Abstract
This chapter provides a picture, in relation to the debate on normativity, of the different analyses of reasons and the different ways in which reasons can be evaluated and classified. The discussion starts out by distinguishing three different classes of reasons on the basis of their role: normative, motivating, and explanatory. And then the focus shifts to normative reasons, discussing the basis of their capacity to favour actions or beliefs in the light of the different understandings of their ontological status as either facts or mental states. We will see, on these premises, that reasons can be distinguished into two different kinds: reasons for belief (epistemic) and reasons for action (practical). Particular attention is devoted to the “weighing conception” of normative reasons (and the understanding of them as pro tanto reasons), as this approach seems best suited to practical (as well as legal) reasoning. This will provide a vantage point from which to analyse the strength of reasons and their modality, most notably their modality as first- and second-order reasons. Finally, it will be considered how the weighing conception fits into the philosophy of law, in view of the fundamental role this discipline assigns to second-order reasons in the attempt to explain the normative nature of law and its authority.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Broome (2004, 28) notes that “within the philosophy of normativity, the 1970s was the age of the discovery of reasons.”
- 2.
For Alvarez (2010, 1), the analysis of reasons raises the following questions, among many others: “What are reasons? Are there different kinds of reasons? Are reasons beliefs and desires? If not, how are they related to beliefs and desires? And what role do they play in motivating and explaining actions?”
- 3.
Searle (2001, 97) relates that Philippa Foot once wrote, “I am sure that I do not understand the idea of a reason for acting, and I wonder whether anyone else does either.”
- 4.
Dancy (2000, 1), underlines that “There are not so many things that we do for no reason at all. Intentional, deliberate, purposeful action is always done for a reason, even if some actions, such as recrossing one’s legs, are not—or not always, anyway.”
- 5.
Alvarez (2010, 7) notes that “this territory is […] quite complex. And with it comes the temptation to suppose that the machinery required to find one’s way around it must be correspondingly complex.”
- 6.
Alvarez (2010, 10) stresses, in this sense, that there are “different ways of partitioning.”
- 7.
Alvarez (2016a) argues that “in itself and out of context, a reason is not a reason of any particular kind, say normative or motivating. It is only in a particular context, where the reason plays a specific role and can be cited to answer a particular question that it can be qualified as being of this or that kind.”
- 8.
In the same sense, Raz (1999a, 15–16) notes that “as well as reasons for actions there are reasons for beliefs, for desires and emotions, for attitudes, for norms and institutions, and many others […]. Reasons are referred to in explaining, in evaluating, and in guiding people’s behaviour.”
- 9.
Sometimes, the distinction is placed between normative and explanatory reasons. See Bagnoli , chapter 2 , part I, this volume, on “Reasons in Moral Philosophy,” para 2.
- 10.
Of course, this idea of reasons as “favouring” comes from Raz (1999a) and Scanlon (1998). Broome (2004, 41), who sees as “a commonplace” the idea that “the reasons for an action are considerations which count in favour of that action,” denies (2013, 46ff.) the primacy of reasons in normativity and supports that of the “ought.” To pro tanto reasons, he adds the presence of “pro toto reasons” (or “perfect reasons”). He does not “take the idea of a reason as primitive” (ibid., 54), and he does not consider “counting in favour [as] the basic normative notion” (Broome 2004, 41). For Broome, the idea of a pro tanto reason does not account for the explanatory role of reasons. On these aspects, see Crisp (2014). See also note 35 below.
- 11.
For Alvarez (2016a), “the advantages of drawing this distinction will be spelled out in examining debates concerning motivating reasons and the explanation of action. […] [A]pparently competing claims about motivating reasons and the explanation of action are often best understood and resolved as claims about motivating or explanatory reasons, respectively. To be precise, a reason that plays a motivating role for a particular action can (arguably) always play an explanatory role for that action, but the converse does not hold.” She argues that “This way of categorising reasons […] enables us to deal with a range of cases that the binary classification cannot accommodate” (ibid.). To explain the difference between the two types of reasons, she uses the example of Othello and Desdemona: while Othello’s jealousy can be seen as one of the reasons explaining the killing of Desdemona, the reason motivating Othello is the belief, induced by Iago, that Desdemona betrayed him (ibid.).
- 12.
Audi (2010, 275) notes that normative reasons can be, for example, moral or prudential. He also notes that “some normative reasons for—roughly, counting in favour of—an action are reasons for any normal human being. Other normative reasons, however, are person-specific: reasons there are for a specific person.”
- 13.
