Abstract
In a series of papers, Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star defend the following general account of reasons:
R: Necessarily, a fact F is a reason for an agent A to Φ iff F is evidence that an agent ought to Φ.
In this paper, I argue that the reasons as evidence view will run afoul of a motivational constraint on moral reasons, and that this is a powerful reason to reject the reasons as evidence view. The motivational constraint is as follows:
M: For some consideration C to be a moral reason for an agent to Φ it must be possible for C to figure as part of the agent’s motivation for Φing without thereby undercutting (either partially or wholly) the positive moral evaluation of the agent in acting as she does.
M presents a problem for Kearns and Star’s view because there will be cases where some consideration is evidence that an agent ought to Φ, but where if an agent was motivated by that consideration the agent’s action would thereby be worse from a moral perspective for that very reason. Further, I argue that this problem will likely arise on any moral theory that evaluates the motivation of an agent as a component of assessing the moral status of acts.
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Notes
For anyone who thinks that actions are partially individuated by the motivations of an agent in doing what she does, the same observation could have been drawn about the praiseworthiness of actions. While I am sympathetic to this way of individuating actions, I am trying to cast a wider net, and hence, I have chosen to talk about the praiseworthiness of an agent in acting as she does. My hope is that putting the point this way will allow those who want to drive a sharp wedge between the praiseworthiness of acts and the praiseworthiness of agents to still find something of use in the arguments that follow. As a further point of clarification, the praiseworthiness of an agent in acting as she does should not be confused with the praiseworthiness of an agent as such—whether she is virtuous, say.
Hereafter referred to as R or the reasons as evidence view.
Nomy Arpaly’s discussion of Huck Finn and reverse Akrasia provides a nice account of the sort of thing that I have in mind. See Arpaly (2004) especially pp. 75–79.
Mark Schroeder discusses a so-called “deliberative constraint” that bears some similarity to M. See Schroeder (2008) especially, pp. 26–40.
In Jordan (2013) I argue, at somewhat greater length, that the virtuousness of an act is not a reason to do it in order to rebut an objection to particularist accounts of moral reasons.
See 1105b, for instance.
I’d like to thank an anonymous reviewer for emphasizing the peculiar oddness of treating courage as a reason.
Elsewhere I have argued that despite the fact that virtues are not reasons, they could still figure as part of a general framework for understanding the internal coherence of the kind of reasons for which virtuous agents act. See Jordan (2013)
I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this issue.
A similar story might be told about being motivated with an eye towards virtue.
Whether there is an analogous constraint for prudential or epistemic reasons is a topic for another forum.
For a related discussion of objections of this kind, see Kearns and Star (2013) especially pp. 71–74.
Strictly speaking, Kearns and Star argue that either reasons are not right-makers, or that evidence that one ought is a right maker. Since the idea that reasons make actions right is a very common and attractive presupposition among the opponents of R—indeed one that drives the main line of objection—and since Kearns and Star provide no independent reason to reject it, I will proceed in what follows to address Kearns and Star’s response under the assumption that reasons are right-makers. Rejecting the idea that reasons make actions right would require substantial further argument.
Kearns and Star may be assuming that for some consideration to be a reason in some context, it must necessarily have the same normative status across all contexts. This is a highly controversial assumption, and by my lights a clearly false one. In any case, this assumption would substantially undercut the appeal of this line of defense. Such an assumption is at odds with moral particularism—e.g. Dancy (2004)—and moderate generalisms that claim that fundamental moral principles are defeasible—e.g. Little (2000), Lance and Little (2004), Väyrynen (2006, 2009) and perhaps Herman (1993, especially pp.145–150) who argues that the categorical imperative only issues presumptive dictates concerning what we ought to do. Further, this assumption is also at odds with generalist views that allow that reasons have variant normative relevance across contexts, but claim that such variance can be captured in terms of exceptionless principles—see McKeever and Ridge (2006) pp. 41–44. Moreover, more robust generalists who insist that some fundamental reasons have invariant normative relevance across all contexts still allow that there may be derivative reasons that have context variant normative relevance, see for example Crisp (2000).
This option may require rejecting more robust forms of generalism. See the discussion in footnote 18.
Crisp’s (2000) discussion of the relation between derivative and what he calls ultimate reasons is relevant here.
Or if one prefers a subjectivized reading of reasons, the fact that an expected outcome of giving would be that some starvation would be averted.
References
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Jordan, A. On Reasons, Evidence of Oughts, and Morally Fitting Motives. Philosophia 42, 391–403 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9492-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9492-8