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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Motivating reasons are mental states of agents, or facts about those states.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Agents can be motivated by facts themselves, not merely their representations of facts, as when one is moved by the actual danger of a situation.
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    • 2.If motivating reasons were purely mental states, the normative connection between reasons and the world would be severed, making rational criticism of motivated action unintelligible.
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    • 3.Parfit and Dancy argue that what explains action can be the fact that p, not the belief that p, since the belief is merely the epistemic route to the motivating fact.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.The Humean conflation of motivating states with propositional content illicitly treats the vehicle of motivation as identical to its object.
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    • 2.Belief-desire psychology, as Nagel argued in 'The Possibility of Altruism,' cannot account for cases where agents are motivated by recognized objective requirements without antecedent desires.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.For a reason to motivate an agent, it must be a reason the agent has.
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    • 2.For an agent to have a reason, the agent must know or believe the consideration that constitutes the reason.
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    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.