Broome (2004, 34) underlines that “a useful distinguishing mark is that ‘the reason’ in this non-normative sense is usually followed by ‘why.’” For Alvarez (2016a), “the basis for doing so was said to be the existence of three distinct questions about reasons: whether a reason favours an action; whether a reason motivates an agent; and whether a reason explains an agent’s action. Accordingly [...] we should recognize three kinds of reasons: normative, motivating and explanatory.”
- 14.
Normative reasons are often qualified “in terms of justification: a reason justifies or makes it right for someone to act in a certain way. this is why normative reasons are also called ‘justifying’ reasons” (Alvarez 2016a). Dancy (2000, 6–7) criticizes this way of marking normative as justifying reasons: “there is a sense of ‘justify’ in which I can be said to have justified doing what I did. but this does not show that the balance of reasons was in favour of the action. It wasn’t. […] So I prefer to keep the notion of a reason that justifies separate from that of a normative reason. Broome (2004, 54), too, notes that “‘justify’ is an ambiguous word.”
- 15.
Norms and values are understood here in a broad sense, that is, as inclusive of different values (moral, prudential, etc.) and norms (legal, social, principles, codes, etc.). For Alvarez (2016a), “the existence of these norms or values depends on a variety of things”: “logical and natural relations, conventions, rules and regulations, etc.”
- 16.
From the same perspective, Alvarez (2016a) notes that “‘normative reason’ derives from the idea that there are norms, principles or codes that prescribe actions: they make it right or wrong to do certain things.” Dancy (2000, 1) sees normative reasons as “good reasons for doing the action. So they are normative, both in their own nature (they favour action, and they do it more or less strongly) and in their product, since they make actions right or wrong, sensible or unwise.”
- 17.
Some authors note that the idea of favouring is an ambiguous one. Schroeder (2007, 11), for example, notes that the idea that reasons “count in favour […] is slippery.” Hieronymi (2005, 437–438, 456–457) makes a deeper critique, stating that “we should not understand ‘counting in favour of an action or attitude’ as the fundamental relation in which a consideration becomes a reason.” She stresses that identifying a “reason as a consideration that counts in favour of an action or attitude […] generates a fairly deep and recalcitrant ambiguity; this account fails to distinguish between two quite different sets of considerations that count in favour of certain attitudes, only one of which is the ‘proper’ or ‘appropriate’ kind of reason for them.” This ambiguity, which for Hieronomy, leads to the so-called problem of the “wrong kind of reason,” referring to the fact that seeing a reason as “a consideration that counts in favour of an action or attitude […] generates a thoroughgoing ambiguity in reasons for certain attitudes–we cannot distinguish precisely between ‘content-related’ and ‘attitude-related’ reasons.” Instead of seeing a reason as counting in favour of something, she proposes that we see it “as a consideration that bears on a question […] in a piece of reasoning.” This makes it possible to “distinguish between questions, thus distinguishing these classes. The attitude-related reasons count in favour of the attitude by bearing on whether the attitude is in some way good to have; the content-related reasons count in favour of the attitude by bearing on some other question.” On this analysis, see also Hieronymi (2013).
- 18.
It is possible to relate these factors to values and norms understood as reference points for desires and purposes, among other things. However, this relation need not be necessary. In any case, we will refer to values and norms as categories in relation to which something can be considered as having been made “right or appropriate.”
- 19.
- 20.
Or, conversely, “reasons for not φ-ing, that is reasons for not doing or for not believing something, for not feeling something, etc.” (Alvarez 2010, 10).
- 21.
- 22.
This is true for the positions that consider reasons as the fundamental dimension of normativity. As we have seen, this is not, for example, the position of J. Broome.
- 23.
- 24.
Chang (2004, 56) explains this approach in this way: “My reason for going to the store, for example, is provided by the fact that I want to buy some ice cream, and my reason for wanting to buy some ice cream is provided by the fact that I want to eat some.” This is a form of “subjectivism,” that is a view that assumes the capacity of reasons to favour desires, plans, motivations, projects, etc.
- 25.
Note that, in this case, “my reason to go to the store is provided by the value of what is in question—namely, eating some ice cream—and the value of eating some ice cream is given by the fact that doing so would be valuable in some way—for example, that it would be pleasurable. It is not the fact that I want ice cream that makes having some pleasurable; having ice cream might be pleasurable even if I don’t desire it” (Chang 2004, 56).
- 26.
Chang (2004, 57) describes the difference in this way: “So, for example, my reason to have the ice cream might strictly be given not by the evaluative fact that it would be pleasurable but rather by the natural facts upon which its being pleasurable supervenes, such as that it would be pleasant or that I would enjoy it.”
