Schroeder, Mark University of Southern California
Print publication date: 2007 (this edition)
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2008
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-929950-8
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299508.003.0005
 

Mark Schroeder
This chapter explores whether the Humean Theory is committed to Too Many Reasons — the existence of reasons which intuitively are not reasons at all. After the objection is motivated, it is shown that some version of the objection is likely to arise even for very restricted versions of the Humean Theory. It is then shown that critics of the Humean Theory have taken this objection so seriously that they have used it as a premise in order to argue that the Humean Theory is literally incoherent — and in several different ways. The answer given to the objection is that it relies on negative existential intuitions about reasons, which are shown to be systematically unreliable, when the only reasons to do something are of very low weight.
Keywords: reasons, incoherence arguments, negative existential intuitions, weight
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299508.003.0005
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