The Right Kind of Solution to the Wrong Kind of Reason Problem

Gerald Lang

Utilitas, 2008, vol. 20, issue 4, 472-489

Abstract: Recent discussion of Scanlon's ‘buck-passing’ account of value, which analyses the value of X in terms of agents' reasons for having certain pro-attitudes or contra-attitudes towards X, has generated the ‘wrong kind of reason’ problem (WKR problem): this is the problem, for the buck-passing view, of being able to acknowledge that there may be good reasons for attributing final value to X that have nothing to do with the final value that X actually possesses. I briefly review some of the existing solutions offered to the WKR problem, including those by Philip Stratton-Lake and Jonas Olson, and offer a new, better one, which accommodates all the relevant cases presented in the literature.

Date: 2008
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