An Objectivist's Guide to Subjective Reasons

Abstract

The distinction between objective and subjective reasons plays an important role in both folk normative thought and many research programs in metaethics. But the relation between objective and subjective reasons (or, more aptly, objective and subjective favoring) is unclear. This paper explores problems related to the unity of objective and subjective reasons for actions and attitudes and then offers a novel objectivist account of subjective reasons. The distinction between objective and subjective reasons plays an important role in both folk normative thought and many research programs in metaethics. But what is the relation between objective and subjective reasons? Are they species of a genus? If so, what is their essence, and what is the differentia? Does one reduce to the other? If so, how does the reduction go? Or are they utterly dissimilar entities, like jadeite and nephrite? There’s much at stake between these options. As Schroeder (2018, 290) points out, the “core case” that motivates the Reasons First program is that what we ought to do is determined by what we have reason to do. But since we need to distinguish “a subjective ‘ought’ of rationality” from “an objective ‘ought’ of advisability,” with subjective reasons explaining the former and objective reasons explaining the latter, there must be a “close relationship between objective and subjective reasons.” Reasons First would be an unattractive research program if it posited that normativity is explained in terms of utterly dissimilar entities. The most popular option in the current literature is ‘objectivism.’ The objectivist claims that subjective reasons reduce to objective reasons. Despite being the most common view in the literature (endorsed, in different forms, in influential work by Mark Schroeder, Derek Parfit, Jonathan Way, Eric Vogelstein, Kurt Sylvan, and Daniel Whiting), prominent forms of objectivism face serious—perhaps fatal—objections. I have two main aims in this paper. The first is to offer a new objection to prominent forms of objectivism. Unlike many objections in the current literature, it does not focus on extensional problems for objectivists. It turns on whether objectivists can deliver a unified account of favoring. Res Philosophica, Vol. 96, No. 2, April 2019, pp. 229–244 https://doi.org/10.11612/resphil.1750 c © 2019 Daniel Wodak • c © 2019 Res Philosophica