Donald Hubin

This paper investigates the purported specialness of Humean theories of practical reasons, particularly their claimed superior connection to motivation. Critics, such as Korsgaard, argue that this connection is illusory, as any theory can assert that an agent will be motivated by its endorsed reasons insofar as the agent is rational. I decompose the Humean position into two components: the thesis of pure instrumentalism and the thesis of desire-based reasons. I argue that pure instrumentalism—the view that reasons are transmitted from ends to necessary means—is, when properly understood through the use of inclusive descriptions of outcomes, conceptually noncontroversial and necessarily adopted by any plausible theory of practical rationality. This uncontroversial status of instrumentalism allows the Humean to establish a unique and non-trivial link between practical reasons and the agent's motivational set. Since the Humean evaluative point of view is defined by the agent's conative states, a failure to be moved by a Humean reason represents a special kind of practical defect: a failure to be moved by one's own motivational perspective. This "unshruggable" force of rational criticism is absent in non-Humean theories, where an agent can simply plead indifference to the external evaluative perspective. I conclude that what is special about Humeanism is its successful establishment of this special conceptual and typical link between reasons and motivation.

This review critically examines Allan Gibbard's Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment, which proposes a thoroughly naturalistic and expressivist account of normative discourse. Gibbard's central thesis holds that fundamental judgments of rationality are expressions of one's acceptance of norms, or rules, that permit an action or emotion. More complex 'flavored' judgments, such as moral and aesthetic judgments, are then analyzed as norms for the rationality of specific emotional responses (e.g., immorality is the rationality of guilt and anger). The review focuses on two primary challenges: 1) The conceptual adequacy of analyzing complex normative judgments (like moral judgment) as solely concerns about the rationality of emotions, questioning whether this model can accommodate different normative categories (e.g., prudential, economic) without running out of distinct emotional correlates. 2) The plausibility of extending the analysis to include those who subscribe to fundamentally different, specifically instrumentalist, norms for emotions. The review concludes by highlighting Gibbard's powerful contribution to noncognitivism by explaining how normative dialogue and the resolution of disagreements mimic objective factual discourse.

In 'The Moral Problem', Michael Smith defends a conception of normative reasons that is nonrelative. Given his understanding of normative reasons, nonrelativity commits him to the convergence hypothesis: that, as a result of the process or correction of beliefs and rational deliberation, 'all' agents would converge on having the same set of desires. I develop several reasons for being pessimistic about the truth of this hypothesis. As a result, if normative reasons exist, we have a reason to be skeptical of either Smith's understanding of what normative reasons are or of his insistence that they are nonrelative.

Neo-Humean instrumentalist theories of reasons for acting have been presented with a dilemma: either they are normatively trivial and, hence, inadequate as a normative theory or they covertly commit themselves to a noninstrumentalist normative principle. The claimed result is that no purely instrumentalist theory of reasons for acting can be normatively adequate. This dilemma dissolves when we understand what question neo-Humean instrumentalists are addressing. The dilemma presupposes that neo-Humeans are attempting to address the question of how to act, 'simpliciter'. Instead, they are evaluating actions from the agent's normative perspective.

Gauthier's version of the Lockean proviso (in Morals by Agreement) is inappropriate as the foundation for moral rights he takes it to be. This is so for a number of reasons. It lacks any proportionality test thus allowing arbitrarily severe harms to others to prevent trivial harms to oneself. It allows one to inflict any harm on another provided that if one did not do so, someone else would. And, by interpreting the notion of bettering or worsening one's position in terms of subjective expected utility, it allows immoral manipulation of others and imposes unwarranted restrictions based on preferences that should carry no moral weight.

This paper critically evaluates the Hypothetical Motivation Theory of Reasons, the widely shared view that an agent has a reason to act if and only if they would be motivated to do so under specific idealized conditions (e.g., full information, vivid awareness, or coherent preferences). While this theory successfully addresses the obvious failings of a crude "actual motivation" account, I argue that it is fundamentally flawed as a philosophical analysis of reasons. The central critique focuses on two core problems inherent to the hypothetical approach: "counterfeit reasons" (motivation inappropriately introduced by the idealizing conditions through brute physiological or non-normative psychological processes) and "truant reasons" (reasons that fail to be generated due to psychological idiosyncrasies). I contend that attempts to eliminate these flaws by refining the idealization—for instance, by excluding brute physiological effects or requiring means/ends rationality—are either ad hoc, ineffective, or reduce the theory to a mere terminological variant of a better alternative. I propose, instead, an Actual Intrinsic Motivation Theory, which grounds reasons for acting on the agent's enduring, non-occurrent intrinsic motivation (or valuing). This approach avoids the unacceptable implications of the crude view without relying on problem-generating subjunctive conditionals. The paper concludes that while hypothetical motivation may serve as a useful heuristic for discovering reasons, it does not constitute a valid analysis, which must instead be anchored in the agent's actual, functional motivational structure.

