Selected Implications

Abstract

Abstract The argument here begins the process of exposing the deformities to our ethical theories, our social practices, and our very self-understanding as agents that have been produced by the tyrannical sway of outcome-centered accounts. In particular, it provides detailed diagnoses of the deformations that have resulted to our democratic and legal practices, and to our ethical theorizing. Harnessing standard distinctions between the right and wrong kinds of reasons, and between good and bad reasons, the argument demonstrates that adoption of the outcome-centered framework alienates us, both in our theories of agency and ethics and in our social practices, from good reasons of the right kind for acting and interacting, leading us to focus instead on reasons of the wrong kinds, and on bad—inauthentic—reasons of the right kind.