- 27.
One of the aspects in which these approaches diverge is that of the internal versus external vision of reasons for acting. On this question, see Sect. 3 below.
- 28.
The Kantian approach can be assimilated to a “subjective” one characterized by the control that the rationality of an “ideally rational agent” imposes on desires and attitudes. See Sobel and Wall (2009, 3ff.).
- 29.
A model of practical rationality that refers to mental states has been developed in Bratman’s theory of action (1987, 2014): this is the belief–desire–intention (BDI) model. This model has as its main reference the concept of plans for action and has been used in the field of artificial intelligence research.
- 30.
Robertson (2009, 19) states that “Kantian principles of rationality are formal in that they lack specific, substantive, normative content, a practically rational deliberator being one who satisfies relevant formal procedures of reasoning.”
- 31.
Robertson (2009, 12), sees it as “uncontroversial […] that the conceptual structure or logical form of a reason is that of a relation.” Raz (1999a, 19) notes that “we usually think of reasons for action as being reasons for a person to perform an action.” Blackburn (2010, 6) underlines that “reasons are reasons for something: the primary datum is relational. The field of the relation is less clear, or rather, more diffuse.” For Searle (2001, 99), “reason statements are relational in three ways. First, the reason specified is a reason for something else. Nothing is a reason just by itself. Second, reasons for action are doubly relational in that they are reasons for an agent-self to perform an action; and third, if they are to function in deliberation, the reasons must be known to the agent-self. To summarize, to function in deliberation a reason must be for a type of action, it must be for the agent, and it must be known to the agent.” Alvarez (2016a) stresses that, for some authors like Skorupski (2010) and Scanlon (2014), “the relation involves not just a person, a reason and an action, but more aspects: a time, circumstances, etc.”
- 32.
- 33.
The notion of person relatedness can be connected with the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons: it is a distinction that was introduced by Parfit (1984) on the basis of the distinction between “objective” and “subjective” reasons elaborated by Nagel (1970). For Parfit (1984, 142), “Nagel calls a reason objective if it is not tied down to any point of view. Suppose we claim that there is a reason to relieve some person’s suffering. This reason is objective if it is a reason for everyone—for anyone who could relieve this person’s suffering. I call such reasons agent-neutral. Nagel’s subjective reasons are reasons only for the agent. I call these agent-relative […]. When I call some reason agent-relative, I am not claiming that this reason cannot be a reason for other agents. All that I am claiming is that it may not be.” On the different ways of understanding this distinction, see Ridge (2011).
- 34.
Dancy (2000, 5) argues that “there can be good reasons not to do an action even when there are better reasons to do it. That an action was right does not show that there were no (good) reasons not to do it. Equally, if an action was wrong, this does not mean that there was no reason to do it; it merely means that there was insufficient reason.”
- 35.
Broome (2004, 42ff.) is against what he calls “protantism,” that is the view that “there is a case for thinking that every ought fact has a weighing explanation.” For Broome, “even if every ought fact does have a weighing explanation, many ought facts also have more significant explanations that are not weighing ones.” As noted, Broome denies that reasons are the primary category of normativity. In his view, this space is composed of different types of reasons (perfect, or pro toto, and pro tanto) and normative requirements. The “weighing conception” of reasons is also questioned by Horty (2007, 1–2) who proposes to conceive reasons as “defaults:” he sees the weighing conception as “incomplete as an account of the way in which reasons support conclusions.”
- 36.
For Broome (2004, 42–43), “a putative example of an ought fact that has no weighing explanation” is that “You ought not to believe both that it is Sunday and that it is Wednesday.”
- 37.
Alvarez (2010, 54) stresses that “the term ‘motivating reason’ does not have much currency outside of philosophy and can rightly be regarded as a term of art.”
- 38.
Audi (2010, 275) distinguishes between “motivational” reason from a “motivating” one: the former is a “potential” reason “even if I never act on it,” while the latter is one that “explains why I do” something. Motivational reasons must be “possessed reasons: reasons someone has to do something.”
- 39.
Alvarez (2010, 127) notes that reasons for φ-ing can be either “independent” of or “related” to one another. The criterion for the distinction “is the relation between reasons for acting and the goodness or value of the action for which I take them to be reasons that explains why sometimes my reasons for doing something are independent of each other and why sometimes they are not.”
- 40.
As we have already noted, Alvarez (2016a) highlights this problem using the example of Shakespeare’s Othello.
- 41.
