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ABSTRACT
Joseph Raz accepts the ‘normative/explanatory nexus’ which states, roughly, that ‘necessarily normative reasons can explain the actions, beliefs, and the like of rational agents’ (From Normativity to Responsibility, 34). I agree with this rough statement, but I disagree with Raz on the details of the nexus. I further argue that, once we see the correct version of the nexus and the reasons why it is true, we must accept an account of the nature of normative reasons that goes against another central commitment of Raz's. Specifically, we must reject Raz's view that ultimately, normative reasons for action are provided by the value of the relevant action. Instead, what it is to be a normative reason is to be a premise in good reasoning, of a certain sort. Actions supported by normative reasons may be valuable in some way, but it is not ultimately because of their value that we have normative reasons to perform them. I also briefly gesture at why the resulting type of ‘good reasoning’ view of normative reasons offers a more unified and explanatorily satisfying view of normative reasons for action, belief, and other responses than Raz's view.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Joseph Raz, From Normativity to Responsibility (Oxford University Press 2011) 34.
2 Raz ibid 47; Cf. p. 337 of Niko Kolodny, ‘Raz's Nexus’ (2011) 2(2) Jurisprudence 333.
3 Raz ibid 28, 34; Cf. pp.355–56 of Ulrike Heuer, ‘Guided by Reasons: Raz on the Normative-Explanatory Nexus’ (2011) 2(2) Jurisprudence 353.
4 Raz ibid 86–87; Cf. pp.335–40 of Niko Kolodny, ‘Raz's Nexus’ (2011) 2(2) Jurisprudence 333.
5 Raz ibid (n 22) 47, 35, 27.
6 Raz ibid 4 et passim; Cf. p.336 of Niko Kolodny, ‘Raz's Nexus’ (2011) 2(2) Jurisprudence 333.
7 Raz has a similarly structured view about epistemic reasons for belief. One partial ground of R's status as a reason to believe that p is a response-independent fact to the effect that R is part of a case for for the truth of p. Another partial ground is the response-dependence recorded in Nexus-Based. See Raz ibid ch.3, and p.4; See also Kolodny ibid 336.
8 Raz ibid 2, 4.
9 p.7 of Ulrike Heuer, ‘Introduction’ in Joseph Raz, The Roots of Normativity (Oxford University Press 2022).
10 Joseph Raz, From Normativity to Responsibility (Oxford University Press 2011) 47.
11 Raz ibid (n 27) 47; Cf. p.363 of Ulrike Heuer, ‘Guided by Reasons: Raz on the Normative-Explanatory Nexus’ (2011) 2(2) Jurisprudence 353. Heuer picks up on Raz's ‘filter’ language and proposes that for Raz, ‘the nexus only provides a filter: it excludes some of these proto-reasons [namely, value-facts] from being reasons. Therefore, perhaps the best interpretation of the nexus is … that it expresses a necessary condition that all reasons have to satisfy’. On my reading, this ‘necessary condition’ interpretation of the role of the nexus may be too weak, as it seems to leave out Raz's claim that certain facts ‘are reasons because they can be recognized and responded to by our rational powers’ (Raz ibid 86, emphasis added). A necessary condition on X is not thereby yet a ground of X, although many necessary conditions of X are also grounds of X.
12 Raz ibid 27.
13 Raz ibid 86.
14 Raz ibid 28, 34; Cf. pp.355–56 of Ulrike Heuer, ‘Guided by Reasons: Raz on the Normative-Explanatory Nexus’ (2011) 2(2) Jurisprudence 353.
15 See, e.g., Raz ibid 4, 28, 96.
16 Raz ibid 86–87; Cf. pp.335–40 of Niko Kolodny, ‘Raz's Nexus’ (2011) 2(2) Jurisprudence 333.
17 Compare Section 4 of Berys Gaut, ‘The Structure of Practical Reason’ in Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut (eds), Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford University Press 1997); See also Cullity and Gaut ibid p.4 on the ‘Recognitional View’ of practical reason.