Some have attempted to justify benefit/ cost analysis by appealing to a moral theory that appears to directly ground the technique. This approach is unsuccessful because the moral theory in question is wildly implausible and, even if it were correct, it would probably not endorse the unrestricted use of benefit/ cost analysis. Nevertheless, there is reason to think that a carefully restricted use of benefit/ cost analysis will be justifiable from a wide variety of plausible moral perspectives. From this, it is reasonable to conclude that such use of the technique is probably morally justified and should be acceptable to most people.

Standards of reasonability play an important role in some of the most difficult cases of rape. In recent years, the notion of the reasonable person has supplanted the historical concept of the reasonable man as the test of reasonability. Contemporary feminist critics like Catharine MacKinnon and Kim Lane Scheppele have challenged the notion of the reasonable person on the grounds that reasonability standards are gendered to the ground and so, in practice, the reasonable person is just the reasonable man in a gender neutral guise. These critics call for the explicit employment of a reasonable woman standard for application to the actions of female victims of rape. But the arguments for abandoning a gender-neutral standard are double-edged and the employment of gendered standards of reasonability is likely to have implications that are neither foreseen by, nor acceptable to, advocates of such standards. Reasonable agent standards can be dropped, in favor of appeals to the notion of a reasonable demand by the law. However, if reasonable agent standards are to be retained, gendered versions of such standards are not preferable to gender-neutral ones

Though most children can easily answer the question, "Who's your daddy?", the concept of paternity is complex and multifaceted. Courts have stumbled in answering it. In order to ground paternal rights and obligations in a satisfactory way, we need to disaggregate the various elements of stereotypical paternity. It is not sufficient merely to separate social from biological paternity. The latter concept, itself, is complex. We need to separate the procreative element of paternity from the genetic relationship.

Modern consequentialism is a very broad theory. Consequentialists can invoke a distribution sensitive theory of value to address the issues of distributive justice that bedeviled utilitarianism. They can attach intrinsic moral value to such acts truth-telling and promise-keeping and, so, acknowledge the essential moral significance of such acts in a way that classical utilitarianism could not. It can appear that there are no limits to consequentialism’s ability to respond to the criticisms against utilitarian theories by embracing a sophisticated theory of value. But there are limits. They are imposed by consequentialism’s commitment to ground considerations of rightness solely on considerations of goodness. Some consequentialists have attempted to incorporate elements of guilt and desert into the theory of value. This can be done, consistent with consequentialist scruples, only if these notions can be analyzed without appeal to deontic concepts such as right and wrong. I analyze the problem consequentialists face and suggest a way incorporate notions of guilt and desert in a theory of value without relying in any fundamental way on concepts of right and wrong action.

Several authors, including Thomas Nagel and David Gauthier, have defended the view that reasons of self-interest (prudential reasons) are rationally binding. That is, there is always a reason, bearing on the rational advisability, based on one's self-interest and, as a result, a person may act irrationally by knowingly acting against such reasons regardless of the person's desires or values. Both Nagel and Gauthier argue from the rationally mandatory nature of prudential reasons to the conclusion that moral reasons can be rationally mandatory, challenging the neo-Humean position that practical reasons that bear on an agent's rationality are essentially grounded on the agent's subjective, contingent, conative states. I argue, pace Nagel and Gauthier, that prudential reasons are not rationally mandatory--that the rational requirement to act in one's own interest, when it exists, is, as the neo-Humean insists, grounded on one's subjective, contingent, conative states. Prudential reasons are not reasons for every (conceivable) agent--not in the sense that bears on the rational advisability of action.

One of the attractions of the Humean instrumentalist theory of practical rationality is that it appears to offer a special connection between an agent's reasons and her motivation. The assumption that Humeanism is able to assert a strong connection between reason and motivation has been challenged, most notably by Christine Korsgaard. She argues that Humeanism is not special in the connection it allows to motivation. On the contrary, Humean theories of practical rationality do connect reasons and motivation in a unique and attractive way, though the nature of this connection has sometimes been misunderstood by both defenders and detractors of the theory.

