Act for a Reason Final Copy Aug 2010-1

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What Happens When Someone Acts for a

Reason?

August 8, 2010

What happens when someone acts for a reason? Someone acts and she actsfor a reason. This seems like the obvious answer, but it is not at all obvious how

it could be right. If the agent were to act for a reason, there would have to bea reason and she would act for it. Some powerful arguments suggest that sucha thing could never happen. So, our question might rest on a mistake. Whathappens when someone acts for a reason? What happens when you divide thenumber of horses and unicorns by the number of elves?

Some who defend Psychologism deny that motivating and normative reasonsbelong to the same ontological category. It seems they deny that it is possiblethat the reasons we act for are in the right sort of category to be good reasons.1

Normative reasons are the reasons that apply to us, make demands on us, andcount in favor of an action. These are facts about the situation or worldlystates of affair that an agent has in mind when deciding what to do. Motivatingreasons are states of the agent or the contents of those states. They help explainwhy the agent behaves as she does. There is nothing in us or in the world thatplays both roles:

When we have such a reason, and we act for that reason, it becomesour motivating reason. But we can have either kind of reason withouthaving the other. Thus, if I jump into the canal, my motivatingreason was provided by my belief; but I had no normative reasonto jump. I merely thought I did. And, if I failed to notice that thecanal was frozen, I had a reason not to jump that, because it wasunknown to me, did not motivate me.2

The problem with such a view is that it denies what seems obvious to many ofus. When someone acts for a reason, there is a reason that is at least potentiallya valid reason and the agent acts for it. If all goes well, the agents reason for

acting was a good reason. Dancy has argued that if this is so, we ought to thinkof both normative and motivating reasons as constituted by the worldly facts orstates of affairs we have in mind when acting rather than the states of mind or

1See Dancy 1995 and 20002Parfit 1997, pp. 99. Smith 1987 is also often saddled with this sort of view.

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the contents of those states.3 An acceptable theory of reasons, he says, shouldaccomodate these two constraints:

Any normative reason is capable of contributing to the explanation of anaction done for that reason. (Explanatory Constraint)

Any motivating reason must be capable of being among the reasons thatcount in favor of acting. (Normative Constraint)

The problem with his view is that it too seems to deny what is obvious to manyof us. When the agent acts on a mistaken belief, the agents reason for actingcannot be a worldly state of affair or fact because the facts do not fit the agentsbeliefs.4 So, what happens when that happens? Dancy says that it sounds tooharsh to say that such an agent acts for no reason at all.5 So, it seems thatthe reason for which the agent acts must be an attitude or the content of anattitude. If this is right, there must be something wrong with the argument

against Psychologism.Someone could respond to Dancys argument against Psychologism by deny-

ing that Explanatory and Normative Constraints. They could deny that thereasons we act for and the reasons there are to act belong to the same onto-logical category. Instead, they could argue that Dancy was wrong to say thatPsychologism violates the Explanatory and Normative Constraints.6 TurningDancys argument on its head, some now defend views on which both norma-tive and motivating reasons are either our attitudes or the contents of theseattitudes.

Arguments from error make it hard to give up Psychologism about moti-vating reasons. In this paper, I want to do two things. First, I want to arguethat Dancy was right to reject Psychologism. Second, I want to offer a responseto the argument from error that saves what is right with Dancys view. Is it

possible to act for good reasons? The argument from error does not force us todeny that it is even if we insist that the good reasons are typically facts aboutthe situation or states of the world rather than states of mind.

1 Motivational and Normative Psychologism

Motivational Psychologism, as the name suggests, is a view concerning the on-tology of motivating reasons, the reasons for which we act. Normative Psy-

3See Dancy 2000.4Gibbons 2009, Hornsby 2007, Lord 2008, Miller 2008, Turri 2009, and Wiland 2002 argue

that cases of error cause trouble for Dancys view.5Personal communication.6Miller 2008, Schroeder 2008, and Gibbons Forthcoming all defend views that are supposed

to accomodate both the Normative and Explanatory Constraints. They all reject the view thatmotivating reasons are worldly facts or states of affairs. For Miller, motivating and normativereasons are Fregean propositions. For Schroeder, both kinds of reasons are propositions, butnormative reason ascriptions are factive because the thing that is a reason is only a normativereason if it corresponds to a fact. For Gibbons, both kinds of reasons are psychological statesof the agent. These states need not be non-factive mental states, mind you. He thinks thatknowledge is a state of mind.

