I can see the broken window, but can I also see why the window is broken?  In this ambitious and interesting paper, Church argues for an affirmative answer to this question.  Just as we can have perceptual knowledge of a state of affairs, so too can we have perceptual knowledge of the reason for that state of affairs.  Her defense of this claim proceeds in roughly two stages.  First, she develops an account of perceptual knowledge, i.e., an account of what makes a given piece of knowledge perceptual rather than non-perceptual.  Second, she shows how this account of perception can be extended to the case of reasons.

The first stage of her argument depends on three key claims:

(1) Perceptual knowledge can be distinguished from non-perceptual knowledge in terms of justificatory immediacy: “perceptual knowledge is immediate knowledge in the sense that it does not depend on any other knowledge for its justification.” (640) 

But unless we develop an explanatory account of perceptual immediacy, Church worries that this claim may be construed in a deflationary way.  She thus argues that:

(2) Perception requires the experience of objectivity: “An experience is a perceptual experience precisely when the independent reality of its object is evident from within that experience.”  (644)

This in turn requires her to explain how we can achieve this experience of objectivity (what I will call experiential objectivity).  How can we experience a state of affairs as existing independently of our experience of it?  Her answer, which draws on an intriguing claim by P.F. Strawson that one’s perception of an object is “infused with … other past or possible perceptions of the same object,” is to invoke imagination:

(3)  Our experience of something as objective depends on our imagining alternative perspectives of it.  Via the imagination, we can occupy perspectives and modalities different from the ones we are presently occupying, and it is these imaginings that serve to ground experiential objectivity.

It is important to recognize what a strong claim (3) is.  Church is not merely invoking our capacity to imagine alternative perspectives in an effort to explain experiential objectivity; rather, she explicitly claims  that “we actively imagine alternative perspectives whenever we experience something as an objective state of affairs.”  (649)  Her argument is largely a transcendental one:  “it is only by imagining alternative perspectives and imagining no-actual possibilities that we could perceive states of affairs, because only then could the objectivity of what is seen be evident from within perception.” (659)  The transcendental considerations, however, are supplemented by empirical ones, for she also suggests that we have good reason to believe that we engage in such imaginings based on the phenomenology of perception.  As she notes, we are not typically aware of such imaginings (one might ask: are we ever aware of them?), but introspective exercises suggest that “we can transform our ordinary experiences of objects into experiences of patches of light and color … by ceasing to imagine alternative perspectives.” (658)  Here, though I am sympathetic to her claim, I would have liked to have heard a bit more.  She rightly notes, in my view, that there is a phenomenological (and not merely cognitive) difference between seeing something as two-dimensional and seeing it as three-dimensional (649), but more could be said to show that active imagining is involved in the explanation of this phenomenological difference.

In the second stage of her argument, Church applies the account of perception that she has developed to the case of perceiving reasons.  She first focuses on explanatory reasons.  When we see why the window is broken in addition to seeing that the window is broken, we must see what explains the broken window, and we must also see it as explaining the broken window.  Explanations might be causal, constitutive, or some combination of the two.  With respect to causal explanations, Church discusses three different analyses of causality: (1) Regularity; (2) Energy transference; (3) Counterfactual, but she focuses largely on the third of these.  How could we perceive causes if to do that we have to perceive counterfactual possibilities?  To see that C caused E—that E would not have occurred if C had not occurred—would seem absurdly to require that we see the non-actual case in which C fails to occur.  The problem is easily solved, however, on Church’s analysis of perception in terms of active imagining: “the non-actual alternatives are alternatives that, when actively imagined, can inform and infuse our current experience in such a way as to make causality perceivable.” (656)

Turning to constitutive explanations, Church offers a similar story.  We explain the shape of an object in terms of its atomic structure, which in turn involves constitutive dependencies: the object would not have the shape that it does if its constituent parts were differently arranged.  What enables us to see these constitutive dependencies is our active imaginings of various alternatives.  As Church notes, not all of these constitutive dependencies are easily seen, and this can be explained by the fact that they cannot be easily imagined.  For example, when we see why a particular diamond is hard, it is not enough merely to have various beliefs about atomic alignments and so on, nor can we simply imagine geometrical structures.  Rather, “our view of the diamond must be informed and infused with our imaginings of various changes in atomic structure and their various effects.” (660)

