Abstract

What is a normative reason for acting? In this paper, I introduce and defend a novel answer to this question. The starting-point is the view that reasons are right-makers. By exploring difficulties facing it, I arrive at an alternative, according to which reasons are evidence of respects in which it is right to perform an act, for example, that it keeps a promise. This is similar to the proposal that reasons for a person to act are evidence that she ought to do so; however, as I explain, it differs from that proposal in two significant ways. As a result, I argue, the evidence-based account of reasons I advance shares the advantages of its predecessor while avoiding many of the difficulties facing it.

Highlights

  • That it is Elliot’s birthday is a reason for Stanley to buy him a present

  • A justifying reason is a fact which makes it right to u but not wrong not to u, while a requiring reason is a fact which makes it right to u and wrong not to u. (So understood, requiring reasons are a subset of justifying reasons.) I am not defending this distinction—the point is that R = MR offers its proponent the Footnote 8 continued can, and typically do, agree that there is a fact-relative notion of rightness; they disagree on the substantive issue of whether the deliberative notion of rightness is the fact-relative notion

  • In view of difficulties facing the idea that reasons are right-makers, I suggested that a reason for acting is evidence of a respect in which acting is right

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Summary

Introduction

That it is Elliot’s birthday is a reason for Stanley to buy him a present. That Paris, Texas is showing is a reason for Miyuki to go to the cinema. A better understanding of the notion of a reason might facilitate a better understanding of these other notions, and vice versa Another concern which might lead one to advance an account of reasons is that the property of being a reason is in some way metaphysically or epistemologically puzzling. By exploring difficulties facing it, I arrive at an alternative, according to which reasons are evidence of respects in which it is right to act This is similar to the proposal that reasons for a person to act are evidence that she ought to do so; as I explain, it differs from that proposal in two significant ways. What is that relation is another interesting question but, again, not one I will try to answer here

Reasons as right-makers
Problems for reasons as right-makers
Reasons as evidence
For reasons as evidence
Objections to R 5 EO
Counterevidential reasons
Weightlessness
Misleading ethical evidence
Problems of reasons as evidence
Enablers
Testimony
Evidence as normative
Conclusion
Full Text
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