Abstract

My thesis focuses on a strategy of argument that has seemed so clearly successful that few have stopped to consider what its structure is, much less evaluated whether it really generates the conclusions it is supposed to establish. Those who employ this strategy attempt to show that there are features necessary to deliberation and, in virtue of these, even the moral skeptic is committed to acknowledging morality's demands. ;These necessary features of deliberation, the argument goes, are the beliefs or aims that we must have if we are to deliberate at all. Common candidates for such beliefs are the belief that we are free, or that we have reasons for action. Common candidates for necessary aims are those involved in acting freely, or in seeing our actions as valuable. If we must have these beliefs or aims to deliberate at all, then, the argument goes, it is irrational for anyone to fail to accept their moral implications. This is meant to be true even for those who, like the moral skeptic, believe that all moral claims are false. ;If successful, this strategy would enable us to isolate the rationality of deliberation from the results of reflection both on the metaphysics of reasons and on the possibility of human freedom. I show however that this strategy rests on mistaken views both about the rationality of belief, and about the ways our aims affect what we ought to do. Rationality alone cannot require us to believe that we are under moral obligations, irrespective of whatever theoretical views we might have of ethics. Similarly, rationality alone cannot require us to achieve the aims we have as deliberators. As a result, there is no reliable way of showing that even the skeptic is committed, on pain of irrationality, to acknowledging morality's demands. I conclude that to find a satisfying response to the skeptic, we must continue the difficult task of showing how moral obligations fit into our best accounts of the world and our place in it.