Abstract
The favoring relations constitutive of normative reasons have a single, unifying source across us all. This is implied by at least five separate considerations. Both normative disagreement and normative conflict implies that our concept of a normative reason is of a favoring relation that has the same source as all other normative reasons. Rational appearances corroborate this, providing both direct evidence of single source—normative reasons are positively represented to have a unified source—and indirect evidence insofar as we are told to compare our rational intuitions with the rational intuitions of others (which would make no sense unless they were providing us insight into the same matter). Additionally, widespread convergence in the content of our rational intuitions, and the fact that the posit of a single mind is simpler than any multiple-bearer thesis, operates to make the unity thesis true beyond a reasonable doubt.
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Notes
- 1.
Such views have additional problems. For instance, a collection of minds is not itself a mind. Thus it can no more be relatum a than a fact, or proposition or natural feature can be.
- 2.
It is, of course, a notoriously ambiguous term. For instance, it could be understood to denote the externality of normative reasons. In that case, the view I am defending is very much an objectivist view, as I am arguing that normative reasons are radically external to us. But it could also be understood to mean ‘exists extra-mentally’, that is, not as mental states. My view is clearly subjectivist in this sense.
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Harrison, G.K. (2018). Unity. In: Normative Reasons and Theism. Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90796-3_4
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