After extending her account of perceiving explanatory reasons to the case of perceiving justificatory reasons, Church turns in the final section of her paper to a discussion of three advantages of seeing reasons, as opposed to gaining knowledge of them some other (indirect or reflective) way.  First, if our knowledge of reasons is perceptual, and hence immediate, it relies much less heavily on memory than inferential knowledge does, and this gives it greater security.  Second, via perception we are well placed to generate further knowledge from the knowledge that we already have.  Perception makes certain facts evident in a way that facilitates new discoveries.  Finally, we are typically more motivated by beliefs gained through perception compared to beliefs gained through inferential reasoning.  The importance of this fact becomes clear when we consider both moral contexts and other contexts where quick action is advantageous.  As Church notes, “Insofar as increased responsiveness to the world and to others is desirable, then seeing reasons will be preferable to understanding that remains non-perceptual.” (667)

Reviewed by Amy Kind

Claremont McKenna College

Articles Covered:*

“Vindicating the Normativity of Rationality” Nicholas Southwood, pages 9-30.
“Reasons: Explanations or Evidence?” Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star, pages 31-56.
“Reply to Southwood, Kearns and Star, and Cullity” John Broome, pages 96-108.

*The Symposium on Broome’s work also contains an article by Garrett Cullity: “Decisions, Reasons, and Rationality.” A review of that article by J.J. Swindell has already appeared in the Philosopher’s Digest, April 7, 2009.

Main authors discussed (by Southwood): John Broome, N. Hussain, D. Velleman, M. Bratman, N. Kolodny, T. Scanlon.
Main authors discussed (by Kearns and Star): John Broome.

In his work on rationality Broome distinguishes between requirements of rationality and reasons. Rationality, he argues, cannot be reduced to responding correctly to reasons; it is also a matter of fulfilling requirements like belief consistency, belief closure, instrumental reasoning, and enkrasia (that is, the requirement to intend to X if you believe you ought to X). For Broome ‘ought’ (and not ‘reason’) is the fundamental normative concept. A ‘reason’ is defined as an explanation, or part of an explanation, of normative facts, i.e., an explanation of why N ought to F. One important question is whether rationality is normative. In his more recent work Broome is sceptical: He thinks rationality is normative in its own right, but he admits that he has no decisive argument to show why this is so.

In his highly interesting paper Southwood aims to provide the missing argument why rationality is normative. He argues against the strategy of tackling the question by offering independent reasons each agent has for compliance with the requirements of rationality (e.g. prudential reasons, or reasons deriving from our valuable status as believers and agents). Just as it is a mistake to answer the “Why be moral?” question by trying to offer a justification outside morality, so it is a mistake to try to answer the question “Why be rational?” by searching “for a justification for rational compliance outside of rationality, a source of normativity that is external to rationality” (18). Whether rationality is normative can, Southwood claims, be answered only by providing a theory of rationality that explains what kind of claims rational requirements are and why they are “by their very nature, normative” (19).

Southwood discusses several accounts of rationality recently offered and then comes up with his own proposal. A first position he rejects is the “distinctive object account” of rationality, which attempts to explain the requirements of rationality by specifying the objects to which they apply. As an example he cites N. Hussain’s claim that rational requirements describe the norms of how we should reason. Southwood rejects Hussain’s interpretation as being too narrow: rational requirements (e.g. demands of coherence and consistency) apply to us independently of whether we are engaged in reasoning (21).

Another account Southwood considers is the “proper functioning account”: rational requirements describe the conditions attitudes have to meet to serve agential functions, either cognitive aims (Velleman) or the practical function to coordinate action (Bratman). According to Southwood, the functioning account fails to show why rational requirements have normative force for particular agents (23).

The “subjective reasons account” (Kolodny, Scanlon) interprets rational requirements as reasons we have to form or revise our beliefs or intentions, given the reasons we think we have because of our other beliefs or intentions. However, Southwood objects that requirements of rationality have real normative force, not only “(seeming) normative force” (Kolodny) relative to the reasons subjects think they have (25).

