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Reasons, Competition, and Latitude

In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 16. Oxford University Press (2021)

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  1. (13 other versions)Leviathan.Thomas Hobbes - 1936 - Harmondsworth,: Penguin Books. Edited by C. B. Macpherson.
    v. 1. Editorial introduction -- v. 2. The English and Latin texts (i) -- v. 3. The English and Latin texts (ii).
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  • On What Matters: Two-Volume Set.Derek Parfit - 2001 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    This is a major work in moral philosophy, the long-awaited follow-up to Parfit's 1984 classic Reasons and Persons, a landmark of twentieth-century philosophy. Parfit now presents a powerful new treatment of reasons and a critical examination of the most prominent systematic moral theories, leading to his own ground-breaking conclusion.
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  • Being Realistic About Reasons.Thomas Scanlon - 2014 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    It is often claimed that irreducibly normative truths would have unacceptable metaphysical implications, and are incompatible with a scientific view of the world. The book argues, on the basis of a general account of the relevance of ontological questions, that this claim is mistaken. It is also a mistake to think that interpreting normative judgments as beliefs would make it impossible to explain their connection with action. An agent’s acceptance of a normative judgment can explain that agent’s subsequent action because (...)
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  • The possibility of altruism.Thomas Nagel - 1970 - Oxford,: Clarendon P..
    Just as there are rational requirements on thought, there are rational requirements on action. This book defends a conception of ethics, and a related conception of human nature, according to which altruism is included among the basic rational requirements on desire and action. Altruism itself depends on the recognition of the reality of other persons, and on the equivalent capacity to regard oneself as merely one individual among many.
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  • (1 other version)The Importance of Being Rational.Errol Lord - 2018 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    Errol Lord offers a new account of the nature of rationality: what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. Lord defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons, and dispels doubts about whether we ought to be rational.
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  • The limits of morality.Shelly Kagan - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Most people believe that there are limits to the sacrifices that morality can demand. Although it would often be meritorious, we are not, in fact, morally required to do all that we can to promote overall good. What's more, most people also believe that certain types of acts are simply forbidden, morally off limits, even when necessary for promoting the overall good. In this provocative analysis Kagan maintains that despite the intuitive appeal of these views, they cannot be adequately defended. (...)
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  • Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality.Douglas W. Portmore - 2011 - New York, USA: Oxford University Press USA.
    Commonsense Consequentialism is a book about morality, rationality, and the interconnections between the two. In it, Douglas W. Portmore defends a version of consequentialism that both comports with our commonsense moral intuitions and shares with other consequentialist theories the same compelling teleological conception of practical reasons. Broadly construed, consequentialism is the view that an act's deontic status is determined by how its outcome ranks relative to those of the available alternatives on some evaluative ranking. Portmore argues that outcomes should be (...)
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  • (3 other versions)Leviathan.Thomas Hobbes - 2007 - In Aloysius Martinich, Fritz Allhoff & Anand Vaidya (eds.), Early Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings with Commentary. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
    Thomas Hobbes took a new look at the ways in which society should function, and he ended up formulating the concept of political science. His crowning achievement, Leviathan, remains among the greatest works in the history of ideas. Written during a moment in English history when the political and social structures as well as methods of science were in flux and open to interpretation, Leviathan played an essential role in the development of the modern world. This edition of Hobbes' landmark (...)
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  • Opting for the Best: Oughts and Options.Douglas W. Portmore - 2019 - New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.
    The book concerns what I take to be the least controversial normative principle concerning action: you ought to perform your best option—best, that is, in terms of whatever ultimately matters. The book sets aside the question of what ultimately matters so as to focus on more basic issues, such as: What are our options? Do I have the option of typing out the cure for cancer if that’s what I would in fact do if I had the right intentions at (...)
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  • (1 other version)Permission to Believe: Why Permissivism Is True and What It Tells Us About Irrelevant Influences on Belief.Miriam Schoenfield - 2012 - Noûs 48 (2):193-218.