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chologismis a view concerning the ontology of normative reasons, the reasonsthere are to act that make demands on us, apply to us, or count in favor of an

action. On the assumption that the Explanatory and Normative Constraintsare correct, Motivational and Normative Psychologism go hand in hand. It willbe helpful to distinguish between two versions of Psychologism:

Normative and motivating reasons are constituted by your mental states.(PsychologismS)

Normative and motivating reasons are constituted by the propositions thatare the contents of your mental states. (PsychologismP)

On the first view, reasons are attitudes.7 On the second, reasons are providedby your attitudes because they are the contents of those attitudes.8

The case against Motivational Psychologism builds on the case against Nor-mative Psychologism and it might be useful to remind ourselves why that viewstrikes many as being so implausible. Normative reasons by their very natureseem like relational beasts. It is hard to imagine a world in which there arereasons that are not reasons for such and such an agent and even if we add theagents in, I think it is extremely difficult to imagine these reasons matching upwith their agents without being reasons-for the agents to do or avoid variousthings. How does something become a reason-for, a reason for an agent to door avoid such and such a thing in such and such circumstances? There mightbe many paths to reasonhood, but the most obvious way something gets to bea reason is by counting in favor or counting against. So, while some reasonsmight not count in favor of anything at all, most of the reasons I can think ofare reasons precisely because they count in favor of doing something or countagainst the doing of it. From here, it is a short step to the rejection of Normative

Psychologism. Unless we all harbor systematic and massive confusions aboutwhat counts in favor of acting, the things that count in favor of, say, lendinga hand, are facts having to do with the external situation or worldly states ofaffairs. We need not be too terribly picky about which of these options to set-tle for because Normative Psychologism rejects both. It asserts that normativereasons are the sorts of things that supervene upon our mental states, so theyare either states of mind or the contents of those states with their veridicalityor accuracy bleached out.

This first argument against Normative Psychologism is the implausible errorargument. Ordinary agents may well be mistaken about the facts on the groundand so the actions they think will turn out favorable might not. That kind oferror is often unfortunate, but often understandable. It is implausible to accuseordinary agents of failing to know what it would take for actions to turn out

to be favorable in some respect or other on the grounds that it is facts about7Gibbons Forthcoming argues that normative and motivating reasons are states of mind

because states of mind make things reasonable and that is what reasons are in the business ofdoing. Turri 2009 defends the view that motivating reasons are states of mind, but does notendorse the further claim that normative reasons are also states of mind.

8See Fantl and McGrath 2009, Lord 2008, Miller 2008, and Schroeder 2008.

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the agents beliefs rather than facts the agent has beliefs about that determineswhether things turned out favorably for them. If I drink a tonic in the belief

that it will help my headache and it only makes the pain more intense, it wouldbe implausible to say that things turned out favorably for me. If counting infavor is what confers reasonhood upon a reason, it is facts about the efficacyof the tonic rather than my beliefs about its efficacy that determines whetherthere was the reasons to drink I took there to be. If counting in favor cannotconfer reasonhood upon a reason, this just seems like one more implausible errorto impute to ordinary agents. If Moore had asked, I know that such and suchcounts strongly in favor of doing it, but what reason is there to do it? we neverwould have been so fascinated by the open question argument.

This is one objection to Normative Psychologism, but it is not the only one.Myself, I think Normative Psychologism cannot do justice to our intuitionsabout right action. In some recent defenses of Normative Psychologism, somehave argued for their view on the grounds that it preserves the link betweenthe right and the reasonable. Reasons, they say, are things that make thingsreasonable and so the reasonable judgment of the morally conscientious agentis the mark of the permissible.9 If this is right and the reasons demanded thatthe agents acted against their own reasonable judgments about what to do,the reasons would make unreasonable demands. But, reasons are, if anything,reasonable things. And, if the reasons accede and do not demand that you donot V when it would not be reasonable from your point of view to do somethingother than V, V-ing just is permissible for you. After all, if you ought not V,there is a reason not to V and that reason is the winning reason. Remove thatreason, and the obligation not to V goes away.

To see why this view is problematic, consider two plausible claims aboutwhat it is reasonable to judge about what you should do:

It is reasonable for you to judge that you should V if you are the mentalduplicate of someone who knows she should V.10

It is reasonable for you to judge that you should V if it seems intuitivethat V-ing is the thing to do, these intuitions are robust, you have noavailable reason to distrust these intuitions, you have no reason availableto think that V-ing is not the thing to do, or you reasonably judge thatV-ing is necessary for some further end, Y-ing, where you reasonably judgethat Y-ing is the thing to do and that judgment is not threatened by anyavailable defeaters.11

It seems unreasonable to reasonably judge that you should V and refrain fromV-ing, so these claims tell us something about what is reasonable to do. The

problem with Normative Psychologism is this. Given the second account ofwhat is reasonable to judge and do, we end up denying that facts that the agentis non-culpably ignorant of can bear on whether V-ing is the thing for the agent

9See Gibbons Forthcoming.10See Gibbons Forthcoming.11See Huemer 2006.

