Agent-neutral Reasons Research Articles

Entrapment and Manipulation

Why is wrong to punish criminals who have been entrapped by the state? The paper begins by presenting some criticisms of existing answers to this question. First, they fail to put the target, or victim, of entrapment at the centre of the moral explanation. Second, they fail to account for the intuitive relation between the reasons not to entrap and the reasons not to punish. Third, they struggle to account for the existence of agent-neutral reasons not to punish entrapped offenders. Lastly, they are ill-equipped to explain why entrapment seems problematic also outside the legal context. In response, the paper develops a novel account of entrapment: the Manipulation Account. According to this, entrapment always involves a particular kind of manipulation (manipulation-by-hidden-intentions) which morally taints punishment. In short, I suggest that both the initial entrapment and the subsequent punishment involve wrongful manipulation. Lastly, the paper presents some untraditional, but ultimately welcoming, implications of the account.

Agent-Relative Reasons and Normative Force

The distinction between agent-relative reasons and agent-neutral reasons is philosophically important, but there is no consensus on how to understand the distinction exactly. In this paper, I discuss several interpretations of the distinction that can be found in the literature: the Motivational Interpretation, the Scope Interpretation, and the Goal Interpretation, and argue that none of these interpretations is entirely convincing. I propose a novel interpretation of the distinction, which I call the Normative Force Interpretation, according to which the distinction between agent-relative reasons and agent-neutral reasons concerns the normative force that these reasons can have for agents.

Habermas’s discourse ethics and Hegel’s critique of Kant

In this article I follow James Gordon Finlayson who claims that a Hegelian criticism applies both to Kant and also to Habermas, namely, the criticism of the will as a tester of maxims. The issue is that Kant cannot connect the will of morality and the will of the particular agent and this leaves the empirical will unaffected. According to Finlayson, Habermas can be charged with this criticism, insofar as he draws a distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons. The upshot is that in Discourse Ethics the empirical will seems to be left also unaffected by the moral will. In light of an analysis of ideal role taking, and rational discourse, I claim that Habermas can rebut the Hegelian criticism. Nonetheless, I show that these concepts are incompatible with the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons. Hence, either the concepts or the distinction have to be removed. Habermas can only afford to discard the distinction, and indeed this modification answers the criticism. The final issue that arises is why does Habermas maintain the distinction? And what would be the consequences for his moral theory if he discards it? At the end of the article I sketch some of the implications and challenges that this alternative could have for Habermas’s Discourse Ethics.

Normative Reasons Qua Facts and the Agent-Neutral/Relative Dichotomy: a Response to Rønnow-Rasmussen

This paper offers a defence of the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons for action from scepticism aired by Toni Ronnow-Rasmussen. In response it is argued that the Nagelian notion of an agent-neutral reason is not incomprehensible, and that agent-neutral reasons can indeed be understood as obtaining states of affairs that count in favour of anyone and everyone performing the action they favour. Furthermore, I argue that a distinction drawn between agent-neutral and agent-relative reason-statements that express the salient features of reason-constitutive states of affairs is neither reductive in the sense of reducing normative reasons to the propositional content of an agent’s mental state, nor trivial in the sense of locating the distinction merely in an agent’s description of the world.

The Personal and the Fitting

This paper is a critical notice of a recent significant contribution to the debate about fitting attitudes and value, namely Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen’s Personal Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). In this book, Rønnow-Rasmussen seeks to analyse the notion of personal value—an instance of the notion of good for a person—in terms of fitting attitudes. The paper has three main themes: (i) Rønnow-Rasmussen’s discussion of general problems for fitting attitude analyses; (ii) his formulation of the fitting attitude analysis of personal value and the notion of ‘for someone’s sake (fss) attitudes’; and (iii) his critique of the dichotomy between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons.

The Rights We Share: From Rights to Reasons, and Back Again

In this paper, I argue that the contemporary human rights literature would benefit from a shift in focus. Recent accounts of the source and status of human rights have been preoccupied with locating -- or failing to locate -- those fundamental features of persons which would provide a universal grounding for what we call 'human rights.' These accounts have found limited success. Here, I suggest that we ought to move our attention away from the features of rational agents, acting individually or collectively, to the tools with which they are actually acting. That is, we need to fully understand the nature of reasons before we can properly grasp the rights owed to all reasoners. The paper appeals to recent work in value theory about the connection between reasons and value to moderate a debate between Brian Slattery and Alan Gewirth. Ultimately, it argues that a particular understanding of agent-neutral reasons -- reasons as intersubjectively created and shared between agents of equal value -- must undergird any plausible human rights account. The paper concludes by suggesting that it is our capacity as reasoners and, therefore, as the source of value, which provides the best foundation for an account of human rights.

The Problem with Rescue Medicine

Is there a rational and ethical basis for efforts to rescue individuals in dire straits? When does rescue have ethical support, and when does it reflect an irrational impulse? This paper defines a Rule of Rescue and shows its intuitive appeal. It then proceeds to argue that this rule lacks support from standard principles of justice and from ethical principles more broadly, and should be rejected in many situations. I distinguish between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons, and argue that the Rule of Rescue qualifies only in a narrow range of cases where agent-relative considerations apply. I conclude that it would be wise to set aside the Rule of Rescue in many cases, especially those involving public policies, where it has only weak normative justification. The broader implications of this analysis are noted.

