Abstract

If what person ought to do can be understood in terms of what there is reason for the person to do, then what he or she ought to do, legally speaking , is not a matter of what some ideal agent ought to do. A proposition specifies a reason for a person to do something iff it is positively relevant to the prior objective probability of the hypothesis that it is maximally good for the person to do that thing. A person ought to do something iff there is a reason for the person to do that thing and if the person does not do it, there is a reason to review the person's conduct critically. So understood, > is not closed under entailment. Legally speaking , a person ought to do something iff the person ought to do that thing just in case the person's own priorities reflect legal priorities