When Reasons Obligate

Abstract

This paper explores isomorphism between two relationships. The first is that between reasons and requirements. Reasons for action (or for belief - but focus here is action) differ from requirements, in that reasons are typically merely advisory while requirements are mandatory. We are rationally required to do that which there is most reason for us to do (and of course if we have most reason to do nothing, that is what reason requires). This way of understanding relationship between reasons for action and what reasons require of an actor has been called maximizing conception. The second relationship is that between moral reasons (a subset of reasons generally, but not necessarily a proper subset) and moral requirements. It is natural to assume that moral reasons ripen into moral requirements in same manner that reasons generally ripen into rational requirements: we are morally required to do what we have most reason, morally, to do. This transposition of maximizing view from realm of reasons generally to moral realm can be traced to Moore. The paper defends a version of Moore's view, despite its perhaps drastic consequences. Part of this defense consists of taking into account putative incomparability between certain types of moral reasons. The paper argues that incomparability, far from undermining maximizing view, helps it accommodate possibility of moral options, and to that extent to avoid what has become commonly known as the strenuousness objection, typically directed against consequentialistic species of maximizing conception. But larger part of this defense consists of criticism of alternative accounts of relationship between moral reasons and moral requirements. Historically, a number of ideas have been invoked to close gap between reasons and requirements, or (as gap could also be described) between goodness and obligation. Sanction theories, voluntaristic theories, and rationalistic or universalization theories are examined and found wanting. The paper concludes that maximizing conception can be reconciled with whatever is defensible in each of these alternatives: a unary account of morality and rationality is available once moral reasoning is represented as an operation of maximization performed upon a filtered or supplemented set of reasons bearing upon actor.