Fitting the view into the contemporary debate

Abstract

The claim that some reasons have greater justificatory strength than requiring strength entails a number of further claims that are at odds with a good deal of current philosophical dogma. For example, it entails that one need not, rationally, always act on the stronger of two opposed reasons, even in the absence of other relevant considerations. And it holds that this is true whether one takes ‘stronger’ to mean ‘stronger in the requiring role’ or ‘stronger in the justifying role.’ The official view advocated in this book also denies the internalism requirement on practical reasons, for it holds that it is not irrational to be completely unmoved by altruistic reasons. Given these conflicts with contemporary views, and given also what appears to be a significant structural difference between the view advocated here and other views – two strength values, as opposed to only one – some readers may have begun to suspect that the notions of practical rationality and reasons for action that form the subject of this book, while interesting and significant, are simply different notions than those of concern to other contemporary philosophers who use the same lexicographical terms. At the very beginning of chapter 1 I explained why this suspicion is unfounded: we are all engaged in the same project of trying to produce an account of the fundamental normative notion relevant to action.