In Othello’s case, according to the first position, the reason for killing Desdemona lies in his desire “to restore his reputation,” crippled by Desdemona betrayal, while according to the second, the reason lies in “the putative facts that she is unfaithful to him and that killing her is a fitting way to restore his reputation.” For a detailed analysis, see Alvarez (2016a).
- 42.
Alvarez (2010, 28) notes that “in addition to answers to ‘why?’-questions, there are other kinds of explanation, for instance, explanations of how to φ (how to iron a shirt), of how x φ-s (how a steam engine works), etc. But to explain how to φ, or how x φ-s, is not to give a reason.”
- 43.
Alvarez (2010, 166) stresses that the explanation is about “why someone habitually acts, is now acting, has acted, will act, etc., in a certain way,” making these actions “intelligible.”
- 44.
The answers that we can give depend also by “the pragmatics of explanation,” that is “the context in which the question is asked” (ibid., 26).
- 45.
For Audi (2010, 276), “they are reasons for which we do something and thereby ground a motivational explanation of our doing it.”
- 46.
You can have it as your purpose to be on time for a meeting but have different reasons why you are taking a taxi (someone stole your bicycle, you woke up late, the bus is late, and so on). Of course, there are actions that can be explained on the basis of their purpose: they are “merely reactive” (instinctive, mechanical, reactive, habitual, etc.) and “skilled actions” (riding a bike, skiing, dancing, driving, etc.) that “can be explained without the need to attribute to the agent any explicit or implicit calculation or reasoning” (Alvarez 2010, 193, 195).
- 47.
Alvarez (2016b) identifies different kinds of non-psychologism (factualism). Kantian perspectives are difficult to locate but, as just noted, they seem to be close to subjectivism (psychologism). For Scanlon (2014, 11), Kantians start from “the idea that claims about the reasons an agent has must be grounded in something that is already true of that agent,” and this is “something similar might be said by proponents of desire-based.”
- 48.
Alvarez (2016b) asserts that “Factualism is widely accepted for normative reasons, reasons that favour doing something. But things become more controversial when the question concerns the reasons for which we act and the reasons that explain our actions. This has led many to conclude that Factualism is right for normative reasons but not for other kinds of reasons.”
- 49.
For Davidson (1963, 685–686), “under (a) are to be included desires, wantings, urges, promptings, and a great variety of moral views, aesthetic principles, economic prejudices, social conventions, and public and private goals and values in so far as these can be interpreted as attitudes of an agent directed towards actions of a certain kind. The word ‘attitude’ does yeoman service here, for it must cover not only permanent character traits that show themselves in a lifetime of behaviour, like love of children or a taste for loud company, but also the most passing fancy that prompts a unique action.”
- 50.
Buckareff (2014) stresses that Davidson “argues that the relationship between reasons and actions displays the same pattern we discern in causal explanations” and that “if the onset of a primary reason is not a cause of action, we have difficulty accounting for the difference between when an agent has a reason for acting in mind that does not actually explain why she acts as she does and cases where the agent has a reason for acting that does explain why she acts as she does. If we dispense with a causal role for reasons, we may be able to appeal to some reasons of an agent in the light of which the action looks reasonable, but, absent a causal role, it is not clear that the putative justification for action explains the action and, hence, really rationalizes it.” O’Connor (2010, 130) notes that in the perspective of the “casual theorist,” it is possible “determining the true reason(s) for the action.”
- 51.
Finlay and Schroeder (2012) refer this definition to schematic internalism and stress that “different ways of spelling out relation R and motivational fact M correspond to […] a different thesis—a version of reasons internalism.” Darwall (1992) distinguishes between “existence” and “judgment” internalism: the latter is based on the idea that “assent to a moral judgment […] concerning what one should do is necessarily connected to motivation (actual or dispositional)”; according to the first, “someone morally […] has to do something only if, necessarily, she (the agent) has (actually or dispositionally) motives to do so.”
- 52.
The scheme of this analysis can be summarized as follows: the motivations (which cannot be reduced exclusively to dispositions, as in Ryle’s analysis) are mainly understood as desires (“to give the motive for a deed is to indicate a desire for the satisfaction of which the deed was done”), and a desire is in turn seen as an “inclination to act.” See Alvarez (2010, 60, 61, 70), referring to Ryle (1949) and White (1968) (quotation in parentheses) and criticizing Smith (1987) and his attempt to characterize desires through the use of the metaphor of “direction of fit.”
- 53.
In this sense, Dancy (1993, 32) notes that “what motivates is the matter of fact believed” and that “what motivates is the fact that one believes, which is still a fact.”
- 54.