    In this paper, I begin by defending permissivism: the claim that, sometimes, there is more than one way to rationally respond to a given body of evidence. Then I argue that, if we accept permissivism, certain worries that arise as a result of learning that our beliefs were caused by the communities we grew up in, the schools we went to, or other irrelevant influences dissipate. The basic strategy is as follows: First, I try to pinpoint what makes irrelevant influences (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Importance of Being Rational.Errol Lord - 2013 - Dissertation, Princeton University
    My dissertation is a systematic defense of the claim that what it is to be rational is to correctly respond to the reasons you possess. The dissertation is split into two parts, each consisting of three chapters. In Part I--Coherence, Possession, and Correctly Responding--I argue that my view has important advantages over popular views in metaethics that tie rationality to coherence (ch. 2), defend a novel view of what it is to possess a reason (ch. 3), and defend a novel (...)
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  • A Defense of Intrapersonal Belief Permissivism.Elizabeth Jackson - 2021 - Episteme 18 (2):313–327.
    Permissivism is the view that there are evidential situations that rationally permit more than one attitude toward a proposition. In this paper, I argue for Intrapersonal Belief Permissivism (IaBP): that there are evidential situations in which a single agent can rationally adopt more than one belief-attitude toward a proposition. I give two positive arguments for IaBP; the first involves epistemic supererogation and the second involves doubt. Then, I should how these arguments give intrapersonal permissivists a distinct response to the toggling (...)
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  • (5 other versions)The Right and the Good.W. D. Ross - 1932 - The Monist 42:157.
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  • The Uniqueness Thesis.Matthew Kopec & Michael G. Titelbaum - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (4):189-200.
    The Uniqueness Thesis holds, roughly speaking, that there is a unique rational response to any particular body of evidence. We first sketch some varieties of Uniqueness that appear in the literature. We then discuss some popular views that conflict with Uniqueness and others that require Uniqueness to be true. We then examine some arguments that have been presented in its favor and discuss why permissivists find them unconvincing. Last, we present some purported counterexamples that have been raised against Uniqueness and (...)
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  • Engaging Reason: On the Theory of Value and Action.Joseph Raz - 1999 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    Joseph Raz presents a penetrating exploration of the interdependence of value, reason, and the will. These essays illuminate a wide range of questions concerning fundamental aspects of human thought and action. Engaging Reason is a summation of many years of original, compelling, and influential work by a major contemporary philosopher.
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  • (5 other versions)The Right and the Good.W. D. Ross - 1930 - International Journal of Ethics 41 (3):343-351.
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  • Whether and Where to Give.Theron Pummer - 2016 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 44 (1):77-95.
    Effective altruists recommend that we give large sums to charity, but by far their more central message is that we give effectively, i.e., to whatever charities would do the most good per dollar donated. In this paper, I’ll assume that it’s not wrong not to give bigger, but will explore to what extent it may well nonetheless be wrong not to give better. The main claim I’ll argue for here is that in many cases it would be wrong of you (...)
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  • Contrastive Reasons.Justin Snedegar - 2017 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    Justin Snedegar develops and defends contrastivism about reasons. This is the view that normative reasons are fundamentally reasons for or against actions or attitudes only relative to sets of alternatives. Simply put, reasons are always reasons to do one thing rather than another, instead of simply being reasons to do something, full stop.
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  • What makes reasons sufficient?Mark Schroeder - 2015 - American Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2):159-170.
    This paper addresses the question: ‘what makes reasons sufficient?’ and offers the answer, ‘being at least as weighty as the reasons for the alternatives’. The paper starts by introducing some of the reasons why sufficiency has seemed difficult to understand, particularly in epistemology, and some circumstantial evidence that this has contributed to more general problems in the epistemological literature. It then introduces the positive account of sufficiency, and explains how this captures sufficiency in both the practical and epistemic domains. Finally, (...)
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  • Oughts and ends.Stephen Finlay - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 143 (3):315 - 340.
