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In his influential discussion of thick concepts Williams argues that the facts that make judgements, which apply thick concepts correctly, true, provide reasons for action — albeit only for the members of a community who have a disposition to be guided by the concepts in question. His internalism about practical reasons may help to explain this claim: the disposition to be guided by a thick concept provides the link to existing motives that all reasons must have. Understood thus, Williams makes room for explaining and vindicating Oscar Wilde's ‘…not one of my words’-dictum about certain thick concepts. However, the chapter argues that the combination of the account of thick concepts that Williams expounds with reasons internalism leads into a dilemma: either the facts that thick concepts, correctly applied, refer to, do not provide reasons (not even for those who have a disposition to be guided by them) — except perhaps in the way in which any other, non-evaluative fact may provide a reason; or they provide reasons for everyone, independently of the disposition to be guided by the concepts. Getting out of the dilemma requires giving up on reasons internalism or, alternatively, modifying the account of thick concepts that Williams sets out.

Chapter 4 draws some of the broader consequences of the anti-naturalist assumptions of the theory of autonomy defended here, by looking both at alternative readings of Kant and at broader questions addressed in contemporary moral philosophy about the precise force of practical reasons in our lives. First, focusing on Guyer’s and Korsgaard’s arguments, it is shown that naturalism provides the framework for influential contemporary interpretations of Kantian autonomy but that its support is dispensable. Following this, the chapter addresses the external reasons and categoricity debates and examines their application to Kantian autonomy. The aim is to show that it is possible to develop an account that is externalist and so anti-Humean about practical reasons but not necessarily anti-Humean about motivation. Having established this, attention turns to the ethical substance of autonomy, its intersubjective normative content. This discussion links up with the first chapter and addresses the universalizability formula of right and apriority in ethics. Consistent with the argument of the previous chapter that focuses on ‘right’ rather than the derivation of specific duties, it is argued that universalizability has moral content and the different ways it can guide our moral thinking are shown.

Discusses the varieties of internalism about reasons, and argues against the most powerful arguments on its behalf, including those offered by Bernard Williams and Christine Korsgaard. Provides two arguments to favour externalism about reasons.

Bernard Williams’s controversial view about reasons for action is the topic of this essay. The essay explains Williams’s internalist account of reasons for action as an improvement on Donald Davidson’s account. It then corrects Williams’s criticism of externalist accounts of reasons for action by conceding that such accounts are viable as long as they do not imply that the reasons a person has for doing an action can explain his or her doing it. The concession follows from acknowledging the very different program of studying reasons in ethics exemplified in the work of Kurt Baier. Once the correction is made to Williams’s criticism, the essay offers a defense of his view against the criticisms of T. M. Scanlon and Christine Korsgaard.

This chapter defends two new versions of skeptical theism that avoid the “Reasoning About God Problem.” Traditional skeptical theists appeal to an epistemic principle to argue that one cannot infer God would have no justifying reason to permit the horrendous evil one observes, but this threatens to undermine all reasoning about what such a God would do. The first version of skeptical theism defended here offers an alternative principle that is more plausible and avoids the Reasoning About God Problem. The second version of skeptical theism targets the premise that maintains that God would not allow horrendous evil without some justifying reason. Specifically, it argues that one should accept a kind of axiological skepticism that undermines this premise. This yields a substantively different kind of skeptical theism, and it also avoids the Reasoning About God Problem.

Parentheticalism is put to use as an explanation of the (otherwise puzzling) ubiquity of sentences involving “believe” and “want” in normative reasons specifications. It is shown that parentheticalism dovetails with a contextualist view of core normative terms. On the resulting view, parenthetical sentences are tailor-made for information-sensitive discourse about reasons and oughts. They specify worldly considerations as reasons and at the same time serve to fix and keep track of subjective bodies of information in the conversational background. Finally, it is argued that the results undermine at least some part of the motivation for psychological views of the nature of normative reasons.

This chapter discusses the nature of action explanation. Against so-called psychologist accounts, it is argued that the reasons cited as explanantia are usually not mental states but worldly states of affairs. Against so-called Anti-Psychologist accounts (such as Dancy’s), it is argued that the factivity of such explanations is not easily cancelled, and that verbs like “believe” and “want” are not mere devices for cancelling factive implicatures (even though there can be ellipsis). In fact, it is argued that simply citing the relevant worldly reasons leaves out an important part of typical action explanations. The correct view is given by parentheticalism: We must explain actions by citing worldly reasons from subjective points of view.

This chapter considers T. M. Scanlon’s (1998) theory of action as a specific instance of cognitivist theories of action. It raises an unusual sort of objection to Scanlon’s cognitivism and its nearest philosophical neighbors: given what is known about the low-level neuroscience of action, there is no reasonable way to interpret the brain’s action-producing neural pathways consistent with this sort of theory. Interpreting the action-producing neural pathways as requiring a cognitive representation of reasons to be involved in action production meets a variety of objections, depending on just which parts of the action-producing neural pathways one interprets as these cognitions about reasons. The chapter proposes that a desire-based interpretation of the neural pathways addresses the obstacles raised to Scanlonian and related cognitivisms and suggests that a desire-based theory of action is thus preferable.

Cognitivists about practical reason hold that we can explain why certain wide-scope requirements of practical rationality are true by appealing to certain epistemic requirements. Extant discussions of cognitivism focus solely on two claims. The first is the claim that intentions involve beliefs. The second is that whenever your intentions are incoherent in certain ways, you will be epistemically irrational (given that intentions involve beliefs). Even if the cognitivist successfully defends these claims, she still has to show that the epistemic requirements explain the practical requirements. This chapter argues that it is not plausible that the epistemic requirements explain the practical requirements. This shows that the cognitivists’ project will fail even if their controversial views about the relationship between the practical and epistemic are granted.

Hume’s theory of justice reveals the basic deficiencies in his own sentiment-based ethical theory. Because Hume’s ethics is widely used as a model or inspiration for contemporary forms of moral constructivism (e.g., Blackburn’s), Hume’s demonstration that moral sentiments are an insufficient basis for normative moral theory likewise calls deeply into question these successor forms of moral constructivism. These findings provide the context for characterizing and then dismissing the debate between Humeans and Kantians about whether there are intrinsic, or only extrinsic links between justifying reasons and motives for action. Discounting issues about motivation also demotes game theory to secondary status.

The conclusion, Chapter 8, analyzes why these changes came about and have in many instances been sustained. It reviews the impact of parents who have been ensnared in the child welfare system working alongside their allies—two commissioners with a vision and a commitment to families, social workers and administrators in and outside foster care agencies, foundation officers, lawyers, and other advocates. Together they created a new force for change. Will that pressure for reform continue? Will another crisis cause the child welfare rollercoaster to accelerate downward? The chapter speculates about the future.