Alvarez (2016a) points out that there is “disagreement about what facts of any kind are: are they concrete or abstract entities? Is a fact the same as the corresponding true proposition, or is the fact the ‘truth-maker’ of the proposition? Are there any facts other than empirical facts, e.g. logical, mathematical, moral or aesthetic facts?”
- 55.
- 56.
These theories can be distinguished into naturalistic and non-naturalistic ones.
- 57.
Robertson (2009, 13) adds that on these positions, “a normative proposition might be true in virtue of satisfying some truth- or knowledge condition—such as those presented by formal criteria like universaliability, convergence commitments, the Categorical Imperative, and so on—which, when satisfied, incur no commitment to there being robustly normative properties within the fabric of the world.”
- 58.
Skorupski (2010, 35) brings up as examples such cases in which we “introduce a supposition, make an inference, or exclude a supposition, etc.”
- 59.
For Raz (2009, 37), epistemic reasons are “truth-related”; that is, they “are reasons for believing in a proposition through being facts which are part of a case for (belief in) its truth.”
- 60.
For the objections, see Alvarez (2010), 20–22.
- 61.
Raz (2009, 41) underlines that the possibility of choice regards not only single actions that “can serve or disserve a number of intrinsic values,” but also action that refers to a single value that “may serve independent concerns.” This happens, for example, when “a single act can advance the welfare of several individuals, when the interest of each of them is a reason, an independent reason, to perform it”: in this case, we may face the impossibility of their contemporary practicability or of their possible conflict.
- 62.
Raz (2009, 43) underlines that “the diversity of concerns manifested in practical reasons is not entirely due to the diversity of values. Diverse values do generate diverse concerns, but so do other factors: for example, being a medically qualified caretaker of sheltered accommodation for disabled people I have a reason to help anyone there who needs insulin injections. There are several such people. So I have a reason to help each of them. Each of these reasons represents an independent concern, and they can conflict with each other, even though they all derive from the same value.”
- 63.
Among the other differences that can be added, there is the one noted by Skorupski (2010, 156, xvii, 40, 41), for whom “epistemic reasons are relative to an epistemic field,” that is to a “set of facts knowable to the actors” that create “epistemic dependencies.” For Skorupski, “epistemic reasons are relative to their field: whether a subset of facts is an epistemic field constitutes a reason—and how good a reason for belief it constitutes—depends on the other facts of the field.”
- 64.
In an even stronger stance, Raz (2011, 95) has argued that “the difference between practical and epistemic reasons is central to the attempt to understand the normativity of reasons. It defeats any attempt to explain normativity as having to do with the influence of value on us. Epistemic reasons have nothing to do with value.”
- 65.
Alvarez (2010, 15) takes the example of bungee-jumping: “If bungee-jumping is a good thing to do (at least for some people) this is presumably because it is fun, thrilling, exhilarating, and so on—that is, it is good for what might be called a hedonic reason. On the other hand, given the risks involved, there seem to be prudential reasons against bungee-jumping.”
- 66.
Raz (1999a, 35) notes that “description of conflicts of reasons and their resolution […] is one of the most intricate e complex areas of practical discourse.”
- 67.
In relation to the role of moral principles, Dancy (2004a) associates these two positions with two general approaches to reasoning, that of “generalism” (reasons depend on general principles) and “particularism” (reasons do not depend on general principles). For Dancy, “normally, particularists are holists and generalists are atomists” (ibid., 9). He also distinguishes holism from nonmonotonic reasoning.
- 68.
For Alvarez (2010, 14), “when the reason to believe something and the reason not to believe it are of equal strength, then believing either may be right.”
- 69.
- 70.
Raz (1999a, 24–25) makes this example: “Suppose John says: wherever φ-ing would increase human happiness one has a reason to φ. Let us assume that Jack denies this. How are we to understand Jack’s position? Is he guilty of a mistake in logic? Not necessarily. John does not state a complete reason, though it is easy to see which reason he is invoking. It is that human happiness is a value and that under certain conditions φ-ing increases human happiness. This is his complete reason for φ-ing when those conditions obtain.” Of course, Jack can continue to deny that human happiness is a value, but he would make a logical mistake if “the reason of his denial is that values do not always constitute reasons, or that sometimes there will be stronger reasons for not φ-ing despite the fact that it contributes to happiness.”
- 71.
Raz (1999a, 34) stresses that “most operative reasons are either values or desires or interests:” the latter can be called “subjective values,” while “values are dubbed objective values” (that is that “everyone has an operative reason to promote”). On the distinction between subjective versus objective and relative versus neutral, see note 33 above.
- 72.
