Abstracts

Reason Holism, Individuation and Embeddedness

Peter Shiu-Hwa Tsu Chung Cheng University

According to Jonathan Dancy, moral reasons are holistic in this sense: a feature that is a moral reason for doing something in one context might be in some other context no reason to do that thing, and might even be a reason against doing it. This is because of what Dancy calls an ‘enabler’ (or ‘disenabler’). For instance, a feature of telling a lie that is a reason against lying might become a reason for, due to the presence of an enabler, say, the feature of the lie taking place in a bluffing game. The enabler in itself is not part of the reason, according to Dancy (2008, p. 331), for it can be either present or absent while the reason feature is present. Hence Dancy’s reason holism presupposes what I call reason individuation, the view that features that function as reasons can be individuated apart from those that function as enablers. Yet, reason individuation is false, or so I will argue, due to what I call ‘the embedded thesis’. According to the embedded thesis, the feature that serves as a moral reason in a context cannot plausibly be individuated independently from its embedded context and still keep its status as a reason. If true, this is not only an important criticism of Dancy, it also helps establish a useful and general constraint on how moral reasons behave.