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Normative Reasons Qua Facts and the Agent-Neutral/Relative Dichotomy: a Response to Rønnow-Rasmussen

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Abstract

This paper offers a defence of the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons for action from scepticism aired by Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen. In response it is argued that the Nagelian notion of an agent-neutral reason is not incomprehensible, and that agent-neutral reasons can indeed be understood as obtaining states of affairs that count in favour of anyone and everyone performing the action they favour. Furthermore, I argue that a distinction drawn between agent-neutral and agent-relative reason-statements that express the salient features of reason-constitutive states of affairs is neither reductive in the sense of reducing normative reasons to the propositional content of an agent’s mental state, nor trivial in the sense of locating the distinction merely in an agent’s description of the world.

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Notes

  1. The precise nature of these facts will be examined below. At this stage it’s sufficient to note that Rønnow-Rasmussen takes facts to be “synonymous” with ontologically substantial or “thick” obtaining states of affairs rather than ontologically “thin” propositional entities (Rønnow-Rasmussen 2011: 135–136, 2012: 98–99).

  2. Talking in terms of a different reason can be slippery; there’s a perfectly good sense in which the fact that y is drowning constitutes the same reason for anyone: a reason for anyone who can to help y. Indeed, the ultimate crux of my argument is that the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons does not amount to a distinction between two kinds of fact, but rather two ways a reason (understood as a fact) can vary in its scope of application.

  3. Nagel originally drew this distinction in terms of “objective” and “subjective” reasons for action, though later adopted Derek Parfit’s agent-neutral/relative terminology (see Parfit 1984: 27, 143).

  4. It should be stressed here that universality found in the general form of Nagel’s reasons is merely logical and imposes no rational constraint on choices of action. It amounts merely to the idea that, as long as we take ourselves to have reasons, then a judgement about these reasons entails claims about the reasons other agents would have under relevantly similar circumstances (see Mackie 1977: 83–102; Scanlon 1998: 74–75).

  5. It might be objected here that if I, Jamie Buckland, claim that my reason for φ-ing is that φ will prolong Jamie Buckland's child’s life, then it is – by definition – an agent-relative reason. After all, there is reference to Jamie Buckland in both the consequent of the conditional and its antecedent, i.e., all we have is (1) but x is substituted for Jamie Buckland. However, its full representation does not contain a free agent-variable, so the reason remains agent-neutral. This includes me (Jamie Buckland) qua member of anyone and everyone, but the point is that from an agent-neutral standpoint I needn’t know that I am, in fact, Jamie Buckland.

  6. Those who are not in a position to do anything about the matter should not interfere with the occurrence of the event in question or, at the very least, desire that the event occur.

  7. There is of course a sense in which agent-relative reasons are shared reasons, for at one level of description the agent-relative reason each of us has to prolong the lives of our own children is a reason for anyone to do the same thing, i.e., what prolongs the lives of our children. But since what is best for one agent’s child might not be best for another’s, then the reasons we have may well be opposed.

  8. Nagel and Parfit’s accounts of the distinction should not, then, be understood as distinct; they are extensionally equivalent (see Ridge 2011: Section 1; cf. Rønnow-Rasmussen 2011: 131–132, 2012: 69).

  9. Aside from a casual endorsement of Joseph Raz’s observation that “reasons have a vague and incomplete criteria of identity” (Raz 2006: 109). Rønnow-Rasmussen offers no direct support in favour of the idea that reasons are obtaining states of affairs rather than true propositions. Support comes from two indirect worries. Firstly, propositions and their corresponding reason-statements express merely what agents take to be (believe to be) their reasons, rather than the reasons themselves. And, secondly, that propositions and the reason-statements that express them are only the “tip of the iceberg” as far as complete normative reasons are concerned: the idea that “there is one and only one thing I have a reason to do at t 1 and that [...] is determined by how the world precisely is at t 1” (Rønnow-Rasmussen 2011: 146). We’ll consider these ideas in more detail below, but it’s worth stressing at this point that I have no problem with the idea that obtaining states of affairs can constitute or ground reasons for action, per se. As I’ll argue below, the point is that unlike Rønnow-Rasmussen I do not regard this idea to be in contention with the propositional account. On another note, the claim that all normative reasons for action are obtaining states of affairs or natural worldly facts just looks false. For instance, if asked why I helped someone, I may say that they wouldn’t have been able to achieve some goal or that they may have suffered unnecessarily unless I helped them. Such counterfactuals seem to provide reasons for action, but are not obtaining states of affairs. This is not, however, a criticism I’ll explore here.

