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Categorical and Agent-neutral Reasons in Kantian Justifications of Morality

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. See, for example, Phillipa Foot’s (1972) classic article “Morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives,” Philosophical Review, 81, 305–316.

  2. I define Kantians as those who hold that all agents must accept reasons to be moral derived solely from procedures of practical reasoning based on facts about the nature of rational agency. This definition of the Kantian view is non-standard in various ways, particularly in leaving out considerations about respecting the autonomy of others. Nevertheless, it serves as a useful definition for distinguishing camps in the debate over whether or not practical reason can be used to justify moral obligations that apply to all agents. Alan Gewirth, Christine Korsgaard, and Thomas Nagel in his early work are examples of contemporary Kantians under this definition.

  3. In “Categorical and agent-neutral reasons” section, I offer more complete definitions of categorical and hypothetical reasons, as well as agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons.

  4. Gewirth, A. (1978). Reason and morality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  5. There is an important issue that I will set aside, namely, the idea that a reason requires one to actually perform the action of pursuing its object. Instead, my view is that a reason requires one to consider pursuing its object. Typically, we do not count agents as irrational if they fail to pursue what they want. After all, there may be other options available that the agents could rationally pursue. Thus, if I have a reason to get ice cream, the requirement I must express is ‘I must at least consider getting some ice cream.’ For the sake of simplicity, and because nothing in my current argument rests on one’s view of this issue, I will ignore this issue and instead treat reasons as if they did require pursuing their objects. Furthermore, this issue of whether a reason requires the pursuit of an object or merely the consideration of the pursuit of an object is also an entirely different issue than whether the reason and its corresponding requirement are merely pro tanto or all-things-considered.

  6. Reasons might also be necessary in the sense that they are universal, requiring an agent to acknowledge similar reasons obtaining in relevantly similar circumstances. I shall set aside the necessity of universality, as it may apply even to non-necessary reasons.

  7. I have formulated reasons as requirements to pursue an object, but the term ‘object’ should be construed very broadly here. An object may be not only a physical object like a doughnut, but may also be a state of affairs like having a job. Further, a practical reason may be focused explicitly on an action, which can be accommodated in this formulation as a reason to bring about the state of affairs where the agent performs that action. The term ‘object’ is useful here simply to designate whatever the reason is directed towards, i.e. the object of the reason. Nothing of any substance should rest on this point, as reasons could be equivalently formulated in terms of a reason to perform some action, where the action may be construed simply as an action or as the pursuit of an object or state of affairs.

  8. Freedom and well-being will be the relevant objects when discussing Gewirth.

  9. More precisely, the particularization of the object must indicate some relationship between the circumstances under which the reason obtains and a particular agent. If the particular agent referred to by the circumstances under which the reason obtains is the only agent who is required to pursue the object of the reason, then the reason is agent-relative. If, however, all agents are required to pursue the object, even once the object has been particularized along the lines of a relationship between the conditions under which the reason obtains and a particular agent, then the reason is agent-neutral. This detail involving the conditions under which the reason obtains will be unimportant for the arguments at hand, and will therefore be set aside.

  10. I think it stretches the idea of necessity to express it as agent-neutrality, in that agent-neutrality is more appropriately construed as an issue of the scope regarding to whom the reason provides considerations that must be taken into account. Although this issue of scope can be glossed as necessity, in that it requires all agents to accept certain considerations, this does not seem to me to be a different type of necessity than agent-relative reasons have, but rather the same necessity with a different scope. I have provided this gloss of necessity as agent-neutrality, however, so as to not privilege the discussion in my favor and against Gewirth. In general, I am somewhat uncomfortable about the use of the term ‘necessity’ in this section, and my different possible readings of the term are attempts to find more precise ways of capturing certain ways of talking about requirements and “necessary” reasons.

  11. Note that this reason might be hypothetical in respect to John, in that if John did not have the contingent desire directed towards alleviating his loneliness, then he might not be required to do so. The reason, however, would be categorical in respect to others, because the requirements it places on others would not depend on any of their contingent desires or reasons. An agent-neutral reason thus (in some sense) entails a categorical reason, but I will maintain that categorical reasons do not entail agent-neutral reasons.

