Abstract

Standard reasons-responsiveness theories, such as Fischer’s and Ravizza’s (1998), tell us to look to other possible worlds in order to determine whether an agent is appropriately responsive to reasons. Carolina Sartorio (2018) has given a powerful critique of such counterfactual accounts of reasons-responsiveness, what she calls the “demarcation problem,” and has given an alternative way of characterizing reasons-responsiveness, one that allegedly avoids the demarcation problem. While we agree with Sartorio that the demarcation problem is a serious one for standard counterfactual accounts of reasons-responsiveness, we argue that her own characterization of reasons-responsiveness faces a serious demarcation problem of its own. We conclude by sketching a characterization of reasons-responsiveness that, although inspired by Sartorio’s account, promises to avoid any demarcation problem.