Raz (1999a, 28) notes that “not every conclusive reason is absolute. A reason may be conclusive because it overrides all the existing reasons which conflict with it and yet not be absolute because it would be not override a certain possible reason, had it been the case.”
- 73.
In relation to the process of weighing, Parfit (2011, 32–34) distinguishes between decisive and sufficient reasons: we have a decisive reason “if our reasons to act in some way are stronger than our reasons to act in any of the other possible ways, these reasons are decisive, and acting in this way is what we have most reason to do. If such reasons are much stronger than any set of conflicting reasons, we can call them strongly decisive.” We have sufficient reasons if “there is […] nothing that we have decisive reasons to do, or most reason to do, because we have sufficient reasons, or enough reason, to act in any of two or more ways.” In these cases “our reasons to do something are sufficient when these reasons are not weaker than, or outweighed by, our reasons to act in any of the other possible ways. We might have sufficient reasons, for example, to eat either a peach or a plum or a pear, to choose either law or medicine as a career, or to give part of our income either to Oxfam or to some other similar aid agency, such as Médecins Sans Frontières.”
- 74.
Raz (1999a, 37–39) offers two more examples, relating to the commands of an authority and to a promise.
- 75.
Raz (1999a, 45) notes that the conflict between first-order and second-order reasons is characterized by “mixed reactions.”
- 76.
Raz (1999a, 47–48) underlines that there are “two main types of exclusionary reasons”: “incapacity-based exclusionary” ones and, in general, “authority-based reasons.”
- 77.
The rule of practical reasoning is, in these cases, that “one ought not to act on the balance of reasons if the reasons tipping the balance are excluded by an undefeated exclusionary reason” (ibid., 40).
- 78.
Raz (1999a, 47) emphasizes that he considers exclusionary reasons as the most important second-order reasons and that he does not discuss “second-order reasons to act for a reason.”
- 79.
Redondo (1999, 98) underlines that, for Raz, “in order to account for the concept of legal norm, one must first have a concept of reason for action.”
- 80.
Redondo (1999, 97) stresses that “the concept of reason for action is thought to be relevant for the study of a broad range of questions. In general, it is considered useful for improving the approach to and the explanation of many controversial issues in the field […]. This is the case, for instance, with respect to the problems of normative authority, the existence or validity of a rule, the way how these affect the reasoning of their addressees, etc.”
- 81.
Another important problem, but mainly related to the theory of law, is that of the relation between reasons and law and in particular that of the role that specific legal reasons (such as those related to rights) may have in the processes of applying the law: in this field, the main issue is that of the priorities, in relation to the content of rights (in the form of a material or axiological hierarchy of such content). This, for example, is the case with Ronald Dworkin (1977) and with his theory of rights as “trumps.” As is well known, Dworkin argued that, in the processes of applying the law, individual rights always prevail over the community’s general goals: in Dworkin’s terms, principles (which express individual rights) always prevail over policies. For the analysis of these aspects, see Bongiovanni and Valentini chapter 5, part III, this volume, on “Balancing, Proportionality and Rights.”
- 82.
This problem, which can be seen as the “classic” one of the philosophy of law, will not be analysed in this contribution.
- 83.
Raz (1999a, 49) states that he prefers “‘mandatory’ to the more common ‘prescriptive.’” The latter “is often used to characterize a type of meaning or a type of speech act […]. ‘Prescriptive’ also connotes the presence of someone”: these are aspects that do not pertain to rules and principles.
- 84.
Raz (1999a, 51, 50) states that “one is […] forced to look to content-independent features of rules to distinguish rules from reasons which are not rules.” With reference to von Wright (1963, Chap. 5), Raz identifies “four elements in every mandatory norms: the deontic operator; the norm subjects, namely the persons required to behave in a certain way; the norm act, namely the action which is required of them; and the conditions of application, namely the circumstances in which they are required to perform the norm action.”
- 85.
This consideration starts from the criticism of Hart’s (1961) practice theory of norms. For Raz (1999a, 53), “the practice theory suffers from three fatal defects. It does not explain rules which are not practices; it fails to distinguish between social rules and widely accepted reasons; and it deprives rules of their normative character.”
- 86.
For Enoch (2014), this type of reason is a “combination of reasons”: “A protected reason, as I understand it, is such a combination of reasons: If you have a protected reason to φ then you have both a reason to φ and an exclusionary reason excluding at least some of the reasons against φ-ing.” In the same essay, he adds to exclusionary reasons quasi-exclusionary reasons, which broaden the range of action of the first (for instance, “they include […] reasons not to deliberate in some ways on some reasons”).
- 87.
