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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 Psychologism about motivating reasons is false

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

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Agents' own deliberations about what to do typically consider facts about the world rather than their own mental states
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    • 2.The reasons agents give and accept as their reasons for acting typically refer to facts about the world rather than mental states
      ?

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    • 3.Motivating reasons are the reasons that would figure as premises in a reconstruction of the agent's practical reasoning
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.When an agent acts on a false belief, the non-existent worldly fact cannot be what moves them, yet their action still has a motivating reason.
      ?

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    • 2.Only mental states like beliefs and desires can play the causal-explanatory role required to explain action across both true and false belief cases.
      ?

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    • 3.Psychologism is vindicated precisely in error cases: the motivating reason must be the psychological state, not the absent fact it misrepresents.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Davidson's causal theory of action requires that motivating reasons be entities capable of standing in causal relations to bodily movements.
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    • 2.Abstract worldly facts, lacking causal powers, cannot be the proximate causes of action; only mental states like belief-desire pairs can serve this role.
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    • 3.Therefore the psychological states, not the facts they represent, constitute the motivating reasons in any causally adequate account of action.
      ?

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    Strongest counterpoint
    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.