Dancy agrees: the world itself has normative significance, reality, as Dancy puts it, is practical. On this, most general level Dancy and Moore agree. But unlike Moore’s, Dancy’s objectivism is not embedded in any particular normative theory. And whereas Moore strikes me as hard-nosed, and his position as sharp-edged, Dancy’s position looks, in comparison, softer and subtler. Contrasting the two positions will help to bring out these features of Dancy’s view. But it will also help to explain the worry that Dancy’s view might have departed too far from its origin. (shrink)

Practical reasoning is a process of reasoning that concludes in an intention. One example is reasoning from intending an end to intending what you believe is a necessary means: 'I will leave the next buoy to port; in order to do that I must tack; so I'll tack', where the first and third sentences express intentions and the second sentence a belief. This sort of practical reasoning is supported by a valid logical derivation, and therefore seems uncontrovertible. A more contentious (...) example is normative practical reasoning of the form 'I ought to φ, so I'll φ', where 'I ought to φ' expresses a normative belief and 'I'll φ' an intention. This has at least some characteristics of reasoning, but there are also grounds for doubting that it is genuine reasoning. One objection is that it seems inappropriate to derive an intention to φ from a belief that you ought to φ, rather than a belief that you ought to intend to φ. Another is that you may not be able to go through this putative process of reasoning, and this inability might disqualify it from being reasoning. A third objection is that it violates the Humean doctrine that reason alone cannot motivate any action of the will. This paper investigates these objections. (shrink)

Some contemporary theories treat phenomena like weakness of will, compulsion and wantonness as practical failures but not as failures of rationality: say, as failures of autonomy or whatever. Other current theories-the majority see the phenomena as failures of rationality but not as distinctively practical failures. They depict them as always involving a theoretical deficiency: a sort of ignorance, error, inattention or illogic. They represent them as failures which are on a par with breakdowns of theoretical reason; the failures may not (...) have exact theoretical analogues, exact analogues in the breakdown of belief, but they are of essentially the same, cognitive kind. Our approach gives us quite a different view of things. The pathologies which we identify in our taxonomy are distinctively rational failures and distinctively practical failures; they are failures of pure practical reason. (shrink)

When we have a normative reason, and we act for that reason, it becomes our motivating reason. But we can have either kind of reason without having the other. Thus, if I jump into the canal, my motivating reason was provided by my belief; but I had no normative reason to jump. I merely thought I did. And, if I failed to notice that the canal was frozen, I had a reason not to jump that, because it was unknown to (...) me, did not motivate me. Though we can have normative reasons without being motivated, and vice versa, such reasons are closely related to our motivation. There are, however, very different views about what this relation is. This disagreement raises wider questions about what normative reasons are, and about which reasons there are. After sketching some of these views, I shall discuss some arguments by Williams, and then say where, in my opinion, the truth lies. [...] I [will] suggest why, as I believe, we should be non-reductive normative realists, and should regard all reasons as external. (shrink)