Naturalizing the contributory

Philip Fox

doi:10.1007/s11229-021-03069-9

Abstract

This paper has two aims. First, I critically discuss Daniel Whiting’s (Philos Stud 195(9):2191–2208, 2018) recent proposal that a reason to ϕ is evidence of a respect in which it is right to ϕ. I raise two objections against this view: (i) it is subject to a modified version of Eva Schmidt’s (Ethics 127(3):708–718, 2018) counterexample against the influential account of reasons in terms of evidence and ‘ought’, and—setting aside judgments about specific cases—, (ii) it is also in an important sense uninformative. Interestingly, it turns out that this last objection cannot be helpfully understood in terms of circularity. This leads to a more general question about the criteria of adequacy for reductive accounts of reasons: In what sense, if any, should such accounts be informative? The second aim of this paper is to clarify one such sense, which is suggested by reflection on Whiting’s proposal. In particular, I argue that successful reductive accounts naturalize the contributory—by which I mean, roughly, that they explain the specifically contributory nature of reasons in fully non-normative terms. Moreover, I explain how views that fail this criterion are unable to meet certain key explanatory desiderata for reductive accounts of reasons. After broaching some of the wider implications for the project of understanding the notion of a reason in other terms, I conclude that the notion of naturalizing the contributory is a helpful notion for structuring the debate over reductive accounts of reasons.

Highlights

There has been a burgeoning literature in recent years on reductive accounts of normative reasons.1. This literature includes both the intramural debate between proponents of various different reductive accounts and the more general debate between reductivists on the one hand and reasons primitivists on the other, who think that the notion of a reason is in principle unanalyzable
My argument will be developed around an illustrative test case, viz. Daniel Whiting’s (2018) recent proposal that a reason to φ is evidence of a respect in which it is right to φ
Unless we provide an account of the contributory nature of this notion, we have not made much progress in understanding contributory normative force as such

Summary

Introduction

There has been a burgeoning literature in recent years on reductive accounts of normative reasons. This literature includes both the intramural debate between proponents of various different reductive accounts (e.g. in terms of evidence, premises of good reasoning, good bases, or explanation) and the more general debate between reductivists on the one hand and reasons primitivists on the other, who think that the notion of a reason is in principle unanalyzable.. One of my central claims will be that we should expect successful accounts of reasons to naturalize the contributory—by which I mean, roughly, that they explain the contributory nature of normative reasons in fully non-normative terms This criterion follows naturally from reflection on recent examples from the literature and helps to clarify the widespread idea that accounts of reasons should be in some important sense informative. The best approach for present purposes, it seems to me, is to follow a popular suggestion and define the normative in terms of a range of certain paradigmatic concepts (cf Fumerton 2001; Schroeder 2015) On this approach, the normative includes notions like reason, ought, permissibility, goodness, virtue, correctness and fittingness, and all other notions relevantly like them.

Two clarifications

Evidential accounts of reasons: some background

The counterexamples: counter‐evidential and redundant reasons

What do we want from an account of reasons?

Conclusion