18 Raz ibid 2, 4.
19 For versions of this idea, see, e.g., Raz ibid ch.4; and ch.3 esp. pp. 88–89 of Joseph Raz, The Roots of Normativity (Oxford University Press 2022); Cf. pp.92–93 of Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge University Press 1996); p.221 of Christine Korsgaard, ‘The Normativity of Instrumental Reason’ in Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut (eds), Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford University Press 1997); p.9 of David Velleman, The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford University Press 2000); Alex Gregory, ‘The Guise of Reasons’ (2013) 50(1) American Philosophical Quarterly 63; Keshav Singh, ‘Acting and Believing Under the Guise of Normative Reasons’ (2019) 99(2) Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 409. For a closely related idea, see also Tenenbaum's defenses of the ‘guise of the good’, in e.g., Sergio Tenenbaum, ‘Knowing the Good and Knowing What One is Doing’ (2009) 39(S1) Canadian Journal of Philosophy 91; Sergio Tenenbaum, ‘The Guise of the Good’ in Ruth Chang and Kurt Sylvan (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason (Routledge 2021). For criticisms, see, e.g., Kieran Setiya, Reasons without Rationalism (Princeton University Press 2007); Kieran Setiya, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ in Sergio Tenenbaum (ed), Desire, Practical Reason, and the Good (Oxford University Press 2010).
20 Ch.3 of Joseph Raz, From Normativity to Responsibility (Oxford University Press 2011).
21 At least, they apply to all ‘standard’ normative reasons; Raz ibid 40, 56–57.
22 Bernard Williams, ‘Internal and External Reasons’ in Bernard Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge University Press 1981).
23 Christine Korsgaard, ‘Skepticism about Practical Reason’ (1986) 83 Journal of Philosophy 5.
24 John McDowell, ‘Might There Be External Reasons?’ in JEJ Altham and Ross Harrison (eds), World, Mind, and Ethics (Cambridge University Press 1995).
25 For much more careful discussion of this territory, see Hille Paakkunainen, ‘Internalism and Externalism about Reasons’ in Daniel Star (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity (Oxford University Press 2018). Some further theorists who accept some version of the Modest Nexus, while differing in their commitments in many other ways, are e.g., Nishi Shah, ‘A New Argument for Evidentialism’ (2006) 56(225) Philosophical Quarterly 481; Jonathan Way and Daniel Whiting, ‘Reasons and Guidance (or, Surprise Parties and Ice Cream)’ (2016) 57(3) Analytic Philosophy 2014; Errol Lord, The Importance of Being Rational (Oxford University Press 2018); Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way, ‘All Reasons are Fundamentally for Attitudes’ (2022a) 21(2) Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 151; Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way, Getting Things Right: Fittingness, Value, and Reasons (Oxford University Press 2022b).
26 The argument in the next six paragraphs paraphrases and restates some of the more careful argument put forward in Hille Paakkunainen, ‘Can There Be Government House Reasons for Action?’ (2017) 12 (1) Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 56, in favour of the ‘Deliberative Constraint’ on reasons. I connect the Modest Nexus to the Deliberative Constraint below.
27 Joshua Gert, ‘Requiring and Justifying: Two Dimensions of Normative Strength’ (2003) 59(1) Erkenntnis 5; Jonathan Dancy, Ethics without Principles (Oxford University Press 2004) 21.
28 The example is from pp.650–51 of Neil Sinclair, ‘Promotionalism, Motivationalism, and Reasons to Perform Physically Impossible Actions’ (2012) 15(5) Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 647.
29 This is a slightly modified version of the principle I defend as ‘Reasons Revised’ or ‘RR’ in Hille Paakkunainen, ‘Can There Be Government House Reasons for Action?’ (2017) 12 (1) Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 56. It is meant to capture the core good idea in the popular thought that reasons are the sort of thing that good deliberation takes into account. Versions of this popular thought are articulated by many others, e.g., Joseph Raz, Practical Reasoning (Oxford University Press 1978) 5; Stephen Darwall, Impartial Reason (Cornell University Press 1983) 30–31; Mark Schroeder, Slaves of the Passions (Oxford University Press 2007) 26, 33; pp. 649–50, 658 of Neil Sinclair, ‘Promotionalism, Motivationalism, and Reasons to Perform Physically Impossible Actions’ (2012) 15(5) Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 647; pp. 221, 223 of Kieran Setiya, ‘What Is a Reason to Act?’ (2014) 167(2) Philosophical Studies 221; p.1 of Jonathan Way, ‘Reasons as Premises of Good Reasoning’ (2017) 98(2) Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 1.