Southwood considers his own interpretation of rational requirements, the “first-personal authority account,” to be an improved version of the subjective reasons account. Rational requirements must have a reference to “our point of view” since they are claims that we ought to have or form certain attitudes. To avoid the troubling subjectivism of Kolodny’s and Scanlon’s account, Southwood distinguishes between ‘subjective demands’ and ‘standpoint-relative demands,’ the latter being demands that are “relative to the particular first-personal standpoint of the agent who is subject to it” (27). Rational requirements are demands we have to fulfill in order to be agents with first-personal authority. We have first-personal authority if we are standing in a specific relation of accountability to ourselves. “The normativity of rationalty,” Southwood claims, “is a matter of honoring our first-personal authority” (30).

Southwood’s article gives a most valuable exposition of current explanations of rationality. His positive solution raises some questions, e.g., what exactly “honoring our first-personal authority” means and how Southwood’s account is related to an account like Korsgaard’s, where first-personal authority involves commitment to a principle of autonomy in terms of which reasons are defined. In his reply, Broome objects that a reference to standpoint-relativity and first-personal authority does not explain why rationality is normative. The rational requirement not to believe a contradiction is, as Broome points out, not standpoint relative and not dependent on first-personal authority. Broome’s objection raises the question whether the senses of “normativity” at stake here are different: one question is whether rational requirements are normative given their specific content; the other question is why we should comply with them. Since Broome himself emphasizes that one cannot be a person if one violates too many requirements of rationality (99), Southwood’s accounting for the normativity of rationality by explicating the presuppositions of agency does not seem implausible.

Kearns and Star develop a highly challenging critique of Broome’s account of reasons in terms of explanations of ought-facts. Their central claim is that “reasons are evidence, rather than explanations,” they are “evidence of the obtaining of ought facts” (32). Kearns and Star draw the distinction between explanation and evidence in the following way: if fact F explains another fact G, then F makes it the case that G. Evidence, however, merely indicates or makes it probable that G is the case. If F is evidence for G, G may not be true. So their analysis of a reason amounts to the claim: “Necessarily, a fact X is a reason for an agent N to F if and only if (iff) X is evidence that N ought to F” (37).

Kearns and Star consider it an important advantage of their analysis of reasons that it takes into account the being/having distinction. It is crucial to distinguish between reasons there are and reasons an agent has, and talk of evidence makes sense of that distinction: a reason I have is evidence I have; ‘there being a reason’ means ‘there is evidence’ (38).

They raise three objections against Broome’s analysis of reasons: first, Broome cannot explain the practical role of reasons in deliberation; second, Broome does not provide a “full-blooded” analysis of reasons; third, Broome offers no unified account of reasons, because he introduces two different kinds of normative reasons, namely perfect reasons and pro tanto reasons, which cannot be analyzed in similar terms. The property of being an explanation of a normative fact (perfect reason) and weighing in favor of a certain action (pro tanto reason) are for Kearns and Star completely different properties.

The first two objections deserve more detail. In regard to the first objection: that a fact is an explanation of what an agent ought to do is according to Kearns and Star not crucial in guiding an agent in her deliberations. Much more relevant for them is that a fact is evidence for what an agent should do. Moreover, given Broome’s analysis of reasons in terms of explanations, persons would not need reasons in order to figure out what they ought to do (which would eliminate reasons from practical life). Their example: A person might come to the conclusion that she ought to eat cabbage by the fact that a reliable book advises her to do so, yet this fact is not an explanation why she ought to eat cabbage (40, 41).

In regard to the second objection: Broome’s analysis would, Kearns and Star argue, be full-blooded if he would analyze the concept ‘reason’ generally in terms of another concept, namely ‘explanation.’ This analysis, however, holds only for ‘perfect reasons.’ Because Broome introduces ‘pro tanto reasons’ (which play a favoring role in a weighing explanation of what one ought to do) he faces a problem: the idea of facts that “count in favor of a certain action” cannot according to the authors be explained otherwise than by the idea of a reason. To say that a fact counts in favor of a certain action is to say that “the fact is a reason to perform this action” (43). Moreover, Broome’s analysis cannot specify the strength of reasons; something that can be easily achieved by referring to the strength of evidence (44).

