Volume 21, Number 2
February 2022
ARTICLE

All Reasons Are Fundamentally for Attitudes

and
Volume 21, Number 2, February 2022, Pages 151–174
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v21i2.1341
PDFPDF

Abstract

As rational agents, we are governed by reasons. The fact that there is beer at the pub might be a reason to go there and a reason to believe you will enjoy it. As this example illustrates, there are reasons for both action and for belief. There are also many other responses for which there seem to be reasons—for example, desire, regret, admiration, and blame. This diversity raises questions about how reasons for different responses relate to each other. Might certain such reasons be more fundamental than others? Should certain reasons and not others be treated as paradigmatic? At least implicitly, many philosophers treat reasons for action as the fundamental or paradigmatic case. In contrast, this paper articulates and defends an alternative approach, on which reasons for attitudes are fundamental, and reasons for action are both derivative and, in certain ways, idiosyncratic. After outlining this approach, we focus on defending its most contentious thesis, that reasons for action are fundamentally reasons for intention. We offer two arguments for this thesis, which turn on central roles of reasons: that reasons can be responded to, and that reasons can feature as premises of good reasoning. We then examine objections to the thesis and argue that none succeed. We conclude by sketching some ways in which our approach is significant for theorizing about reasons.
Copyright © 2022 Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
|

Action and Production

Stephen J. White

Is There Value in Keeping a Promise? A Response to Joseph Raz

Crescente Molina

Interests, Wrongs, and the Injury Hypothesis

Richard Healey

Dietz on Group-Based Reasons

Magnus Jedenheim Edling

Reasons: Wrong, Right, Normative, Fundamental

Errol Lord and Kurt Sylvan

Are All Normative Judgments Desire-Like?

Alex Gregory

Explaining Reasons: Where Does the Buck Stop?

Ulrike Heuer

The Essence of Structural Irrationality: The Impossibility of Attitudinal Success

Julian Fink

Resolution and Resolve: Rationally Resisting Temptation

Abigail Bruxvoort

Contextualizing, Clarifying, and Defending the Doctrine of Double Effect

Melissa Moschella

Radical Cognitivism About Practical Reason

William Ratoff

Uncertainty and Intention

Benjamin Lennertz

Portico