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Weighting Surprise Parties: Some Problems for Schroeder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2015

OLLE RISBERG
OLLE RISBERG*
Affiliation:
Uppsala [email protected]
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Abstract

In this article I argue against Schroeder's account of the weight of normative reasons. It is shown that in certain cases an agent may have reasons she cannot know about without them ceasing to be reasons, and also reasons she cannot know about at all. Both possibilities are troubling for Schroeder's view.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 101 - 107
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

1 Schroeder, Mark, Slaves of the Passions (Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 This is the claim Schroeder calls Still Attractive (Slaves, p. 140), and has elsewhere called a ‘platitude’ (‘Weighting for a Plausible Humean Theory of Reasons’, Noûs 41 (2007), pp. 110–32, at n. 20). Calling it is his ‘account’ of the weight of reasons is really a bit too quick, though, as it is derived from more basic principles. Note also that in Slaves the principle is formulated in terms of sets of reasons, rather than reasons plain and simple. None of this makes any difference for our purposes.

3 Schroeder, Slaves, p. 131.

4 Smith, Michael, The Moral Problem (Oxford, 1994), p. 62Google Scholar; see also Korsgaard, Christine, ‘Skepticism about Practical Reason’, The Journal of Philosophy 83 (1986), pp. 5–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Notably, while Smith's ultimate 1994 account avoids the problem I discuss, Schroeder explicitly distances himself from such ‘counterfactual’ theories of reasons (Slaves, ch. 1, esp. n. 4). Moreover, as Smith uses the alleged platitude to support his account (The Moral Problem, pp. 150–1), its falsity would be problematic for him as well.

5 Williams, Bernard, ‘Internal and External Reasons’, Moral Luck, ed. Williams, B. (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 101–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Schroeder, Slaves, p. 29.

7 Schroeder, Slaves, p. 113.

8 Correctness, moreover, is explained in terms of yet more reasons – in this sense, Schroeder's view is recursive. See Schroeder, Slaves, ch. 7, sect. 3, esp. p. 138.

9 Schroeder, Slaves, p. 140.

10 Schroeder, Slaves, p. 131.

11 It is not clear that the demand for full information actually does any work in the prediction. Since Schroeder's account of correct deliberation seems to require that we put weight even on reasons we are unaware of, then it appears that correct deliberation from incomplete information too always results in acts the agent ought to perform. But I will not press this issue further here.

12 Schroeder, Slaves, p. 132.

13 Schroeder, Slaves, p. 33.

14 Whether or not Schroeder's view actually implies that Nate ought to go home depends on how we cash out ‘the right kind of reasons’ in deliberation (see Slaves, pp. 134–5). But be that as it may, I think this is what the view has to imply to be plausible.

15 I thank Erik Carlson for stressing the significance of conjunctive facts like this. For what it is worth, this seems to be the reason Schroeder had in mind in the original case, as he claims that Nate has a reason he cannot know about (Slaves, p. 33). But one could also take him to mean that Nate could not know about his reason without it ceasing to be a reason, which rather suggests the reason discussed in section III.

16 Maybe you worry that this is somehow an illegitimate double-counting: surely Nate does not have two reasons to go home? In that case, note that this is one of the worries that Weight is designed to handle (see Slaves, p. 34 and ch. 7).

17 Schroeder, Slaves, p. 132.

18 I am grateful to Erik Carlson, Mark Schroeder and an anonymous reviewer for valuable comments on this article.