  12. Pain provides merely one example of a reason, which might be seen as a requirement that exists external to agents (in a Platonic or Moorean sense), rather than as a requirement that agents construct. Such external reasons are always categorical in the sense of placing requirements on agents regardless of their contingent psychological states, but may still, nevertheless, be agent-relative. G. E. Moore, for example, takes values to be simple and unanalysable, and hence necessarily external to agents (or not reducible to natural facts about agents), but still feels compelled to offer an argument against ethical egoism – i.e. an argument for the agent-neutrality of such values. See Moore, G. E. (1993). Principia ethica (rev. ed.), Chapter 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  13. If agent-neutral reasons are all categorical, and if agent neutral reasons are necessary for a Kantian justification of morality, then categorical reasons are necessary for a Kantian justification of morality. See note 11.

  14. There also may be some types of reasons other than agent-neutral that require the direct consideration of other agents. Some have held that morality is best captured by agent-relative reasons that involve the direct consideration of others, considering, for example, cases of promising to involve agent-relative reasons. Nevertheless, the primary thrust of this paper is that categorical reasons need not involve the consideration of others that is essential to morality, and instead that agent-neutral reasons provide one of the most plausible ways of including this direct consideration of others.

  15. There are, of course, moral theories that do not involve the direct consideration of others, but Kantians have typically found such theories to be unsatisfying. For example, Humean theories of morality provide consideration of others, but only indirectly, based on contingent desires of an agent.

  16. As another example, one can consider Christine Korsgaard’s claim that every agent must value his or her own capacity to construct reasons. The purported value of our capacity to construct reasons is a categorical value, capable of creating categorical obligations, but Korsgaard recognizes that claiming that each of us must value his or her own capacity to construct reasons does not, by itself, entail that each of us must value everyone’s capacity to construct reasons. As such, Korsgaard recognizes (although not explicitly) the purported value of an agent’s capacity to construct reasons to be categorical, but not necessarily agent-neutral. It is interesting to note that Korsgaard herself seems somewhat unclear on the relevance of the difference between categorical and agent-neutral reasons, as she does proclaim that in justifying categorical reasons she has made some progress towards justifying morality. See Korsgaard, C. (1996). The sources of normativity, Lectures 3 and 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  17. Gewirth, A. (1978). Reason and morality, p. 40. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

  18. Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 39.

  19. If we introduce the language of reasons it becomes clearer in what sense an action having a point in its favor constitutes that action being valuable. A point in favor of an act can be read as a reason to perform the act because reasons are things that count in deliberation. In the most basic sense, reasons simply are points in favor of an act. If we accept this line of argument, then we can see the sense in which a desire counting for something constitutes a value. For how can something count, or carry weight in a normative system, unless it has value? This limited sense of value, as something that counts, is suggested in the exchange between Michael Slote and Lawrence Becker on Gewirth’s argument that desires constitute values. See Slote, M. (1999). Anticipating Gewirth: A critical disagreement. In M. Boylan (Ed.), Gewirth: Critical essays on action, rationality, and community (pp. 35–38 incl.) Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield and Becker, L. C. (1999). Values and ends: Comments on Michael Slote ‘Anticipating Gewirth.’ In M. Boylan (Ed.), Gewirth: Critical essays on action, rationality, and community (pp. 39–44 incl.) Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

  20. Gewirth divides values into two classes: particular-occurrent goods and generic-dispositional goods. Gewirth tells us, “Viewed in the former way [occurrently], they consist in the particular purposes any person may actually try to fulfill by his actions, including maintaining particular basic goods, retaining the particular goods he already has, and obtaining further particular goods. Viewed in the latter way [dispositionally], the three kinds of goods [maintaining particular basic goods, retaining the particular goods he already has, and obtaining further particular goods] consist in the general conditions and abilities required for fulfilling any such particular purpose.” See Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 58. Examples of dispositional goods may include my health, enough to eat, and a place to live; without these, I could not earn the money necessary to pay my cable bill or buy new contraptions.