    This paper advances a reductive semantics for ‘ought’ and a naturalistic theory of normativity. It gives a unified analysis of predictive, instrumental, and categorical uses of ‘ought’: the predictive ‘ought’ is basic, and is interpreted in terms of probability. Instrumental ‘oughts’ are analyzed as predictive ‘oughts’ occurring under an ‘in order that’ modifer (the end-relational theory). The theory is then extended to categorical uses of ‘ought’: it is argued that they are special rhetorical uses of the instrumental ‘ought’. Plausible conversational (...)
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  • Supererogation, Sacrifice, and the Limits of Duty.Alfred Archer - 2016 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 54 (3):333-354.
    It is often claimed that all acts of supererogation involve sacrifice. This claim is made because it is thought that it is the level of sacrifice involved that prevents these acts from being morally required. In this paper, I will argue against this claim. I will start by making a distinction between two ways of understanding the claim that all acts of supererogation involve sacrifice. I will then examine some purported counterexamples to the view that supererogation always involves sacrifice and (...)
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  • Normative strength and the balance of reasons.Joshua Gert - 2007 - Philosophical Review 116 (4):533-562.
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  • Reasons for and reasons against.Justin Snedegar - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (3):725-743.
    What an agent ought to do is determined by competition between reasons bearing on the options open to her. The popular metaphor of balancing or weighing reasons on a scale to represent this competition encourages a focus on competition between reasons for competing options. But what an agent ought to do also depends on the reasons against those options. The balancing metaphor does not provide an obvious way to represent reasons against. Partly as a result of this, there is a (...)
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  • An Opinionated Guide to the Weight of Reasons.Barry Maguire & Errol Lord - 2016 - In Errol Lord & Barry Maguire (eds.), Weighing Reasons. New York, NY: Oxford University Press USA.
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  • On the law of war and peace.Hugo Grotius - unknown
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  • Supererogation.Alfred Archer - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13 (3):e12476.
    It is a recognizable feature of commonsense morality that some actions are beyond the call of duty or supererogatory. Acts of supererogation raise a number of interesting philosophical questions and debates. This article will provide an overview of three of these debates. First, I will provide an overview of the debate about whether or not acts of supererogation exist. Next, I will investigate the issue of how to define the supererogatory. I will finish by examining a problem known as the (...)
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  • (1 other version)Making Comparisons Count.Ruth Chang - 2001 - New York: Routledge.
    This book attempts to answer two questions: Are alternatives for choice ever incomparable? and In what ways can items be compared? The arguments offered suggest that alternatives for choice no matter how different are never incomparable, and that the ways in which items can be compared are richer and more varied than commonly supposed.
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  • Supererogation Across Normative Domains.Brian McElwee - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (3):505-516.
    The phenomenon of moral supererogation—action that goes beyond what moral duty requires—is familiar. In this paper, I argue that the concept of supererogation is applicable beyond the moral domain. After an introductory section 1, I outline in section 2 what I take to be the structure of moral supererogation, explaining how it comes to be an authentic normative category. In section 3, I show that there are structurally similar phenomena in other normative domains—those of prudence, etiquette, and the epistemic—and give (...)
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  • Particular Reasons.Selim Berker - 2007 - Ethics 118 (1):109-139.
    Moral particularists argue that because reasons for action are irreducibly context-dependent, the traditional quest in ethics for true and exceptionless moral principles is hopelessly misguided. In making this claim, particularists assume a general framework according to which reasons are the ground floor normative units undergirding all other normative properties and relations. They then argue that there is no cashing out in finite terms either (i) when a given non-normative feature gives rise to a reason for or against action, or (ii) (...)
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  • Kantian Ethics and Supererogation.Marcia Baron - 1987 - Journal of Philosophy 84 (5):237.
    ...believe that his theory asks too much, demanding total devotion to morality and treating everything worth doing (and perhaps more) as a duty. But, despite their differences, the two sets of...
