A Disjunctive Conception of Acting for Reasons

Abstract

This chapter introduces a disjunctivist conception of acting for reasons by showing that an account of acting for reasons should give a place to knowledge. This disjunctive conception is claimed to have a role analogous to that of the disjunctive conception that John McDowell recommends in thinking about perception; and it is shown that the two conceptions have work to do in combination when they are treated as counterparts. It is also claimed that the disjunctive conception of acting for reasons safeguards the connection between what moves us to act (sometimes called ‘motivating reasons’) and what favours our acting (sometimes called ‘normative reasons’).

Reasons and factive emotions

“…As Hornsby (2008) notes, the kind of relationship expressed by 'her reason' in 'her reason for going to the psychiatrist is that she thinks she is being followed' and 'her reason for running is that she is being followed' is different to that in 'her reason for running is that she thinks she is being followed'. As Hornsby would put it, the sentence following 'that' in the final example does not express the 'reason for which' one acts.…”

“…But in the case where Bukowski sees that his horse has lost the 12 The idea that there is a knowledge requirement on personal reasons is not new. One will find helpful discussions of this requirement in Unger (1975), Hyman (1999Hyman ( , 2011Hyman ( , 2015, Williamson (forthcoming), Hornsby (2007Hornsby ( , 2008, Alvarez (2010), Littlejohn (2012) and McDowell (2013), and Hawthorne and Magidor (forthcoming). 13 For an extensive discussion of these two uses, see French (2012). race, it would be wrong to say that one of Bukowski's reasons for seeing is that his horse has lost the race.…”

Untitled

“…10 For this objection and others, see Broome (2013: 88ff); Parfit (2011: 118ff). 11 Hornsby (2008, § 1.1), Parfit (20012011: 35), Schroeder (2007: 14-15;2008: 67;2009: 233) and Way (2009: 3-4) advance (C), or something very similar to it. Some (e.g., Shope 1978) are suspicious of any analysis formulated using a subjunctive conditional.…”

Reasons for action, acting for reasons, and rationality

“…For the purposes of this paper, Factualism can be understood as the view that, if someone's reason for ϕ-ing was that p, then p. 3 The following authors have given arguments against Psychologism, although, given the details of their views, not all of them could be said to endorse the version of Factualism I defend here: Alvarez (2008Alvarez ( , 2010; Dancy (2000) and (2014) (but see below, Sect. 4); Hornsby (2008) (though she defends a 'disjunctive conception', see below, Sect. 4); Hyman (1999Hyman ( , 2015, Littlejohn (2012Littlejohn ( , 2014, Raz (1999) and Williamson (2000).…”