Normative Reasons Qua Facts and the Agent-Neutral/relative Dichotomy: a Response to Rønnow-Rasmussen

Philosophia 45 (1):207-225 (2017)
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Abstract

This paper offers a defence of the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons for action from scepticism aired by Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen. In response it is argued that the Nagelian notion of an agent-neutral reason is not incomprehensible, and that agent-neutral reasons can indeed be understood as obtaining states of affairs that count in favour of anyone and everyone performing the action they favour. Furthermore, I argue that a distinction drawn between agent-neutral and agent-relative reason-statements that express the salient features of reason-constitutive states of affairs is neither reductive in the sense of reducing normative reasons to the propositional content of an agent’s mental state, nor trivial in the sense of locating the distinction merely in an agent’s description of the world.

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Jamie Buckland
University of York

Citations of this work

Punishment, Consent, Value and Respect.Matías Parmigiani - 2022 - Análisis Filosófico 42 (1):171-189.
Reasons and Normativity.Jakob Green Werkmäster - 2019 - Dissertation, Lund University

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon (ed.) - 1998 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
The View From Nowhere.Thomas Nagel - 1986 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Rationality Through Reasoning.John Broome (ed.) - 2013 - Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

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