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to do. Whether these are non-normative facts (e.g., facts about the effects ofaction, the historical features of the situation) or normative facts (e.g., facts

about which normative principles are genuine, facts about which of the relevantreasons are stronger), since these facts are not fixed by facts that NormativePsychologism says determines which reasons apply to you, these facts do notdetermine which reasons apply to you. It should not be terribly difficult toconstruct any number of counterexamples to this view. Non-culpable factualignorance excuses.12 It does not obviate the need to justify an action thatresults in an overall bad state of affairs. Less controversially, we can makereasonable mistakes about which normative principles are genuine or which ofthe reasons we are considering is overriding.

It is more difficult to counterexample the first view about what is reasonableto judge. It seems to be something of a contingent fact about human psychologythat no actual person has the sorts of moral intuitions that would make actinglike a vampire, cannibal, or Neo-Con reasonable, but since it is a mere contingentfact about human psychology that this is so, this fact counts against the secondview of reasonable judgment and action. The first view escapes this becausesomeone who is the same on the inside as a vampire, cannibal, or Neo-Con maywell not be the same on the inside as someone who knows what to do. Thesehorrible creatures fail to do what they ought because they act against necessarilytrue principles and while these principles might not be inviolable, the reasonsthese creatures have for acting against them do not justify the violations. Theproblem with this view, it seems, is that it avoids counterexamples but abusesthe notion of the reasonable. Someone can make a reasonable mistake aboutwhether some reason is stronger than another and in so doing might judgethat V-ing is the thing to do even though no one could knowingly judge thatthat is so. If the hope is to link the reasonable to the right, I worry the first

view avoids counterexamples by means of a technical trick. We know what itwould take for it to avoid all the counterexamples, it would have to deny that aconscientious and careful moral reasoner can reason to a reasonable judgmentabout what to do if given the wrong intuitions as inputs. But, the thoughtthat someone can reason carefully and correctly from the firm intuitions shehas to a judgment about what to do and fail to be reasonable precisely becauseshe has the wrong inputs smacks of a strange kind of externalism. It is akinto saying that someone who hallucinates cannot have reasonable beliefs aboutthe external world because the inputs were defective. The reasonable, it seems,is more intimately connected to the agents perspective on things and the firstview avoids the counterexamples that arise for the second only by denying this.

So, here is a second argument against Normative Psychologism. It is pos-sible for two equally reasonable subjects to judge that they should V and act

accordingly where one subject is permitted to V but the other is obliged notto V. Such a difference in obligations requires a difference in the reasons thatapply to them because ought implies reason. In such cases, the reasons are

12For arguments that non-culpable factual ignorance excuses rather than obviates the needto justify, see [omit], Gardner 2007, pp. 121-41.

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typically grounded in features external to the subject (e.g., facts that the subject is non-culpably ignorant of, facts about the comparative weight of reasons

that the agent is non-culpably ignorant of, or facts about which principles aregenuine that the subject is non-culpably ignorant of). So, some reasons areneither attitudes of the agent nor the propositions that the agent has in mind.So, some reasons are constituted by facts external to the agent.

While defenders of Psychologism can try to accomodate intuitions about theright by cutting the connection between the agents perspective and the reason-able, they do violence to our intuitions about reasonable judgment. Instead,they can try to accomodate intuitions about the reasonable by upholding thelink between the reasonable and the agents perspective, but then they do vi-olence to our intuitions about right action. Of course, they can deny that thereasonable judgment is the mark of the permissible, but then they undercut theargument offered for Normative Psychologism. It seems that the last option isthe best option for Psychologism. If the defenders of Psychologism deny thatthe reasonable judgment is the mark of the permissible, this undercuts one ar-gument for Normative Psychologism but leaves Psychologism untouched. In thenext section, we shall consider another argument for Psychologism, the argu-ment from error. I hope to show below that Psychologism cannot respect theExplanatory and Normative Constraints if it is motivated by the argument fromerror. If we treat these assumptions as axiomatic, there might be difficulties thatarise for Dancys view, but Psychologism is not a tenable alternative.

2 The Argument from Error

This argument from error is intended to be an argument for some version ofPsychologism. Suppose Plum and White are running down two very similar

halls in two very similar houses. There is a killer chasing Plum and she knowsit. White believes that there is a killer chasing her, but there is no one afterher. Keep Plum and White as psychologically similar as you can in keepingwith what I have just said. To introduce some jargon, Plum is in the good case,White is in the bad. (Obviously, goodness and badness is measured in epistemicterms rather than practical terms. Most of us would think our case is not madebetter by putting a killer into it much less one that gives us good reason torun screaming down a hall.) Given anti-Psychologism about motivating andnormative reasons, it is tempting to say Plums case is a case where there aregood reasons to run and Plum runs for those reasons. So, we might say:

(1) Plums reason for running down the hall was that the killer wasafter her.

