
Contents
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19.1 Incommensurability 19.1 Incommensurability
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19.2 Parity 19.2 Parity
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19.3 The Ubiquity of Ties 19.3 The Ubiquity of Ties
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19.4 The Justifying/Requiring Distinction 19.4 The Justifying/Requiring Distinction
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19.5 Concluding Remarks 19.5 Concluding Remarks
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References References
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19 Underdetermination by Reasons
Get accessJoshua Gert is Leslie and Naomi Legum Professor of Philosophy at The College of William and Mary. His work on rationality and reasons includes Brute Rationality (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Normative Bedrock (Oxford University Press, 2012).
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Published:10 July 2018
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Abstract
The norms of rationality determine whether an act is irrational, rationally required, or rationally optional. It has seemed theoretically difficult to make significant room for the last category, because rational status is typically taken to be a function of reasons, and reasons are typically taken to have univocal strength values. But there is also a strong intuition that normal choice situations present us with many equally rational options. If this intuition is correct, two questions arise. The first is how it could be true, assuming that rational status is indeed a function of reasons. The second is whether and how we can act in a non-arbitrary way when we are faced with a choice between a number of equally rational options. This chapter examines four strategies for addressing these questions: incommensurability of reasons, parity, the ubiquity of ties, and a distinction between the justifying and requiring roles of practical reasons.
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