Deliberation without Authority

Deflationary normative pluralism is the view that there is no absolute standpoint from which different kinds of values, reasons, or obligations can be weighed against one another. There is no all-things-considered ought, but rather only facts about what one morally ought to do, prudentially ought to do, legally ought to do, ought to do from the perspective of etiquette or authenticity, and so on (Tiffany 2008; and Baker 2018). Recently, it has been argued that the position collapses into subjectivism (Case 2016); or that we can provide an informative analysis of an authoritative sense of ought (McPherson 2018). I will argue that these criticisms are based on a mistaken picture of deliberation, and that a more accurate picture shows normative pluralism to be a stable and well-motivated position.