Abstract

What an agent ought to do is determined by competition between reasons bearing on the options open to her. The popular metaphor of balancing or weighing reasons on a scale to represent this competition encourages a focus on competition between reasons for competing options. But what an agent ought to do also depends on the reasons against those options. The balancing metaphor does not provide an obvious way to represent reasons against. Partly as a result of this, there is a serious lack of work on reasons against. A simple view is that there is no problem here, since reasons against an option are really just more reasons for—in particular, reasons for certain alternatives. This simple view lets us maintain the balancing metaphor, and more importantly, it simplifies theorizing about the competition between reasons. This is because if it’s true, there is really just one kind of competition, the competition between reasons for competing options. This paper challenges the simple view, arguing against several ways of identifying which alternatives to an option the reasons against it are reasons for. I also sketch a competing view, according to which reasons against are distinct from reasons for—these are two different normative relations. If this kind of view is correct, then our theory of the competition between reasons will need to recognize at least two kinds of competition: the one between reasons for competing options, and the one between the reasons for an option and the reasons against it.

Highlights

  • What an agent ought to do is determined by competition between reasons bearing on the options open to her

  • The option you ought to choose is the one corresponding to the lowest pan—since it has the most weight in it—once all the reasons are taken into account

  • The view I focus on in this paper is one that is endorsed by some of the small number of philosophers who have thought about reasons against, and more importantly is a very natural one to come to, if you start with the balancing metaphor and try to accommodate reasons against

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Summary

Reasons and balancing

Deciding what you should do very often involves considering various trade offs. Different options have different costs and benefits. Ross (1930) explained this idea, at least in the moral case, in terms of prima facie duties. The option you ought to choose is the one corresponding to the lowest pan—since it has the most weight in it—once all the reasons are taken into account This metaphor highlights at least three very important features of the competition between reasons. The view I focus on in this paper is one that is endorsed by some of the small number of philosophers who have thought about reasons against, and more importantly is a very natural one to come to, if you start with the balancing metaphor and try to accommodate reasons against. Considered, we will presumably need some way of aggregating the results of these two kinds of competition This is because the reasons against our options are as important as the reasons for them. I’ll show that it can explain the initial appeal of some implementations of the simple view without inheriting their problems

Reasons against as reasons for
Implementation 1: reasons for an alternative
Implementation 2: reasons for the negation
Implementation 3: reasons for the disjunction of alternatives
Implementation 4: reasons for each of the alternatives
Summing up
Reasons transmission
Reasons against as distinct from reasons for
Criteria for reasons against
Explaining the appeal of the simple view
Comparison with Greenspan’s view
Conclusion
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