(2) Plums reason for running down the hall was that the killer wasafter her and this was a good reason for her to run.

(3) Plum ran down the hall for the reason that the killer after her.

(4) Plum ran down the hall for the reason that the killer after her

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and this was indeed a good reason for her to run.13

What should we say about White? According to Dancy, The distinction be-tween true and false beliefs on the agents part cannot affect theform of theexplanation which will be appropriateto his actions.14 Why think this? Iwould defend the idea this way. Think about the implausible error objection. Ifthe form the explanation took depended upon whether the agents beliefs werecorrect, in the case of error we would need to describe the agents reason for act-ing as something that the agent is right about. While the agent is wrong aboutthe facts on the ground, the agent is, presumably, right about the facts in herhead. So, we would have to describe the agent as acting for the sort of reasonthat only a muddled agent would think counts in favor of acting. If we are nottrying to explain the behavior of muddled agents, we should not describe theagents reason for acting in psychologized terms.15 So, it seems that if (1)-(4)are correct, these should be correct as well:

(5) Whites reason for running down the hall was that the killer wasafter her.

(6) Whites reason for running down the hall was that the killer wasafter her and this was a good reason for her to run.

(7) White ran down the hall for the reason that the killer after her.

(8) White ran down the hall for the reason that the killer after herand this was indeed a good reason for her to run.

Since there was no killer much less a killer chasing White, it seems that Whitesreason for running could not have been that the killer was after her. So, it seemsthat (5)-(8) should be false. If (5)-(8) are false, (1)-(4) must be false as well. So,

neither Plum nor White ran for the reason that there was a killer after them.It was, in some sense, the thought that was their reason for running.Dancy responds by saying that there can be correct non-factive explanations

(e.g., (7)).16 While he would not describe Whites case by means of (5)-(8), thatis not because he thinks (5)-(8) are false. He would prefer to describe the casethis way:

13If reason in (1)-(4) meant different things depending upon whether it was the kind ofreason that could be good or the kind of reason for which somene Vs, (2) and (4) would bezeugmatic (e.g., She saw a crack and the killer in the mirror). They both seem perfectly fine.So, there is at least a tiny bit of evidence that the Explanatory and Normative Constraintsare correct. The this in (2) and (4) pretty clearly refer to whatever it is that was Plumsreason for running and (2) and (4) are correct only if what this picks out is a good reason.

14Dancy 1995, pp. 13.15Someone could defend the idea in this way. The explanations we are after are causal

explanations and the cause of behavior does not depend upon the correctness of the agentsattitudes. Some of the relevant attitudes are about the future and the present and past donot depend causally upon future facts. The reason I did not offer this kind of justification isthat it is controversial as to whether the explanations we are interested in are purely causal.Others might try to justify Dancys point in these ways, but Dancy would not. He thinks thatthese reasons explanations are not causal.

16Dancy 2000, pp. 131.

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(5d) Whites reason for running down the hall was that, as she sup-posed, there was a killer after her. However, there was no one

after her.

This is supposed to be a correct explanation because the explanation depicts thelight in which the agent acted. It is supposed to be non-factive, however, becausethe truth of (5d) does not turn on the truth or falsity of the agents relevantbeliefs (i.e., (5d) is supposed to be true even if there is no killer after her). Hethinks it is too harsh to deny that White acted for a reason, but I think (5d)sounds too harsh in a different way. To my ears (5d) is a contradiction. Here, Ihave to side with Hornsby who remarks:

... [I]t is a very strange idea that explanations are ever non-factive.To many ears, He V-ed because, as he supposed, p is true only ifit is true that p. (One plausible account of as X supposes used

parenthetically within a sentence s will treat it [as a sentence adverbsuch as luckily should arguably be treated] as conveying somethingabout what is said in s without affecting its truth-conditions. If so,then, given that p because q requires the truth of p and of q,introducing a parenthetic as X supposes within it will not produceanything non-factive.17

On this point, she and I are in perfect agreement.There is further evidence against Dancys proposal. Consider:

(9) White ran down the hall because the killer was after her.

Dancy agrees that in the circumstances described, (9) is false.18 He agrees that(9) is false because he agrees that it is obviously factive, but if (~9) is false.

This is why he denies that it is a consequence of (7). It had better not be aconsequence of (7), for Dancys response to the argument for error is supposedto show how (7) could be correct. Dancy would probably agree that thereis some connection between (7) and (9). In many conversational contexts Iimagine that we would at least take it that someone who asserted (7) wouldassent to (9) if asked. Someone could say that the connection between (7) and(9) is weaker than entailment, but there are ways of testing this. For example,if (7) merely conversationally implied that (9), then this implication should becancellable. I dont think the implication is cancellable. Moreover, you cannotproperly reinforce entailment, but you can properly reinforce things that areconversationally implied.19 So, consider:

(10) Plum knew that the killer was in the kitchen. Indeed, the killer

was in the kitchen.(11) Mustard has put a killer behind bars. Indeed, he has put many

killers away.