Contractarians view justice as being defined by a contract made by rational individuals. No one supposes that this contract is actual, and the fact that it is merely hypothetical raises a number of questions both about the assumptions under which it would be actual and about the force of hypothetical agreement that is contingent on these assumptions.Particular contractarian theories must specify the circumstances of the agreement and the endowments, beliefs, desires, and degree and type of rationality of the agents. How these issues are settled determines the force of the hypothetical agreement. The fact that ignorant people who desired only universal suffering would, under duress, agree to a certain principle gives us no reason to believe the principle is a correct moral principle or to think it rational to accept or act on it: some counterfactual assumptions undermine entirely the moral force of hypothetical agreement. On the other hand, to take people just as they are, with their current beliefs, desires, endowments, and all, is to endorse their ignorance and mistakes as well as any previous injustice that affects their bargaining power.

Neo-Humean instrumentalists hold that anagent's reasons for acting are grounded in theagent's desires. Numerous objections have beenleveled against this view, but the mostcompelling concerns the problem of ``aliendesires'' – desires with which the agent doesnot identify. The standard version ofneo-Humeanism holds that these desires, likeany others, generate reasons for acting. Avariant of neo-Humeanism that grounds anagent's reasons on her values, rather than allof her desires, avoids this implication, but atthe cost of denying that we have reasons to acton innocent whims. A version of neo-Humeanismthat holds that an agent has reason to satisfyall of her desires that are not in conflictwith her values appears to allow us to grantthe reason-giving force of innocent whims whiledenying the reason-giving force of alien desires.

Benefit/cost analysis is a technique for evaluating programs, procedures, and actions; it is not a moral theory. There is significant controversy over the moral justification of benefit/cost analysis. When a procedure for evaluating social policy is challenged on moral grounds, defenders frequently seek a justification by construing the procedure as the practical embodiment of a correct moral theory. This has the apparent advantage of avoiding difficult empirical questions concerning such matters as the consequences of using the procedure. So, for example, defenders of benefit/cost analysis (BCA) are frequently tempted to argue that this procedurejust isthe calculation of moral Tightness – perhaps that what itmeansfor an action to be morally right is just for it to have the best benefit-to-cost ratio given the accounts of “benefit” and “cost” that BCA employs. They suggest, in defense of BCA, that they have found the moral calculus – Bentham's “unabashed arithmetic of morals.” To defend BCA in this manner is to commit oneself to one member of a family of moral theories (let us call thembenefit/cost moral theoriesorB/C moral theories) and, also, to the view that if a procedure is (so to speak) the direct implementation of a correct moral theory, then it is a justified procedure. Neither of these commitments is desirable, and so the temptation to justify BCA by direct appeal to a B/C moral theory should be resisted; it constitutes an unwarranted short cut to moral foundations – in this case, an unsound foundation. Critics of BCA are quick to point out the flaws of B/C moral theories, and to conclude that these undermine the justification of BCA. But the failure to justify BCA by a direct appeal to B/C moral theory does not show that the technique is unjustified. There is hope for BCA, even if it does not lie with B/C moral theory.

The U.S. Supreme Court regards parental rights as fundamental. Such a status should subject any legal procedure that directly and substantively interferes with the exercise of parental rights to strict scrutiny. On the contrary, though, despite their status as fundamental constitutional rights, parental rights are routinely suspended or revoked as a result of procedures that fail to meet even minimal standards of procedural and substantive due process. This routine and cavalier deprivation of parental rights takes place in the context of divorce where, during the pendency of litigation, one parent is routinely deprived of significant parental rights without any demonstration that a state interest exists—much less that there is a compelling state interest that cannot be achieved in any less restrictive way. In marked contrast to our current practice, treating parental rights as fundamental rights requires a presumption of joint legal and physical custody upon divorce and during the pendency of divorce litigation. The presumption may be overcome, but only by clear and convincing evidence that such an arrangement is harmful to the children.

Many believe that the rational evaluation of actions depends on the rational evaluation of even basic desires. Hume, though, viewed desires as "original existences" which cannot be contrary to either truth or reason. Contemporary critics of Hume, including Norman, Brandt and Parfit, have sought a basis for the rational evaluation of desires that would deny some basic desires reason-giving force. I side with Hume against these modern critics. Hume's concept of rational evaluation is admittedly too narrow; even basic desires are, despite their nonrepresentational nature, subject to rational evaluation. But this evaluation is not relevant to their tendency to generate reasons for action, and does not undermine the spirit of the Humean view of rational action.

This review critically examines Robert Nozick's The Nature of Rationality, focusing primarily on his conception of Decision Value (DV), which attempts to synthesize Evidential Expected Utility and Causal Expected Utility, and introduces the novel concept of Symbolic Utility. Nozick argues that rational choiceworthiness must be maximized by a weighted sum of evidential, causal, and symbolic connections between actions and states of affairs. The review challenges the normative validity of including evidential and symbolic utilities in a principle of rational choice. It argues that for consequentialist theories of individual rationality, the power lies in maximizing value, not the evidence or symbols of value. Specifically, the introduction of symbolic utility—which allows a dominated action (such as cooperating in the Prisoner's Dilemma) to be considered rationally choiceworthy—is criticized as confusing a practical mistake with a new form of utility. The paper concludes that while Nozick offers an interesting evolutionary and descriptive account of how people make choices, he fails to provide a compelling justification for the resulting principle of rational choiceworthiness.