The authors then provide further arguments supporting their account. For example, they argue that their analysis of reasons avoids the assumption that ‘ought’ depends on unknowable ought-facts, an assumption which would violate the reasonable condition that ‘ought’ implies the “possibility of our knowing what to do” (53). What sense would it make to criticize agents for ignoring reasons that they could not know? Kearns and Star point out that their interpretation merely presupposes that “if one ought to F, there is some (knowable) evidence that one ought to F,” which seems plausible since a fact is evidence of itself. The main difficulty of their account seems to be that it does not amount to all-things-considered oughts and normative truths since, as Kearns and Star concede, “evidence doesn’t generally play an active role with respect to fixing the truth” (55). However, as the authors point out (referring to Parfit’s example of the trapped miners), evidence makes a contribution to figuring out what we ought to do.

In his reply, Broome objects that the “evidential property” is not the decisive criterion for a normative reason (101). Broome accuses Kearns and Star of confusing “epistemology with the determination of facts” (102). Weighing the evidence for (or against) the truth of a proposition is a matter of epistemology. We can weigh evidence for the proposition that one ought to X against the evidence that the proposition is false (it is not the case that one ought to X). But whether one ought to X is dependent on the weight of the reason that you ought to X against the weight of the reason that you ought not to X (which is different from ‘it is not the case that one ought to X’). The weight of a reason is dependent on the facts, not the evidence you have.

Reviewed by Herlinde Pauer-Studer
University of Vienna

Main authors discussed: Michael Smith, Donald Davidson, Phillip Pettit, Thomas Nagel

Schueler presents a dilemma for the defender of the Humean theory of motivation. First, let’s define the theory. Schueler focuses on the theory as one that explains why a person acted as she did and not as a theory of what a person ought to do (103). According to Schueler, contemporary advocates of the Humean theory, “…agree with Hume in holding that a desire or some analogous motivational state is always needed to move anyone to act” (105). His main example of a contemporary Humean theory of motivation is Michael Smith’s, according to which:

R at t constitutes a motivating reason of agent A to Φ if and only if there is some Ψ such that R at t consists of an appropriately related desire of A to Ψ and a belief that were she to Φ she would Ψ (106).

The first horn of the dilemma arises when we fill in the reason for the phrase “appropriately related to” in Smith’s formulation. Schueler argues that this phrase is necessary to avoid counter-examples in which a person does Φ, has a desire for Ψ, and a belief that if she were to Φ she would Ψ, and yet this particular belief-desire pair has nothing to do with the agent Φing. Schueler develops an example to make this clear. Suppose he knows that the bus that goes by his house goes to the University. One day when his car won’t start and he wants to get to the University, he gets on the bus. However, he got on the bus, not to get to the University, but rather to get to his sister’s office. There he plans to borrow her car and then drive to the University. The reason the belief-desire pair (“I want to get to the University” and “I believe this bus goes to the University”) does not explain his action is because they were not “put together” in the right way by him (108-9). It is analogous to something that happens in theoretical reasoning (107). Suppose someone has two beliefs that entail a third. This person comes to believe the third belief, not on the basis of the two that entail it, but because he heard a rumor that it might be true and he is easily swayed by rumors.

One lesson that Schueler takes from the bus example is that practical reasoning is an activity–it is not the mere presence of the belief-desire pair that explains behavior. Rather, the explanation of the behavior requires that the agent engage in practical reasoning in which the agent “puts them together” (109). But this causes a problem for the Humean. For if the explanation of the action traces back to the activity of an agent reasoning about beliefs and desires, then the actual desire is not what explains the action, and can, in fact, be dropped out of the explanation altogether (110). This is seen more clearly when we consider that an agent can be wrong about what she desires—when, for example, the agent believes she wants to Ψ but actually does not want to Ψ (111). In such a case, the desire to Ψ simply cannot explain what the agent does, for that desire does not exist. And yet, someone might mistakenly believe that she wants to Ψ, reason about how to satisfy this desire, and come to believe that if she were to Φ she would Ψ, and as a result of putting these two things together, Φ. What this shows us, argues Schueler, is that it is the representation of a desire to Ψ that is relevant in the explanation of the action and not the desire itself (112). According to Schueler, this first horn of the dilemma is not strong enough by itself to refute the Humean theory of motivation. But, the “putting together” point discussed here will be relevant when we move to the second horn of the dilemma.

The second horn focuses on the fact that from a phenomenological point of view our practical reasoning often does not take the form of explicitly reasoning about how to satisfy one of our desires. Instead, we often seem to reason about what to do based on what we find to be important, worth doing, or think we ought to do. These are not desires, and yet they are the sorts of the things we “put together” with beliefs in our practical deliberation (117).

