Abstract: Long claimed to be the ‘dominant conception of practical reason’, the Humean theory that reasons for action are instrumental, or explained by desires, is the basis for a range of worries about the objective prescriptivity of morality. As a result, it has come under intense attack over the last quarter century. A wide variety of arguments have been advanced which purport to show that it is false, or surprisingly, even that it is incoherent. This book explores the viability of this central Humean thesis about reasons in the face of this critical onslaught. Its thesis is that the purportedly general objections to the Humean theory actually turn on substantive assumptions that are non-essential to the theory, and in fact are better rejected on independent grounds. In the course of advancing this argument, the book develops and defends a version of the Humean theory that withstands these objections. If this is right, then the commitments of the Humean theory have been widely and deeply misunderstood. Along the way, the book raises and addresses questions about the fundamental structure of reasons, the nature of normative explanations, the aims of and challenges facing reductive views in metaethics, the weight of reasons, the nature of desire, moral epistemology, and most importantly, the relationship between agent-relational and agent-neutral reasons for action.

Keywords: morality, reasons, practical reason, objectivity, Humean Theory of Reasons, reduction, explanation, agent-neutrality