An Objection to Lord’s Reasons Responsiveness View

In his 2018 volume, The Importance of Being Rational, Errol Lord defends the thesis that “what it is to be rational is to correctly respond to possessed objective normative reasons” (p. 3).  Lord calls this thesis “Reasons Responsiveness”.  According to Lord, Reasons Responsiveness entails the following principle:

Equivalence:

Necessarily, you are rational if and only if you correctly respond to reasons. (Lord 2018, p. 23)

In this blog post, I will briefly explain why I believe that Equivalence—and by extension, Reasons Responsiveness—is false.

To better appreciate Lord’s proposal, let us consider how it explains the irrationality incurred from having inconsistent beliefs or intentions.  Many (if not most) contemporary action theorists attempt to explain why it is irrational to have inconsistent beliefs or intentions in terms of something along the lines of the following wide scope norms.

Belief Consistency:

Rationality requires that [if one believes P, then one does not believe ¬P]

Intention Consistency:

Rationality requires that [if one intends to F, then one does not intend to ¬F]

Lord deems such wide scope norms unnecessary given that the same explanatory work may be done by Reasons Responsiveness. Simply put, in all cases in which an agent has inconsistent beliefs or intentions, they are also failing to respond appropriately to their reasons.  According to the present view, if one possesses decisive reasons to adopt a certain attitude or course of action, then one is rationally required to adopt that attitude or course of action (p. 11).  Moreover, if one possesses decisive reason to believe P, then one ipso facto possesses decisive reason not to believe ¬P.  Hence, we may explain why it is irrational for an agent to have inconsistent beliefs in terms of the requirement that they respond appropriately to their reasons.  The upshot is that we are free to dispense with Belief Consistency and Intention Consistency, and adopt Reasons Responsiveness in their place.

Pace Lord, I maintain that there are cases in which an agent violates Intention Consistency, but in which they do not violate Reasons Responsiveness. Hence, Reasons Responsiveness is unable to explain all cases in which an agent is irrational for having inconsistent intentions.

Consider an agent, let’s call her Edna, who goes to the supermarket to purchase some soup. She finds two identical cans of Campbell’s Tomato soup—can A and can B—on the shelf and forms the intention to take can A rather than can B.  Since both cans are indistinguishable in every salient respect, each reason Edna possesses to (intend to) take can A—e.g., she loves soup, Campbell’s Tomato soup is her favourite, the soup is on sale, etc.—is also a reason she possesses to intend to take can B.  What Edna lacks is a reason to take can A rather than can B or a reason to take can B rather than can A. Even so, Edna may intend to take can A rather than can B.  Moreover, she does not appear to be guilty of irrationality for so doing.

If the above analysis is right, then this poses a problem for Reasons Responsiveness.  This is because while it is rationally permissible for Edna to intend to take can A rather than can B, it is not rationally permissible for her to simultaneously intend to take can A rather than can B and intend to take can B rather than can A.  In sum, even in picking situations, one is not rationally permitted to have inconsistent intentions.  However, as we already noted, Edna has no reason to (intend to) take can A rather than can B. We therefore cannot explain why Edna is being irrational by saying she fails to respond appropriately to her reasons.  Ex hypothesi, she has none.  Hence, we appear to have a case in which an agent has inconsistent intentions but does not fail to respond correctly to the reasons she possesses.

Lord anticipates a similar kind of objection in chapter 2 of his volume.  However, the case Lord considers differs from the above example in a crucial respect.  Lord considers a case in which an agent possesses sufficient (but not decisive) reason to intend to F and sufficient (but not decisive) reason to not intend to F.  Such cases appear to pose a problem for Reasons Responsiveness since possessing merely sufficient reason to intend to F does not entail possessing decisive reason to not intend to ¬F.  The apparent upshot is that Reasons Responsiveness appears to allow that an agent with merely sufficient reasons may have inconsistent intentions.

Lord solves this problem by appealing to a principle he calls “Intentions Attenuate” (p. 31).  According to Intentions Attenuate, if one adopts the intention to F, the adopted intention attenuates the strength of all competing intentions, including the intention to ¬F.  Intentions Attenuate contrasts with the popular suggestion that forming an intention generates additional reasons to do what one intends.  Lord rejects this proposal due to bootstrapping concerns (and rightly so).  Intentions Attenuate avoids the boostrapping problems because it does not entail that merely forming an intention generates additional reasons.  Rather, it entails that an intention may either intensify or attenuate the weight of one’s pre-existing reasons.  However, it is the very feature of Intentions Attenuate that allows it to avoid boostrapping concerns that preclude it from solving the problem being limned in this post. Since Edna has no reason to intend to take can A rather than can B, there are no reasons to be either intensified or attenuated.  The upshot is that Intentions Attenuate is of no help to Lord in addressing the present worry.

One possible diagnosis of why Intentions Attenuate is ineffective against the Edna example is that it appears to presuppose that an intention is rationally permissible only if one has at least some reason in its favour.  (See p. 38 of Lord’s discussion.)  However, I believe intentions stand in contrast to belief in precisely this regard.  Plausibly, it is rationally permissible to adopt a certain belief only if one has some reason in its favour, at least when it comes to beliefs about external world.  For example, I cannot rationally believe that the number of stars in the Milky Way is even given that I lack any reason to believe that it is.  However, as the rational permissibility of picking illustrates, it may be rationally permissible to adopt an intention even if one has no reason in support of the intention.  Given this fact, we cannot hope to make sense of the consistency norms governing intentions in terms of an agent appropriately responding to her possessed reasons.

Reference:

Lord, E. (2018) The Importance of Being Rational. Oxford University Press.

