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Perverse Reasons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2021

Francesco Orsi
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Abstract

For an agent to be motivated by a normatively perverse reason is to be motivated by a normative or evaluative thought as such which, if true, would count as such against the action that it motivates the agent to perform, or against the attitude that it motivates the agent to take. For example, that an action is morally wrong or prudentially bad counts, as such, against performing the action. When the thought that an action is morally wrong or prudentially bad (bad for me) motivates me as such to perform the action, my motivating reason is normatively perverse. If being motivated by normatively perverse reasons is possible, then what, if anything, is wrong about it? I present and reject some accounts of what may be wrong about normative perversity (wrong reasons, malfunctioning attitudes, practical irrationality, instability, evaluative ignorance). In the course of this discussion some desiderata emerge. Then I defend the suggestion that normative perversion is socially undesirable, in that it undermines certain valuable interpersonal and intrapersonal relations. Entering and maintaining these relations is constitutive of valuing people as beings to whom reasonable justification is owed. I show how this account satisfies the desiderata.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 96 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 457 - 480
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Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2021

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