The scope of rational requirements

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 60, Issue 238, 2010, Pages 28-49

  Brunero, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI ST LOUIS   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 74549172022     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: 14679213     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2008.596.x     Document Type: Review

References (30)

1. The wide-scope interpretation of rational requirements has recently been defended in J. Broome, 'Normative Requirements', in J. Dancy (ed.), Normativity (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 78-99
2. and 'Wide or Narrow Scope?', Mind, 116 (2007), pp. 359-70
3. J. Dancy, Practical Reality (Oxford UP, 2000), pp. 70-6
4. R.J. Wallace, 'Normativity, Commitment, and Instrumental Reason', Philosopher's Imprint, 1 (2001), pp. 1-26
5. For earlier presentations and defences of this view, see S. Darwall, Impartial Reason (Cornell UP, 1983)
6. P.S. Greenspan, 'Conditional Oughts and Hypothetical Imperatives', Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1975), pp. 259-76
7. T. Hill, 'The Hypothetical Imperative', Philosophical Review, 82 (1973), pp. 429-50
8. See M. Schroeder, 'The Scope of Instrumental Reason', Philosophical Perspectives, 18 (2004), pp. 337-64
9. N. Kolodny, 'Why be Rational?', Mind, 114 (205), pp. 509-63
10. See G.E. Hughes and M.J. Cresswell, A New Introduction to Modal Logic (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 14-16. This is logically equivalent to ¬◇(p ∧ ¬q): it is not possible that it rains all September and does not rain on Taft's birthday
11. See Broome, 'Normative Requirements', pp. 78-79
12. The 'rational ought' here is also sometimes called the 'subjective ought'. See D. Parfit, 'Reason and Motivation', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 77 (1997), pp. 93-130, at p. 93
13. Schroeder, 'Means-Ends Coherence, Stringency, and Subjective Reasons', Philosophical Studies (forthcoming)
14. Recent arguments in both J. Raz, 'The Myth of Instrumental Rationality', Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 1 (2005), pp. 2-28
15. and K. Setiya, 'Cognitivism about Instrumental Reason', Ethics, 117 (2007), pp. 649-73, show that implausible consequences follow from the view, which was once but is no longer held by John Broome, that the 'O' in the wide-scope interpretation of a rational requirement is the ordinary practical 'ought'
16. Kolodny, 'Why be Rational?', p. 529n
17. See W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), ch. 2
18. See the exchange in Broome, 'Wide or Narrow Scope?', and Kolodny, 'State or Process Requirements?', for further discussion of this and related issues. See esp. §3 and §6 of Kolodny's paper
19. For further discussion of Kolodny's transparency account, see S. Bridges, 'Rationality, Normativity and Transparency', Mind (forthcoming)
20. For a summary of the debate, see J. Dancy, 'Moral Particularism', in E.N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford. edu/entries/moral-particularism, and the collection of papers in B.W. Hooker and M. Little (eds), Moral Particularism (Oxford UP, 2000). I shall refer to moral particularism as 'particularism' and moral generalism as 'generalism' below
21. Dancy, Ethics without Principles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), p. 73
22. See also Dancy, Moral Reasons (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 60-18
23. and Shelly Kagan's related critique of the 'ubiquity thesis', in Kagan, 'The Additive Fallacy', Ethics, 99 (1988), pp. 5-31
24. Dancy, 'Moral Particularism', §3
25. See also Dancy, Ethics without Principles, p. 74
26. Some generalists deny that holism creates problems for them. See, e.g., S. McKeever and M. Ridge, 'What does Holism have to do with Moral Particularism?', Ratio, 18 (2005), pp. 93-103
27. P. Väyrynen, 'Moral Generalism: Enjoy in Moderation', Ethics, 116 (2006), pp. 707-41
28. For further examples of arguments roughly along these lines, see, in addition to works cited in fn. 1 above, C. Korsgaard, 'The Normativity of Instrumental Rationality', in G. Cullity and B. Gaut (eds), Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 215-54, at p. 237
29. T.M. Scanlon, 'Reasons: a Puzzling Duality?', in P. Pettit, S. Scheffler and M. Smith (eds), Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), pp. 231-46, at pp. 234-5
30. The phrasing here is borrowed from Kagan's formulation of the ubiquity thesis. See Kagan, 'The Additive Fallacy', p. 12