Are all practical reasons based on value?

Oxford Studies in Metaethics 17:27-53 (2022)
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Abstract

According to an attractive and widely held view, all practical reasons are explained in terms of the (instrumental or final) value of the action supported by the reason. I argue that this theory is incompatible with plausible assumptions about the practical reasons that correspond to certain moral rights, including the right to a promised action and the right to an exclusive use of one’s property. The argument is an explanatory rather than extensional one: while the actions supported by the relevant reasons (e.g. keeping a valid promise or respecting property) can be argued to have a certain kind of value, I argue that this value presupposes a moral right, and therefore cannot explain the reason. Reflection on such cases suggest the conclusion that reasons that are subject to normative powers are generally not value-based. This also has important implications for the dialectic between ‘value-first’ and ‘reasons-first’ approaches to normativity.

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Benjamin Kiesewetter
Bielefeld University

Citations of this work

The ranges of reasons and creasons.Clayton Littlejohn - 2023 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (2):1-10.
Fittingness: A User’s Guide.Chris Howard & Rach Cosker-Rowland - 2023 - In Chris Howard & Rach Cosker-Rowland (eds.), Fittingness. OUP.
Practical reason.R. Jay Wallace & Benjamin Kiesewetter - 2024 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

Slaves of the passions.Mark Schroeder - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Principia ethica.George Edward Moore - 1903 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Thomas Baldwin.
The Morality of Freedom.Joseph Raz - 1986 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon - 2002 - Mind 111 (442):323-354.
The Normativity of Rationality.Benjamin Kiesewetter - 2017 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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