What You’re Rationally Required to Do and What You Ought to Do

Mind 126 (504):1109-1154 (2017)
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Abstract

It is a truism that we ought to be rational. Despite this, it has become popular to think that it is not the case that we ought to be rational. In this paper I argue for a view about rationality—the view that what one is rationally required to do is determined by the normative reasons one possesses—by showing that it can vindicate that one ought to be rational. I do this by showing that it is independently very plausible that what one ought to do is determined by the normative reasons one possesses. Thus, the paper also makes a contribution tos the debate about the nature of our obligations.

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Errol Lord
University of Pennsylvania

Citations of this work

Right in some respects: reasons as evidence.Daniel Whiting - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (9):2191-2208.
Rationality versus Normativity.John Broome - 2020 - Australasian Philosophical Review 4 (4):293-311.
Two challenges for 'no-norms' theism.James Reilly - 2023 - Religious Studies 59 (4):775-782.

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References found in this work

The moral problem.Michael Smith - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell.
The sources of normativity.Christine M. Korsgaard - 1996 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Onora O'Neill.
Unprincipled virtue: an inquiry into moral agency.Nomy Arpaly - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Practical Reality.Jonathan Dancy - 2000 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
The Importance of Being Rational.Errol Lord - 2018 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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