Description
Book SynopsisIn recent decades normative reasons-considerations that count in favor of one thing or another-have come to the theoretical fore in ethics and epistemology. A major attraction of normative reasons is that they have weight or strength. Reasons are particular considerations that count in favor of actions or attitudes to some degree. This feature is attractive to theorists who want to explain more complex normative phenomena in terms of a notion that is weighted. This volume aims to provide the beginnings for a theory of weight. The fourteen new essays fall into three groups. One set of essays addresses questions about the nature of weight. Topics include the relations between reasons and conditions and modifiers, between reasons and other weighted notions such as commitments, and different models of the interaction of reasons. A second set of essays addresses substantive questions: questions about weight relevant to value-first, desire-first, evidence-first and other normative research programs. A third set of essays applies issues in the theory of weight to broader ethical debates. The book thus not only makes novel contributions to debates in ethics and epistemology about the nature of normative reasons and their weight, it also makes a strong case for the theoretical fruitfulness of the ideology of normative reasons.
Trade ReviewEven to those who, like this reader, are not particularly enthusiastic about this program's impact on the course of practical philosophy, the fourteen papers in the volume offer a worthwhile opportunity to reflect on its scope and significance. * Patricio A. Fernandez, Journal of Moral Philosophy *
[T]he book contains a wealth of exciting topics on reasons ... you have definitely very weighty reasons to read [it] all. * Krister Bykvist, Analysis *
Weighing Reasons is a refreshing collection ... All too often volumes of this type contain very little new work and so are sometimes a little bit stale. They tend to be on already much-debated topics and their famous contributors rarely venture outside their well-known views. This anthology, in contrast, is on a relatively unexplored topic, and its editors and many of its authors belong to a stellar younger generation of philosophers. * Jussi Suikkanen, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
Table of ContentsContributors ; Introduction ; 1. An Opinionated Guide to the Weight of Reasons ; Errol Lord & Barry Maguire ; Section One: Machinery in the Theory of Weight ; 2. Conditions, Modifiers, and Holism ; Ralf Bader ; 3. How do reasons accrue? ; Shyam Nair ; 4. Reasons, Reason, and Context ; Daniel Fogal ; 5. Commitment: Worth the Weight ; Alida Liberman & Mark Schroeder ; Section Two: Analytic Issues in the Theory of Weight ; 6. Democratizing Humeanism ; Kate Manne ; 7. Value and the Weight of Practical Reasons ; Joseph Raz ; 8. The Distinction between Justifying and Requiring: Nothing to Fear ; Joshua Gert ; 9. Bearing the Weight of Reasons ; Stephen Kearns ; Section Three: Applications of the Theory of Weight ; 10. Reasoning with Precedents as Constrained Natural Reasoning ; John F. Horty ; 11. Comparativism: The Grounds of Rational Choice ; Ruth Chang ; 12. The Modesty of the Moral Point of View ; Karl Schafer ; 13. Making the <"Hard>" Problem of Moral Normativity Easier ; Stephen Darwall ; 14. The Implementation Problem for Deontology ; Michael Smith and Frank Jackson ; Index
