Abstract
Recently, Walter Sinott-Armstrong and Justin Snedegar have argued for a general contrastivist theory of reasons. According to the contrastivist account of reasons, all reasons claims should be understood as a relation with an additional place for a contrast class. For example, rather than X being a reason for A to P simpliciter, the contrastivist claims that X is a reason for A to P out of {P,Q,R…}. The main goal of this paper is to argue that the contrastivist account of reasons will be ill-fitted for accommodating certain features of moral reasons. In brief, the reason why the contrastivist analysis fails is that it cannot adequately allow for cases of morally correct whole-hearted action—cases where consideration of any alternate course of action would be misguided. But, if all consideration of alternate courses of action is misguided, then it is hard to see how one can set the relevant contrast class that is essential to the contrastivist view—any contrast class will seem out of place. In addition, I address some of the arguments that have been given in favor of the contrastivist account of reasons and argue that there are at least two ways that the non-contrastivist can respond to these arguments.
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Notes
In Sinnott-Armstrong (2008), see especially pp 257-258.
For the purposes of this paper, I am operating under the assumption that reasons are either all contrastive, or reasons are such that none of them are contrastive. For an argument against a hybrid position—one that claims that some reasons are contrastive and others are not— see Snedegar (2013).
Later on I will discuss a four place non-contrastivist view about reasons that adds a place for the context in which the agent finds herself. In principle, there could be a context dependent contrastivist understanding of the reason relation, in which case the reason relation would be a five place one.
For a seminal essay on the contrastivist account of knowledge see Schaffer (2004).
Snedegar draws a distinction between shallow and deep contrastivism. According to shallow contrastivism the reasons relation can be understood in terms of a more fundamental non-contrastive favoring relation. According to deep contrastivism, the reasons relation cannot be understood in terms of any other non-contrastive relation. I find his claim here somewhat puzzling, since I would have thought that the reason relation and the favoring relation were one and the same. Given the limited description that we get of what shallow contrastivism might be, it is not clear to me whether the arguments provided here would also count against such a position. Nevertheless, since Snedegar suggests that he prefers deep contrastivism anyway, I take the arguments in this paper to be of relevance even if all they do is show that deep contrastivism fails.
There is something a bit odd about this example. It seems to me that while the fact that it’s your birthday might plausibly favor baking you a cake, it can’t plausibly favor baking you a chocolate cake. Reasons must be fitted to their actions such that the specificity of the action must fit the reason, and the fact that it is your birthday doesn’t fit any action that would differentiate cake varieties. To do that something else must come into play, perhaps the fact that you like chocolate. The argument can be found in Sinnott-Armstrong (2006) pp. 83–84.
It is worth clarifying the conception of whole-heartedness at play in what follows. The term "whole-hearted" might invoke a conception of agency that involves a force of conviction or will that will lead an agent to pursue her end despite the appeal of alternatives that might derail her in her aims. This is not the sense of whole-heartedness that I have in mind. In contrast, to this there is a virtue theoretic conception of agency in which paradigmatically virtuous acts involve a kind of effortlessness in doing what is right case by case, precisely because alternate courses of action do not present themselves as having any appeal. I discuss this virtue-theoretic conception of whole-hearted action in more detail below.
It is important to emphasize that the constraint I have in mind only disallows deliberation which itself counts against the moral appraisal of the agent, and not deliberation that merely brings about something else, a blindspot, say, that so-counts. It is important to note that this deliberative constraint is consistent with maintaining that the best possible deliberative procedure may be distinct from the criteria for right action. For example, utilitarians who draw this distinction allow that there is nothing about deliberating in accordance with the principle of utility which itself undercuts the moral status of an agent’s act, rather, it is the further fact that agents who deliberate in this manner are more likely to fail to adequately satisfy the principle of utility.
For a highly influential essay laying out this conception of virtuous agency, see McDowell (1998).
One might worry that McDowell’s view is unreasonably strong, since it seems to suggest that all virtuous activity must be such that competing courses of action are silenced. This is a highly controversial presumption, and one that there may be grounds to reject. Hence, I want to emphasize that the arguments that follow will stand so long as it is at least sometimes the case that virtuous agency is as McDowell describes. That is, the arguments that follow require only the comparatively uncontroversial claim that virtuous agency at least sometimes requires whole-heartedness in the way McDowell describes, not the more controversial claim that it always does so.
For more on the problem faced by contrastivist in explaining why certain odd or “crazy” contrast classes are not relevant, see Baumann (2008).
Thinking of things in this way can also explain why what Baumann (2008) calls "crazy" alternative possibilities are crazy. They are crazy precisely because it is hard to imagine a circumstance in which these crazy alternatives would figure as salient possibilities for a normally functioning agent.
References
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Jordan, A. Whole-Hearted Motivation and Relevant Alternatives: A Problem for the Contrastivist Account of Moral Reasons. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 17, 835–845 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9485-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9485-5