17Hornsby pp. 29218On this point, he and Schroeder both said in personal correspondence that they agree.19A point I owe to Stanley 2008 who credits it to Sadock 1978.

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(12) Mustard has put a killer behind bars, but only one. After thestress of that, he retired.

Compare these with this:

(13) White ran down the hall for the reason that a killer was afterher. Indeed, she ran down the hall because the killer was afterher.

To my ear, (13) is a redundant conjunction much in the way that (10) is. So,we have further linguistic evidence for the hypothesis that (7) entails (9). Thisis a problem because, as Hornsby notes, p because q is factive. I have neverseen this denied in print, only in conversation, but it might be worth offeringsome evidence for that as well. So, consider:

(14) White ran down the hall because the killer was after her. In-deed, the killer was after her.

(15) The killer was after White. That is why she ran down the hall.

It seems that (14) is a redundant conjunction, so there is some evidence that (9)is true only if there is a killer coming after White. Also, note that (15) seemsto be equivalent to (9). (15) entails:

(16) The killer was after White.

If (16) is not factive, nothing is.Hornsby accepts some of this, possibly all of it. She offers a disjunctivist

account of acting for a reason according to which you can be influenced by thefacts you know to be true. On her account, since agents in the good and badcase know different things, the reasons for which they act (can) differ accordinglyeven if these subjects are in the same non-factive mental states:

(17) Plum ran down the hall for the reason that a killer was afterher and White ran down the hall for the reason that she believeda killer was after her.20

There are concerns, of course, whether (17) really properly describes the light inwhich White acted. As she sees it, this does what we want a reasons explanationto do because we manage to express that both Plum and White treated someconsideration as they would have if they knew it to be true. If either knew thatthere was a killer after them, they would run. That is what (17) conveys andthat does a pretty good job depicting the light in which they acted. Neithertried to be a hero, both tried to get to safety.

One of the difficulties I have in accepting this view is that it clashes with

the thought that the from the explanation takes depends upon the accuracy ofthe agents beliefs. So, for example, if we did not know whether it was Plum orWhite who correctly believed that the killer was after them but knew that oneof them had correct beliefs, we could not say whether it was (17) or (18) thatwas correct:

20Hornsby 2007, pp. 300.

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(18) White ran down the hall for the reason that a killer was afterher and Plum ran down the hall for the reason that she believed

a killer was after her.

What is it that we are not supposed to know if we do not know whether it is(17) or (18) that is correct? Whatever it is, it is something we do not know ifall we know is this:

(19) White and Plum both ran down the hall because they bothbelieved that a killer was after them.

If that contains all we need to know to explain their action, what is wrong witha conjunctive account that denies both (17) and (18) and simply offers (19) inits place? Perhaps she will reply by saying that (19) does not tell us the reasonsfor which White and Plum acted, but we can easily enrich (19) as follows:

(20) White and Plum both ran down the hall because they bothbelieved that a killer was after them and both thought that thefact that there was a killer after them was a good reason to run.Both knew that if they knew that there was a killer there, runningwas the way to respond.

This does not tell us whether (17) or (18) is true, but it seems to tell us every-thing we need to know about White and Plum. On the disjunctivist account,full understanding requires knowing whether it is (17) or (18) is true, and I justdo not see what the disjunctivist thinks is gained if we gain this extra bit ofknowledge beyond what is contained in (20). We do learn that there was a killerafter one of our agents, but it is not at all clear what this has to do with reasonsor understanding the agents action.

There is a further strange feature of the view. The that-clauses we use to pickout motivating reasons often employ propositions that are true only if certainfuture events transpire. Indeed, these events might take place after we offer theexplanation of the agents action. White put all of her money into a hedge fundthat Mustard was running. It is strange to say that her reason for investing hermoney with Mustard is one thing if it pans out and something else if it doesnot. But, on the view that says the explanans will depend upon whether Whiteknows or merely believes that she will make a good return on her investment,this is precisely how things are.

If neither of these views seem satisfactory, it is tempting to embrace Moti-vational Psychologism. Like Dancys view, it denies that the form the reasonsexplanation takes depends upon events that will transpire only after the actionoccurs and asserts that the form that the explanation takes does not depend

upon the accuracy of the agents mental states. Like Hornsbys view, it doesnot respond to the argument from error by saying things that are contradictory.

