Abstract

Any account of practical reason must address, among other issues, three important questions. First, how should we understand the role that dispositions of character play, or ought rationally to play, in our practical deliberation? Second, what is the nature of the freedom we experience in practical deliberation, and how does it differ from our freedom in theoretical deliberation? Finally, what moral significance should we ascribe in practical deliberation to the motives from which we would perform a certain action? This dissertation pursues these questions in three papers. Together, the papers develop a view of the nature and source of our practical reasons. ;"Reasons and Character" focuses on certain paradoxes arising from the explanatory function of character. These paradoxes, I argue, can be resolved only if character is conceived as a set of dispositions to respond to reasons given by facts about the objects of the person's desires and the worth of having and being motivated by these desires, and not by the fact that he would have these desires if he reasoned in some procedural way. I explain the significant implications this view of the relation of reason and character has for questions in normative ethics. ;"Practical Freedom: Orthonomy or Autonomy?" asks what kind of freedom is required to account for our sense that our actions are our own. I argue that we require only 'orthonomy,' or the freedom to get our reasons right, and not some form of 'autonomy.' In defending this claim, I challenge the depth of the distinction between practical and theoretical deliberation. ;"The Moral Relevance of Motive," explores the extent to which motives are relevant in the assessment of action. Ordinary moral practice suggests that motives are not themselves right- or wrong-making features of action. But if what makes the action an action is that its agent could be asked to give reasons for it, moral evaluations that fail to consider the agent's motives will fail to evaluate the action as an action. I develop the view of practical reason articulated in the first two papers in such a way as to reconcile these claims