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The fundamental reason for reasons fundamentalism

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Abstract

Reasons, it is often said, are king in contemporary normative theory. Some philosophers say not only that the vocabulary of reasons is useful, but that reasons play a fundamental explanatory role in normative theory—that many, most, or even all, other normative facts are grounded in facts about reasons. Even if reasons fundamentalism, the strongest version of this view, has only been wholeheartedly endorsed by a few philosophers, it has a kind of prominence in contemporary normative theory that suits it to be described as orthodoxy by its critics. It is the purpose of this paper to make progress toward understanding what appeal Reasons Fundamentalism should have, and whether that appeal is deserved. I will do so by exploring and comparing two central motivations for Reasons Fundamentalism.

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Notes

  1. For example, Jonathan Adler (2002, 9) describes the thesis of evidentialism in epistemology as the view that “to (fully) believe that p one needs adequate reasons”. Similarly, according to Derek Parfit (1997, 209), one important form of egalitarianism is the view that “we always have a reason to prevent or reduce inequality, if we can”.

  2. Prominent proponents of something like this view have included Derek Parfit (2011), Jonathan Dancy (2004), and Mark Schroeder (2007).

  3. Here I follow Schroeder (2008). Many philosophers talk in terms of possessed reasons or reasons you ‘have’, but this talk is contentious and naturally interpreted as incorporating substantive commitments about the relationship between objective and subjective reasons, so it is best avoided.

  4. Dancy (2000) is naturally interpreted as accepting this view. See the discussion in Schroeder (2018a, 294–295).

  5. See, for example, Prior (1960).

  6. This example comes from Schroeder (2010).

  7. Sidgwick (1907) famously tries to use a monistic consequentialist theory, in order to explain many of the same things as Ross, but Ross has the advantage that he can offer the very same diagnosis of intuitive counterexamples to utilitarianism that he and Sidgwick both offer to intuitive counterexamples to absolute deontological principles. The advantage of pluralist consequentialism is that it can agree with Ross that it is not always best to maximize happiness.

  8. This argument comes from Schroeder (2011).

  9. They can’t be made alike in this respect, without the first person’s killing resulting in more killings, by preventing the preventions of killings, which undermines the force of the example.

  10. Many agent-relative teleologists arrive at their view more quickly, assuming that it is the only way to capture these cases of constraints. But as Oddie and Milne (1991) have shown, that is not exactly right. What is true, is that the assumptions required in order to reconcile constraints with traditional, agent-neutral consequentialism become increasingly implausible as assumptions about a notion of goodness about which we have some independent grasp. See Nair (2014) for a particularly good discussion of this point, and Setiya for a defense of the view that killings that prevent killings really are much worse than killings that do not.

  11. On Agent-Relative Teleology, see especially Sen (1983), Dreier (1993), Smith (2003), Louise (2004), and Portmore (2014).

  12. Compare especially Samuel Scheffler’s reasoning in The Rejection of Consequentialism, particularly at (1982, **-**).

  13. Dreier (2011), Oddie (2018), Milona and Schroeder (2019).

  14. Compare Wedgwood (2015).

  15. This is Setiya’s (2014) informal gloss on his account, which he goes on to spell out more precisely in other terms, but the idea of sound inferences forms the backbone of Silverstein’s (2016) account. This difference makes it likely that Silverstein’s account has better prospects to avoid the objection from elusive reasons explained below.

  16. Schroeder (2007, chapter 2).

  17. Sliwa (2012, 2016).

  18. King (2020).

  19. Sliwa (2016), King (2020).

  20. Compare Smith (2003, chapter 3), Arpaly (2002b).

  21. See especially Schroeder (2007, chapter 2) and (2009).

  22. Compare Schroeder (2018b).

  23. Markovits (2010, 2012), Arpaly (2002a, b), Arpaly and Schroeder (2013). An important fellow traveler is Stratton-Lake’s (2000) symmetry thesis, though Stratton-Lake follows what he takes to be Kant’s view in imposing a further condition on moral worth that is inspired by Barbara Herman and Marcia Baron’s distinction between primary and secondary motives.

  24. See especially Lehrer and Paxson (1969), Lehrer (1970), Klein (1971), Annis (1973), Ackerman (1974), Johnsen (1974), Swain (1974), Olin (1976), and Barker (1976). For a fairly comprehensive discussion of the problems confronted in this attempt to answer the problems posed by Gettier (1963), see Shope (1983), and for discussion of how defeasibility analyses of knowledge are a kind of right reasons account and diagnosis of where implementations of this idea in the 1970’s went wrong, see Schroeder (2015).

  25. Alston (1985).

  26. This is a familiar issue from the Gettier literature—see, for example, Swain (1981, chapter 4).

  27. Again, though not explored in recent literature on moral worth, similar issues have long been part of similar discussions in epistemology. See especially Lehrer (1974, chapter 6).

  28. Schroeder (2018b).

  29. Compare Markovits’ (2010, 227) case of the altruist and the reward-seeker, who both rush into a burning building for the reason that there is a child who needs to be saved. Arpaly’s (2002a, 240) case of Steve plays a similar role, though she uses it to make more points.

  30. Markovits: “We should understand the Coincident Reasons Thesis as pronouncing an action morally worthy whenever the noninstrumental reasons for which it is per- formed coincide with the noninstrumental reasons that morally justify its performance” (2010, 230). A similar feature comes out in Arpaly and Schroeder’s (2013) view that moral worth is exhibited by agents who act on intrinsic desires whose objects correspond to the reasons as articulated by the true moral theory.

  31. Broome (2004, 2013).

  32. Markovits (2010, 205).

  33. Compare Daniel Star (2011, 84): “Suppose, for the sake of a simple example, that the correct moral theory is hedonistic utilitarianism (needless to say, I do not actually think this is the correct moral theory). This theory would have it that the only ultimate reasons are facts about pain and pleasure. If an act would increase pleasure in the world then the fact that this act would increase pleasure is an ultimate reason to do it, while if an act would increase pain in the world then the fact that this act would increase pain is an ultimate reason not to do it. Furthermore, one ought to do those acts that increase the balance of pleasure over pain (according to the theory). Now consider the fact that a particular act is a lie. This normative theory says nothing about facts that are lies. However, the fact that this act is a lie is evidence that one ought not do it, and is thus also a derivative reason not to do it.”.

  34. Daniel Star (2011, 75): “Philosophers engaged in the project of normative ethics are not wasting their time when they search after highly general moral principles which could not be discovered or justifiably accepted through non-philosophical thinking, and which specify the good reasons on which virtuous people act, as well as provide a criterion or criteria for determining what it is that people ought to do.”.

  35. For Star (2011, 2015), reasons strictly speaking are evidence of what you ought to do—and as such they can play a role in an account of moral worth, because the right motive will always involve being sensitive to evidence of what you ought to do. Whereas the explainers of what you ought to do are more properly called ‘right-making features’, and are the proper objects of inquiry in explanatory moral theory, but bear no essential connection to worthy motivation.

  36. Wedgwood (2015) is also prominently skeptical that anything plays the dual roles of reasons.

  37. Reasons fundamentalism therefore denies what I have elsewhere called the ‘no background conditions’ view of reasons, whereas the cleanup view implies it. See Schroeder (2007, chapter 2).

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Nathan Howard, Stephen Finlay, and Ralph Wedgwood.

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    Mark Schroeder

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Schroeder, M. The fundamental reason for reasons fundamentalism. Philos Stud 178, 3107–3127 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01572-2

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