Determined by Reasons: A Competence Account of Acting for a Normative Reason, written by Susanne Mantel

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-252
Author(s):  
Adam Shmidt
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reason

Making Non-Transitive Betterness Behave

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 495-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Vong
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Principle ◽  
Normative Reason ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Do So

It is exceedingly plausible that the normative reason involving relations, ‘more reason to do than’ and ‘is rationally preferred to’, are transitive. Many philosophers and economists use the plausibility of covariation between these reason involving relations and the ‘better than’ relation to argue – or more often, to insist – that the ‘better than’ relation is also transitive. But Rachels, Temkin and Baumann provide powerful arguments for non-transitive betterness. Conversely, some defenders of non-transitive betterness, such as Friedman, use the covariation of betterness and reason to argue that the reason involving relations are also non-transitive. I will argue that both types of covariation argument are overly hasty. To do so, I will present two functions that input a non-transitive axiological ranking and output a transitive deontic ranking. I then argue that an ethical principle involving these functions has independent plausibility and avoids important objections associated with non-transitive betterness.

Acting for a Normative Reason

2018 ◽  
pp. 11-89
Author(s):  
Susanne Mantel
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reason

scholarly journals Normative Reason, Primitiveness, and the Argument for Semantic Normativism

Etyka ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Joanna Klimczyk
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reason ◽  
Linguistic Meaning

This paper sketches a particular line of criticism targeted at Scanlon’s account of a normative reason, which is purported to kill two birds with one stone: to raise doubts about the plausibility of Scanlon’s account of a normative reason and, next, to dismiss Scanlon’s conception of what a normative reason is in the role of an argument for semantic normativism. Following Whiting I take semantic normativism to be the view, according to which linguistic meaning is intrinsically normative. The key argument for semantic normativism is that a word or expression has conditions for its correct use which count, or speak in favour of using it in certain ways and not in others. Specifically, it has immediate implications for how a subject should or may (not) employ that expression. I shall argue that if the favouring format of analysis of a normative reason is not a particularly happy proposal in itself, then it supplies a superficial support for semantic normativism.

Normative and Natural Truths

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Parfit
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reason ◽  
Normative Beliefs ◽  
Normative Naturalism ◽  
True State

This chapter considers arguments for and against normative naturalism. According to the normativity objection, irreducibly normative, reason-implying claims could not, if they were true, state normative facts that were also natural facts. When some naturalists reply to the normativity objection, they appeal to cases in which words with quite different meanings, and the concepts they express, refer to the same property. According to non-analytical naturalists, though we make some irreducibly normative claims, these claims, when they are true, state natural facts. Such views take two forms. Hard naturalists believe that, since all facts are natural, we do not need to make any such irreducibly normative claims. According to soft naturalists, we do need to make such claims. Soft naturalism, this chapter argues, could not be true. If there were no irreducibly normative truths, our normative beliefs could not help us to make good decisions and to act well.

What Are Prima Facie Duties?

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-56
Author(s):  
David Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Normative Reason ◽  
Conceptual Innovation ◽  
Prima Facie Duty

This chapter focuses on Ross’s most important conceptual innovation: the idea of prima facie duty. Four main claims are defended: first, contra some of his harsher critics, that though much of what Ross says in introducing and explaining the concept of prima facie duty is problematic or misleading, he nonetheless has a clear and coherent theoretical picture; second, contra Hurka, that Ross lacks the contemporary concept of a normative reason, but that his views should be reframed in ways that do employ that concept; third, that Ross is not and should not be a scalar deontologist; and fourth that he was wrong in the Foundations to follow Prichard in favoring subjective over objective rightness.

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.

From Raz’sNexusto Legal Normativity

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 465-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Essert
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reason ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Legal Obligation ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
The Law ◽  
Legal Normativity ◽  
Critical Notice

This is a Critical Notice ofFrom Normativity to Responsibility, Joseph Raz’s brilliant treatment of the nature of normativity and reasons. Building on the thought that the law claims to give reasons to its subjects, I consider the application of Raz’s views about reasons to some questions in legal philosophy. I concentrate on what I take to be the central idea of the book, Raz’s “normative/explanatorynexus”, according to which a consideration cannot be a (normative) reason for an agent to perform an action unless the agent could follow the consideration in performing the action. I show (briefly) how thenexuscan explain some of the Fullerian principles of legality. And I examine (at somewhat greater length) the implications of thenexusfor our understanding of the psychology of legal obligation; here I suggest that thenexusmight cause trouble for Raz’s own well-known exclusionary reasons account of legal obligation.

scholarly journals Authoritatively speaking : a speech pragmatic analysis of authority and power

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alek Willsey
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Normative Reason ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Normative Influence ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Normative Status

A speaker needs authority to perform some speech acts, such as giving orders. A paradigm example of this is when a manager orders their employee to take out the trash; ordinarily, these words will give the employee a normative reason of considerable strength for them to take out the trash, and so they should take out the trash, all things considered. I will explore three related problems regarding a speaker's authority. First, there is the problem of defining how and within what scope a speaker has the capacity to set norms for others -- I will call this the Authority Problem. An answer to the Authority Problem would settle what constitutes a manager's capacity to change the normative status of their employee. Second, there is the problem of showing how a speaker uses their authority to produce felicitous authoritative speech -- I will call this the Illocutionary Authority Problem. An answer to this problem will show how a manager exercises their capacity to alter the normative status of their employee, assuming they have such a capacity. Third, there is the problem of explaining how a speaker's right to produce authoritative speech can be systematically infringed -- I will call this the Problem of Discursive Injustice. An answer to this problem will explain how a manager can have their orders systematically misfire despite exercising their capacity to alter the normative status of others in the usual way, such as when the employee routinely misapprehends their manager's orders as being requests. To answer each of these problems within the philosophy of language, I draw on recent work in social and political philosophy. I defend the view that a speaker's authority to alter what someone else ought to do (by giving them and taking away normative reasons for action) is constituted entirely by the respect their addressee(s) have for their use of power directed at them. Further, a speaker's powers are the linguistic tools by which they attempt to exert this normative influence over their addressee(s). Finally, a speaker may be discursively entitled to use their power in specific institutions because of the role they occupy, and this speech can systematically misfire despite this entitlement because they are wrongfully deprived of the respect they deserve.

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