Reasons for emotion and moral motivation

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 805-827
Author(s):  
Reid Blackman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Rational Agents

AbstractInternalism about normative reasons is the view that an agent’s normative reasons depend on her motivational constitution. On the assumption that there are reasons for emotion I argue that (a) externalism about reasons for emotion entails that all rational agents have reasons to be morally motivated and (b) internalism about reasons for emotion is implausible. If the arguments are sound we can conclude that all rational agents have reasons to be morally motivated. Resisting this conclusion requires either justifying internalism about reasons for emotion in a way hitherto unarticulated or giving up on reasons for emotion altogether.

Is It Rational to Be Moral?

2021 ◽  
pp. 211-226
Author(s):  
Shaun Nichols
Keyword(s):  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Challenging Question ◽  
Primary Form ◽  
Rule Representation ◽  
Normative Judgments

Why should all rational agents be moral? This is one ancient and challenging question about moral motivation. But there is another perhaps more tractable question about moral motivation. Why as a matter of fact are most of us motivated by moral considerations? What is it about the kind of creature I am that inclines me to be moral? Moral judgments (e.g. that it’s right to give to a certain charity) seem to be directly motivating. This chapter argues that even non-moral normative judgments often are directly motivating. A primary form of rule representation automatically carries with it motivation force.

scholarly journals Rationality, Appearances, and Apparent Facts

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier González de Prado Salas
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Apparent Reasons ◽  
Normative Account

Ascriptions of rationality are related to our practices of praising and criticizing. This seems to provide motivation for normative accounts of rationality, more specifically for the view that rationality is a matter of responding to normative reasons. However, rational agents are sometimes guided by false beliefs. This is problematic for those reasons-based accounts of rationality that are also committed to the widespread thesis that normative reasons are facts. The critical aim of the paper is to present objections to recent proposed solutions to this problem, according to which the responses of deceived agents would be rationalized by facts about how things appear to them. My positive aim is to argue that accounts of reasons in terms of apparent reasons manage to capture the intuitions that seem to favor a normative account of rationality (more specifically, they capture the connection between attributions of rationality and praise and criticism).    

Parentheticalism, Normative Reasons, and Error Cases

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Henning
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Subject Orientation

This chapter discusses another crucial use of parenthetical sentences in normative reasons-discourse. Due to their feature of subject-orientation, they enable us to cite known falsehoods as normative reasons without violating the factivity requirements of reasons-discourse. This is important, because it allows us to deal with error cases in a way that does not entail that putatively rational agents systematically misidentify their reasons. Ontological and linguistic objections to the idea that falsehoods can be full-blooded normative reasons for agents are discussed and rejected. A notion of quasi-factivity is introduced to characterize the requirements of reasons-discourse. Parentheticalism is shown to enable a unified account of normative reasons-discourse, avoiding divergences between veridical and error cases.

In the Thick of Moral Motivation

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley Buckwalter ◽  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
Moral Motivation

Evidence and Its Limits

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clayton Littlejohn
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Evidential Support ◽  
Way Of Thinking

On a standard way of thinking about the relationships between evidence, reasons, and epistemic justification, a subject’s evidence consists of her potential reasons for her beliefs, these reasons constitute the normative reasons that bear on whether to believe, and justification is taken to result from relations between a subject’s potential reasons for her beliefs and those beliefs. This chapter argues that this view makes a number of mistakes about the rational roles of reasons and evidence and explores some parallels between practical and theoretical reasons. Just as justified action is unobjectionable action, justified belief is unobjectionable belief. Just as you cannot object to someone deciding to do something simply on the grounds that their reasons for acting didn’t give them strong reason to act, you cannot object to someone believing something simply on the grounds that they didn’t believe for reasons that gave their beliefs strong evidential support.

Pure Instrumental Morality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Moehler
Keyword(s):  
Decision Situation ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Moral Ideals

This chapter discusses the domain of pure instrumental morality that represents the second level of the two-level contractarian theory. To this end, the chapter clarifies the features of the homo prudens model that underlies the derivation of the weak principle of universalization. Further, the chapter develops, in the form of the empathetic contractor theory, the hypothetical decision situation in which rational agents are placed to derive the weak principle of universalization. Finally, the chapter clarifies the features of the weak principle of universalization that, although its derivation does not rely on substantial moral premises as traditionally conceived, weakly expresses the moral ideals of autonomy, equality, impartiality, and reciprocity.

Parentheticalism and Requirements of Rationality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Henning
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Wide Scope ◽  
Structural Requirements

It is suggested that parentheticalism obviates the need to think of rationality as a distinct normative category, different from the category of support by normative reasons. So-called structural requirements are discussed as a potential obstacle to this proposal. It is shown that a parentheticalist account of the antecedents of rationality conditionals can explain away the impression that there are structural requirements of rationality. This account also solves the bootstrapping problem without introducing wide-scope oughts or the like. A notion of pseudo-detachment is introduced to describe the inferential behavior of the relevant conditionals. It is also explained how parentheticalism can capture the elusive idea of taking the subject’s point of view.

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