The Non-Triviality Principle and Objections to Its Application

In Chapter 6, six objections to the application of the Non-Triviality Principle in the triviality argument are examined. According to the first objection, the Non-Triviality Principle does not apply to the kind of facts referenced in the triviality argument. According to the second and third objections, the triviality argument depends on what are claimed to be false assumptions about causation—respectively, that causation comes in degrees and that probabilistic causation implies that causation is scalar. The fourth objection is that the relation that matters varies in strength with the strength of the causal connection, but the triviality argument wrongly assumes otherwise. The fifth objection is that the triviality argument works only if reasons externalism is true, but reasons internalism is true. The sixth objection is that the triviality argument fails if particularism or brutalism applies to what matters in survival. None of these objections, it is argued, hit their targets.

Reasons Internalism and the Problem of Depression

This article looks at a version of the “too-few-reasons” problem for reasons internalism stemming from the existence of cases of clinical depression. People with clinical depression lack motivation to do things like go to work or seek treatment for their depression. Internalism appears committed to saying that such people lack reasons to do these things since internalism makes having reasons depend on having motivations. But, intuitively, depressed people do have reasons to do them. This article considers a number of possible solutions to this problem, such as that depressed people have actual or ideal desires which explain their reasons, and argues that these solutions do not succeed.

Motivating Reasons and Normative Reasons

Reasons for action are traditionally divided into “motivating reasons,” which explain why someone did something, and “normative reasons,” which concern why she should (or should not) have done it. We explore various positions concerning both types of reason, and the relations between them. We discuss Davidson’s causal account of action, reasons internalism and externalism, constructivism, motivational internalism and externalism, and practical normative realism (PNR)—the view that there are truths concerning what you have reason to do (this is opposed by error theorists and noncognitivists, whose views we also briefly address). In our account of PNR, we distinguish between what you ought to do and what you have most reason to do, by appealing to the idea of reasonable credences. And we include two appendices, one resisting Lewis’s argument to the effect that advocates of PNR must reject motivational internalism, the other responding to a concern about future contingents.