In a number of recent philosophical debates, it has become common to distinguish between two kinds of normative reasons, often called the right kind of reasons (henceforth: RKR) and the wrong kind of reasons (henceforth: WKR). The distinction was first introduced in discussions of the so-called buck-passing account of value, which aims to analyze value properties in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes and has been argued to face the wrong kind of reasons problem. But nowadays it also gets applied in other philosophical contexts and to reasons for other responses than pro-attitudes, for example in recent debates about evidentialism and pragmatism about reasons for belief. While there seems to be wide agreement that there is a general and uniform distinction that applies to reasons for different responses, there is little agreement about the scope, relevance and nature of this distinction.Our aim in this article is to shed some light on this issue by surveying the RKR/WKR distinction as it has been drawn with respect to different responses, and by examining how it can be understood as a uniform distinction across different contexts. We start by considering reasons for pro-attitudes and emotions in the context of the buck-passing account of value ( §1). Subsequently we address the distinction that philosophers have drawn with respect to reasons for other attitudes, such as beliefs and intentions ( §2), as well as with respect to reasons for action ( §3). We discuss the similarities and differences between the ways in which philosophers have drawn the RKR/WKR distinction in these areas and offer different interpretations of the idea of a general, uniform distinction. The major upshot is that there is at least one interesting way of substantiating a general RKR/WKR distinction with respect to a broad range of attitudes as well as actions. We argue that this has important implications for the proper scope of buck-passing accounts and the status of the wrong kind of reasons problem ( §4). §1 Reasons for pro-attitudes and emotions According to an influential view that can be traced back at least to Brentano, what it is for some X to be good or valuable can be analyzed in terms of a normative relation that holds between X and certain positive or negative attitudes or emotions towards X, such as e.g.

Which principles govern the transmission of reasons from ends to means? Some philosophers have suggested a liberal transmission principle, according to which agents have an instrumental reason for an action whenever this action is a means for them to do what they have non-instrumental reason to do. In this paper, we (i) discuss the merits and demerits of the liberal transmission principle, (ii) argue that there are good reasons to reject it, and (iii) present an alternative, less liberal transmission principle, which allows us to accommodate those phenomena that seem to support the liberal transmission principle while avoiding its problems.

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According to epistemic reductionism about practical reasons, facts about practical reasons can be reduced to facts about evidence for ought-judgements. We argue that this view misconstrues practical conflicts. At least some conflicts between practical reasons put us in a position to know that an action f is optional, i.e. that we neither ought to perform nor ought to refrain from performing the action. By understanding conflicts of practical reasons as conflicts of evidence about what one ought to do, epistemic reductionism fails to account for this. In conflict cases in which f-ing is optional, epistemic reductionism suggests that we have equally strong evidence for and against assuming that we ought to f, and thus cannot be in a position to know that it is not the case that we ought to f. This is a serious flaw. I.Although the notion of a practical reason can intuitively and somewhat helpfully be paraphrased as 'something that counts in favour of an action', it is natural to ask whether a more informative and substantial analysis can be given. A recent proposal, which has been suggested independently by Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star (2008;2009) and Judith Jarvis Thomson (2008: Ch. 9), holds that facts (or propositions) about reasons can be reduced to facts (or propositions) about evidence for ought-judgements. We will refer to this view as epistemic reductionism about practical reasons (ER, for short):(ER)For R to be a reason for A to f is for R to be evidence that A ought to f. 1A number of considerations make ER attractive. ER constitutes an informative analysis, which can be applied to both practical and epistemic reasons and is thus well-situated to account for the unity of normative reasons. It is also in a good position to explain several plausible features of reasons, such as the fact that reasons figure as premises in reasoning about what ought to be done, or the fact that reasons come with different strengths.But ER is not without problems. A number of authors have presented counterexamples that are meant to show that ER is extensionally inadequate. For example, there can be evidence that one ought to f even if in fact one cannot f, and thus ER entails reasons for actions that one cannot perform. Further, in some circumstances the fact that one can f, or the fact that one has no reason not to f, or the fact that a reliable person has testified that one ought to f, can be evidence that one ought to f; ER entails that these would then be reasons to f, which seems questionable. 3 Proponents of ER typically respond by arguing that the implications should be accepted on reflection. Opponents to ER insist that these implications are counterintuitive, while proponents maintain that intuitions about which facts are and are not reasons are not reliable enough to settle the issue. 4

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