Do We Have Reasons To Do What We Cannot Do?

Bart Streumer utilizes the principle “R: We do not have reasons to do what we cannot do” in order to justify that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. This thesis questions Streumer’s assumption and instead argues that we have reasons to do what is psychologically-, physically and maybe even metaphysically impossible but not conceptually or logically impossible. As is shown in the thesis we do not have reasons to do the latter, due to it being the case that we cannot even try to do what is conceptually or logically impossible. It is further argued that there will always be stronger contradicting reasons against doing what we cannot do, due to every reason in favor of doing what we cannot do being outweighed by the reason given by the fact that we cannot do it. This will in turn justify that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. By allowing reasons to do what we cannot do, we will be able to accommodate for the moral residue in genuine moral dilemmas and other hard cases without attributing irrationality to agents who feel for instances guilt and regret after a genuine moral dilemma. It is also possible that we could generalize the results in this paper and have it replace Jonathan Dancy’s notion of “enabler”; albeit the thesis points to further research being required to strengthen the last two claims

Reasons and Normativity

Normative reasons are of constant importance to us as agents trying to navigate through life. For this reason it is natural and vital to ask philosophical questions about reasons and the normative realm. This thesis explores various issues concerning reasons and normativity. The thesis consists of five free-standingpapers and an extended introduction. The aim of the extended introduction is not merely to situate the papers within a wider philosophical context but also to provide an overview of some of the central research questions concerning reasons and normativity. The introduction is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces and outlines the dissertation. Chapter 2 concerns the issue of what a reason is and what different types of reasons there are, such as pro tanto reasons and overall reasons. Chapter 3 discusses the frequently employed weighing metaphor, i.e. that reasons have a certain weight and can be weighed against the weight of other reasons. Chapter 4 covers how reasons relate to other normative notions such as ought, value, and obligation. For example, it discusses whether it is the case that for something to be valuable just is for there to be reasons to favor it. Chapter 5 concludes the introduction by briefly exploring how it all relates.The thesis can be said to be embedded in a recent research trend within philosophy of normativity that has a distinguished focus on reasons.The five papers deal with various issues concerning reasons and normativity. Paper I argues for a novel and theoretically parsimonious way to understand background conditions for values and reasons. Paper II explores an interpretation of the distinction between subjectivism and objectivism about reasons and value so as to accommodate that the distinction does not commit either party to certain first order claims about what reasons there are or what makes objects valuable. Paper III discusses the dictum ‘ought implies can’and how to properly interpret the ‘can’. Paper IV defends principles according to which what we ought and have reasons to do transmit from ends to the necessary means of that action. Paper V analyzes how the Fitting Attitudes analysis of value should best understand degrees of value