30 Exception: if no set of reasons is deemed weightiest, good deliberation concludes in true belief about which options are the permitted or best options. I leave aside this complication for present purposes.
31 The idea of fallibility here refers to the idea that in some possible worlds in which one takes the means to Φ, one fails to Φ – perhaps because of external impediments. In such cases, the external impediments might excuse one's failures to Φ. But the demand remains in force so long as there is a robust range of possible worlds in which the available means to Φ-ing are successful.
32 Theses similar to Reasoning-Based are defended by e.g., Kieran Setiya, Reasons without Rationalism (Princeton University Press 2007); Matthew Silverstein, ‘Reducing Reasons’ (2016) 10(1) Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1; Jonathan Way, ‘Reasons as Premises of Good Reasoning’ (2017) 98(2) Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 1; Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way, Getting Things Right: Fittingness, Value, and Reasons (Oxford University Press 2022b).
33 Note that this formulation leaves it open that there are ‘wrong kind’ of reasons for belief or other attitudes, since it is often possible to reason well from e.g., pragmatic reasons for belief towards intending to or taking means to form the relevant belief. I elaborate on and defend this implication in Hille Paakkunainen, ‘Good Reasoning and Wrong Kinds of Reasons’ (ms).
34 On metaphysical reduction of normative properties in this sense, see, e.g., Mark Schroeder, ‘Realism and Reduction: The Quest for Robustness’ [2005], Philosophers’ Imprint 5(1) 1; Mark Schroeder, Slaves of the Passions (Oxford University Press 2007), Ch.4.
35 On the constitutive standards of deliberation, see, e.g., Christine Korsgaard, Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity (Oxford University Press 2009), though her employment of the vocabulary of ‘reasons’ is non-standard. For more detailed discussion of the kind of constitutivist strategy suggested in the main text, see Hille Paakkunainen, ‘Doing Away with the “Shmagency” Objection to Constitutivism’ (2018b) 41 (4) Manuscrito 431.
36 For development of this view, see Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way, ‘Fittingness First’ (2016) 126 Ethics 575; Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way, ‘What is Good Reasoning?’ (2018) 96(1) Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 153; Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way, Getting Things Right: Fittingness, Value, and Reasons (Oxford University Press 2022b).
37 Kieran Setiya, Reasons without Rationalism (Princeton University Press 2007) defends such a view. I also develop such a view, on different grounds, in Hille Paakkunainen, Natural Reasons through Virtue (ms).
38 Notice that Reasoning-Based is neutral on the question of normative naturalism. Reasoning-Based reduces the property of being a normative reason in terms of the complex property of being certain sort of a premise in good reasoning, but it is a further question whether the goodness of good reasoning is to be understood in a way that admits of a naturalistic reduction.
39 For this view, see, e.g., Derek Parfit, On What Matters (Oxford University Press 2011); David Enoch, Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism (Oxford University Press 2011).
40 Thus for example Maguire's fully value-based view is ruled out by its inability to explain why the Deliberative Constraint on reasons holds. See Barry Maguire, ‘The Value-Based Theory of Reasons’ (2016) 3(9) Ergo 233.
41 Joseph Raz, From Normativity to Responsibility (Oxford University Press 2011) Ch.3.
42 Raz ibid 47.
43 Raz ibid 48.
44 Joseph Raz, The Roots of Normativity (Oxford University Press 2022) Ch.3.
45 Raz ibid 90–91; Cf. Ulrike Heuer, ‘Introduction’ in Raz ibid 5.
46 For a view of good reasoning in this vein, see Jonathan Dancy, Practical Shape: A Theory of Practical Reasoning (Oxford University Press 2018).
47 For helpful feedback, I'm grateful to the audience at the Roots of Responsibility workshop on Reasons and Normativity: Themes from Raz, at UCL in June 2022; and especially to Jonathan Dancy, who graciously commented on my paper on that occasion, as well as continued to discuss the issues with me via email afterwards. While the terms of submission for this publication prohibited me from substantively changing my paper from the way it was at the time of presentation, I have benefited from the feedback regardless. Thank you to Yuuki Ohta and John Hyman for inviting me to their wonderful conference, and for the opportunity which that occasion afforded me to more deeply reflect on Raz's work in relation to my own.