| The central question of my dissertation is: what makes it the case that certain considerations are reasons for acting? This is a question about the truth-makers of claims about reasons, that is, what makes it the case that one has a reason to phi rather than Psi. There are two leading camps in the philosophical debate devoted to answering this question: subjectivism and objectivism. Subjectivist theories hold that one has a reason to do something when one has a non-truth evaluable favoring attitude towards that thing, e.g. desiring it. Objectivist theories insist that one's desires are irrelevant to establishing the existence of reasons; that some action or desire is morally good or valuable is equally and universally reason-providing, whatever else individual agents happen to desire. I argue that all reasons for action are subjective; that, conversely, there are no objective reasons. After rejecting objectivism and providing a general defense of subjectivist views, I defend a more nuanced subjectivist-internalist position called Expressive Reasons. Subjectivist-internalism is the view that reasons are not only rooted in agent's desires, but also that it must be possible for a reason to serve as the basis for an individual's action if it is to be a reason in the first place. Expressive Reasons is the particular view that R is a reason for A to &phis; when &phis;-ing is an expression of soundly deliberating A's self; and A, under ordinary conditions, would act on the basis of R. I argue that Expressive Reasons has unique philosophical advantages over competing views of reasons, and that it has compelling practical advantages in how it directs us to respond to different others. |
