Pro Tanto Reason Research Articles

Process Reliabilism, Virtue Reliabilism, and the Value of Knowledge

AbstractThe value problem for knowledge is the problem of explaining why knowledge is cognitively more valuable than mere true belief. If an account of the nature of knowledge is unable to solve the value problem for knowledge, this provides a pro tanto reason to reject that account. Recent literature argues that process reliabilism is unable to solve the value problem because it succumbs to an objection known as the swamping objection. Virtue reliabilism (i.e., agent reliabilism), on the other hand, is able to solve the value problem because it can avoid the swamping objection. I argue that virtue reliabilism escapes the swamping objection only by employing what I call an entailment strategy. Furthermore, since an entailment strategy is open to the process reliabilist (in two different forms), I argue that the process reliabilist is also able to escape the swamping objection and thereby solve the value problem for knowledge.

Autonomy, free speech and automatic behaviour

One of the strongest defences of free speech holds that autonomy requires the protection of speech. In this paper I examine five conditions that autonomy must satisfy. I survey recent research in social psychology regarding automatic behaviour, and a challenge to autonomy is articulated. I argue that a plausible strategy for neutralising some of the autonomy-threatening automatic responses consists in avoiding the exposure to the environmental features that trigger them. If this is so, we can good autonomy-based pro tanto reasons for controlling exposure to certain forms of speech.

Rejecting Ethical Deflationism

One of the perennial challenges of ethical theory has been to provide an answer to a number of views that appear to undermine the importance of ethical questions. We may refer to such views collectively as “deflationary ethical theories.” These include theories, such as nihilism, according to which no action is better than any other, as well as relativistic theories according to which no ethical theory is better than any other. In this article I present a new response to such deflationary ethical views. Drawing a distinction between acceptance and rejection, on the one hand, and belief and disbelief, on the other, I argue that we have strong reason to reject these theories, even if we do not have reason to disbelieve them. In Section I, I clarify the question of what ethical theory we should accept, and I argue for the central importance of this question. In Section II, I discuss what I call “absolutely deflationary” ethical theories. These are theories according to which it matters not at all what we do or not at all what ethical theory we accept. I argue that it is generally rational to reject any theory of this kind. In Section III, I discuss what I call “relatively deflationary” ethical theories. These are theories according to which it matters little what we do or what ethical theory we accept. I argue that we have strong pro tanto reason to reject theories of this kind. And then, in Sections IV and V, I reply to some common objections to my arguments. Throughout, I will be arguing not that deflationary ethical theories are false but only that we should reject them from the practical point of view as a basis for guiding our actions.

School Choice and the Burdens of Justice

This paper takes issue with Swift’s argument for the claim that parents who affirm equality of opportunity can justifiably buy advantageous private schooling if it is necessary to ensure educational adequacy for their children. We advance a number of reasons of justice and morality that support the view that egalitarian parents ought to accept a degree of educational inadequacy: parents have a pro tanto reason to share the burdens of injustice; it is not obvious that the legitimacy of parental partiality is as extensive in unjust circumstances as it is under just arrangements; we have some duty of justice to accept inadequacy for our children in the fight for the realization of educational justice; and we might be morally required to accept more than a fair share of the burden of establishing just educational institutions.

Does justice require genetic enhancements?

It is argued that justice in some cases provides a pro tanto reason genetically to enhance victims of the genetic lottery. Various arguments--both to the effect that justice provides no...

Kagan on Requirements: Mill on Sanctions

According to Shelly Kagan, An agent is morally required to perform ... that act which can be reasonably expected to lead to the best consequences overall (p. 204).1 She is required to do this even if it involves the sacrifice of her own interests. But Kagan does not infer from this that it is right or permissible to force an agent to promote the good, or that other people may coercively exact the sacrifice from her: The impermissibility of one or more individuals imposing sacrifice upon another is completely compatible with that other person's nonetheless being morally required to make the sacrifice herself. So even if it is true that society may not enforce to promote the good, this does not show that morality does not include such requirement (p. 208; emphasis in original). My aim in this article is to ask what moral amounts to, if the fact that something is required does not imply that it is appropriate to force people to do it. I shall argue that Kagan's conception of moral does not amount to much more than what he calls a pro tanto reason (p. 16). And I shall show that, as one moves from pro tanto reasons to what is morally required, in some robustly distinct sense of requirement, one finds grounds for making some of the distinctions that are suggested by those whom Kagan refers to as the moderate defenders of our ordinary moral views.

Defending Moral Options

Shelly Kagan has produced a sustained and powerful attack on two central features of ordinary morality (the defender of which he calls the moderate) the belief in agent-relative options to give special weight to one's own interests and projects and thereby not maximally to promote the good, and the belief in agent-relative constraints against harming persons even if doing so would prevent more such harms done by others or would, more generally, maximally promote the good. The extremist, in contrast, rejects both options and constraints and believes that we are always morally required maximally to promote the good. Kagan argues that it is a combination of several fundamental features of the moderate's position that together cannot be coherently defended, but I will focus only on agent-relative options in order to suggest that the moderate at least has more resources for their defense than Kagan grants. I believe the moderate's defense of options against the extremist should to two moral notions-individual autonomy (or self-determination) and fairness. Both are important components of ordinary moral views, yet Kagan only briefly discusses autonomy (pp. 236-39) and essentially ignores fairness. We need to see how Kagan frames the problem of defending options in order to see how autonomy might play a role in their defense. Kagan argues that the moderate is committed to accepting a pro tanto reason to promote the good-meaning that a person always has a reason to perform an action if that action will maximally promote the good, though it is possible that some other moral consideration can either override that reason or keep it in particular circumstances from being morally decisive. This commitment can be seen in the stock case of a drowning child where the moderate believes that one is morally required to save the child if one can do so at little risk or to oneself. However, if the or risk to the agent of saving the child becomes great enough, the moderate holds that doing so is not morally required, even if from an objective standpoint doing so would still maximize the good. It is this appeal to cost that the moderate believes overrides the reason to promote the good, or prevents it from being morally decisive in the