Respect and the reality of apparent reasons

Kurt L. Sylvan

doi:10.1007/s11098-020-01573-1

Abstract

Rationality requires us to respond to apparent normative reasons. Given the independence of appearance and reality, why think that apparent normative reasons necessarily provide real normative reasons? And if they do not, why think that mistakes of rationality are necessarily real mistakes? This paper gives a novel answer to these questions. I argue first that in the moral domain, there are objective duties of respect that we violate whenever we do what appears to violate our first-order duties. The existence of these duties of respect, I argue, ensures that apparent moral reasons are exceptions to the independence of appearance and reality. I then extend these arguments to the domain of overall reason. Just as there are objective duties of respect for moral reasons that explain moral blameworthiness, so there are objective duties of respect for reasons (period) that explain blameworthiness in the court of overall reason. The existence of these duties ensures that apparent reasons (period) are exceptions to the independence of appearance and reality.

Highlights

On a familiar view in meta-ethics, rationality requires us to respond to apparent normative reasons, not normative reasons per se.1 The popularity of this view owes partly to a view about normative reasons on which they are, in the first instance, facts that count in favor of acts and attitudes
Whenever a source of reasons calls for respect,14 we find an exception to the idea that having an apparent reason to / does not guarantee having a real reason to /
To warm up to my general account, I will begin by arguing that there is a kind of reason in the moral case for which the following thesis holds: Weak Transparency-Substantive: Necessarily, if one has a substantive apparent reason of this kind to /, one has an objective reason of this kind to /

Summary

Introduction

On a familiar view in meta-ethics, rationality requires us to respond to apparent normative reasons, not normative reasons per se. The popularity of this view owes partly to a view about normative reasons on which they are, in the first instance, facts that count in favor of acts and attitudes. I give a similar argument that failing to respond to structural apparent reasons constitutes violation of an objective duty of commitment to reasons-responsiveness, which I formulate to avoid worries about fetishism and rational akrasia. This duty explains the normativity of (enkratic) structural rationality. To warm up to my general account, I will begin by arguing that there is a kind of reason in the moral case for which the following thesis holds: Weak Transparency-Substantive: Necessarily, if one has a substantive apparent reason of this kind to /, one has an objective reason of this kind to /. This thesis requires separate treatment, since it raises issues that do not arise in the case of Weak Transparency-Substantive

Respect and the appearances

The nature and objects of respect

Commitment and normative appearances

Praiseworthy akrasia?

Fetishism?

Commitment

Assessing weak transparency-structural

The thesis

The argument in outline

Why heeding apparent reasons fulfils this duty

The thesis and the argument in outline

Commitment to objective reasons-responsiveness