Reasons as Reasons for Preferences

American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (3):297-311 (2022)
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Abstract

I argue that all reasons for actions and attitudes consist in reasons for preferences; call this view RP. According to RP, reasons for A to believe that p just consist in reasons for A to prefer their believing that p to their not believing that p, and reasons for A to have a pro-attitude or perform an action just consist in reasons for A to prefer that she has that attitude/performs that action. I argue that we have strong reason to accept RP because we can explain a correlation between reasons for prefer- ences and other reasons only if we accept RP. I argue that no objections undermine RP and that RP has interesting implications for the reasons for attitudes there are and for reasons fundamentalism.

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Rach Cosker-Rowland
University of Leeds

Citations of this work

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References found in this work

What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon (ed.) - 1998 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Slaves of the passions.Mark Schroeder - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Being Realistic About Reasons.Thomas Scanlon - 2014 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism.David Enoch - 2011 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon - 2002 - Mind 111 (442):323-354.

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