On content-independent reasons: It's not in the name

Law and Philosophy

Volumn 28, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 233-260

  Sciaraffa, Stefan ^a  

^a BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 64049103396     PISSN: 01675249     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10982-008-9037-7     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. He first coined the term in a discussion of promises. Hart, H.L.A., 'Legal and Moral Obligation', in A.I. Melden (ed.), Essays in Moral Philosophy (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958), p. 102.
2. Hart, H.L.A., Essays on Bentham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 254-255.
3. See, for example, Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom (New York: Clarendon Press, 1986);
4. Green, Leslie, The Authority of the State (Oxford: The Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1988);
5. Edmunson, William, Three Anarchical Fallacies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
6. and Christiano, Thomas, The Authority of Democracy', The Journal of Political Philosophy 12(3) (2004): 266-290.
7. Raz, 'Authority, Law, and Morality', The Monist 68 (1985): 295-324,
8. republished in Raz, Ethics and the Public Domain (New York: Oxford University Press).
9. See also Shapiro, 'On Hart's Way Out' in Jules Coleman (ed.), Hart's Postcript: Essays on the Postscript to the Concept of Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
10. See Hart (1958), p. 102;
11. Hart (1982), pp. 254-255;
12. Raz (1986), pp. 35-37;
13. Green (1988), pp. 40-41,
14. and Shapiro, 'Authority', in The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence & Philosophy of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 389.
15. Labels truer to this underlying Gricean idea are natural (content-dependent) and non-natural (content-independent) reasons.
16. Green, Leslie, 'Legal Obligation and Authority', in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2004 Edition), http://plato.Stanford.edu/archives/spr2004/entries/legal-obligation/.
17. I would like to thank an anonymous referee for pressing me to clarify this point.
18. Shapiro (2002), p. 389.
19. In addition to the conception of content-dependent reasons quoted above, Shapiro also provides a conception of content-independent reasons: "[T]hey are supposed to be reasons simply because they have been issued and not because they direct subjects to perform actions that are independently justifiable." Ibid., p. 389. Thus, Shapiro defines the class of content-independent and the class of content-dependent reasons independently of one another. This is a risky strategy because a successful account of the distinction between these two kinds of reasons must describe two mutually exclusive classes of reasons. The present example shows that Shapiro's distinction is not successful in this respect. The captain's command to swab the deck is a reason to swab the deck, both because it has been issued and because it has a certain content. Were Shapiro to abandon his independent conception of content-dependent reasons and cast the distinction as one between content-independent reasons that are reasons because they have been issued and all other reasons, his distinction might be similar to the Gricean distinction I defend. However, like the Gricean distinction, Shapiro's distinction in this case would not be content-based. Thanks again to the anonymous referee who pressed me to clarify this point.
20. Markwick, 'Law and Content-Independent Reasons', Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 20 (2000): 579-96.
21. Someone might object that this example fails to satisfy Markwick's formulation only because it does not adequately characterize the paradigmatic content-independent reason in question. On this objection, the proper characterization that satisfies Markwick's formulation is as follows: a captain acting within his legitimate authority commands it. This, however, would be a cheat because legitimate authority on the standard account is defined in terms of content-independent reasons. A is a legitimate authority with respect to S only if A provides S with content-independent reasons. See, e.g., Raz (1986),
22. Green (2004),
23. and Thomas Christiano 'Authority', in Edward Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition), http://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/fall2004/entries/authority/.
24. See Hart (1958) for an expression of this view with respect to promises.
25. See McDowell, John 'Virtue and Reason' The Monist 62 (1979): 331-350 for a seminal discussion of the difference between silencing and over-riding reasons.
26. I would argue that we should extend this same reasoning to egregiously immoral commands or requests.
27. Raz (1986), p. 35.
28. Interestingly, Raz, like Hart, suggests a Gricean rather than a content-based conception of content-independent reasons when discussing specific examples of such reasons, yet stops short of describing such reasons in terms of Gricean intentions. See, e.g., Raz's account of why requests provide content-independent reasons. "But the specific quality of requests is that they are acts intended to communicate to their addressee the speaker's intention that the addressee shall regard the act of communication as a reason for a certain action."
29. Ibid., p. 37.
30. One might argue that Raz intends for his normal justification thesis to distinguish direct (content-dependent) reasons from indirect (content-independent) reasons. That is, a putative authority provides a subject with content-independent reason if and only if the putative authority satisfies the normal justification thesis with respect to the subject. See infra no. 32 and accompanying text for a discussion of the normal justification thesis. However, Raz cannot think this for he holds both that requests are sources of content-independent reasons and that requests characteristically do not satisfy the normal justification thesis. See, Ibid., p. 37.
31. Grice, 'Meaning', The Philosophical Review 64 (1957): 377-388, 385.
32. Raz (1986), p. 37.
33. This account of Grice borrows from Rovane, Carol, The Bounds of Agency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 149.
34. See Hart (1982), p. 251. Here, Hart cites to Grice's analysis of non-natural meaning.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., p. 254.
37. Raz similarly makes these observations without linking them. See supra no. 17.
38. Bratman, Michael Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
39. Given that intentions can also serve as reasons for forming yet further intentions, we could add a third category of content-independent reasons. In addition to content-independent reasons for action and belief, there are also content-independent reasons for adopting further intentions. Anything I say below about content-independent reasons for action should also apply to content-independent reason for adopting further intentions.
40. Cf. Roveane (1998), p. 149. Note also that when X and Y are one and the same, X's present intentions do not provide reasons for Y to perform the corresponding actions. Rather, X/Y performs the action with the present intention of performing the action.
41. For a discussion of enablers as applied to reasons, see Dancy, Jonathan Ethics without Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ch. 3.
42. They also enable and disable fellow enablers and disablers.
43. See Rovane (1998), pp. 152-53.
44. Raz (1986), p. 53ff.
45. I assume that a consideration is a reason for believing a proposition only if it is evidence of the truth of the proposition. One might reject this assumption. For example, one might hold that one has reason to believe propositions that it is useful for one to believe irrespective of the useful proposition's truth. The reader who rejects this assumption might think that there are non-epistemic enabling conditions of content-independent reasons for belief.
46. See Christiano, 'The Authority of Democracy' (2004), Waldron, Jeremy Law and Disagreement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002),
47. and Cohen, Joshua, 'Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy' in Alan Hamlin and Philip Pettit (eds.), The Good Polity (New York: Basil Blackwell for arguments of this sort, 1989).
48. See Hart (1982).
49. Cf. Raz and Green's similar conceptions of authority that hold that a legitimate authority provides its subjects with content-independent and exclusionary reasons. Raz (1986) and Green (1988).
50. Raz (1986), p. 35
51. and Hart (1958).
52. See supra no. 28 and accompanying text.
53. Simmons's view of consent seems to be an account of the normative force of acts of consent based in a conception of the natural freedom of persons to bind themselves to obligations to others. Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligations, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 62ff. This logic readily extends to promises.
54. See Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, bk. III, pt. II, ch. V;
55. Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 344-350
56. and Hart (1958) for conventionalist views of the normative force of promise-keeping.
57. See Raz (1986), pp. 35-36
58. and Green (1988), p. 27ff.
59. Cf. Raz (1986), pp. 35-36, 52-53
60. and Green (1988), p. 27ff. They hold that advice provides only content-independent reasons for belief.