PEA Soup

Reasons not to intend

The distinction between the 'right' and 'wrong' kind of reasons is taken to play at least three important roles: 'right' kind but not 'wrong' kinds of reasons contribute to standards of correctness, and in the case of reasons for attitudes, 'right' kind but not 'wrong' kinds of reasons can serve to make attitudes rational, and exhibit at least a strong asymmetry, in that it is at least substantially easier to believe or intend for the 'right' kinds of reasons, if not outright impossible to believe or intend for the 'wrong' kind.

Toxin-puzzle style considerations often lead philosophers to endorse the following thesis:

R is a RK-reason to intend to do A iff R is a reason to do A. 

This is because it seems difficult, if not impossible to intend to drink the toxin directly for the reason that so intending will result in a reward, and moreover that believing that so intending will result in a reward doesn't make intending to drink it rational, but only makes acting to get oneself to have that intention rational - corresponding to at least two of the earmarks of a 'wrong'-kind reason.

Proponents of the so-called 'state-given/object-given' distinction appear to go further than this, and claim that all RK-reasons which bear on intention are reasons for or against the object of that intention.

a problem for (some) hybrid theories

According to some (but not all) 'hybrid' metaethical theories, moral sentences like 'stealing is wrong' express both beliefs and desires, but different beliefs for different speakers.  I think Paul Edwards was a forebear of this position, but it has recently been defended by Stephen Barker and Michael Ridge.

I understand these kinds of views to work something as follows: every speaker is assumed to have some property, P, such that she disapproves of P-actions.  Then, for any given speaker, S, who disapproves of P-actions, 'Stealing is wrong' expresses the belief that stealing is P, and expresses disapproval of P-actions. 

Parfit on Normative Irreducibility

Derek Parfit has recently circulated an argument against what he calls Non-Analytical Naturalism, which he understands as the thesis that normative truths are reducible to natural truths.  He begins by stipulating that he will use 'normative' as an abbreviation for 'irreducibly normative':

When some normative word cannot be analyzed or defined in non-normative terms, we can call this word, and the concept it expresses, irreducibly normative.  That is what I shall mean by 'normative'...

His central argument then appears to be that Non-Analytic Naturalism is (by definition) inconsistent with normativity, and hence false. 

Expressivist '&' and '~'

I wanted to follow up on Jimmy Lenman’s suggestion in a recent discussion thread that there is something harder for expressivists about accounting for negation than about accounting for conjunction. I’d like to try explaining why I think that is not the case.

Jimmy describes the project of accounting for propositional logic within an expressivist framework as that of providing an ‘inferential role’ semantics for ‘~’ and ‘&’. That may be right, but inferential role semantics can take different forms.