Keynote 5, Clayton Littlejohn

This talk is about the place of reasons. Many philosophers now think that normative reasons are (typically) provided by the features of the situation that meet some kind of epistemic constraint (e.g., the facts about the situation that the agent is in a position to know). These views are supposed to vindicate the idea that normative reasons have a place in our practical reasoning. After discussing a particularly vexing example, I shall argue that these approaches put normative reasons in the wrong place. We shouldn’t locate them in the beliefs of the rational, responsible, or virtuous agents but in the beliefs of philosophers who have a good theory about what makes it the case that these agents manage to act rightly, responsibly, and virtuously. We couldn’t locate them in the beliefs of right acting agents unless we had a good theory of the role that full belief plays in practical reasoning. We have no such theory and good reason to think that none will be forthcoming.