Getting Exclusionary Reasons Right

Abstract

Getting Exclusionary Reasons Right offers a defense of exclusionary reasons as originally conceptualised by Joseph Raz. Exclusionary reasons are second-order reasons to refrain from acting for some reasons and are used to explain the ordered nature of practical normativity, and the various normative concepts that are said to follow from it, i.e. mandatory rules, rule-following, authority, and promises to name just a few. Exclusionary reasons differ from other kinds of defeaters in that they exclude valid reasons, i.e. reasons that still justify or make eligible the actions they count for. According to Raz, this is because excluded reasons are defeated not qua reasons, but as reasons we can act for, or that motivate, which explains why exclusionary reasons are reasons to refrain from acting for a reason. However, the coherence and distinctiveness of the idea of an exclusionary reason—understood in this way—has faced serious challenges. I take up these challenges in what follows. Chapter one presents a coherent account of exclusionary reasons as reasons to refrain from acting for a reason, or to ‘not-φ-for-p’. It both clarifies the sense in which exclusionary reasons concern motivations and motivating reasons, and rejects alternative accounts according to which exclusionary reasons have as their object other normative reasons. It is argued that when they are understood as excluding some considerations as reasons that can rationally motivate, exclusionary reasons confer value on or point to an agent’s not acting for otherwise valid reasons. That is, they justify our not being responsive to certain values on some occasions. Chapter two vindicates the notion of acting-for-a-reason on which Raz’s account relies. It considers objections which claim that not acting for otherwise valid reasons presupposes a level of control over our reasons and motivations that is incompatible with the rational constraints on attitudes (beliefs, intentions, etc.), and shows how exclusionary reasons, as they are restated in chapter one, avoids them. Perhaps surprisingly, it is argued that instances where exclusionary reasons are relevant, when properly understood, are not instances where reasoning about what we ought to do involves choice. Getting Exclusionary Reasons Right concludes by considering the implications the account offered herein has for rationalist approaches to obligations and authority. Namely, it makes clear how fully rational agents can ever be moved to act for, or out of an awareness of their obligations.