Not Sufficiently Neutral?

Jonathan Dancy, Ulrike Heuer, Jonas Olson, and others have argued that there is reason to reject the buck-passing account of value (BPA) because of its implications for first-order normative ethics. Dancy argues that BPA is inconsistent with certain deontological views. Olson argues that BPA is inconsistent with an attractive way of distinguishing between consequentialism and deontology. Heuer argues that it begs the question against Williams’s internalism about reasons. This chapter argues that Dancy, Olson, and Heuer are mistaken. Others claim that certain versions of BPA are inconsistent with a consequentialist view about the reasons for pro-attitudes there are. This chapter argues that even global consequentialism should not involve a consequentialist view about the reasons for pro-attitudes that there are and because of this it is not a problem for BPA that it is inconsistent with a consequentialist view of the reasons for pro-attitudes that there are.

Too Little Value?

According to the Buck-Passing Account (BPA), for X to be good is for there to be reasons for everyone to have pro-attitudes in response to X. Suppose that there are birds that are in a great amount of pleasure in a world where there are no past, present, or future rational agents. There are no reasons for any agents to have pro-attitudes towards the birds’ pleasure, so BPA entails that their pleasure is not valuable, but it is valuable. So, BPA produces too little value. This is a problem for BPA and fitting-attitude accounts of value that has been raised and discussed by Krister Bykvist, Jonathan Dancy, and Andrew Reisner. This chapter motivates and defends two responses to this too little value problem: 1. The trans-world reasons response, according to which the birds’ pleasure is valuable because there are reasons for beings in other worlds to have pro-attitudes towards it; 2. The counterfactual response, according to which the birds’ pleasure is valuable because there would be reasons for agents to have pro-attitudes towards it if they were around.

Reasons as The Unity among the Varieties of Goodness

The Buck-Passing Account of Value (BPA) analyses goodness simpliciter in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes. The Value-First Account (VFA) analyses reasons for pro-attitudes in terms of value. And the No-Priority View (NPV) holds that neither reasons nor value can be analysed in terms of one another. This chapter argues that BPA should be accepted rather than VFA or NPV because if BPA is accepted, then what all the different varieties of goodness have in common can be explained: but if VFA or NPV is accepted, what the different varieties of goodness have in common cannot be explained. In making this argument this chapter motivates and defends accounts of goodness for (prudential value) and goodness of a kind (attributive goodness) in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes. It shows that the objections that have been made to buck-passing accounts of goodness for and goodness of a kind can be overcome and that there are many advantages to accepting such accounts.

The Buck-Passing Account and The No-Priority View

According to the No-Priority View (NPV), what it is to be a reason for a pro-attitude cannot be analysed in terms of value but neither can what it is to be good or of value be analysed in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes. NPV has been defended by Jonathan Dancy and W. D. Ross. This chapter argues that there are several reasons to accept the buck-passing account of value (BPA) over NPV. First, BPA explains striking correlations between reasons and value that NPV does not. Second, BPA explains why value does not give non-derivative reasons to have pro-attitudes; NPV cannot do this. Third, BPA is more qualitatively parsimonious than NPV, and, as explained in this chapter, there are strong reasons to prefer more to less qualitatively parsimonious theories. Fourth, BPA explains why similar theoretical debates arise about reasons and value; NPV cannot do this. Fifth, BPA is more informative than NPV.

Reasons First

This chapter extends the buck-passing account of value and morality motivated and defended in the rest of the book to provide an account of all of practical normativity in terms of reasons. In doing so, this chapter argues that accounts of what it is to be a normative reason in terms of ought, evidence of what ought to be done, being good as a basis, and fittingness, should be rejected; and that ought and fittingness should instead be analysed in terms of reasons. So this chapter argues that reasons are more fundamental than oughts and fittingness. The combination of the view that reasons are the most basic normative property in terms of which other normative properties can be analysed and the buck-passing accounts of value and morality in terms of reasons provides an illuminating and fruitful account of all of practical normativity in terms of reasons. This chapter shows how the case for the buck-passing account of value and morality can be extended to make a case for a reasons-first or reasons fundamentalist account of practical normativity.