For Raz (1999a, 71), “this analogy provides a key to an understanding of the nature of mandatory norms.”
- 88.
Raz (1999a, 73) states that “when the occasion for action arises one does not have to reconsider the matter for one’s mind is already made up. The rule is taken not merely as a reason for performing the norm act but also as resolving practical conflicts by excluding conflicting reasons. This is the benefit of having rules.”
- 89.
For Raz (1999a, 73), the reference problem is that “not every rule is a valid reason.”
- 90.
Raz (1999a, 73) seems to merge two levels: the validity of a norm involves “more than […] following a rule” (such that “a norm is valid if, and only if, it ought to be followed”) and, at the same time, for a norm to be valid requires that “a person follows a rule only if he believes it to be both a valid first-order and an exclusionary reason,” that is a “combination of reasons in the validity of which he believes.”
- 91.
The idea of legitimate authority was developed by Raz in his “service conception” (see Raz 1979; 1986). For a review of the various analyses and criticisms of Raz’s authority theory, see Ehrenberg (2011). The problem of authority will not be discussed here: for the analysis of this problem, see Himma and Rodriguez Blanco chapter 8 and 9, part I, this volume, on “Authority” and on “The Authority of Law.”
- 92.
The correlation between authority and normativity has been questioned by the authors who support the thesis of the connection between law and morality. Nino (1985), for example, has argued that to derive duties from legal norms, working from a positivistic view, is to lapse into the naturalistic fallacy. As noted by Redondo (1999, 112), “on this basis, Nino concludes that it is reasonable to hold, against the thesis of authors like Joseph Raz, that legal provisions do not express operative reasons for justifying decisions, except when they are identified as moral judgments.” In the contemporary philosophy of law of positivist style, Raz’s theory of reasons has been almost exclusively discussed in relation to his conception of authority and not in relation to his conception of reasons. Even those, as Essert (2013) who criticizes the idea that law is directly reason-giving, accept the distinction between first-order and second-order (exclusionary) reasons and see the latter as “reasons to deliberate about other reasons in particular ways.” In this perspective, “to be normative,” law (“legal obligations”) needs “to make a difference in the structure or content of our deliberations:” this is possible on the basis of “considerations which make a practical difference in our deliberations without themselves being reasons for action: second-order reasons” (ibid., 27, 30).
- 93.
Bix (2011, 412–413) explains epistemic reasons through this example: “before I do something rash, you might remind me of my obligation to be a good role model to my child or to my students. This reason was always present, and your reminding me did not in any way change the reasons for action that apply to me, but you effectively helped me to (re-)discover those already-existing reasons.”
- 94.
Enoch (2011, 5) underlines that “examples of this triggering case are all around us.”
- 95.
- 96.
Enoch (2011, 15) underlines that “we must distinguish, in particular, between the claim that the law gives legal reasons for action and the claim that the law gives (genuine, unqualified) reasons for action.”
References
Alvarez, M. 2010. Kinds of reasons: An essay on the philosophy of action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alvarez, M. 2016a. Reasons for action: Justification, motivation, explanation. In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. E. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/reasons-just-vs-expl.
Alvarez, M. 2016b. Reasons for action, acting for reasons, and rationality. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/46560247/art_3A10.1007_2Fs11229_015_1005_9.pdf.
Audi, R. 2010. Reasons for action. In The Routledge companion to ethics, ed. J. Skorupski. Abington, Oxon: Routledge.
Bix, B.H. 2011. The nature of law and reasons for action. Problema. Anuario de Filosofía y Teoría del Derecho, 5: 399–415. http://www.redalyc.org/pdf/4219/421940003018.pdf.
Blackburn, S. 2010. The Majesty of reason. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0031819109990428.
Bratman, M. 1987. Intention, plans, and practical reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bratman, M. 2014. Shared agency. A planning theory of acting together. Oxford: Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Broome, J. 2004. Reasons. In Reason and value: Themes from the moral philosophy of Joseph Raz, ed. J. Wallace, P. Pettit, S. Scheffler, and M. Smith, 56–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Broome, J. 2013. Rationality Through Reasoning. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Buckareff, A. 2014. Review of Reasons and causes: Causalism and anti-causalism in the philosophy of action, ed. G. D’Oro and C. Sandis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/reasons-and-causes/.
Chang, R. 2004. Can desires provide reasons for action? In Reason and value: Themes from the moral philosophy of Joseph Raz, ed. J. Wallace, P. Pettit, S. Scheffler, and M. Smith, 56–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Crisp, R. 2014. Keeping things simple. In Weighing and reasoning: Themes from the philosophy of John Broome, ed. I. Hirose, and A. Reisner, 140–154. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dancy, J. 1993. Moral reality. Oxford: Blackwell.