  10. This notion of “owned” propositional content is crucial to understanding Rønnow-Rasmussen’s account of motivating reasons; the idea being that propositions are always someone’s because they are what a certain person might express at a given time and place. What is notable, however, is that Rønnow-Rasmussen does not distinguish clearly between propositional entities and propositional attitudes (the mental state held by an agent towards a proposition). At one point he cites the importance the intentional context of a proposition has on an agent’s behaviour in terms of a propositional attitude, but it is often ambiguous as to whether he is referring to reason-statements expressing the propositional attitude, i.e., my belief that my daughter y is drowning, or the “owned” proposition <that my daughter y is drowning > qua some abstract entity (Rønnow-Rasmussen 2012: 100). As we’ll see now, Rønnow-Rasmussen makes a particular effort to distinguish motivating reasons qua the propositional content of an agent’s belief state from explanatory reasons qua the agent’s belief state itself, insisting that it’s an agent’s belief that R (in combination with an appropriate desire) which causes them to act, not some “proposition-like entity” (Rønnow-Rasmussen 2011: 134). However, he goes on to maintain that motivating and explanatory reasons are both reductive in the same sense. For instance, in relation to reducing normative reasons to “in-the-head propositional entities” (motivating reasons) he insists: “What is in the head is more accurately (or, at any rate, just as correctly) described as the grasping of the fact or feature, but not the fact or feature itself.” Yet, he also speaks of reducing normative reasons to what goes on in the agent’s mind, in terms of propositional attitudes (a mental state held towards a proposition) (Rønnow-Rasmussen 2012: 106–107). The problem with this ambiguity is that the distinction Rønnow-Rasmussen draws between motivating reasons qua the propositional content of an agent’s mental state and explanatory reasons qua the mental state itself collapses. He insists the propositional content of an agent’s mental state expresses an obtaining state of affairs an agent believes to be a (normative) reason for them to φ. Yet simultaneously holds that propositional content does not explain action, rather, it is my belief that my daughter y is drowning which explains why I act. However, if motivating reasons are just what agents believe to be their reasons qua grasped in-the-head propositional entities, then this serves equally well in explaining action. I’ll expand and defend this idea in Section 7.

  11. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this improved version of my original formulation.

  12. Recall Section 2 (Rønnow-Rasmussen 2011: 137).

  13. It must be stressed here that we are concerned simply with the status of normative reasons qua obtaining states of affairs. In the sense of generating action both agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons are, in John Perry’s terms, “essentially indexical” because agents will have to believe that they (reflexively) ought to act at time t. Nevertheless, the reason-constitutive fact itself needn’t be essentially indexical (Perry 1979).

  14. It could be argued that this understanding of propositions is “Russelian”, i.e. that propositions themselves are instantiations of concrete properties. So, the proposition <that my daughter y is drowning > consists of my daughter y, drowning, and the “being-in” relation between them (Russell 1903: 47; also see Suikkanen 2012: 598).

  15. At one point Rønnow-Rasmussen goes as far as suspecting that “reasons need not be graspable” (Rønnow-Rasmussen 2012: 111). Though again, if a normative reason for action need not be graspable by anyone then I no longer understand how it can be said to constitute a practical reason for anyone to do anything.

  16. I thank the anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this point.

  17. Notice that the proposed schema is asymmetrical in its treatment of agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons. Given the propositional account of reasons under scrutiny, reasons are understood as the owned propositional content of an agent’s mental state – an obtaining state of affairs an agent believes to be a (normative) reason for them to φ. However, unlike the agent-relative reason expressed in (5), the agent-neutral reasons expressed by (7) and (8) are not representative of the first-personal motivating reasons we’ve been considering, i.e., (7) and (8) do not express the propositional content of TRR’s judgements that are true. Rather, they express propositions owned by x which x believes to be reasons for TRR to φ. And, as we’ve seen in (6), it is possible to capture agent-relativity in this schema via the use of third-personal pronouns. Qua reasons for x to φ, however, (6), (7), (8), and (9 (below)) are all agent-neutral.

  18. Nagel was always keen to stress the formal nature of the original distinction, in particular the idea that the formal condition of agent-neutrality could not dispense with a substantive theory of value (Nagel 1970: 126).

  19. Another method of defending the notion of an essentially indexical agent-relative reason is to argue that reasons-statements are non-extensional contexts (Suikkanen 2012). However, since I have defended a propositional-based account of reasons, and propositions are themselves non-extensional, Suikkanen’s observations complement my own position.

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Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Laboratory of Ethics and Political Philosophy within the Nova Institute of Philosophy, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. I am grateful to all attendees for their comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for Philosophia for their extremely helpful comments and criticisms that improved the paper immensely. Additionally, thanks are owed to Emma Borg, Max de Gaynesford, Brad Hooker, Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, Philip Stratton-Lake, and Alan Thomas for their helpful comments and discussion on earlier work from which this paper was derived.

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Buckland, J. Normative Reasons Qua Facts and the Agent-Neutral/Relative Dichotomy: a Response to Rønnow-Rasmussen. Philosophia 45, 207–225 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9762-3

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