Achievements and Intelligibility

Abstract

The type of view defended about correctly responding to normative reasons doesn’t fit nicely into the landscape of views in the philosophy of mind and action about reacting for reasons. This is because it doesn’t account for cases where we react for reasons that are not normative reasons—i.e., cases where we merely react for motivating reasons. This chapter defends a view about what it is to react for motivating reasons. According to this view, what it is for A to X for a consideration r is for A to X in virtue of the fact that A conceives of r as a normative reason to X. It is argued that this account solves the classic deviant causal chain problems for causal theories of reacting for reasons. Finally, disjunctivism about reacting-for-reasons is defended: the view that reacting for motivating reasons is different in kind from reacting for normative reasons.