When reasons run out

Abstract

Abstract Subjectivists about practical normativity hold that an agent's favouring and disfavouring attitudes give rise to practical reasons. On this view, an agent's normative reason to choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream ultimately turns on facts about what appeals to her rather than facts about what her options are like attitude-independently. Objectivists—who ground reasons in the attitude-independent features of the things we aim at—owe us an explanation of why it is rational to choose what we favour, if not simply because favouring is a source of reasons. My aim in this paper is to supply such a story. The proposal is roughly that when an agent cannot base her choices on her judgements about what she has most reason to do, structural rationality extends to her a license to choose something simply because she favours it, without imbuing favouring with the authority of a normative reason.