Reason-Statements As Non-Extensional Contexts

Many believe that, if true, reason-statements of the form ‘that X is F is a reason to φ’ describe a ‘favouring-relation’ between the fact that X is F and the act of φing. This favouring-relation has been assumed to share many features of other, more concrete relations. This combination of views leads to immediate problems. Firstly, unlike statements about many other relations, reason-statements can be true even when the relata do not exist, i.e., when the relevant facts do not obtain and the relevant acts are not done. Secondly, the previous combination of views also makes it very difficult to draw the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons. I argue that we should think that the predicate ‘is a reason to’ creates non-extensional contexts in the statements in which it is used. This would both solve the previous problems and avoid the awkward consequences of the so-called slingshot argument.

Mark Schroeder’s Hypotheticalism: agent-neutrality, moral epistemology, and methodology

Mark Schroeder’s Slaves of the Passions is the most systematic defense yet constructed of a broadly ‘Humean’ conception of normative reasons for action, according to which all of one’s reasons are ultimately explained by facts about one’s psychology. This, however, radically undersells the book, which is breathtaking in its scope, originality, and density of powerful ideas. So: if you care about deep questions in ethics, you should read it. It is also rhetorically Humean, written so engagingly that even those without prior interest in its subject may enjoy thinking through such a superb example of philosophical argument. Despite admiring much in this book, I will play the usual role of symposium commentator here, and focus on sketching three brief objections to Schroeder’s account, in the hopes that they will spur him to develop and clarify his views. Section 1 argues that Schroeder’s crucial account of agent-neutral reasons cannot be made to work. Section 2 argues that a core element of his distinctive proposal in moral epistemology has awkwardly limited scope. Finally, Sect. 3 identifies a tension between Schroeder’s view and its central methodological motivation.

VIII-Permissible Rescue Killings

Many believe that agent-centred considerations, unlike agent-neutral reasons, cannot show that victims have the right to kill their attackers in self-defence, let alone establish that rescuers have the right to come to their help. In this paper, I argue that the right to kill in self- or other-defence is best supported by a hybrid set of reasons. In particular, agent-centred considerations account for the plausible intuition that victims have a special stake, which other parties lack, in being to thwart the attackers. That special stake plays an important part justifying victims' right to obtain help, and rescuers' right to give it.

Humean agent-neutral reasons?

In his recent book Slaves of the Passions, Mark Schroeder defends a Humean account of practical reasons (hypotheticalism). He argues that it is compatible with ‘genuinely agent-neutral reasons’. These are reasons that any agent whatsoever has. According to Schroeder, they may well include moral reasons. Furthermore, he proposes a novel account of a reason's weight, which is supposed to vindicate the claim that agent-neutral reasons (if they exist), would be weighty irrespective of anyone's desires. If the argument is successful, it could help avoid an error-theory of moral language. I argue that it isn't, and that we should reject a Humean approach to reasons.

OBJECTIVISM AND RELATIONAL GOOD

In his critique of egoism as a doctrine of ends, G. E. Moore famously challenges the idea that something can be “good for” someone. Donald Regan has recently revived and developed the Moorean challenge, making explicit its implications for the very idea of individual welfare. If the Moorean is right, there is no distinct, normative propertygood for, and so no plausible objectivism about ethics could be welfarist. In this essay, I undertake to address the Moorean challenge, clarifying our theoretical alternatives so that we may better decide what to admit into our moral ontology and better assess what may be at stake in whether objectivists treatgoodorgood for(or neither) as fundamental. I compare the Moorean and welfarist pictures of value, providing an account of the form and function ofgood for. According to this account “good for” expresses a distinctrelational valuethat has its source in the value of persons. Good for value is thus a form of extrinsic value that provides agent-neutral reasons for action, and it plays a pervasive normative role in regulating child rearing, guiding individual life choices, and shaping social policy formation.

Categorical and Agent-neutral Reasons in Kantian Justifications of Morality

The dispute between Kantians and Humeans over whether practical reason can justify moral reasons for all agents is often characterized as a debate over whether reasons are hypothetical or categorical. Instead, this debate must be understood in terms of the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons. This paper considers Alan Gewirth’s Reason and Morality as a case study of a Kantian justification of morality focused on deriving categorical reasons from hypothetical reasons. The case study demonstrates first, the possibility of categorical agent-relative reasons, and second, that inattention to this possibility has caused considerable confusion in the debate between Kantians and Humeans.

Agent-Neutral Reasons: Are They for Everyone?

According to both deontologists and consequentialists, if there is a reason to promote the general happiness – or to promote any other state of affairs unrelated to one's own projects or self-interest – then the reason must apply to everyone. This view seems almost self-evident; to challenge it is to challenge the way we think of moral reasons. I contend, however, that the view depends on the unwarranted assumption that the only way to restrict the application scope of a reason for action is by restricting it to those agents whose interests or projects are involved in the reason. In fact normative theories may coherently restrict application scopes in other ways. Thus we must take seriously the possibility that the reason to promote the general happiness, although genuine, does not apply to everyone.

Value and Agent-Relative Reasons

In recent years the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons has been taken by many to play a key role in distinguishing deontology from consequentialism. It is central to all universalist consequentialist theories that value is determined impersonally; the real value of any state of affairs does not depend on the point of view of the agent. No reference, therefore, to the agent or to his or her position in the world need enter into a consequentialist understanding of what makes an action right or wrong or morally permissible. Consequentialism thus provides an agent-neutral account of both the right and the good.