Broome’s Too-Quick Objection

Abstract

ABSTRACT Normativity seems characteristically, perhaps essentially, explained by claims about the competition between normative reasons. John Broome’s ‘quick objection’ aims to show that rationality cannot be explained by claims about normative reasons and, thus, that it is not normative. Broome’s objection turns on the idea that rationality is mind-dependent in a way that facts about reasons are not. However, this objection is shaped by a popular, powerful, and restrictive assumption about the substance of normative reasons called factualism, which holds that the substances that are reasons are facts, either in the sense of true propositions or of the truth-makers of such propositions. I suggest that support for factualism is weaker than its popularity suggests. In particular, I suggest that arguments for factualism from (1) the nature of normative explanation, (2) expressions attributing reasons, (3) the relationship between normativity and actuality, and (4) common sense are weaker than they appear. Rejecting factualism allows us to tie some class of reasons—subjective reasons, we might call them—more closely to the mind and to thereby ground the normativity of rationality. Thus, Broome’s ‘quick objection’ is too quick for it must account for the possibility of non-factualist reasons.