Acting in Light of a Fact and Acting in Light of a Belief

Abstract

AbstractWe conceive of ourselves as beings capable of acting in response to normative reasons. Given that our normative reasons are usually facts, this self‐conception entails that we are capable of acting in response to facts. Arguments from error cases might seem to force us to deflate that self‐conception, for they seem to show that to act in light of a fact must simply be a way of acting in light of a belief. The goal of this article is to argue against this deflationary view. I offer a counterexample to it and argue that in order to reject the argument from error on which it is grounded we should adopt a disjunctive view of acting in light of a consideration. According to this view there are two subjectively indistinguishable but distinct ways of acting in light of a consideration: acting in light of a fact and acting in light of a belief. This view allows us to take seriously the idea that our motivating reasons can be identical to facts and not mere true considerations and thus to take seriously our self‐conception as beings that respond to and are capable of being moved by normative reasons for action.