Normative Restrictions on Input to Practical Reflection

Abstract

Procedural theories of practical reasoning provide rules according to which agents’ reasons for action are constructed. Those procedures operate on some given input (an agent's desires, other mental states, and circumstances) to the reasoning process in a way that determines the output of an agent's reasons for action. I argue that a procedural theory of practical reasoning must include a previously unrecognized normative restriction on what counts as acceptable input, roughly, that agents should take features of their own, but not others’, selves as input. Using Korsgaard's The Sources of Normativity as a case study, I show that common features of procedural theories result in a threat to each person's view of themselves as practically distinct from others. I then show that psychological claims are insufficient to defeat this threat, and that maintaining a practical distinction between ourselves and others requires a normative restriction on the input to practical reflection.