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2 - The Incoherence Argument: Reply to Schafer-Landau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2009

Michael Smith
Michael Smith
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Summary

Russ Schafer-Landau's “Moral Judgement and Normative Reasons” is admirably clear and to the point (Schafer-Landau 1999). He presents his own version of the argument for the practicality requirement on moral judgement – that is, for the claim that those who have moral beliefs are either motivated or practically irrational – that I gave in The Moral Problem (Smith 1994), and he then proceeds to identify several crucial problems. In what follows I begin by making some comments about his presentation of the argument. I then confront the problems.

DOES SCHAFER-LANDAU ADEQUATELY REPRESENT THE ARGUMENT?

Shafer-Landau represents my argument, which he usefully labels “the incoherence argument,” as comprising four premises (Schafer-Landau 1999: 34–35).

The first

(1) If S believes that an action is right, then S believes that S has a normative reason to do it

is a premise that I accept, provided the normative reasons mentioned are understood to be pro tanto normative reasons. Since, as I point out (Smith 1994: 183), moral reasons have to be weighed against other sorts of reasons, (1) would be implausible if the normative reasons it mentions were understood to be all things considered normative reasons.

The second premise

(2) S has a normative reason to do x in C if and only if, and because, S's fully rational counterpart (i.e., S if possessed of all true beliefs, no false ones, and a maximally coherent set of desires) would advise S to do x in C is misleading.

Type
Chapter
Information
Ethics and the A Priori
Selected Essays on Moral Psychology and Meta-Ethics
 , pp. 43 - 55
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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References

Copp, D. 1997: “Belief, Reason and Motivation: Michael Smith's The Moral Problem,” Ethics 108: 33–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreier, J. 1996: “Review of The Moral Problem,” Mind 105: 363–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennett, J., and M. Smith 1994: “Philosophy and Common Sense: The Case of Weakness of Will,” in M. Michael and J. O'Leary Hawthorne, eds., Philosophy in Mind. Dordrecht: Kluwer Press. 141–57
Parfit, D. 1984: Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Pettit, P., and Smith, M. 1993: “Practical Unreason,” Mind 102: 53–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sayre-McCord, G. 1997: “The Metaethical Problem,” Ethics 108: 55–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schafer-Landau, R. 1999: “Moral Judgement and Normative Reasons,” Analysis 59: 33–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith M. 1994: The Moral Problem. Oxford: Blackwell
Smith, M. 1995: “Reply to Ingmar Persson's Critical Notice of The Moral Problem,” Theoria 61: 159–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, M. 1996: “Normative Reasons and Full Rationality: Reply to Swanton,” Analysis 56: 160–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, M. 1997 “In Defence of The Moral Problem,” Ethics 108: 84–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, M. 1999. “The Definition of ‘Moral.’” In D. Jamieson, ed., Singer and His Critics, Oxford: Blackwell

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