  21. Gewirth sees freedom as occurrent in requiring the absence of constraint on one’s actions as they occur. He sees freedom as dispositional in allowing the freedom to dispose oneself towards whichever of one’s ends one will actually pursue. Gewirth’s actual definition of dispositional freedom is that free choices, “may be dispositional, in that if the agent had chosen not to perform the action, he would not have performed it.” See Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 32. This provides an agent counterfactual control over her choices, such that what she decides to pursue will depend upon her choice that is controlled by her, “antecedent, informed deliberation between alternatives.” See Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 31.

  22. This necessary reason depends on the apparent assumption that all agents have desires, and hence, it might appear the necessary reason would fail to apply to agents without desires. Given Gewirth’s broad definition of desires, an agent with no desires would have no purposes to pursue, nor interests in any goals, and would therefore fail to be an agent in the sense of someone who might take action. Thus, because the possibility of action is connected to agency, all agents must have desires and hence a necessary reason to pursue their freedom and well-being.

  23. Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 80.

  24. It is worth noting that the transition from (1) to (2) involves a transition from a rights–claim to an ‘ought’ judgment. Gewirth states, “A right–claim is correlative with and logically equivalent to a strict ‘ought’-judgment that other persons ought at least refrain from interfering.” See Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 78.

  25. McMahon, C. (1986). Gewirth’s justification of morality. Philosophical Studies, 50, 261–281 (incl.).

  26. Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 79.

  27. Gewirth’s argument is most clearly represented this way in Gewirth, A. (1988). The justification of morality. Philosophical Studies, 53, 245–262 (incl.), especially p. 259.

  28. Universality is the requirement that if an agent has a reason to pursue an end because of certain circumstances, the agent must acknowledge that any other agent in relevantly similar circumstances has a reason to pursue a similar end.

  29. The fact that I cannot make a valid rights claim unless others have a reason to respect it, combined with the fact that the reason others have to respect my rights claim is that they make similar rights claims, creates a similarity between Gewirth’s theory and social contract theories. Gewirth is not, strictly, a contract theorist in that he argues agents claim rights for themselves, rather than negotiating with others and forming a contract for those rights. Gewirth’s theory is like a contract theory, however, in that one cannot make a valid rights claim unless every agent has reason to make a similar rights claim. If some agents have no reason to make a rights claim, then any possible rights claim that I made against them would be invalid, because they would have no reason to respect my claim.

  30. Gewirth states that rights claims are claims made against other agents, and as justified claims, the agents against whom the right is claimed must reasons to respect that right. See Gewirth, Reason and morality, 65. In the generalized case where an agent claims rights against all other agents, Gewirth’s view of rights claims is therefore inherently agent-neutral. To say that a rights claim is inherently agent-neutral is to say that it provides agent-neutral reasons to all agents who assent to the claim.

  31. An anonymous reviewer has suggested an alternate interpretation of Gewirth’s view of rights claims. On the suggested interpretation the claimant is committed to seeing the claim as binding on those to whom the claim is addressed, but the claimant is not thereby committed to the view that the addressees should see that rights claim as binding upon themselves. This interpretation is textually possible, and if this interpretation were workable within the overall context of Gewirth’s argument, the burdens on Gewirth’s argument would be significantly reduced. If the claimant need not hold that the addressees of a rights claim should see the claim as binding, then the way in which a consideration of other agents entered into Gewirth’s argument would not be required to meet the full standard of agent-neutrality. Importantly, my criticism of Gewirth that appears in “Criticism of Gewirth” section would then no longer be valid.The suggested interpretation is not, however, workable in the overall context of Gewirth’s argument, and although it would make it easier for Gewirth to establish the logical necessity for an agent to make a rights claim, it would render impossible Gewirth’s later appeal to universality. To see the consequences of the suggested interpretation, one first needs to clarify the status of an apparent conflict within the interpretation. The interpretation seems to commit the claimant to a contradictory view in which the addressee both should and need not see the rights claim as binding. It is important to note that this cannot be a simple disagreement in which either the claimant or addressee must be mistaken. If such were the case, then in order for the rights claim to be valid, the addressee would have to be mistaken, and the claimant would be justified in both seeing the addressee as bound by the claim and holding that the addressee should see him or herself as bound by the claim. The apparent disagreement on the bindingness of the claim must therefore not constitute a logical contradiction, and the only way such contradiction can be avoided is if the bindingness of the rights claim is evaluated from two differing dialectical perspectives. From the perspective of the claimant, the claim is binding on the addressee, but the claimant acknowledges that the addressee has a differing perspective in which the claim may be validly judged to be non-binding. If, however, differing perspectives are allowed to give rise to conflicting, but equally valid, judgments, then the requirement of universality (which demands consistency in such judgments even amongst perspectives) would have to be abandoned. Furthermore, if the requirement of universality is abandoned, then Gewirth’s argument will be unable to succeed, because universality would no longer demand that I see another agent’s rights claim as binding on me, merely in light of the fact that I have made a similar rights claim that I see as binding on others. The anonymous reviewer’s alternate interpretation of Gewirth’s view of rights claims must therefore be rejected as it is incompatible with one of the most essential steps in Gewirth’s argument.