Humeans, such as Smith and Pettit, are aware of this fact and respond by introducing the distinction between a desire that exists in the foreground and a desire that exists in the background of a decision. A desire that exists in the foreground of the decision is one that the agent is consciously aware that she has and is one that she is reasoning about how to satisfy. One that exists in the background helps to motivate the action, but the agent need not be aware that it is there–it is not one about which the agent is consciously reasoning. Smith and Pettit claim that the Humean can respond to the objection by claiming that in those cases in which it appears to us that we are not reasoning about how to satisfy one of our desires, we nevertheless have a background desire that is doing the motivational work (118).

Now we can see the dilemma clearly. To accommodate what seems to be an obvious point about the phenomenology of our practical deliberation, the Humean must claim that our desires that motivate us exist in the background. But to avoid counter-examples like the bus case, they must claim that the desires that motivate do not exist in the background. The Humean cannot have it both ways. According to Schueler, the best way to avoid this dilemma is to reject the Humean theory of motivation.

Reviewed by Scott Wilson
Wright State University

Main authors discussed:  John Broome

This article takes up an interesting issue at the intersection of philosophy of action and ethics. The issue takes the form of two related questions: (1) What difference do our decisions make to our reasons for action, and (2) What difference do our decisions make to the rationality of our actions? Before delving into Cullity’s arguments, it is worth pointing out two assumptions that he admittedly makes. He operates with an objective view of reasons, and with a view that “decisions” are things that are made consciously.

On to the arguments we go.

First, focusing on question one, Cullity outlines three ways (cases) in which our decisions make a difference to our reasons for action. The first case is one where my decision causes me to do something that puts me in a new situation  and provides me with new reasons to do something. The second case is one where I make a decision between two equal options, X and Y. The fact that I have made a decision to X, now gives me a reason to pursue X and not Y. The third case is one where I am part of a group that engages in a fair process and reaches a decision. I now have a normative reason (because of the decision and because of fairness) to follow the course of action that the group decided on.

Cullity then moves to, and spends the majority of the article on, question two. He begins by reviewing John Broome’s position on the question. Broome’s position, as characterized by Cullity, is that if you intend E and believe that M is the necessary means to E, but do not intend M, then you are not as you ought to be; you are not rational. Cullity criticizes Broome’s position as not fully capturing the relationship between our decisions and the rationality of our actions because it misses two important cases of instrumental irrationality: (1) the procrastinator who never gets around to intending any means to his end, and (2) the person who intends a very poor or inefficient means to his end. Cullity works to expand Broome’s position to envelop these two criteria.

Formally, Cullity’s position of instrumental rationality comes in two parts:

“Rationality requires of you that (if, during a period through which you have an orderly succession of temporal beliefs,

i) you intend E throughout that period,

ii) you believe throughout that period that E will only suitably be achieved if, by t, you intend some particular means to E, and

iii) at the end of that period you believe that it is t, then at the end of that period you intend what you believe to be suitable means to E),” (p. 72)

and “Rationality requires of you that (if, during a period through which you have an orderly succession of temporal beliefs,

i) you intend E throughout that period,

ii) you believe throughout that period that E will only suitably be achieved by your taking M at or before t, and

iii) at the end of that period you believe that it is t and that you have not taken M, then you believe that you are taking or trying to take M” (p. 74).

Cullity admits that there are additional general requirements of rationality as well. He develops what he calls a “standard-fixing account of rationality,” where if an agent violates things that reinforce “important dispositions” (things that are usually important to our practical and theoretical functioning), then she is irrational. Some examples of these important dispositions include not being weak-willed, gullible, a procrastinator, or impulsive. Cullity closes by noting that there is a cognitivist explanation of the application of [the second part/conjunction of] his standard-fixing account to what are called “from-intentions” (planning from E using the assumption that E will occur), since from-intentions are states whose rationality depends on supplying us with beliefs.

Cullity admits that he does not in this paper attempt to defend the “standard fixing account of rationality” against objections, as he says that doing so will require developing a particular version of the account and adding further detail. He aims for this paper to be an introduction to this theory of rationality.

Reviewed by J. S. Swindell
Baylor College of Medicine