The Limits of Non-Relative Views

Abstract

The previous chapter’s analysis of the reasons one has to overcome repression suggests that there is a salient distinction not only between those reasons that are relative to an agent’s motivational set and those that are not, but also between those reasons that are deliberatively accessible and those that are not. The intersection of these two distinctions creates space for four different categories of reasons and opens the possibility for categorizing a reason to overcome repression as a relative external reason. Such a reason gains its normative status — its ability to evaluate, constrain, and justify action — from its relativity to an agent’s motivational set, but also has its normative status obscured by the forces that repress the agent. Many of these forces are themselves normative and so it is difficult to say, with any certainty, when a reason to overcome repression is merely a pro tanto reason outweighed by more authoritative reasons and when it is, in fact, an agent’s best reason all things considered. This book does not attempt to provide a protocol for making that decision. Rather, it argues that not being able to explain why a reason to overcome repression is a pro tanto reason that at least occasionally is authoritative enough to be an agent’s best reason is a significant shortcoming for any theory of practical reasoning. This chapter and the next show why only those theories that allow for relative external reasons can overcome this shortcoming, these theories fall under a category that will be called relative externalism for short.