There are often conflicting considerations bearing on what one ought to do or believe. This conflict is often resolved by appealing to facts about the relative weights of these competing considerations. Anyone who might once have looked for exceptionless principles relating options with oughts should look instead for an account of normative reasons and their weight. This volume aims to provide the beginnings of a theory of weight. The fourteen chapters fall into three groups. One group of chapters addresses questions about the nature of weight. Topics include the relations between normative re ... More

There are often conflicting considerations bearing on what one ought to do or believe. This conflict is often resolved by appealing to facts about the relative weights of these competing considerations. Anyone who might once have looked for exceptionless principles relating options with oughts should look instead for an account of normative reasons and their weight. This volume aims to provide the beginnings of a theory of weight. The fourteen chapters fall into three groups. One group of chapters addresses questions about the nature of weight. Topics include the relations between normative reasons and conditions and modifiers, between reasons and other weighted notions such as commitments, and different models of the interaction of normative reasons. A second group of chapters addresses substantive questions: how value-first, desire-first, evidence-first and other normative research programs account for weight. A third group of chapters applies issues in the theory of weight to broader ethical debates. The book thus not only makes novel contributions to debates in ethics and epistemology about the nature of normative reasons and their weight, it also makes a strong case for the theoretical fruitfulness of the ideology of normative reasons.