Moral Reasons

This book attempts to place a realist view of ethics (the claim that there are facts of the matter in ethics as elsewhere) within a broader context. It starts with a discussion of why we should mind about the difference between right and wrong, asks what account we should give of our ability to learn from our moral experience, and looks in some detail at the different sorts of ways in which moral reasons can combine to show us what we should do in the circumstances. The second half of the book uses these results to mount an attack on consequentialism in ethics, arguing that there are more sorts of reasons around than consequentialists can even dream of.

Jonathan Dancy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading and author of An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology (Blackwell, 1985) and Berkeley: An Introduction(Blackwell, 1987), and editor of A Companion to Epistemology (with Ernest Sosa, Blackwell, 1992), Reading Parfit (Blackwell, 1997), and Normativity (Blackwell, 2000).

Introduction	p. ix
Internalism and Cognitivism	p. 1
Internalism and externalism	p. 1
Problems for cognitivist internalism	p. 4
Forms of cognitivist internalism	p. 7
Motivated desire theory	p. 9
Pure cognitivism	p. 12
The Pure Theory and its Rivals	p. 18
Pure and hybrid theories	p. 18
Intrinsically motivating states	p. 22
Directions of fit	p. 27
Metaphysical underpinnings	p. 30
Motivating beliefs v. facts as reasons	p. 32
Non-purposive action	p. 34
In Defence of Purity	p. 38
Further problems	p. 38
Moral and non-moral reasons	p. 43
Silencing and virtue	p. 47
Silencing and weakness of will	p. 53
Particularism and the pure theory	p. 55
Why Particularism?	p. 60
Holism in the theory of reasons	p. 60
Approaches to moral judgment	p. 63
Switching arguments	p. 64
Moral principles	p. 66
Against Generalism (1)	p. 73
Resultance	p. 73
Supervenience	p. 77
Universalizability	p. 79
Subsumptive rationality	p. 82
Subsumption and non-cognitivism	p. 84
A different argument	p. 86
Universalizability as a weapon	p. 88
Against Generalism (2)	p. 92
The theory of prima facie duties	p. 92
The notion of a prima facie duty	p. 96
The propensity theory	p. 100
The need for general moral truths	p. 104
Conflict, Dilemma, Regret	p. 109
Defeated reasons	p. 109
Salience and shape	p. 111
Defeated reasons again	p. 116
The rationality of regret	p. 120
Strong incommensurability	p. 123
Supererogation	p. 127
Shapes and the supererogatory	p. 127
Deontic and evaluative properties	p. 128
Three accounts of supererogation	p. 131
The cost to the agent	p. 137
Deontic and evaluative properties again	p. 140
Objectivity	p. 144
Nagel's two viewpoints	p. 144
Two conceptions of objectivity	p. 147
Moral reasons and objectivity	p. 153
Degrees of objectivity	p. 155
The analogy with colour	p. 156
Are values and colours both dispositions?	p. 158
Shapes and dispositions	p. 160
Towards Agent-Relativity	p. 166
Non-consequentialist reasons	p. 166
Scheffler's liberation strategy	p. 168
Against the independence thesis	p. 172
Consequentialism and consequences	p. 175
The pro tanto reason to promote the good	p. 180
Forms of agent-relativity	p. 182
Agent-Relativity--the Very Idea	p. 188
Motivation	p. 188
Kagan	p. 190
Nagel	p. 193
Sen	p. 196
Parfit and common aims	p. 201
Conclusions	p. 208
Discounting the Cost	p. 211
An analogy	p. 211
Options and discounts	p. 213
Constraints and moral cost	p. 217
Begging the question	p. 220
Absolute and threshold constraints	p. 222
Particularism and the agent-relative	p. 224
Is agent-relative morality demanding enough?	p. 230
Consequentialism and the Agent-Relative	p. 234
Is consequentialism self-effacing?	p. 234
Ends, aims and motives	p. 236
Acts and agents	p. 238
A self-defeating theory?	p. 239
Blameless wrongdoing	p. 240
Two criteria	p. 243
The act/agent distinction	p. 247
Conclusion	p. 249
Internal and external reasons	p. 253
Hare's later views	p. 258
Nagel on incommensurability	p. 261
Bibliography	p. 264
Index	p. 270
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

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