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ABSTRACT
Many metaethicists endorse a cognitive constraint which links the reasons for which we act or hold attitudes (motivating reasons) to normative reasons (reasons that speak in favour of an action or attitude). As traditionally formulated, this constraint (known as the Taking Condition) requires that an agent’s motivating reasons are mentally represented by her as corresponding normative reasons. In response to the charge that the Taking Condition is overly demanding, Errol Lord and Kurt Sylvan have proposed a reformulation which eschews the need for normative representation (Lord and Sylvan 2019 [“Prime Time (for the Basing Relation).” In Well-Founded Belief, edited by J. Adam Carter, and Patrick Bondy, 141–173. London and New York: Routledge]). As they argue, agents must treat their motivating reasons as normative reasons, where this notion picks out a specific set of dispositions rather than a representational state. I argue that this proposal seriously distorts our understanding of the relation between an action or attitude and the reasons for which we perform or hold it. On the plausible assumption that an account of motivating reasons should not stray too far from this understanding, this response to the over-demandingness charge thus fails. I also provide some directions on how friends of the Taking Condition should instead respond this charge.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Rüdiger Bittner, Hichem Naar and two anonymous referees for their insightful written feedback on earlier versions of this paper. I would also like to thank the participants of Neil Roughley’s research seminar at the University Duisburg-Essen, and participants of the workshop ‘The Depth of the Self – Implicit Motives and Human Flourishing’, August 2019 at the Munich School of Philosophy/Technical University of Munich, for helpful responses on the main line of argument. Special thanks go to the two anonymous referees for their unusually generous and constructive comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 In requiring that motivating reasons are represented under a normative guise, this constraint resembles a family of views known as the ‘Guise of the Good’. Cf. Singh (Citation2019, 419, n. 23). Unlike the Taking Condition, the Guise of the Good is standardly understood as a view about the objects of desire, though. See Anscombe (Citation1957) for a classical defense.
2 Variants of this objection are found in Audi (Citation1993, 241), Boghossian (Citation2014, 6–7), Lord and Sylvan (Citation2019, 161), among others.
3 Their focus is on doxastic reasons. As I read this proposal, the idea is applicable more widely, though. For kindred responses, see Schlosser (Citation2012) on practical reasons, as well as Kiesewetter (Citation2022, 685) on motivating reasons in general.
4 Cf. McDowell (Citation2009, 137–138) on why ascriptions of motivating reasons which (purportedly) represent them as situational features need not disallow a propositionalist conception of them.
5 See Raz (Citation1997) for a cognate take on attitudes. He does not make a general claim about reasons for attitudes, though.
6 My defence of TC’s traditional reading has some echoes with Singh’s intelligibility-based argument for TC (Singh Citation2019) and his critique of Lord’s (Citation2018) dispositionalist account of rationality (Singh Citation2020, ch. 4). While my critique of TC’s dispositional reading resonates with some of Singh’s remarks about the connection between the intelligibility and the non-accidental character of acting (holding attitudes) for reasons, my account of non-accidentality goes beyond Singh’s considerations in a number of respects. See also n. 38.
7 While many formulate the charge in terms of normative belief, the main worry is more general.
8 Some take this conclusion to be corroborated by the fact that, in acting (holding attitudes) for reasons, normative thoughts need not cross our mind (e.g., Müller [Citation2019, 8]; Schlosser [Citation2012, 283]). I don’t think this threatens TC. Cf. my remarks on implicit cognition in n. 41.
9 I set aside a third response, according to which cognitively unsophisticated creatures engage with reasons only in a very attenuated sense. Cf. Singh (Citation2020, 96) on the normative import of rationality. I find it difficult to specify this attenuated sense. After all, ascriptions of motivating reasons to them seem to have the very same meaning as ascriptions of motivating reasons to human adults.
10 Müller (Citation2019) focuses on young children, setting animals aside.
11 See also Sylvan (Citation2016, 382f.) on doxastic reasons.
12 Lord and Sylvan (Citation2019, 161–162) explicitly speak only of dispositions to think and act, though I take it the core proposal is intended to accommodate also for the formation of further (e.g. emotional) attitudes. Cf. also Sylvan’s (Citation2015, 601) explication of reason-treating. (This explication introduces additional complexities, which I here ignore as they are irrelevant to the core proposal.) I say more about the nature of the relevant dispositions in section 5.3.
13 Neta (Citation2019, 200) supposes that Lord & Sylvan’s position suggests a view on which the dispositions constitutive of reason-treating are themselves involved in normative representations. I don’t think this is warranted by the textual evidence. For reasons indicated below, I believe their view is best interpreted as a rival to TC’s traditional reading.
14 See Lord and Sylvan (Citation2019, 158) on doxastic reasons. Cf. also Sylvan (Citation2016, 383–384).
15 In this connection, cf. Lord and Sylvan (Citation2019, 162–163) on reasoning.
16 On this point in connection with practical reasons, see Bittner (Citation2001, ch. 4).
17 I will focus on the factive use of ‘response’ just illustrated. There is a question of whether it also admits of a non-factive use, which mirrors the question of whether locutions that explicitly ascribe motivating reasons have a non-factive use. Those who deny this maintain that agents who misapprehend the facts of their situation merely purportedly act (hold attitudes) for reasons (Bittner Citation2001; cf. also Alvarez Citation2010). I here wish to remain neutral on this issue. While I won’t discuss putative examples of a non-factive use of ‘response’, what I will say can be adapted so as to accommodate for views that also recognize a non-factive usage. Arguably, if there is a non-factive use, the factive use is conceptually prior to and helps elucidate it. See Hornsby (Citation2008) on practical reasons.
