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Agent-Neutral Reasons: Are They for Everyone?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

B. C. Postow
B. C. Postow
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee
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Abstract

According to both deontologists and consequentialists, if there is a reason to promote the general happiness – or to promote any other state of affairs unrelated to one's own projects or self-interest – then the reason must apply to everyone. This view seems almost self-evident; to challenge it is to challenge the way we think of moral reasons. I contend, however, that the view depends on the unwarranted assumption that the only way to restrict the application scope of a reason for action is by restricting it to those agents whose interests or projects are involved in the reason. In fact normative theories may coherently restrict application scopes in other ways. Thus we must take seriously the possibility that the reason to promote the general happiness, although genuine, does not apply to everyone.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , July 1997, pp. 249 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

1 For discussion of various formulations of this distinction see McNaughton, David and Rawling, Piers, ‘Agent-Relativity and the Doing-Happening Distinction’, Philosophical Studies, lxiii (1991), 167–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Dancy, Jonathan, Moral Reasons, Oxford, 1993, pp. 188–209Google Scholar.

2 Dancy, p. 194.

3 A similar point is made by McNaughton and Rawling, who argue forcefully that agent-relative moral constraints should not be associated with agent-relative value. See McNaughton, David and Rawling, Piers, ‘Value and Agent-Relative Reasons’, Utilitas, vii (1995), 31–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Kagan, Shelly, The Limits of Morality, Oxford, 1989, p. 61Google Scholar.

5 Nagel, Thomas, The View From Nowhere, New York, 1986, p. 153Google Scholar.

6 Both views seem to be held by Lucas, J. R.. See Postow, B. C., ‘Responsibility, by J. R. Lucas’, Mind, civ (1995), 175–8Google Scholar, a review of Lucas, J. R., Responsibility, Oxford, 1993Google Scholar.

7 Stewart, Robert M., ‘Agent-Relativity, Reason, and Value’, The Monist, lxxvi (1993), 74Google Scholar.

8 See Dreier, James, ‘Structures of Normative Theories’, The Monist, lxxvi (1993), 35Google Scholar.

9 An earlier version of this paper was read to the Canadian Philosophical Association. For help in working out the formal notation and in thinking about the logic of the notions, I am much indebted to John Nolt. I have also profited from comments by George Brenkert, Stephen Darwall, Jim Nelson, Paul Viminitz and an anonymous referee for this journal, and from discussion with John Baker.