This is either horribly confusing, or horribly confused. I think that what’s going on here is that you (or the sources you’re getting this from) have taken a bundle of incompatible moral theories, identified a role that each of them has a part playing, and generalized a term from one of those theories inappropriately.
The same thing can be a reason for action, a reason for inaction, a reason for belief and a reason for disbelief all at once, in different contexts depending on what consequences these things will have. This makes me think that “reason for action” does not carve reality, or morality, at the joints.
I’m sort of surprised by how people are taking the notion of “reason for action”. Isn’t this a familiar process when making a decision?
For all courses of action you’re thinking of taking, identify the features (consequences if you that’s you think about things) that count in favor of taking that course of action and those that count against it.
Consider how those considerations weigh against each other. (Do the pros outweigh the cons, by how much, etc.)
Then choose the thing that does best in this weighing process.
The same thing can be a reason for action, a reason for inaction, a reason for belief and a reason for disbelief all at once, in different contexts depending on what consequences these things will have. This makes me think that “reason for action” does not carve reality, or morality, at the joints.
It is not a presupposition of the people talking this way that if R is a reason to do A in a context C, then R is a reason to do in all contexts.
The people talking this way also understand that a single R might be both a reason to do A and a reason to believe X at the same time. You could also have R be a reason to believe X and a reason to cause yourself to not believe X. Why do you think these things make the discourse incoherent/non-perspicuous? This seems no more puzzling than the familiar fact that believing a certain thing could be epistemically irrational but prudentially rational to (cause yourself) to believe.
This is either horribly confusing, or horribly confused. I think that what’s going on here is that you (or the sources you’re getting this from) have taken a bundle of incompatible moral theories, identified a role that each of them has a part playing, and generalized a term from one of those theories inappropriately.
The same thing can be a reason for action, a reason for inaction, a reason for belief and a reason for disbelief all at once, in different contexts depending on what consequences these things will have. This makes me think that “reason for action” does not carve reality, or morality, at the joints.
I’m sort of surprised by how people are taking the notion of “reason for action”. Isn’t this a familiar process when making a decision?
For all courses of action you’re thinking of taking, identify the features (consequences if you that’s you think about things) that count in favor of taking that course of action and those that count against it.
Consider how those considerations weigh against each other. (Do the pros outweigh the cons, by how much, etc.)
Then choose the thing that does best in this weighing process.
It is not a presupposition of the people talking this way that if R is a reason to do A in a context C, then R is a reason to do in all contexts.
The people talking this way also understand that a single R might be both a reason to do A and a reason to believe X at the same time. You could also have R be a reason to believe X and a reason to cause yourself to not believe X. Why do you think these things make the discourse incoherent/non-perspicuous? This seems no more puzzling than the familiar fact that believing a certain thing could be epistemically irrational but prudentially rational to (cause yourself) to believe.