18 Whilst targeting TC’s dispositional reading, the criticism I will develop is not aimed against hybrid dispositional-representational views of motivating reasons à la Neta (Citation2019). Neta likewise argues against purely dispositional views of motivating reasons and in favour of normative representations. His case takes a different tack, though, and is framed in terms of the basing-idiom.
19 I spell out what this import amounts to in the further course of this subsection.
20 Another line of thought one might consider in spelling this out elaborates on my remarks on the agent’s perspective in the foregoing paragraph. I here opt for a different consideration, though, which will also help prepare my diagnosis of what is amiss with TC’s dispositional reading in section 5.2.
21 I shall assume that this awareness may be pre-reflective, allowing that our motivating reasons need not be explicitly known to us. See also n. 23.
22 This also accommodates for irrational responses. Since this characterization is tied to the agent’s perspective to begin with, it makes no claim about the actual import of her reasons.
23 Plausibly, this awareness may be pre-reflective. Cf. Johnson King (Citation2020, 196).
24 On non-deliberate actions as performed under descriptions, see also Kalis and Ometto (Citation2021).
25 On responses as agential performances see von Hildebrand (Citation1969). Cf. also Engel (Citation2013, 201) on doxastic basing.
26 The point carries over to following what purports to be a solicitation. It also holds true if instead we say of irrational responses that it merely appears to the agent as if she is following a solicitation. In this case, the agent engages with her motivating reason in a way that, to her, is subjectively indistinguishable from following a prompt. This is not something she can do by accident either.
27 A putative counter-example is expressive action. See Müller and Wong (Citationforthcoming) for an overview of this debate, including a defence of expressive actions as responses.
28 See Lord and Sylvan (Citation2019, 158–159, 161-163) on doxastic reasons. See also Sylvan (Citation2016, 382–383).
29 As indicated in n. 26, where the motivating reason is not a corresponding normative reason, one might want to say that it merely seems to the agent as though she complies with a solicitation. Since this explanatory connection also holds in this case, one might look to explain the non-accidentality of irrational responses in terms of this connection also when they are described as cases of mere purported compliance.
30 Cf. Singh (Citation2020, ch. 4) on conforming with a normative standard by manifesting dispositions that lack a categorical basis in the agent. In this connection, see also n. 38.
31 This proposal is motivated by familiar worries concerning causal deviance (Lord and Sylvan Citation2019, 161–162). See also Sylvan (Citation2016, 382–383). Cases involving baseless dispositions might be thought to illustrate the relevant deviant causal chains. My purpose here is less with deviance per se, however, than with whether Lord & Sylvan can accommodate for the non-accidentality of acting (holding attitudes) for reasons.
32 For a cognate appeal to competences in a slightly different context, see Isserow (Citation2019).
33 For cognate examples, see Lord (Citation2017, 452–454). The response I offer below applies to these cases, too. Waights Hickman (Citation2021) provides material for a congenial but differently inflected response to cases of this sort involving semantic competence.
34 In line with the topic of the paper, I focus on actions (attitudes) performed (held) for reasons, setting aside (putative) non-accidental actions (attitudes) that lack motivating reasons.
35 There are strong reasons to doubt that we are in this position even when normatively assessing our own attitudes. See Burge (Citation1996).
36 For some thoughts on the requisite type of awareness, see von Hildebrand Citation1969, 13–14) and Anscombe (Citation1957) on non-observational awareness. See also my remarks on implicit cognition in section 6.
37 We might want to allow that the requisite awareness can be implicit. In this case, Nika may non-accidentally take a beautiful picture despite believing that she does not. Cf. also n. 41.
According to a further response to this type of case, the agential basis of competences itself involves representational states (Singh Citation2020, ch. 4). Cf. also Waights Hickman (Citation2021) on semantic competence. In this case, appeal to competences itself comes with a cognitive constraint on non-accidentality. As Singh (Citation2020, 94–95) notes, however, the relevant representations are plausibly quite general. Thus, pending further argument, it is not clear that this response is implicitly committed to NC.
38 One might wonder whether the problem comes down to a lack of intelligibility. Singh (Citation2020, ch. 4) argues that actions (attitudes) we perform (hold) for reasons are attributable to agents only insofar as they are intelligible to them, which requires them to represent their motivating reasons as corresponding normative reasons. (Cf. his remarks on pp. 88–92 on what is amiss with actions and attitudes that are manifestations of baseless dispositions.) This diagnosis coheres with the thought that agents responding to reasons apprehend themselves accordingly. However, one might see some resources to explain the problematic detachment without (at least explicitly) bringing in considerations on intelligibility. The account I have given in this subsection takes a somewhat different angle.
39 Remember that the notion of a prompt takes its cue from the connection between questions and answers. In being asked a question one is not merely called upon to make an utterance with a certain content, but to acquiesce to a demand thereby placed on one.
40 Implicit cognition is a genuine intentional state rather than a mere set of dispositions. For a recent, lucid defence of this notion in connection with semantic competence, see Waights Hickman (Citation2021).
Lord’s (Citation2018, ch. 6) account of conceptions of normative reasons is a first move into this direction in the debate on reasons.
41 It might also prove useful specifically in defending TC’s traditional reading for two reasons: (i) Implicit cognition is ascribable to creatures unable to form corresponding explicit beliefs. (ii) Qua implicit, it need not align with explicit beliefs. In this respect, it also makes intelligible how agents can conform to TC’s traditional reading even whilst believing that their motivating reasons lack normative import. In this connection, cf. also Singh’s (Citation2020, 68–69) proposed interpretation of the much-discussed case of Huckleberry Finn.
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Jean Moritz Müller
Jean Moritz Müller is a research associate at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bonn, Germany. He works in the philosophy of mind and related areas of metaethics.