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  • Reasons, oughts, and requirements.Justin Snedegar - 2016 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 11:155-181.
    This paper raises a challenge for the recently popular reasons first approach to normativity, according to which all normative notions can be explained in terms of reasons. The reasons first theorist owes us an account of how these explanations go for all other normative notions. I focus here on requirement, and to a lesser extent, permission. There is a very plausible, widely accepted account of the relationship between your reasons and what you ought to do|roughly, what you ought to do (...)
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  • How to say ought in foreign: The composition of weak necessity modals.Kai von Fintel - manuscript
    1 This paper has been presented at the workshop “Time and Modality: A Round Table on Tense, Mood, and Modality”, Paris, December 2005, at a CUNY linguistics colloquium in May 2006, and at the 6th Workshop on Formal Linguistics in Florian´opolis, Brazil, August 2006. We thank the audiences at those presentations, in particular Orin Percus, Tim Stowell, Marcel den Dikken, Anna Szabolcsi, Chris Warnasch, Roberta Pires de Oliveira, Renato Miguel Basso, and Ana M¨uller. We thank Noam Chomsky, Cleo Condoravdi, and (...)
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  • (1 other version)Enticing reasons.Jonathan Dancy - 2005 - In Christian Nimtz & Ansgar Beckermann (eds.), Philosophy-Science -Scientific Philosophy, Main Lectures and Colloquia of GAP 5, Fifth International Congress of the Society for Analytical Philosophy. Mentis. pp. 10-32.
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  • Must I do what I ought (or will the least I can do do)?Paul McNamara - 1996 - In Mark Brown & Jose' Carmo (eds.), Deontic Logic, Agency and Normative Systems. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. pp. 154-173.
    Appears to give the first model-theoretic account of both "must" and "ought" (without conflating them with one another). Some key pre-theoretic semantic and pragmatic phenomena that support a negative answer to the main title question are identified and a conclusion of some significance is drawn: a pervasive bipartisan presupposition of twentieth century ethical theory and deontic logic is false. Next, an intuitive model-theoretic framework for "must" and "ought" is hypothesized. It is then shown how this hypothesis helps to explain and (...)
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  • Satisficing and Maximizing: Moral Theorists on Practical Reason.Michael Byron (ed.) - 2004 - New York, USA: Cambridge University Press.
    How do we think about what we plan to do? One dominant answer is that we select the best possible option available. However, a growing number of philosophers would offer a different answer: since we are not equipped to maximize we often choose the next best alternative, one that is no more than satisfactory. This strategy choice is called satisficing. This collection of essays explores both these accounts of practical reason, examining the consequences for adopting one or the other for (...)
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  • Competing Reasons.Justin Snedegar - 2021 - In Jessica Brown & Mona Simion (eds.), Reasons, Justification, and Defeat. Oxford Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    This chapter investigates different ways that pro tanto reasons bearing on our options can compete with one another in order to determine the overall normative status of those options. It argues for two key claims: (i) any theory of this competition must include a distinct role for reasons against, in addition to reasons for, and (ii) any theory must allow for comparative verdicts about how strongly supported the options are by the reasons, rather than simply which options are permissible or (...)
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  • Asymmetrical Practical Reasons.Patricia Greenspan - 2005 - In Maria E. Reicher & Johan C. Marek (eds.), Experience and Analysis, The Proceedings of the 27th International Wittgenstein Symposium. Öbv&hpt. pp. 387-94.
    Current treatments of practical rationality understand reasons as considerations counting in favor of or against some practical option, treating the positive and the negative case as symmetrical. Typically the focus is on examples of positive reasons. However, I want to shift the spotlight to negative reasons, as making a tighter or more direct link to rationality — and ultimately to morality, which is what much of the current interest in reasons is meant to clarify. Recognizing a positive/negative asymmetry in normative (...)
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  • (1 other version)Brute rationality.Joshua Gert - 2003 - Noûs 37 (3):417–446.