A Buck-Passing Account of Morality

This chapter motivates and defends a new buck-passing account of all moral notions in terms of reasons for action and reasons to make amends. According to this view, for an action to be wrong is for there to be reasons for us not to perform and for us to have pro-attitudes towards our apologizing or otherwise making amends if we perform it. This chapter shows that this account evades various objections including Parfit and Scanlon’s to buck-passing accounts of morality. It argues that this account explains several features of the relationship between moral properties and reasons, is more informative than alternative views, is part of an illuminating account of the relationship between moral and non-moral obligations, and fits with and explains the distinctively but not necessarily exclusively social status of morality. The chapter argues that there are reasons to reject alternative views to a buck-passing account of morality. It also shows that analogues of the arguments that show that the buck-passing account of value should be accepted show that a buck-passing account of morality should be accepted. So, it is not possible to consistently be buck-passers about value but not about morality.

Other Evaluative Concepts and Properties

A final type of objection to the buck-passing account of value (BPA) argues that it encounters problems with evaluative properties beyond goodness simpliciter and final value. Roger Crisp and Pekka Väyrynen have argued that BPA must extend to provide an account of certain thick concepts, namely thick evaluative concepts, but provides an implausible account of the thick evaluative. This chapter argues that if BPA must extend to the thick evaluative, it provides a plausible account of the thick evaluative. W. D. Ross argued that to have certain pro-attitudes towards an object, such as to be in a state of admiration towards something, is partially to think of the object of these pro-attitudes as good. So accounts of goodness like BPA are circular. However, this chapter argues that BPA can accommodate Ross’s view of pro-attitudes without circularity and that alternatives to BPA cannot provide a more informative account of what it is to have a pro-attitude than BPA.

Too Much Value?

According to the Buck-Passing Account (BPA), for X to be good is for there to be reasons for everyone to have pro-attitudes in response to X. Suppose that a demon will punish everyone if they do not admire it. There are reasons for everyone to admire the demon, so BPA entails that it is good, but it is not good. So, BPA produces too much value. This chapter argues that this problem, often dubbed the wrong kind of reason problem, can be dissolved because there are no reasons to admire the demon. But, this chapter argues, even if there are reasons to admire the demon this does not show that BPA should be rejected, but only that it should be revised to hold that the reasons for pro-attitudes in BPA are reasons to have pro-attitudes that are not provided or enabled by facts about the additional consequences of having those pro-attitudes.

The Value-First Account and the Unity of the Normative

The Value-First Account (VFA) analyses reasons for pro-attitudes in terms of goodness or value. This chapter makes an argument against VFA. It argues that epistemic reasons for belief should not be analysed in terms of value. But it argues that if epistemic reasons should not be analysed in terms of value but reasons for pro-attitudes should be analysed in terms of value, then epistemic reasons for belief cannot be instances of the very same relation as reasons for pro-attitudes. And this chapter argues that we should hold that epistemic reasons for belief are instances of the very same relation as practical reasons. So, we should reject VFA because it is inconsistent with the way in which epistemic normativity relates to practical normativity.

The Value-First Account and First-Order Neutrality

The Value-First Account (VFA) analyses reasons for pro-attitudes in terms of value. G. E. Moore, amongst others, held VFA. This chapter first motivates and defends a neutrality requirement according to which we have reason to reject views about what it is to have a certain property or to fall under a certain concept that entail the falsity of substantial, widely held, and somewhat plausible first-order views in normative ethics. Two versions of VFA conflict with this neutrality requirement. One version holds that reasons to have pro-attitudes towards something are just valuable features of that thing. This chapter argues that this view conflicts with an important kind of deontology. Another version of VFA analyses reasons for pro-attitudes in terms of the goodness of having those attitudes. The chapter argues that this view conflicts with many views about what things are of value. This chapter then argues that all other versions of VFA fail to provide genuine and non-circular accounts of reasons for pro-attitudes.