  32. Deryck Beyleveld has argued that most criticisms of Gewirth fail to appropriately account for Gewirth’s Argument from the Sufficiency of Agency (ASA). See Beyleveld, D. (1991). The dialectical necessity of morality. An analysis and defense of Alan Gewirth’s argument to the principle of generic consistency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, and Beyleveld, D. (2002). A reply to Marcus G. Singer on Gewirth, Beyleveld and dialectical necessity. Ratio Juris, 15, 458–473 (incl.). The ASA attempts to show that no other grounds are relevant to claiming a right to freedom and well-being other than being an agent (hence having a necessary reason to pursue freedom and well-being), so that if I claim a right to freedom and well-being because I am an agent, then I must acknowledge the same right for any other agent. The ASA, then, is encapsulated in my explanation of McMahon’s misunderstanding of how Gewirth’s argument is intended to work. In one sense I am perfectly willing to grant that the ASA is successful, in that if I must claim a right to freedom and well-being based solely on my nature as an agent, then I must grant the same right to all other agents. This would be, in some sense, an important result because it moves us directly from my (potential) rights claim to acknowledging rights for all agents, which would be one suitable justification for morality. Nevertheless, the ASA, understood in the sense in which I am willing to grant its success, is entirely irrelevant because I will argue that Gewirth’s argument fails before the ASA becomes applicable. That is, I will argue that even though my nature as an agent might require me to accept that I necessarily have a reason to pursue my freedom and well-being, I am not thereby logically required to claim rights to my freedom and well-being. The focus of my criticism will be that my necessary reason to pursue my freedom and well-being should be seen as a categorical agent-relative reason that does not require me to claim rights to my freedom and well-being (because such rights claims are inherently agent-neutral, involving the claim that all other agents have a reason to respect my rights). The primary difficulties in any Kantian justification of morality arise where agent-neutral considerations appear first, and in Gewirth’s argument the agent-neutral considerations first appear when I make my rights claim.

  33. Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 80.

  34. The transitions from Gewirth’s versions of (3) and (4) to the versions of (3) and (4) I mention here do involve some presumptions. The transition from Gewirth’s version of (3) to the version of (3) that I mention here involves a transition from acts (of refraining from interfering) to states of affairs (my not having freedom and well-being). The transition from Gewirth’s version of (4) to the version of (4) that I mention here involves a transition from an evaluative to a deontic (ought) claim. One might question either of these presumptions that allow the transitions from Gewirth’s versions to the versions I mention here, but I am willing to grant both presumptions to Gewirth so as to focus on a different flaw in his argument.

