The Goals of Moral Worth

2021 ◽  
pp. 157-182
Author(s):  
Nathan Robert Howard
Keyword(s):  
Moral Worth ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Motivating Reasons ◽  
Special Case ◽  
Orthodox View

While it is tempting to suppose that an act has moral worth just when and because it is motivated by sufficient moral reasons, philosophers have, largely, come to doubt this analysis. Doubt is rooted in two claims. The first is that some facts can motivate a given act in multiple ways, not all of which are consistent with moral worth. The second is the orthodox view that normative reasons are facts. I defend the tempting analysis by proposing and defending a heterodox account of both normative and motivating reasons that is inspired by Donald Davidson’s primary reasons. We should adopt the heterodox view, the chapter argues, because it addresses an overlooked but fatal defect in the orthodox conception of reasons, of which challenges to the tempting analysis are a special case.

Reasons, Choices, and Responsibility

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Kearns
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Motivating Reasons ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter is divided broadly into two parts. The first part examines the idea that agents choose for (motivating) reasons. After an investigation of what this idea amounts to, arguments for the claim the agent always chooses for reasons and for the claim that agents never choose for reasons are set out and critiqued. It is concluded that, at the very least, there are deep problems with the idea that agents choose for reasons. The second part examines what light the relationship between (normative) reasons and responsibility can shed on the nature of reasons. Roughly, it is argued that, given reasons-responsive accounts of responsibility, reasons are best cashed out as being evidence of the normative or evaluative status of actions.

Subjective Reasons and Truth

Reasons First ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 77-100
Author(s):  
Mark Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Simple Model ◽  
Motivating Reasons ◽  
Special Case

Chapter 4 takes up the question of why epistemologists have been reluctant to endorse answers to what evidence supports basic perceptual beliefs that allow such evidence to be false, and argues that the best philosophical motivation for this commitment is closely related to the problem of unjustified belief. The idea that subjective reasons are just a special case of objective reasons is resisted, as are arguments drawing on felicity data about reports of subjective or motivating reasons. An alternative argument drawing on the idea that perceptual experiences can in themselves be instances of knowledge is addressed, and Williamson’s claim that knowledge is the most general factive stative attitude is refuted. Finally, a simple model for thinking about how subjective reasons could factor into the competition over what it is rational to believe without building in a prior truth or rationality constraint is introduced, drawing on work by John Horty.

What Matters in Survival

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Ehring
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Error Theory ◽  
Normative Reason ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Motivating Reasons ◽  
What Matters In Survival ◽  
Extreme View ◽  
What Matters

This work is about what matters in survival, that is, about what relation to a future individual gives you a reason for prudential concern for that individual. For common sense there is such a relation and it is identity, but according to Parfit, common sense is wrong in this respect. Identity is not what matters in survival. In this work, it is argued that this Parfitian thesis, revolutionary though it is, does not go far enough. The result is the highly radical view, “Survival Nihilism,” according to which nothing matters in survival. Although we generally have motivating reasons to have prudential concern, and perhaps even indirect normative reasons for such concerns—such as a commitment to find a vaccine for the Covid-19 virus—there is no relation that gives you a basic, foundational normative reason for prudential concern. This view goes beyond what Parfit calls the Extreme View. It is the More Extreme View, and is, in effect, something like an error theory about prudential reason as a special kind of normative reason.

scholarly journals Creditworthiness and Matching Principles

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Way
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Motivating Reasons ◽  
The Right

You are creditworthy for φ‎-ing only if φ‎-ing is the right thing to do. Famously though, further conditions are needed too—Kant’s shopkeeper did the right thing, but is not creditworthy for doing so. This case shows that creditworthiness requires that there be a certain kind of explanation of why you did the right thing. The reasons for which you act—your motivating reasons—must meet some further conditions. This chapter defends a new account of these conditions. On this account, creditworthiness requires that your motivating reasons be normative reasons, and that the principles from which you act match normative principles.

