Abstract
In this discussion, we look at three potential problems that arise for Whiting’s account of normative reasons. The first has to do with the idea that objective reasons might have a modal dimension. The second and third concern the idea that there is some sort of direct connection between sets of reasons and the deliberative ought or the ought of rationality. We can see that we might be better served using credences about reasons (i.e., creasons) to characterise any ought that is distinct from the objective ought than possessed or apparent reasons.
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Notes
This might be controversial. Some writers think that even an objectivist should agree that features of the agent’s perspective should be among the things that determine the objective ordering of options. See Fassio (2022). This possibility raises lots of interesting issues worth exploring, but it would require a separate treatment to do them justice. One thing to note is that one proposal is that features of the agent’s perspective enters into the objective ordering (e.g., it is, objectively speaking, undesirable to impose risk) and another is that things that are extrinsic to that perspective and are modal might enter into the ordering (e.g., it is, unbeknown to the agent, dangerous to X given that there are nearby possibilities in which X-ing is harmful but the actual world is not one in which X-ing is harmful). My impression is that the considerations that speak in favour of letting the features of the perspective enter into the ordering do not necessarily support the idea that modal facts unknown to an agent might matter beyond facts about perspectives and actual outcomes.
For further reasons to be sceptical, see Fassio and Gao (2021). The use of three options cases like the miners case to motivate the idea that the determinants of what we ought to do are facts that meet some epistemic condition (e.g., that they are known) is widespread. See, for example, Kiesewetter (2017) and Lord (2018).
Here is a good question that deserves more attention—why retain reasons? Why should not we do this all in terms of things like values? Part of my answer is that I’m sceptical that we can capture the things we want to say about ‘ought’ using just values. (It is hard to see how we can, using just values, capture the intuitive judgments that figure in some recent puzzles about supererogation (Horton, 2021; Muñoz, 2021).) Part of my answer derives from the arguments for thinking that value-based reasons play important explanatory roles (Kiesewetter, forthcoming).
For further exploration and arguments that possessed reasons do not directly determine what we ought to do in any interesting normative sense, see Littlejohn (2019).
Another (possible) advantage of using creasons instead of apparent reasons to give an account of rationality is that if we use creasons, it is easier to see how it might be possible for a thinker to rationally believe a set of propositions she knows to be inconsistent when her informational sources are diverse and the set of her opinions is sufficiently large (and why shrinking the number of propositions in the collection leads from partial defeat to complete rationality defeat). On a view where the probabilities of objective reasons determine what's rational, it is easier to see how rationality might track a degree of support and how partial and complete defeat of rationality are connected. For discussion of the idea that defeaters are indicators of ignorance (i.e., evidence that a particular belief is not or would not be knowledge), see Littlejohn & Dutant (2021).
I want to thank Davide Fassio, Daniel Whiting, and a referee for this journal for feedback and discussion. I also want to thank Daniel for his wonderful book. He has been a source of inspiration and ideas for me for many years now.
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Littlejohn, C. The ranges of reasons and creasons. AJPH 2, 75 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-023-00129-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-023-00129-4