The Incoherence Argument: Reply to Schafer-Landau

Michael Smith

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511606977.004

2 - The Incoherence Argument: Reply to Schafer-Landau

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2009

Michael Smith

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Michael Smith: Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey

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Summary

Russ Schafer-Landau's “Moral Judgement and Normative Reasons” is admirably clear and to the point (Schafer-Landau 1999). He presents his own version of the argument for the practicality requirement on moral judgement – that is, for the claim that those who have moral beliefs are either motivated or practically irrational – that I gave in The Moral Problem (Smith 1994), and he then proceeds to identify several crucial problems. In what follows I begin by making some comments about his presentation of the argument. I then confront the problems.

DOES SCHAFER-LANDAU ADEQUATELY REPRESENT THE ARGUMENT?

Shafer-Landau represents my argument, which he usefully labels “the incoherence argument,” as comprising four premises (Schafer-Landau 1999: 34–35).

The first

(1) If S believes that an action is right, then S believes that S has a normative reason to do it

is a premise that I accept, provided the normative reasons mentioned are understood to be pro tanto normative reasons. Since, as I point out (Smith 1994: 183), moral reasons have to be weighed against other sorts of reasons, (1) would be implausible if the normative reasons it mentions were understood to be all things considered normative reasons.

The second premise

(2) S has a normative reason to do x in C if and only if, and because, S's fully rational counterpart (i.e., S if possessed of all true beliefs, no false ones, and a maximally coherent set of desires) would advise S to do x in C is misleading.

Type: Chapter
Information: Ethics and the A Priori
Selected Essays on Moral Psychology and Meta-Ethics
, pp. 43 - 55

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511606977.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2004

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References

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