Miller says this on behalf of PsychologismP:

[U]nless we are infallible about what facts there are, there will beplenty of instances in which we invoke motivating reasons in our

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practical deliberation and yet at the same time are quite mistakenabout the existence of the facts to which they make putative refer-

ence.21

Think about White. She is mistaken about the facts. Is she mistaken aboutthe reason for which she runs? According to Miller, if you were to ask eitherPlum or White why they were running down the hall so quickly, both would bedisposed to say, I am running down the hall for the reason that the killer is afterme. They would then politely excuse themselves and continue running. On hisview, motivating reasons are propositions, not propositional attitudes, so theseremarks are not elliptical for a longer statement that makes explicit referenceto attitudes. Suppose, then, that this is a case where White is mistaken aboutthe facts but not thereby mistaken about her reasons. White would thus speakthe truth if she said:

(21) I am running down the hall for the reason that the killer is afterme.

But the problem here is obvious. The proposition her utterance expresses isfalse. (21) entails (5) and (7), which entail (9). But (9) is false. He is not wrongin saying that we are fallible about the facts. Obviously, we are. He is wrong indenying that this fallibility extends straightforwardly to judgments about ourreasons for acting or the reasons others acted for. White cannot correctly assert(21) if there is no killer after her and we cannot correctly assert (7) if there isno killer after her.

In the debate between Dancy and the defenders of PsychologismP, bothparties agree that our ascriptions of motivating reasons do not typically makereference to the agents attitudes even in cases of error. Dancy says that in the

good case, a reason is a fact. Miller says that it is a Fregean proposition thatmight correspond to some fact. The problem with using the argument fromerror as an argument for PsychologismP is that the Dancy and PsychologismPseem to agree on which sentences correctly describe Plum and Whites reasons.If, as I have argued, sentences of the form Her reason for V-ing was that pentail that p is the case, the argument from error applies to both views withequal force. Miller rejects PsychologismS as does Dancy. It is hard to see howPsychologismS can avoid the implausible error objection. It is also hard to seehow Hornsbys disjunctivist proposal avoids the implausible error objection. So,where does this leave us? It leaves us looking for a new view.

3 Acting and Achieving

The argument from error is more powerful than previously thought, for if itconstitutes a decisive refutation of Dancys view it seems to constitute a decisiverefutation of PsychologismP as well. It seems to me that there is one furtherview worth considering. It is a compromise of sorts, but one that is designed to

21Miller 2009, pp. 229.

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please no one. Since this is the mark of a good compromise, this view has atleast something going for it.

It seems that the parties to this debate have worked under the assumptionthat acting for a reason is not a kind of achievement. Sure, responding toreal reasons is an achievement, but acting for a reason is something you cansuccessfully pull off even if you do not manage to respond to real reasons. Whythink that? This seems to me to be a pretty promising argument to the contrary.

(P1) The reasons for which an agent Vs when the agent Vs fora reason are picked out by means of that-clauses that deploypropositions that are the contents of the beliefs that figure in theagents deliberation and so are typically propositions about thesituation rather than propositions about their own propositionalattitudes.

(P2) When the agent Vs for a reason, the form the explanationtakes of the agents V-ing does not depend upon the accuracy orveridicality of the agents propositional attitudes.

(P3) The ascriptions that report the reasons for which the agent Vdare factive.

(C) So, if ~p, She Vd for the reason that p is false and if the agentis the non-factive psychological duplicate of someone who actedfor a reason (i.e., a subject it would be true to say of, She Vdfor the reason that p), she herself did not succeed in acting fora reason.

The support for (P1) comes from the implausible error argument and the ar-guments for the Explanatory and Normative Constraints. The thought behind

(P2) is that the form an explanation takes does not depend upon whether theagents attitudes are veridical or not. If we have two subjects that are non-factive mental duplicates who both V and we want to say the reasons for whichthey V, we cannot then say that hte reasons for which they V differ (i.e., it is afact about an agents mind in one case and a fact the agent has in mind in theother). As for (P3), that seems pretty well supported by the linguistic evidence.If you think the idea of a correct but non-factive explanation makes little sense,you should accept (C).

How does this view differ from disjunctivism? It flips disjunctivism on itshead. According to disjunctivism:

(1) In the good case, she ran down the hall for the reason that thekiller was after her.

(2) In the bad case, she ran down the hall for the reason that shebelieved the killer was after her.

The disjunctivist thinks that the propositions that specify the agents motivatingreasons in the good and bad case provide the explanans that correctly explainthe same explanandum proposition in the good and bad case. This contradicts

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(P2) because it says that there are two cases (i.e., the good and the bad) withthe same explanandum where agents are in the same non-factive mental states

and the reasons that explain their behaviors differ. On the present view:


(4) In the bad case, she ran down the hall, but she did not run forany reason at all. At best, she took it that there was a reason torun.