Dancy, J. 2000. Practical reality. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dancy, J. 2004a. Ethics without principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dancy, J. 2004b. Enticing reasons. In Reason and value: Themes from the moral philosophy of Joseph Raz, ed. J. Wallace, P. Pettit, S. Scheffler, and M. Smith, 1–18. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Darwall, S. 1992. Internalism and agency. Philosophical Perspective (Ethics) 6: 155–174.
Davidson, D. 1963. Actions, reasons, and causes. The Journal of Philosophy 60 (23): 685–700.
Dworkin, R. 1977. Taking rights seriously. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ehrenberg, K. 2011. Critical reception of Raz’s theory of authority. Philosophy Compass 6: 777–785.
Enoch, D. 2011. Reason-giving and the law. Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Law 1: 1–38. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2607030.
Enoch, D. 2014. Authority and reason-giving. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89: 296–332. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2606995.
Essert C. 2013. Legal obligation and reasons. https://law.queensu.ca/sites/webpublish.queensu.ca.lawwww/files/files/Faculty&Research/FacultyProfileDocuments/EssertLegalObligationandReasons.pdf.
Finlay, S., M. Schroeder, 2012. Reasons for action: Internal vs. External. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. E. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasons-internal-external/.
Hart, H.L.A. 1961. The concept of law. Oxford: Clarendon.
Hieronymi, P. 2005. The wrong kind of reasons. The Journal of Philosophy 9: 437–457.
Hieronymi, P. 2013. The use of reasons in thought (and the use of earmarks in arguments). Ethics 1: 114–127.
Horty, J.F. 2007. Reasons as defaults. Philosophers’ Imprint 3: 1–26. http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~horty/articles/007003.pdf.
Mele, A. 2003. Motivation and agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nagel, T. 1970. The Possibility of altruism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Nino, C.S. 1985. La validez del derecho. Buenos Aires: Astrea.
O’Connor, T. 2010. Reasons and causes. In A companion to the philosophy of action, ed. T. O’Connor, and C. Sandis, 129–138. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Parfit, D. 2011. On what matters, vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Perry, S.R. 1989. Second-order reasons, uncertainty and legal theory. Faculty Scholarship. Paper 1354. http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/1354.
Raz, J. 1979. The authority of law: Essays on law and morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Raz, J. 1986. The morality of freedom. Oxford: Clarendon.
Raz, J. 1999a. Practical reasoning and norms. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1st ed., 1975).
Raz, J. 1999b. Engaging reason: On the theory of value and action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Raz, J. 2006. The problem of authority: Revisiting the service conception. Minnesota Law Review 9: 1003–1044. https://ssrn.com/abstract=999849.
Raz, J. 2009. Reasons: Practical and adaptive. In Reasons for action, ed. D. Sobel, and S. Wall, 37–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Raz, J. 2011. Reason, rationality, and normativity. In Id., From normativity to responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Redondo, M.C. 1999. Reasons for action and the law. Dordrecht: Springer.
Ridge, M. 2011. Reasons for action: Agent-neutral vs. Agent-relative. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. E. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/reasons-agent.
Ryle, G. 1949. The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson.
Robertson, S. 2009. Introduction: Normativity, reasons, rationality. In Spheres of reason: New essays in the philosophy of normativity, ed. S. Robertson, 1–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rodriguez-Blanco, V. 2013. Reasons in action v Triggering-reasons: A reply to Enoch on reason-giving and legal normativity. Problema: Anuario de Filosofía y Teoría del Derecho 7: 3–25. http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=421940005001.
Scanlon, T.M. 1998. What we owe to each other. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Scanlon, T.M. 2014. Being realistic about reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schroeder, M. 2007. Slaves of the passions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Searle, J. 2001. Rationality in action. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Smith, M. 1987. The humean theory of motivation. Mind 96: 36–61.
Skorupski, J. 2010. The domain of reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sobel, D., and S. Wall. 2009. Introduction. In Reasons for action, ed. D. Sobel, and S. Wall, 1–12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
von Wright, G.H. 1963. Norm and action: A logical enquiry. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
White, A. (ed.). 1968. The philosophy of action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bongiovanni, G. (2018). Reasons (and Reasons in Philosophy of Law). In: Bongiovanni, G., Postema, G., Rotolo, A., Sartor, G., Valentini, C., Walton, D. (eds) Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9452-0_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9452-0_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-9451-3
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-9452-0
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)