The thesis that rationality consists in the straight-forward maximization of utility has not lacked critics. Typically, however, detractors reject the Humean picture of rationality upon which it seems based; they seek to emancipate reason from the tyranny of the passions. It is, then, noteworthy when an attack on this thesis comes from ‘within the ranks.’David Gauthier's paper ‘Reason and Maximization’ is just such an attack; and for this reason, among others, it is interesting. It is not successful, though. In defense of this conclusion, we shall begin by relating the essentials of Gauthier's argument. Then we shall examine in some detail Gauthier's claim that the principle of straighforward max-imization fails to be self-supporting. We shall argue that Gauthier's defense of this claim is at best incomplete. Finally, we shall show that the fact that a normative principle is self-subverting or non-self-supporting does not entail that the principle is defective.

This paper addresses the perfect predictor version of Newcomb's problem, arguing that the infallibility of the predictor fundamentally alters the puzzle, leading to intuitive tension with standard Causal Decision Theory (CDT). While traditional evidential decision theories recommend one box and CDT recommends two boxes in the standard case, the perfect predictor version makes the two-box solution counter-intuitive due to the guaranteed outcomes. We demonstrate that both the one-box argument (based on the infallibility constraint) and the two-box argument (based on the fixity constraint, stipulating independence of action and state) are logically sound in the perfect predictor scenario, provided we adopt the "imported view" of puzzle constraints relevant to practical decision problems. We formally show that the simultaneous stipulation of both infallibility and fixity results in an over-constrained and impossible decision problem, as these two constraints are incompatible. The paper concludes that the persistent controversy surrounding the perfect predictor version stems not from a flaw in either competing argument, but from the puzzle's self-contradictory formulation. The resolution lies in acknowledging that the perfect predictor problem, as typically stated, requires an agent to accept two incompatible premises, making it an incoherent practical choice.

This entry examines the philosophical complexities of fatherhood, focusing on the concept itself and the justification for paternal rights and responsibilities in light of modern reproductive technologies and changing social roles. The common concept of fatherhood is argued to be a multidimensionally vague cluster resulting from a fusion of biological (progenitor and procreator), social/psychological, and normative elements, leading to substantive ethical disputes masquerading as conceptual disagreements. The discussion explores various competing analytical approaches to paternity: those grounded solely in descriptive properties (genetic relationship, procreative act, or intentionality) versus those viewing fatherhood as an essentially normative matter (a defined set of rights and duties). Finally, the entry analyzes the justification of paternal rights and responsibilities, considering whether rights are derivative of responsibilities (fiduciary model) or independently grounded (e.g., liberty rights). It concludes by challenging the legal and philosophical assumption of uniqueness and unification of paternity, suggesting that a fragmentation of rights and responsibilities, grounded in multiple distinct descriptive bases, may be necessary to resolve contemporary paternity dilemmas.

This paper critically examines the traditional account of the circumstances of justice formulated by David Hume and adopted by John Rawls. The central problem is defining the scope of justice—the range of cases where considerations of justice appropriately apply—a task crucial for both theoretical evaluation and practical moral guidance. Hume's conditions (moderate scarcity, limited generosity, rough equality, and interdependence) are analyzed across five interpretations of their relationship to justice (logical, epistemic, ontological, deontic, and utility presuppositions). I argue that Hume's conditions fail to define the scope of justice under the most compelling interpretations. Counterexamples—such as cases of absolute scarcity or utter selfishness—demonstrate that talk of justice and injustice remains conceptually coherent, morally obligatory, and socially useful, even when Hume's conditions are violated. Furthermore, I challenge Rawls's claim that these conditions represent the "normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary." Cooperation, especially for non-material goods like friendship and intellectual exchange, can be both necessary and possible outside of the Humean-Rawlsian constraints. The paper concludes that the traditional circumstances of justice unduly restrict the application of justice, compelling us to consider the requirements of justice under a much broader range of actual and hypothetical conditions.

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to ground intergenerational justice by "virtual representation" through a thickening of the veil of ignorance. Contractors don't know to what generation they belong. This approach is flawed and will not result in the just savings principle Rawls hopes to justify. The project of grounding intergenerational duties on a social contractarian foundation is misconceived. Non-overlapping generations do not stand in relation to one another that is central to the contractarian approach.