Afroogh, Saleh
(2020)
De Dicto Cognitive Reason Contextualism.
[Preprint]
Abstract
What does it mean to say that an agent has a reason to do a certain action? Does it mean that she
would desire to do the action, or that there is some external consideration, which she ought to
follow? Or is there a third alternative? The debate between Humean affective (i.e., desire-based)
and classical Kantian cognitive theories has seemingly ended up in a theoretical standoff, and so
most of the contributors have recently focused on the conative attitude of motivation - either
preceded by affective or cognitive attitudes. Accordingly, they contend that an agent has a reason
to f only if, on some occasions, she would be motivated to f: call this Conative Reason Internalism.
I argue, first, that even the most qualified version of this weak conative condition obtains
only contingently. Secondly, that a cognitive contextual attitude, derived from the agent’s capacity
of Reasons-Understanding, necessarily obtains. Therefore, necessarily, if an agent has a reason to
f, it follows that, were she contextually rational, she would make evaluative sense out of the
propositional content of f-ing or would understand why f-ing is considered as a right action in the
relevant context: I call this De Dicto Cognitive Reason Contextualism.
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