The view is consistent with (P2). I say that the explanandum proposition thatwe explain by describing the agents motivating reasons in the good case is aproposition that is false in the bad case. So, the question, What was the agentsreason for acting? rests on a mistake if the agent is in the bad case, but not inthe good. If acting for a reason is something that happens only in the good case

and not in the bad, we can accept the principle that states that there will notbe different correct explanations of the same phenomenon in both cases. Whyhold this view? Given (P1) and (P3), all the candidate explanans propositionsthat we use in the good case are excluded if we try to explain how the agent inthe bad case managed to act for a reason. She acted in the bad case, but failedto act for a reason.

Does that mean that the present view makes it impossible to explain theagents behavior in the bad case? Not at all. The view agrees with disjunctivismin saying the following:

(5) In the good case, she ran down the hall because the killer wasafter her.

(6) In the good case, she ran down the hall because she believed thatthe killer was after her.

(7) In the bad case, she ran down the hall because she believed thatthe killer was after her.

Not only do the disjunctivists seem to agree that these all come out to be true,all parties seem to agree that this comes out false:

(8) In the bad case, she ran down the hall because the killer wasafter her.

Suppose Dancys view and Motivational Psychologism accept (5)-(7) but reject(8). Consider:

(9) She ran down the hall because the killer was after her.(10) She ran down the hall because she believed that the killer was

after her.

If they say that the truth of (9) or (10) depends upon whether the agent is inthe good case or bad, the only position for them to take that is consistent with

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(P2) is the position I am advocating, which is that the thing you try to explainby citing the reasons for which an agent Vs is a feature unique to the good

case. If to deal with this point you accept (6) and (7) but deny (5), it seemsyou also have to deny:


On its face, (11) entails (5). But, to deny (5) is simply to deny (P1). It isto assert that the reasons for which we act really are correctly picked out bypropositions that report our attitudes instead of the propositions that are thecontents of the attitudes that figure in deliberation.

The most significant obstacle the present view faces is that in asserting (4),it seems the view suffers from an explanatory deficit that other views do not.In response, notice that those who defend PsychologismP or Dancys view haveto deny She Vd for the reason that p entail She Vd because p. They agreethat She Vd because she believed p is true whenever She Vd for the reasonthat p is true. In asserting (4), I am committed to saying that in the bad case,it is false that White ran down the hall because the killer was after her. On thispoint, all the views are in agreement. I am not committed to denying that sheran down the hall because the killer was after her. This causal explanation isone that all parties seem to agree is correct. I say that the explanans propositionin She Vd because she believed p does not ascribe the reason for which theagent acts. All parties seem to agree on that point as well. So, I do not thinkmy view suffers from any explanatory deficit. My view accepts all the becauseclaims that the other views accept and offers the same causal explanation of theagents behavior in terms of the agents attitudes that alternative views do.

The difference is that on the view defended here, there are more true be-

cause claims than on the rival view. In the good case where the agent correctlybelieves p, you can correctly say, She Vd because p. So, maybe the problemwith the view is not that it suffers from an explanatory deficit. Does the viewoffer too many explanations? What is the extra thing that motivating reasonsexplain? It has to be something that distinguishes the good case from the bad.Here is what it is. We know what something has to be to be a motivatingreasonit has to be something that could turn out to be a good (normative)reason if the facts fit the attitudes. We know that each instance of acting for areason involves a motivating reason and each behavior that can be understoodin terms of motivating reasons is acting for a reason. So, acting for a reason isan achievement. When you act for a reason, there is a reason and you act forit. You saw something in the situation and have responded to it rather than re-sponded in a predictable way given psychological inputs that might misrepresent

the circumstances in which you acted.Why have two notions? Why have causal explanations of behavior that cite

the agents psychological states and reasons explanations that cite facts that fitthose states? One idea is this. In saying that someone acted for a reason, weimpart two pieces of information. Part of it has to do with specifying the agentsreasons to say what the agents intentions were in acting. (This is something

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we can do in the good case and the bad by describing the agents psychologicalstates.) Part of it has to do with reporting facts that the agent confronted

because those facts are facts that we all potentially might have to deal with.Causal explanations of behavior that cite the agents psychological states do notconvey this extra bit of information, which is that the agent saw something inthe circumstance that she took to be something that called for her to act in theway that she did.

Properly understood (5) and (6) are complementary, not competing. Theydo not compete because facts and beliefs explain different things. In somecontexts, we want to know what it is that the agent got out of acting in the waythat she did. We want to know what she accomplished or what she achieved.These are the contexts in which we say what the reasons for which an agentacted. If it turns out that the agents attitudes were mistaken, our questionrested on a mistake. We had thought that the agent got something out ofacting in the way that she did that she had hoped for, but she did not. Incontexts where we do not want to know what the agent got out of acting, weare looking for a psychological explanation of the agents behavior. So, if weknow that the agents attitudes are false or do not know whether the agentsattitudes are false, our interest is in what would make the agents behaviorintelligible. Here, psychological states of the agent are useful. If the agent is inthe good case, we can ask both sorts of question and that is why both (5) and(6) turn out true. If the agent is in the bad case, we can ask only one sort ofqueston and that is why (7) turns out true rather than (8).