Heuer's Argument Against the Humean Theory

In his paper, “Reasons for Actions and Desires”, Ulrike Heuer attempts to cast doubt on the Humean account of practical reasons (in the sense of justificatory reasons for action). Heuer describes the Humean account as the claim that “all practical reasons are based on a person’s given motives, or desires” (p. 43).  Moreover, he takes the Humean to be committed to the following two claims:

(H1) Anything can be the object of a desire. 

(H2) Actions can be justified (at least in some rudimentary sense) by showing that they are suited to lead to the satisfaction of a desire. (p. 52)

I will put aside the question of whether the Humean is necessarily committed to (H1) and (H2) for the time being. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that she is.  This, Heuer argues, makes the Humean account susceptible to the following counterexample, due to Warren Quinn: 

Imagine that I had a disposition to turn on every radio within my reach, but not because I want to listen to music or news; as Quinn puts it: ‘Indeed, I do not turn them on in order to hear anything’. (p. 51)

The preceding case is supposed to present us with a scenario in which an agent has a desire, but in which the desire fails to justify the actions that would lead to the satisfaction of that desire.  In order to constitute a genuine counterexample to the Humean account, the Humean must be committed to saying that the agent in Quinn’s example does in fact have a desire.  In order to establish that the Humean is so committed, Heuer notes that “most Humeans rely on” a functionalist conception of desire, according to which an agent desires some end just in case she is disposed to perform actions that would lead to achieving that end (p. 51).  Since the agent in Quinn’s example satisfies the right-hand-side of the preceding biconditional, it follows that he has a desire.

One immediate problem with the preceding argument is that Heuer fails to establish that the Humean must be committed to a functionalist (or some relevantly similar) conception of desire.  He only claims that most Humeans “rely” on a functionalist conception. However, it matters little if most (or even all) Humeans rely on a functionalist conception of desire.  What Heuer needs, if he is to establish that the counterexample has force against the Humean, is that the Humean is necessarily committed to a functionalist (or some relevantly similar) conception of desire, given her other theoretical commitments. But, as we shall soon see, the Humean need not be saddled with a functionalist conception of desire.

Perhaps it is Heuer’s recognition of the above point that leads him to stress the Humean’s commitment to (H1).  The idea seems to be this: since the Humean is committed to the claim that anything can be the object of a desire, it follows that she has no basis for denying that the agent in Quinn’s example has a desire to turn on every radio within reach. If this is supposed to be Heuer’s line of argument, then it appears to rest on a mistake.  Specifically, Heuer appears to conflate two very distinct claims: the claim that (i) there is no formal constraint on the content of a desire, and the claim that  (ii) there is no formal constraint on the nature of a desire. While (H1) plausibly entails (i), it does not entail (ii).  That is to say, a Humean need not be committed to saying that every attitude that has the function of disposing an agent to act is a desire (i.e., the functionalist conception of desire). For example, a Humean may consistently subscribe to the following hybrid of a pleasure-based and action-based conception of desire:

Pleasure-Action-Hybrid View (PAH)

S desires P iff S is disposed to take whatever actions S believes necessary to bring about P, and S has this disposition in virtue of the fact that S is disposed to take pleasure in the thought that P and displeasure in the thought that not-P. 

According to PAH, an agent counts as having a desire only in those cases in which she is disposed to perform actions in a specific way; namely, in virtue of being disposed to take pleasure in the thought of the desired outcome obtaining, and displeasure in the thought of the desired outcome failing to obtain. Significantly, this is not a formal constraint on the content of a desire.  It is formal constraint on what constitutes a desire.  Admittedly, it may turn out that, as a matter of fact, a given agent may be disposed to take pleasure or displeasure in the thought of only certain outcome’s obtaining and not others. But his is an empirical and contingent matter. Not a formal one.  It remains true that, in principle, anything may be the object of desire, even if it turns out that some things seldom or never are.  Hence, PAH is perfectly consistent with (H1).

Moreover, PAH allows the Humean to adopt the following more nuanced reply to Quinn’s example.  According to PAH, the agent in Quinn’s example has a desire to turn on every radio within reach only if he is disposed to satisfy the desire in virtue of a disposition to take pleasure in the thought of every radio within reach being on and displeasure in the thought of every radio within reach being off.  But once we substitute PAH for a functionalist conception of desire, Quinn’s purported counterexample seems much less compelling.  If, on the one hand, the agent in Quinn’s example is disposed to take pleasure in thought of the radios being on, it seems less obvious that her desire to do so fails to provide her with some (even if rudimentary) justification.  After all, the fact that she is disposed to take pleasure in the thought of the radios being on does seem to provide her with some (even if rudimentary) justification for acting so as to satisfy her desire.  If, on the other hand, the agent in Quinn’s example is not disposed to take pleasure in the thought of every radio within reach being on (which seems truer to Quinn’s original intention), then the Humean may consistently deny that the agent has a desire.  She may, instead, hold that the agent merely has a pathological urge or some other motivational state distinct from desire. In short, the Humean need not be saddled with the view that all states that dispose an agent to act so as to satisfy them are genuine desires.


Finally, there seems to be a fatal flaw in the overall structure of Heuer's appropriation of Quinn's example as an argument against the Humean account. Recall, Heuer defines the Humean account as the theory of rationality according to which “all practical reasons are based on a person’s given motives, or desires” (p. 43).  The Humean is therefore committed to the claim that having a desire is a necessary condition for having a practical justification. However, the claim that all practical justification is based on desire does not entail that all desires provide practical justification.  The former specifies a necessary condition for practical justification, while the latter specifies a sufficient condition. Hence, the Humean may grant that the desire of the agent described in Quinn’s example fails to provide him with a reason.  However, it does not follow from the fact that some desires fail to provide practical justification that all desires fail to provide practical justification or that all practical justification is not based onn desire. In short, Heuer has not provided us with a valid argument against the claim that all practical justification is based on desires.