Reasons Wrong and Right

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 97 (3):371-399 (2016)
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Abstract

The fact that someone is generous is a reason to admire them. The fact that someone will pay you to admire them is also a reason to admire them. But there is a difference in kind between these two reasons: the former seems to be the ‘right’ kind of reason to admire, whereas the latter seems to be the ‘wrong’ kind of reason to admire. The Wrong Kind of Reasons Problem is the problem of explaining the difference between the ‘right’ and the ‘wrong’ kind of reasons wherever it appears. In this article I argue that two recent proposals for solving the Wrong Kind of Reasons Problem do not work. I then offer an alternative solution that provides a unified, systematic explanation of the difference between the two kinds of reasons.

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Nathaniel Sharadin
University of Hong Kong

Citations of this work

Fittingness.Christopher Howard - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13 (11):e12542.
Moral encroachment and reasons of the wrong kind.James Fritz - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (10):3051-3070.
The fittingness of emotions.Hichem Naar - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):13601-13619.

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References found in this work

What we owe to each other.Thomas Scanlon - 1998 - Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
On What Matters: Two-Volume Set.Derek Parfit - 2011 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Slaves of the passions.Mark Andrew Schroeder - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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