The independence of (in)coherence

On an increasingly popular view of rationality, rationality is fundamentally about responding correctly to reasons and there is no independent rational requirement to avoid incoherence: having an incoherent combination of attitudes is irrational not because there is a fundamental requirement of rationality that prohibits it, but rather because you are guaranteed to fail to respond correctly to reasons in having it. This paper argues that any such attempt to explain the irrationality of incoherence in terms of responsiveness to reasons fails. For there is something distinctively irrational about incoherence that is not explained in terms of the guaranteed failure to respond to reasons. Any adequate account of the nature of coherence requirements on belief and intention should take into account the distinctive kind of commitments involved in each type of attitude.

Normativity I

According to Normative Disjunctivism, when an agent is means–ends incoherent, then she either ought not intend the end, ought not believe intending the means is necessary, or ought to intend the means. If this view is true, it might lend support to the idea that means–ends coherence is a myth. The thought is that we’ve made the mistake of confusing a disjunction of requirements of reason for a disjunctive rational requirement (means–ends coherence). This chapter argues that Normative Disjunctivism is false and wouldn’t support the myth theory even if it were true. It presents four separate arguments against Normative Disjunctivism. And the chapter argues that the myth theorist lacks the resources to explain away relevant intuitions about the separateness, and ways of satisfying, the rational requirement of means–ends coherence.

Two Approaches to Instrumental Rationality and Belief Consistency

R. Jay Wallace argues that the normativity of instrumental rationality can be traced to the independent rational requirement to hold consistent beliefs. I present three objections to this view. John Broome argues that there is a structural similarity between the rational requirements of instrumental rationality and belief consistency. Since he does not reduce the former to the latter, his view can avoid the objections to Wallace’s view. However, we should not think Broome’s account explains the whole of instrumental rationality since agents with consistent intentions can still fail in their instrumental reasoning. This consideration makes Broome’s approach vulnerable to a line of criticism that both he and Wallace present against Christine Korsgaard’s conception of instrumental rationality.

REASONS TO BELIEVE AND REASONS TO ACT

ABSTRACTI consider the structural differences between reasons to believe and reasons to act. I argue that Mark Schroeder's project of providing a unified account of reasons to believe and reasons to act faces serious difficulties. I also investigate the difference between rational requirement and rational permission. While the difference between these notions in the case of action is a matter of the strength of one's reasons, I argue that in the case of belief, the difference depends on what one is attending to.

Discourse Ethics and Moral Rationalism

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I raise the following question: can the ethical thought of Jurgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel provide us with a way of showing that morality is a rational requirement? The answer I give is that (unfortunately) it cannot. I argue for this claim by showing that a decisive objection to Alan Gewirth’s line of thought in Reason and Morality also applies to discourse ethical arguments that try to show an inescapable commitment to a moral principle.

Uncovering the Rationale for Requiring Infertility in Surrogacy Arrangements

Anyone who reads numerous statutes is frequently left scratching his or her head: is this provision a deliberate, rational requirement or filler thrown in for no apparent reason? One puzzling requirement peppering state surrogacy statutes is the limitation of surrogate parenting arrangements to couples in which the intended mother is infertile, unable to bear a child or unable to carry the child without unreasonable risk to the mother or child. The legislative history of these statutes offers no explanation for this emphasis on maternal infertility.The only attempted justification for such a requirement comes from commentators who argue that it bars women who want to avoid the nuisance of being pregnant and giving birth from using a surrogate.

Morality as a Rational Requirement

John Searle has recently produced an argument for strong altruism which rests on the recognition that ‘I believe my need for help is a reason for you to help me’. The argument fails to recognize the difference between ‘a reason for me for you to help me’ and ‘a reason for you for you to help me.’ These are two logically distinct types of reason and the existence of one can never therefore be enough to establish the existence of the other. The existence of this logical gap is a major obstacle for any argument for morality as a rational requirement that attempts to universalise from reasons individual persons have to act morally.

Reasonable Self-Interest

Philosophers have debated for millennia about whether moral requirements are always rational to follow. The background for these debates is often what I shall call “the self-interest model.” The guiding assumption here is that the basic demand of reason, to each person, is that one must, above all, advance one's self-interest. Alternatively, debate may be framed by a related, but significantly different, assumption: the idea that the basic rational requirement is to develop and pursue a set of personal ends in an informed, efficient, and coherent way, whether one's choice of ends is based on self-interested desires or not. For brevity I refer to this as “the coherence-and-efficiency model.” Advocates of both models tend to think that, while it is sufficiently clear in principle what the rational thing to do is, what remains in doubt is whether it is always rational to be moral. They typically assume that morality is concerned, entirely or primarily, with our relations to others, especially with obligations that appear to require some sacrifice or compromise with the pursuit of self-interest.