FA and Motivating Reasons

The main aim in ‘FA and Motivating Reasons’ is to clear the ground for the discussion in Chapter 11 by drawing attention to some notions and distinctions that help us to understand the core elements of fitting-attitude analysis (FA). In particular, the distinction between explanatory and motivating reason plays a core part in this and the next chapter. In light of this distinction, the focus is on whether we should accept either ‘the guise of the good thesis’ or the more plausible ‘guise of reason thesis’. Eventually (in Chapter 11), it is argued that we should endorse neither of these. While the previous chapters gave us a positive insight (they lead to a modification of the FA pattern of analysis), this—and the next chapter also, as we shall see—will mainly have a negative impact. It suggests we should refrain from introducing certain modifications of FA analysis that at first sight might seem compelling.

Favouring for No Reason

‘Favouring for No Reason’ addresses two matters. First, it argues that some favourings (i.e. pro- or contra-attitudes) may not be reason-governed. Various examples, including some from Joseph Raz, suggest that neither the guise of the good nor the guise of reason thesis is true: some of our favourings are favourings for no reasons. Being motivated is often a matter of having a set of beliefs and desires whose content appears normative to the agent, but sometimes being motivated does not involve motivating reasons but is rather a matter merely of having the right sorts of belief and desire. A second issue concerns whether fitting-attitude analysis (FA) should require that the valuable object’s properties appear in the content of the fitting pro- or contra-attitude. The so-called dual-role approach to FA analysis affirms that the properties that make an object x valuable have a dual role: on the one hand, they provide reasons for favouring x, and on the other hand, they appear in the intentional content of the favouring. It is argued that the dual-role approach is preferable to the classical form of FA analysis. However, that does not mean that the classical FA analysis is incorrect. Dual-role FA analysis should be regarded as a specification of its classical forebear. The remaining sections of this chapter consider different cases that challenge the dual-role approach.

The Guise of the Normative

The chapter starts by contrasting desire-as-belief with the idea that there are ‘besires’. On a natural understanding of that view, desire-as-belief is the superior theory, being more parsimonious and more in keeping with common sense. The chapter then addresses the guise of the good: the view that we only desire things if we believe them to be good. The guise of the good faces various counterexamples, cannot permit that different people can correctly desire different things, and makes poor sense of the contrast between wanting, wishing, and hoping. But these problems can be avoided if we treat desires as beliefs about reasons.