Yohan Molina

Este artículo pretende abordar el problema de la ontología de las normas sociales, incluyendo las jurídicas, y defenderá una concepción proposicional de acuerdo con la cual las normas son proposiciones —esto es, contenidos de expresiones lingüísticas y actitudes cognitivas— que existen en virtud de actos de aceptación. En la primera parte se distinguen diferentes usos del término “norma” para señalar que el foco se centrará en el género “prescriptivo”. En la segunda parte se presentará algunas propuestas sobre la ontología de las normas prescriptivas y se delinearán diversos desafíos que cada una enfrentaría. En la tercera parte se intentará defender la posición de que las normas son proposiciones que sirven de instrumentos cognitivos guías de la acción cuyo rasgo “prescriptivo” ha de entenderse en términos de su carácter representacional pero falible de exigencias o requisitos prácticos genuinos o vinculantes. Esto permitiría lidiar con casos de error en el seguimiento de normas existentes. Finalmente, indicaré que dichos contenidos proposicionales cuentan como normas en virtud de actos de aceptación, donde estos actos pueden ser variados, explícitos o implícitos, darse en distintos niveles y admitir otros hechos como explicadores parciales de determinada norma individual.

There is a general agreement in the contemporary discussion on practical reasons that the reasons for which we act are able to explain our actions. These first-person explanatory reasons, closely connected to motivating reasons, can be called, for ease of exposition, “agential reasons.” The acceptance of agential reasons largely relies on our ordinary practices of giving explanations. Based on some standard considerations about the notion of explanation and central cases of explanatory relationships already developed in the literature, I will cast some doubts on the idea that there are agential reasons as a subcategory of explanatory reasons for actions. I will then suggest that this skeptical suggestion on agential reasons need not embrace either an error theory of our explanatory practices or a psychological reading of them. Rather, I will propose an alternative normative account that I believe fits better with the explanatory interest underlying them.

It is a truism that practical and legal reasoning deals with normative reasons. However, there has been considerable dispute about what they are. Thinkers such as Joseph Raz have famously claimed that practical normative reasons are obtaining states of affairs or ‘facts’, understood as entities serving as the truth-makers of propositions. However, this view has not garnered widespread acceptance among contemporary practical philosophers. According to the most popular account, normative reasons are true propositions. It has also been argued that they are propositions regardless of their truth values. Additionally, some have advocated that normative reasons should be understood as mental facts. Against these approaches, I will defend in this paper the view that normative reasons are obtaining states of affairs. First, I will cast doubt on those competing views as suitable ontological proposals. Second, I will address two potential objections raised in the literature.

Practical motivating reasons are the reasons in light of which an agent acts. This paper aims to defend the thesis that practical motivating reasons are obtaining states of affairs. This conception can be called strict statism. After distinguishing different accounts of motivating reasons according to two different ontological commitments, I will argue that strict statism’s main competitors are problematic. I will then provide some considerations for thinking that some worries concerning error cases do not pose a decisive threat to the view. If I am right, strict statism is a plausible ontological account for motivating reasons.

David Enoch has introduced into the contemporary metaethical discussion a relevant contribution that aims to show that belief in the existence of irreducible moral truths is plausible. This contribution relies on the indirect use of an indispensability argument. I will maintain that this indirect strategy is unnecessary. There are reasons to think that indispensability considerations can be applied directly to the moral realm to justify robust moral realism. This will result in a modified metaethical argument able to address certain skeptical concerns. If this is right, something like the modified version of the argument would be the one worth considering in the ongoing metaethical discussion.

Este artículo tiene como objetivo discutir la concepción pública de las razones para justificar la obligación moral propuesta por Christine Korsgaard en sus libros The Sources of Normativity (1996a) y Self-constitution (2009). Se enfatizará principalmente dos puntos conectados. Por un lado, la descripción de Korsgaard de la naturaleza pública de las razones, que afirma que su fuerza normativa es potencialmente compartida, es insuficiente para su propia concepción de las obligaciones morales universales, porque estas obligaciones se basan en la normatividad compartida existente de las razones. Por otra parte, Korsgaard no considera su propia explicación de la normatividad de las razones para dar cuenta del paso de la fuerza normativa compartible de las razones a su normatividad compartida existente, y esto se debería a que ello traería consecuencias perjudiciales para apoyar el respeto incondicional a la humanidad. Además, revisaré formas alternativas de entender la publicidad de las razones y esbozaré un trilema para la justificación moral de Korsgaard.

El presente escrito pretende ser un aporte a la comprensión del singular valor de la buena voluntad según lo descrito en la Fundamentación de la metafísica de las costumbres. Para ello, después de aclarar sucintamente ciertos extravíos conceptuales sobre esta noción, repasaremos dos de las más representativas aproximaciones contemporáneas a la axiología kantiana que, sin embargo, arrojan resultados insatisfactorios al momento de precisar el valor de la voluntad buena: los abordajes de Korsgaard y Sensen. Intentaremos develar dichos fallos y luego replantearemos la distinción entre valor irrestricto e incondicionado para aliviarlos en el marco general de la propuesta de Sensen.

In ‘Normative Facts and Reasons’, Fabienne Peter proposes that there are two different types of practical warrant, which she terms ‘entitlement warrant’ and ‘reason-based justification’. This thesis relies fundamentally on her distinction between normative facts and normative reasons. I will raise two general critical observations. First, I will claim that Peter advocates a representation-dependent conception of reasons that is at odds with an intuitive and accepted understanding of them. Second, I will contend that reasons need not be the entities we directly handle in our deliberations, which undermines the idea that reasons are propositions. In this way, her distinction fails: normative reasons are just normative facts. This implies that the existence of two types of practical warrant, based either on normative facts or reasons, is unfounded.