Abstract
One of the popular albeit controversial ideas in the last century of moral philosophy is that what we ought to do is explained by our reasons. And one of the central features of reasons that accounts for their popularity among normative theorists is that they can conflict. But I argue that the fact that reasons conflict actually also poses two closely related problems for this popular idea in moral philosophy. The first problem is a generalization of a problem in deontic logic concerning the existence of conflicting obligations. The second problem arises from a tension between the fact that reasons can conflict and a model of how reasons explain ‘ought’s that has been widely accepted. Having presented each of these problems, I develop a unified solution to them that is informed by results in both ethics and deontic logic. An important implication of this solution is that we must distinguish between derivative and nonderivative reasons and revise our conception how it is that reasons explain ‘ought’s .
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 629-663 |
| Number of pages | 35 |
| Journal | Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition |
| Volume | 173 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2016 |
Bibliographical note
For helpful comments thanks to the audience of the USC speculative society, Tony Anderson, Josh Crabill, Steve Finlay, Lou Goble, Keith Hall, Matthew Hanser, Ben Lennertz, Alida Liberman, Nick Laskowski, Errol Lord, Doug Portmore, Indrek Reiland, Henry Richardson, Jacob Ross, Barry Schein, Sam Shpall, Justin Snedegar, Julia Staffel, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Gabriel Uzquiano-Cruz, Ryan Walsh, Aness Webster, Ralph Wedgwood, Aaron Zimmerman, and especially two anonymous referees at Philosophical Studies. Thanks most of all to Mark Schroeder for advice and criticism on every issue at every stage of this project.Keywords
- Deontic logic
- Normative conflicts
- Obligations
- Reasons