Motivating Reasons and Normative Reasons

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David McNaughton ◽  
Piers Rawling
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Future Contingents ◽  
Causal Account ◽  
Motivational Internalism ◽  
Normative Realism ◽  
Reasons Internalism ◽  
Motivating Reasons

Reasons for action are traditionally divided into “motivating reasons,” which explain why someone did something, and “normative reasons,” which concern why she should (or should not) have done it. We explore various positions concerning both types of reason, and the relations between them. We discuss Davidson’s causal account of action, reasons internalism and externalism, constructivism, motivational internalism and externalism, and practical normative realism (PNR)—the view that there are truths concerning what you have reason to do (this is opposed by error theorists and noncognitivists, whose views we also briefly address). In our account of PNR, we distinguish between what you ought to do and what you have most reason to do, by appealing to the idea of reasonable credences. And we include two appendices, one resisting Lewis’s argument to the effect that advocates of PNR must reject motivational internalism, the other responding to a concern about future contingents.

scholarly journals Christian Wolff über motivierende Gründe und handlungsrelevante Irrtümer

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Schierbaum
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Christian Wolff ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Ontological Question ◽  
Motivating Reasons

Abstract In this paper, I discuss Christian Wolff’s conception of motivating and normative reasons. My aim is to show that in the discussion of error cases, Wolff pursues a strategy that is strikingly similar to the strategy of contemporary defenders of nicht-psychologist accounts of motivating reasons. According to many nicht-psychologist views, motivating reasons are facts. My aim is to show that Wolff’s motivation in pursuing this strategy is very different. The point is that due to his commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Wolff has to show that error cases are compatible with the PSR. The issue is worth discussing because it is not yet sufficiently explored what motivating reasons are, according to Wolff, and how they relate, in substance, to normative reasons. Methodologically, my approach can be characterized as one of “mutual illumination”: I think it is possible to highlight some crucial ambiguities of Wolff’s conception against the backdrop of the contemporary conception of motivating reasons, but also to question the importance and role of the ontological question of what motivating reasons are in contemporary discussions against the backdrop of Wolff’s position.

From a Rational Point of View

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Henning
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Rational Point ◽  
Formal Semantics ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
The World ◽  
Motivating Reasons ◽  
Normative Discourse

When we discuss normative reasons, oughts, requirements of rationality, hypothetical imperatives (or “anankastic conditionals”), motivating reasons, or weakness and strength of will, we often use verbs like “believe” and “want” to capture a relevant subject’s perspective. According to the received view, what these verbs do is describe the subject’s mental states. Many puzzles concerning normative discourse have to do with the role that mental states consequently appear to play in this discourse. This book uses tools from formal semantics and the philosophy of language to develop an alternative account of sentences involving these verbs. According to this view, called parentheticalism in honour of J. O. Urmson, we very commonly use these verbs in a parenthetical sense. Clauses with these verbs thereby express backgrounded side-remarks on the contents they embed, and these latter, embedded contents constitute the at-issue contents of our utterances. Thus, instead of speaking about the subject’s mental states, we often use sentences involving “believe” and “want” to speak about the world in a way that, in the conversational background, relates our utterances to her point of view. This idea is made precise and used to solve various puzzles concerning normative discourse. The result is a new, unified understanding of normative discourse, which does not postulate conceptual breaks between objective and subjective normative reasons, or normative reasons and rationality, or indeed between the reasons we ascribe to an agent and the reasons she herself can be expected to cite.

Justified Belief, Reasons, and Evidence

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-42
Author(s):  
Alan Millar
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Motivating Reasons ◽  
The Subject

Normative reasons for belief—reasons to believe something—are constituted by truths or facts. Such reasons are distinguished from motivating reasons for belief, that is, reasons for which a subject believes something. These are constituted by considerations that the subject treats as reasons to believe. One has a justified belief, in the sense of a well-founded belief, only if the considerations that constitute one’s motivating reason are truths that one knows. Evidence-based knowledge that P is explicated in terms truths or facts that provide an adequate reason to believe that P. It is argued that not all knowledge is evidence-based, and suggested that we need to make sense of the idea that evidence adequate for knowledge is clinching evidence. The discussion addresses a problem raised by Jennifer Hornsby about the distinction between normative and motivating reasons.

Achievements and Intelligibility

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Errol Lord
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Causal Chain ◽  
Normative Reason ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Motivating Reasons ◽  
Causal Theories ◽  
In Virtue Of

The type of view defended about correctly responding to normative reasons doesn’t fit nicely into the landscape of views in the philosophy of mind and action about reacting for reasons. This is because it doesn’t account for cases where we react for reasons that are not normative reasons—i.e., cases where we merely react for motivating reasons. This chapter defends a view about what it is to react for motivating reasons. According to this view, what it is for A to X for a consideration r is for A to X in virtue of the fact that A conceives of r as a normative reason to X. It is argued that this account solves the classic deviant causal chain problems for causal theories of reacting for reasons. Finally, disjunctivism about reacting-for-reasons is defended: the view that reacting for motivating reasons is different in kind from reacting for normative reasons.

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