Time, Rationality and at least three kinds of Reason

All too often we find ourselves choosing a lesser good instead of a greater good, due to the mere fact that the lesser good is closer in the future, and all too often we find ourselves preferring that greater suffering has happened in the past rather than us having to experience small suffering in the future. Philosophers call this phenomena time biases, the first bias is called the bias towards the near and the second one is called the bias towards the future. It is also the case that we have ideals which make us act in spite of us knowing that these actions will frustrate future desires. This thesis will examine whether it can be rational to have these biases and ideals or if we should be temporally neutral. So that we will be able to examine these temporal biases and ideals in a meaningful way the thesis will start of by making explicit what I mean with “rationality” and then analyze if the temporal biases and ideals can withhold the standards which are set by rationality and temporal neutrality. My examination of rationality will focus on Ingmar Person’s subjectivistic and internalistic view on rationality and there I reach the conclusion that Persson’s view is superior to Brandt’s classic view on rationality because Brandt’s view on rationality is too intersubjective which implies counter-intuitive consequences, some of which Persson manages to stay away from. Further into the thesis I examine the temporal biases and realize that they are not temporal biases at all but rather depend on our (in)ability to properly represent different states of affairs. My examination of ideals leads to the conclusion that they only appear to be temporally biased but in fact withhold the standards set both by rationality and by temporal neutrality.Alltför ofta väljer vi ett mindre gott istället för ett större gott, enbart på grund av att det mindre goda ligger närmare i framtiden, och alltför ofta skulle vi föredra att ett större ont inträffat oss i det förgångna än att behöva uppleva ett mindre ont i framtiden. Detta kallar filosofer för tidspartiskheter, den första benämns som partiskhet mot det nära i framtiden, och den andra benämns som partiskhet mot framtiden. Det är även så att vi har ideal som gör att vi handlar, detta till trots att vi vet att vår handling kommer förstöra för våra framtida önskningar. Den här uppsatsen granskar om det kan vara rationellt att uppvisa dessa tidspartiskheter och ideal eller om vi bör vara tidsligt neutrala – temporalt neutrala. För att på ett meningsfullt sätt kunna granska tidspartiskheterna och om våra ideal är rationella eller inte, börjar jag med att tydliggöra vad jag menar med ”rationalitet” för att sedan analysera om tidspartiskheterna och våra ideal klarar av att leva upp till de krav som rationalitet och temporal neutralitet ställer. Min analys av rationalitet fokuserar på Ingmar Perssons subjektivistiska och internalistiska syn på rationalitet där jag kommer fram till att Perssons syn på rationalitet är överlägsen Brandts klassiska analys av rationalitet då Brandts analys av rationella önskningar är för intersubjektiv vilket leder till kontra-intuitiva konsekvenser, som Persson däremot klarar sig undan. I alla fall en del av de kontra-intuitiva konsekvenserna. Jag analyserar sedan tidspartiskheterna och kommer fram till att de strikt talat inte är tidspartiskheter utan istället beror på vår (o)förmåga att på ett likvärdigt sätt representera olika sakförhållanden. Min analys av ideal utmynnar i att det enbart är vid första anblick som ideal verkar vara ett tydligt brott mot temporal neutralitet, men att ideal i själva verket klarar av kraven som ställs av rationalitet och av temporal neutralitet

Normative Transmission and Necessary Means

This paper focuses on the interaction of reasons and argues that reasons for an action may transmit to the necessary means of that action. Analyzing exactly how this phenomenon may be captured by principles governing normative transmission has proved an intricate task in recent years. In this paper, I assess three formulations focusing on normative transmission and necessary means: Ought Necessity, Strong Necessity, and Weak Necessity. My focus is on responding to two of the main objections raised against normative transmission for necessary means, in that they seem to give us reasons for buying tickets to plays we have no intention of seeing and that the principles give us the wrong result when the means are necessary but not sufficient. Even though these objections have been discussed previously, the counterarguments have so far relied on rejecting premises that the proponents of these objections are unlikely to concede. In this paper, I show how we may answer the objections in a way more likely to convince proponents of the objections. The result is an argument for a key aspect when it comes to understanding how reasons and ends-means normativity function. Normative transmission from ends to necessary means is not only interesting at the structural level, it is also possible to argue that it has implications for areas as diverse as philosophy of rationality, political philosophy and applied ethics

Toward a Reasons-First View of Normative Background Conditions

Background conditions are thought to explain how objects can have value in virtue of certain features and how reasons can consist in certain facts. The following paper provides an account of what background conditions are and what effect they have on normative features. It defends the idea that if values depend on reasons, then there is nothing really surprising or mysterious about the presence of background conditions in normative explanations. Background conditions turn out to be a natural and predictable result of normative hierarchies that treat reasons as metaphysically fundamental relative to other normative features. The account is also shown to have advantages over competing accounts in that it is able to capture the functional criteria that characterize background conditions while remaining theoretically parsimonious

Subjectivism and the Framework of Constitutive Grounds

Philosophers have applied the framework of constitutive grounds to make sense of the disagreement between subjectivism and objectivism. The framework understands the two theories as being involved in a disagreement about the extent to which value is determined by attitudes. Although the framework affords us with some useful observations about how this should be interpreted, the question how value can be determined by attitudes in the first place is left largely unanswered. Here we explore the benefits of a positive interpretation which aims to address this oversight and make the framework more informative. This interpretation, which is inspired by the recent work of Schroeder (2007) and Sobel (2016), claims that the relevant sense in which value can be determined by attitudes is discovered by seeing how facts can be endowed with the normative property of being a reason. We argue that this interpretation significantly deepens our understanding of the disagreement between subjectivism and objectivism