The fundamental reason for reasons fundamentalism
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The fundamental reason for reasons fundamentalism Mark Schroeder1
Accepted: 2 September 2020 Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Reasons, it is often said, are king in contemporary normative theory. Some philosophers say not only that the vocabulary of reasons is useful, but that reasons play a fundamental explanatory role in normative theory—that many, most, or even all, other normative facts are grounded in facts about reasons. Even if reasons fundamentalism, the strongest version of this view, has only been wholeheartedly endorsed by a few philosophers, it has a kind of prominence in contemporary normative theory that suits it to be described as orthodoxy by its critics. It is the purpose of this paper to make progress toward understanding what appeal Reasons Fundamentalism should have, and whether that appeal is deserved. I will do so by exploring and comparing two central motivations for Reasons Fundamentalism. Keywords Reasons Normativity Explanation Moral worth
Reasons, it is often said, are king in contemporary normative theory. The vocabulary of reasons forms a common currency in which we can formulate theses as diverse as evidentialism in epistemology and egalitarianism in political philosophy.1 Philosophers appeal to the vocabulary of reasons in order to explain 1
For example, Jonathan Adler (2002, 9) describes the thesis of evidentialism in epistemology as the view that ‘‘to (fully) believe that p one needs adequate reasons’’. Similarly, according to Derek Parfit (1997, 209), one important form of egalitarianism is the view that ‘‘we always have a reason to prevent or reduce inequality, if we can’’. & Mark Schroeder [email protected] 1
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
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M. Schroeder
topics as diverse as peer disagreement, self-defense, supererogation, pragmatic encroachment, legal reasoning, and the emotions, and even this is a severely abbreviated list. But some philosophers go further. They say not only that the vocabulary of reasons is useful, but that reasons play a fundamental explanatory role in normative theory—that many, most, or even all, other normative facts are grounded in facts about reasons. Even if reasons fundamentalism, the strongest version of this view, has only been wholeheartedly endorsed by a few philosophers, it has a kind of prominence in contemporary normative theory that suits it to be described as orthodoxy by its critics.2 It is the purpose of this paper to make progress toward understanding what appeal Reasons Fundamentalism should have, and whether that appeal is deserved. I will do so by exploring and comparing two central motivations for Reasons Fundamentalism.
1 The two motivations Reasons Fundamentalism is a global thesis. Quantifying over each normative property and relation, it says that facts regarding that property or relation are ultimately, inclusively grounded in facts regarding the reason relation. So it can be argued for either directly, by directly motivating a universal claim about normative properties and relations, or in
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