The Objectivity of Practical Reason

FAIN: FT-51405-03

George Schueler
Regents of the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001)

This project involves examining the idea that "practical reasons" are completely objective. A widely accepted view in contemporary moral philosophy, the "desire-belief" account of practical rationality, entails that this is not so. In my last two books I have argued for a different account of the role of practical rationality in the explanation of actions. In this project I want to turn from the question of how reasons can possibly move us to act, to the question of how, and whether, reasons can be objective. In fact I think that the view that reasons are objective is entailed by the account I have given of the way explanations of actions in terms of the agents' reasons actually work.