Awareness and the Possession of Reasons

Abstract

Abstract It is now common, though not uncontroversial, to regard facts as the normative reasons that justify our actions and attitudes. But in order for a fact to be a reason that justifies an action or attitude for a given agent it must be a fact that is possessed by that agent. Knowledge-centric views of possession ground our possession of reasons, at least partially, in our knowledge of them or in our being in a position to know them. This chapter defends two claims: that awareness-centric accounts of possession are just as well placed to explain the motivations behind knowledge-centric views of possession, and that such views are also better placed to explain the reasons we possess in certain cases of inference and environmental luck.