Abstract
Daniel Whiting’s excellent new book, The Range of Reasons (2022), makes a number of noteworthy contributions to the philosophical literature on reasons and normativity. A good deal has been written on normative reasons, and it is no easy thing to make novel and promising arguments. Yet, this is what Whiting manages to do. We are sympathetic to some of his ideas and critical of others. It makes sense for us to focus on the first half of his book, where Whiting presents two accounts of normative reasons (the first superseded by, although possibly also compatible with, the second). We welcome this opportunity to clarify our own current views on the nature of normative reasons by contrasting them with Whiting’s views.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Page numbers that appear without a publication year below should all be read as references to this book.
See also Star (2018), 7–8.
Here we are in fact paraphrasing what Whiting himself said when responding to us in a recent symposium on his book.
Whiting also makes a point of separately providing explanations of justifying and demanding (or requiring) reasons. In our early work on reasons, we admittedly did not discuss this distinction. However, Joshua Gert (2016, 166) points out that there is an alternative way for us to capture it: we can construe justifying reasons as evidence that it is not the case that one ought not A (i.e., that it is permissible to A). See also Kearns (2016). This small move away from RAE as a precise statement is clearly in the spirit of our new expansive evidential account of reasons.
References
Brunero, J. (2018). Reasons, evidence, and explanations. In D. Star (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity (pp. 321–341). Oxford University Press.
Gert, J. (2016). The distinction between justifying and requiring: Nothing to fear. In B. Maguire & E. Lord (Eds.), Weighing Reasons (pp. 157–172). Oxford University Press.
Kearns, S. (2016). Bearing the weight of reasons. In B. Maguire & E. Lord (Eds.), Weighing Reasons (pp. 173–190). Oxford University Press.
Kearns, S., & Star, D. (2008). Reasons: Explanations or evidence? Ethics, 119(1), 31–56.
Kearns, S., & Star, D. (2009). Reasons as evidence. Oxford Studies in Metaethics, 4, 215–242.
Kearns, S., & Star, D. (2013). Weighing reasons. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 10(1), 70–86.
Schmidt, E. (2017). New trouble for reasons as evidence: Means that don’t justify the ends. Ethics, 127(3), 708–718.
Star, D. (2015). Knowing better: Virtue, deliberation, and normative ethics. Oxford University Press.
Star, D. (2018). Introduction. In D. Star (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity (pp. 1–17). Oxford University Press.
Whiting, D. (2018). Right in some respects: Reasons as evidence. Philosophical Studies, 175(9), 2191–2208.
Whiting, D. (2022). The range of reasons. Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Kearns, S., Star, D. A range of reasons. AJPH 3, 7 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-024-00139-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-024-00139-w