T. M. Scanlon offers a qualified defense of normative cognitivism--the view that there are irreducibly normative truths about reasons for action. He responds to three familiar objections: that such truths would have troubling metaphysical implications; that we would have no way of knowing what they are; and that the role of reasons in motivating and explaining action could not be explained if accepting a conclusion about reasons for action were a kind of belief. Scanlon answers the first of these objections within a general account of ontological commitment, applying to mathematics as well as...
T. M. Scanlon offers a qualified defense of normative cognitivism--the view that there are irreducibly normative truths about reasons for action. He r...
In a clear and elegant style, T. M. Scanlon reframes current philosophical debates as he explores the moral permissibility of an action. Permissibility may seem to depend on the agent's reasons for performing an action. For example, there seems to be an important moral difference between tactical bombing and a campaign by terrorists--even if the same number of non-combatants are killed--and this difference may seem to lie in the agents' respective aims. However, Scanlon argues that the apparent dependence of permissibility on the agent's reasons in such cases is merely a failure to...
In a clear and elegant style, T. M. Scanlon reframes current philosophical debates as he explores the moral permissibility of an action. Permissibi...
