Reasons, Rationality and Agency

Abstract

Chapter 3 claimed that reasons to overcome repression are a type of relative external reason, but did not have much to say about what a reason for action is or why these relative external reasons should count as reasons for action. It is now time to come clean about this, but the effort to do so is complicated by the conclusion of Chapter 5, which revealed the important insight that even if a reason to overcome repression is warranted by the future coherence it would yield, deliberating about that warrant will not cause a repressed agent to act on or even acknowledge his reason to overcome repression. Insofar as an agent is moved to overcome repression, he is led to do so by forces outside of his own volitional self-control, believing all the while that what he is doing is wrong. If this really is the case, one is left wondering why a reason to overcome repression should even count as a reason for action if it does not do any of the work typically associated with reasons for action. It does not motivate the agent to overcome his repression, nor does it, from the agent’s perspective at least, normatively authorize such a move. Moreover, as he overcomes his repression, his actions seem less than rational because he does not seem well enough in control of his actions to be in full in possession of his agency.