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  • (1 other version)Brute Rationality.Joshua Gert - 2006 - Philosophical Quarterly 56 (222):145-146.
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  • Comparative Value and the Weight of Reasons.Itai Sher - 2019 - Economics and Philosophy 35 (1):103-158.
    Abstract:One view of practical reasoning is that it involves the weighing of reasons. It is not clear, however, how the weights of reasons combine, especially given the logical and substantive relations among different reasons. Nor is it clear how the weighing of reasons relates to decision theoretic maximization of expected value. This paper constructs a formal model of reasons and their weight in order to shed light on these issues. The model informs philosophical debates about reasons, such as the question (...)
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  • Why ethical satisficing makes sense and rational satisficing doesn't.James Dreier - 2004 - In Michael Byron (ed.), Satisficing and Maximizing: Moral Theorists on Practical Reason. New York, USA: Cambridge University Press. pp. 131-154.
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  • Beyond Optimizing. A Study of Rational Choice.Michael Slote - 1992 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 54 (2):359-359.
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  • Passing the Deontic Buck.Matt Bedke - 2011 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 6. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 128.
    In this paper I explore buck passing analyses of deontic properties in terms of reasons. The preferred analysis is that the permissibility/impermissibility/optionality/requiredness/etc. of some agent's acting is to be couched in terms of reasons to respond in some way to that agent's action, or the prospect thereof. Along the way I try to accommodate supererogation, wrong kinds of reasons objections, and commonly accepted inferences in deontic logic.
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  • Normative Bedrock: Response-Dependence, Rationality, and Reasons.Joshua Gert - 2012 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Joshua Gert offers an original account of normative facts and properties, those which have implications for how we ought to behave. He argues that our ability to think and talk about normative notions such as reasons and benefits is dependent on how we respond to the world around us, including how we respond to the actions of other people.
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  • Deliberation, Reasons, and Alternatives.Justin Snedegar - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (3):682-702.
    A plausible constraint on normative reasons to act is that it must make sense to use them as premises in deliberation. I argue that a central sort of deliberation – what Bratman calls partial planning – is question-directed: it is over, and aims to resolve, deliberative questions. Whether it makes sense to use some consideration as a premise in deliberation in a case of partial planning can vary with the deliberative question at issue. I argue that the best explanation for (...)
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  • (1 other version)Practical Reasons and Moral "Ought".Patricia Greenspan - 2007 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 2:172-199.
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  • In Defence of Non-Deontic Reasons.Margaret Olivia Little - 2013 - In David Bakhurst, Margaret Olivia Little & Brad Hooker (eds.), Thinking about reasons: themes from the philosophy of Jonathan Dancy. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
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  • (1 other version)Making room for options : moral reasons, imperfect duties, and choice.Patricia Greenspan - 2010 - In Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred Dycus Miller & Jeffrey Paul (eds.), Moral obligation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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  • (1 other version)Practical Reasons and Moral 'Ought'.Patricia Greenspan - 2007 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume Ii. Clarendon Press. pp. 172-194.
    Morality is a source of reasons for action, what philosophers call practical reasons. Kantians say that it ‘gives’ reasons to everyone. We can even think of moral requirements as amounting to particularly strong or stringent reasons, in an effort to demystify deontological views like Kant’s, with its insistence on inescapable or ‘binding’ moral requirements or ‘oughts.’¹ When we say that someone morally ought not to harm others, perhaps all we are saying is that he has a certain kind of reason (...)
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  • How to be a Deontic Buck-Passer.Euan K. H. Metz - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (11):3193-3211.
    Deontic, as opposed to evaluative buck-passing theories seem to be easier to accept, since there appears to be an intimate connection between deontic properties, such as ‘ought’, ‘requirement’, and ‘permission’ on the one hand, and normative reasons on the other. However, it is far from obvious what, precisely, the connection consists in, and this topic has suffered from a paucity of discussion. This paper seeks to address that paucity by providing a novel deontic buck-passing view, one that avoids the pitfalls (...)
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