Acting for a reason is thus similar to knowing and different from believinginsofar as knowing and acting for a reason are both achievements. In contextswhere we can safely assume that the agents attitudes were correct, we can ask,

Why did she do that? and get in return an account of what she achieved by

acting in the way she did. This is akin to contexts where someone asks, in anon-skeptical or non-challenging way, How does she know that? Just as we canask How does she know that? to learn something either about how she learnedthat p or why she came to believe p, we can ask, Why did she do that? eitherto learn what she gained or what she had hoped to gain and receive differentanswers. If taken in the first way, the answer cites facts. If taken in the second,the answer can cite attitudes. In contexts where we cannot safely assume thatthe agents attidues were correct, we can ask, Why did she do that? and geta correct answer that describes the agents attitudes, but that does not tell usthe reasons for which she acted. We are not interested in the reasons for whichshe acted, we want a psychological story that makes sense of her behavior thatremains neutral on the question as to whether she had any reasons to act as shedid.

In this way, we can allow that psychological states of the agent do have arole to play in explaining behavior. In asking why some event occurred, if wewant to know the causes, we can cite the psychological states as causes. Thesepsychological states are the reasons why someones body moved in such andsuch a way. The reasons why an event occurred are not reasons for the event to

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occur and they are not the reasons for which an agent acted. 22 The thesis thatpsychological states are reasons why events take place is extremely plausible

and I think that this is all that Psychologism can be right about. And this, isjust to say, that Motivational Psychologism is false.

Should this be upsetting to those who defend Psychologism? I do not thinkit should be at all upsetting to Smith, for as I understand his view, he does notreally deny (P1). Rather, for him, motivational reason is a term of art thathas more to do with explaining behaviors. I do not think he ever worked underthe assumption that the things we pick out as the agents reasons for whichshe Vd were themselves motivational reasons of the kind he was interested inwhen he defended the Humean view that motivating reasons always involvedsome belief-desire pair. So, in the end, nothing I have said against MotivationalPsychologism speaks against the Humean view that he defends. Whether thatview is correct depends pretty much on what he thought it depended on, noton whether the things we describe as the reasons for which an agent acts arefacts, beliefs, the contents of beliefs rather than desires, but on whether thecorrect causal story of an event that is an action involves psychological stateswith differing directions of fit.

References

1. Dancy, Jonathan 1995. Why There Is Really No Such Thing as the Theoryof Motivation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series 95: pp.1-18

2. Dancy, Jonathan 2000. Practical Reality. New York: Oxford UniversityPress.

3. Gibbons, John 2009. You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do. Nous 43: 157-77.

4. Gibbons, John. Forthcoming. Things That Make Things Reasonable.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

5. Fantl, Jeremy and Matt McGrath 2009. Knowledge in an UncertainWorld. New York: Oxford University Press.

6. Hornsby, Jennifer 2007. Knowledge in Action. In A. Leist (ed.), Actionin Context. (Berlin: De Gruyter), pp. 285-302.

7. Huemer, Michael. 2006. Phenomenal Conservatism and the InternalistIntuition. American Philosophical Quarterly 43: 147-58.

22That reasons why are not the same thing as motivating reasons is something that Dancy2000 and some of his critics agree on. It is less clear that this is something that all defenders ofPsychologism agree to. Some might say that motivating reasons are kinds of reasons why andthey might deny that they are reasons why because they are considerations in light of whichthe agent acted. Instead, they are states by virtue of which there seemed to be somethingin the situation that called for a response. My sense is that this is closer to the view thatsomeone like Smith prefers.

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8. Lord, Errol 2008. Dancy on Acting for the Right Reason. Journal ofEthics and Social Philosophy.

9. Miller, Christian 2008. Motivation in Agents. Nous 42: 222-66.

10. Parfit, Derek 1997. Reasons and Motivation. Proceedings of the Aris-totelian Society, Supp. Volume 71: 99-130.

11. Sadock, Jerrold. 1978. On Testing Conversational Implicature. Syntaxand Semantics 9: Pragmatics: 281-97.

12. Schroeder, Mark 2008. Having Reasons. Philosophical Studies 139: 57-71.

13. Smith, Michael 1987. The Humean Theory of Motivation. Mind 96, pp.36-61.

14. Stanley, Jason 2008. Knowledge and Certainty. Philosophical Issues 18:33-55.

15. Turri, John 2009. The Ontology of Epistemic Reasons. Nous 43: 490-512.

16. Wiland, Eric 2002. Theories of Practical Reason. Metaphilosophy 33, pp.450-67.

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