  35. Gewirth does deploy one last resource that might appear to save his argument. He offers a criticism of the universal ethical egoist position, directed to showing that there is some contradiction or equivocation involved in claiming only an agent-relative obligation to protect one’s freedom and well-being. Gewirth argues that if the egoist is to escape commitment to contradictory goals, the egoist must equivocate in the sense of ‘ought’ that the egoist applies to him or herself as compared to the sense in which the egoist applies oughts to other agents. The issue of interest, according to Gewirth, is that the egoist thinks that oughts can be separated, in some sense, from their general action-guiding quality. Gewirth argues that this separation of oughts and their action-guiding quality involves the ethical egoist in an equivocation in her use of ‘ought’ regarding herself and her use of ‘ought’ regarding others. As Gewirth puts it, “But this nonuniversality and equivocation are in fact incurred by the egoist’s position. For his ‘ought’ as he applies it to his own actions is unqualifiedly prescriptive; it sets a conclusive requirement for his actions. The egoist definitively endorses his own acting for his self-interest ... On the other hand, when he differentiates his ‘ought’-beliefs about how other persons ought to act from his wants or desires as to their actions, he shows that his ‘ought’ as he applies it to other persons’ actions is not unqualifiedly prescriptive but is at most hypothetical and prima facie.” See Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 85.The appropriate answer to Gewirth is that the action-guiding quality of an ought is not something that applies to any agent who accepts an ought-belief. Instead, the action-guiding quality of an ought, in the case of agent-relative oughts, is something that applies only to one agent. This relativity to an agent is, after all, what agent-relative oughts are all about. Agent-relative ought-beliefs, while themselves universal, have relative content such that the ought, and the action guiding-quality of the ought, both apply only to an individual agent. Therefore, there is no equivocation in the egoist’s use of ‘ought’ because the oughts that the egoist applies to herself have action-guiding qualities only for herself, and the oughts the egoist applies to others have action-guiding qualities only for those others. It is instructive to note that Gewirth’s argument here is quite similar to Nagel’s argument from The Possibility of Altruism. See Nagel, T. (1970). The possibility of altruism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Both arguments attempt to show that reasons cannot be relative to individual agents (i.e. agent-relative), and both attempt to do so by reference to the practical content of reasons or oughts (for Nagel, the motivational content, and for Gewirth, the action-guiding quality). Nagel’s argument has, however, been widely rejected (even by Nagel himself). See Nagel, T. (1986). The view from nowhere (p. 159) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Insofar as Gewirth’s criticism of the ethical egoist is similar to Nagel’s it adds nothing new to the debate over the justification of morality. Hence, I have chosen to focus more directly on other features of Gewirth’s argument.

  36. Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 64.

  37. Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 77.

  38. Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 81.

  39. The only other possible reconstruction of Gewirth here is that he believes that the necessary reasons should be expressed as categorical requirements, and then fallaciously believes that categorical requirements are sufficient to justify morality.

  40. Gewirth, apparently, would agree with my claim that the necessity of the requirements must be the same type of necessity in the necessary reasons. He remarks, “It would be contradictory for him to accept both that he must have freedom and well-being and that other persons may interfere with his having those, where the criterion of the ‘must’ and the ‘may’ are the same, consisting in the agent’s own requirements for agency. Hence, from the agent’s standpoint, the necessity of his having freedom and well-being entails the necessity of other persons’ at least refraining from interference with his having them.” See Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 81, emphasis in original. Furthermore, if some type of necessity other than the necessity of necessary reasons were attributed to the requirements entailed by those reasons, then one would need a further justification of that attribution of necessity. Such a justification does not appear to be forthcoming, particularly not in Gewirth’s work.

