Abstract

The present work lays the foundations for a proposed longer work in which I shall defend an answer to the question whether immoral action is necessarily irrational. Here I first examine the traditional formulations, by Hume and Kant, of the crucial positions in the controversy over whether reason does or does not require us to do right or act well, or forbid us to do wrong or be villainous, and I criticize the views of each of these philosophers. I then show how this issue has been transformed in contemporary philosophy, and address myself specifically to one subsidiary issue, whether there necessarily is a reason for every person to do each act that he or she ought, morally, to do. I then develop and defend an analysis of reasons for action based on our common sense notion of reasons, an account according to which there can be a reason for someone to act even though he or she does nor recognize it. Some moral reasons scepticism is based on the assumption that in order for there to be a reason for someone to act, he must have a desire that he can expect to satisfy by so acting. Consequently I next provide a detailed analysis of the relationship between reasons for action and desires, and argue that, contrary to this assumption, desire-independent reasons are possible, and a number of considerations appear to function this way. I then suggest a new approach to the issue of reasons to be moral, using the results obtained so far and the idea of a pattern of nongoal practical reasoning that it is rational for someone to have. I sketch arguments that might be offered within this approach and some difficulties that will arise, and conclude that, given an objective theory of human values, it will support moral rationalism or something close to it, but without such a theory it will support moral reasons scepticism