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.

Existential Symbolism and Theological Anthropology

This chapter focuses on The Theological-Anthropological Method and the work of its principal architect Paul Tillich. It examines features of Tillich’s thinking that have had appeal in religious studies by elaborating on two frameworks in his thought and six Tillichian tenets about religion. It then exposes a striking paradox in Tillich’s theology. In his view, religions typically fail to apply the Protestant Principle, by which he means a self-critical criterion that is based on the belief that no human symbol is adequate to the task of representing the unconditioned. Tillich would thus have one judge many religions—those that lack, or fail to apply, that self-critical principle—as sources of idolatry and existential despair. It is argued that the potential of the Theological-Anthropological Method to provide motivating reasons to study religion is weakened by this fact.

The matter of motivating reasons

It is now standard in the literature on reasons and rationality to distinguish normative reasons from motivating reasons. Two issues have dominated philosophical theorising concerning the latter: (i) whether we should think of them as certain (nonfactive) psychological states of the agent—the dispute over Psychologism; and (ii) whether we should say that the agent can ϕ for the reason that p only if p—the dispute over Factivism. This paper first introduces a puzzle: these disputes look very much like merely verbal disputes about the meaning of phrases like ‘S’s reason’ in motivating reasons ascriptions, and yet charity requires us to think that something substantive is afoot. But what? The second aim of the paper is to extract substantive theses from certain natural argument for Psychologism and Anti-Factivism—theses which are versions of a Cartesian view of the nature and normative structure of rationality. The paper ends by arguing against these substantive theses on phenomenological and ethical grounds. The upshot is that proponents of Psychologism and Anti-Factivism are either engaged in the project of defending merely verbal theses or they’re engaged in the project of defending false substantive ones.

Why There Is Really No Such Thing as the Theory of Motivation

This paper (a forerunner of the author’s Practical Reality) considers in detail the distinction between the reasons we have to act in certain ways, often known as justifying reasons, and the reasons for which we act when the time comes, often known as motivating reasons. It argues that it must be possible for one and the same reason to play both roles. It warns accordingly against the popular version of that distinction which understands the reasons we have to act in certain ways with relevant features of the situation and reasons for which we act as certain psychological states of our own, combinations of beliefs and desires. Any such distinction makes it impossible to act for a good reason. The paper also offers some suggestions about what a better account of the distinction would look like.

Externalism for Internalists

This paper discusses the relation between meta-ethics and meta-epistemology and attempts to move forward on both fronts at once. Internalism claims that only facts believed by the agent are relevant to justification. An extreme externalism allows that facts of which the agent has no inkling can be relevant to justification. An extreme internalism maintains that only matters internal to the believer’s perspective are relevant to questions of justification. Less extreme forms of these views are introduced, e.g. Alston’s internalistic externalism. Eventually progress is supposed possible only if we distinguish between reasons/justifiers and enablers, and between motivating reasons and states which enable those considerations to motivate. These distinctions enable our meta-ethics and our meta-epistemology to come together

Subjective Reasons and Truth

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.

The Goals of Moral Worth

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.

What Matters in Survival

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.

Christian Wolff über motivierende Gründe und handlungsrelevante Irrtümer

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.