Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
View graph of relations
Original language | English |
---|
Title of host publication | Explanation in Action Theory and Historiography: Causal and Teleological Approaches |
---|
Editors | Gunnar Schumann |
---|
Publisher | Routledge |
---|
Chapter | 8 |
---|
Number of pages | 19 |
---|
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780429506048 |
---|
ISBN (Print) | 9781138584402 |
---|
Publication status | Published - 11 Jun 2019 |
---|
Abstract
This essay considers various constraints placed by philosophers on what they take to be a shared concept of a reason for action. I try to show that these constraints are incompatible with one another, proceeding to argue that we would therefore do better to embrace a conceptual pluralism. On such a pluralism, there is no such thing as the concept of a reason for action. Interminable debates about the nature of reasons for action arise precisely because no single thing called a 'reason for action' can perform all the varying functions that philosophers require of it. As with products such as three-in-one shampoos, each individual function is performed at the expense of others. Unlike such stuffs, however, some of the desired functions of reasons cannot be combined at all. I conclude that neither disjunctivist nor anti-disjunctivist accounts of reasons for action are capable of providing a unifying account of them.
ID: 16413144