  41. Given that each agent is required to pursue his or her own freedom and well-being, one might think that Gewirth intends an instrumental argument that claiming rights to freedom and well-being is a necessary means to securing one’s own freedom and well-being. Many commentators have read Gewirth this way, and criticisms of Gewirth based on the contention that we can secure our own freedom and well-being without claiming rights to them are common. Bernard Williams, R. M. Hare, Jesse Kalin, and Kai Nielsen among others have offered similar criticisms. See Williams, B. (1985). Ethics and the limits of philosophy (Ch. 4). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Hare, R. M. (1984). Do agents have to be moralists? In E. J. Regis (Ed.), Gewirth’s ethical rationalism: Critical essays (52–58 incl.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Kalin, J. (1984). Public pursuit and private escape: The persistence of egoism. In E. J. Regis (Ed.), Gewirth’s ethical rationalism: Critical essays (128–146 incl.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press; and Nielsen, K. (1984). Against ethical rationalism. In E. J. Regis (Ed.), Gewirth’s ethical rationalism: Critical essays (59–83 incl.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nielsen, for instance, suggests it would be equally efficacious in protecting my freedom and well-being if I could merely bring others to believe that I had rights to freedom and well-being. Further, the production of this belief in others might be accomplished without actually making a sincere rights claim. See Nielsen, “Against ethical rationalism,” p. 69. Another possibility would be to simply accumulate enough material protection (in the form of strength or guile) to obtain a high probability of safeguarding one’s freedom and well-being. To these criticisms a defender of Gewirth might reply that one wishes for an assurance of maintaining one’s freedom and well-being, rather than merely a high probability of such. Claiming a right to freedom and well-being, however, provides no assurance, because others may still violate that right. Therefore, as one has no option but to pursue the best means for a high probability of maintaining one’s freedom and well-being, one need not claim rights to them. It is striking how closely the above arguments parallel arguments against Hobbes’ theory of morality. Early in Reason and morality, however, Gewirth states that Hobbes’ theory will not work for precisely the reasons discussed above. See Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 19. I am therefore quite skeptical that Gewirth intended the connection between the necessary reason to pursue freedom and well-being and the rights claim to be an instrumental connection, and instead I believe Gewirth intended the connection to be one of logical entailment.

  42. Furthermore, this categorical reason and its corresponding requirement may be more authoritative than requirements entailed by non-necessary reasons, but even so, it need only be more authoritative for me. Gewirth does claim that the rights to freedom and well-being would, “take precedence over other rights, in that the later, if they are to be valid, must not violate the rights to freedom and well-being.” See Gewirth, Reason and morality, p. 64. Gewirth does not, however, explicitly defend this claim, so the considerations I offer are reconstructions of what I believe he most likely had in mind. Because my necessary reason to pursue freedom and well-being are foundational, in a sense, for all my other reasons (in that if I do not have freedom and well-being, I cannot achieve anything else that I have a reason to pursue) it may be that my freedom and well-being are incommensurable with my other reasons. That is, it may be that I cannot rationally trade my freedom and well-being for something else that I have reason to pursue, because if I lose my freedom and well-being, then all of my other reasons have, so to speak, the rug pulled out from under them. Thus, the requirement I express in virtue of my necessary reason to pursue freedom and well-being, that “I must pursue my freedom and well-being”, can be both categorical and particularly authoritative, but still only agent-relative. Others have disputed this point. For example, see, Reagan, D. (1999). Gewirth on necessary goods. In M. Boylan (Ed.) Gewirth: Critical essays on action, rationality, and community, (vol. 63, pp. 45–70 incl.). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

  43. David Wiggins also argues that Hume could accept categorical obligations in “Categorical Requirements: Kant and Hume on the Idea of Duty.” Wiggins argues for an interpretation of Hume in which obligations are justified by reference to linguistic practices, and in which desires (including benevolence) serve only as a genealogical origin for obligations. See Wiggins, D. (1991). Categorical requirements: Kant and Hume on the idea of duty. Monist, 74, 83–106 (esp. pp. 90–91). Wiggins’ view in which obligations are justified by reference to linguistic practices undoubtedly can accommodate categorical obligations, but his view strikes me as profoundly non-Humean. The most central feature of Humean views is that reasons must have a justifying basis in an agent’s desires (or similar psychological states), and Wiggins’ view rejects desires as a justifying basis in favor of linguistic practices. In contrast, my argument that Humeans both can and should accept categorical reasons still preserves the central features of the Humean view.

  44. Cullity G. & Gaut, B. (1997). Introduction. In G. Cullity & B. Gaut (Eds.), Ethics and practical reason (3–5). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  45. Heath, J. (1997). Foundationalism and practical reason. Mind, 106, 451–473, esp. 466.

  46. Lenman, J. (1999). Michael Smith and the Daleks: Reason, morality, and contingency. Utilitas, 11(164), 164–177.

  47. Williams, Ethics and the limits of philosophy, Ch. 4.

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Huckfeldt, V.E. Categorical and Agent-neutral Reasons in Kantian Justifications of Morality. Philosophia 35, 23–41 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9051-2

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