¹ Where ‘desire’ is understood in the broad sense, as any disposition an agent might have to bring something about. I shall generally follow this usage.

² For earlier criticisms of this view, see Nagel, Thomas, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Bond, E. J., Reason and Value (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; and Darwall, Stephen, Impartial Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983).Google Scholar For more recent critiques, see Pettit, Philip and Smith, Michael, “Backgrounding Desire,” Philosophical Review 99, no. 4 (1990): 565–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Quinn, Warren, “Putting Rationality in Its Place,” in Quinn, , Morality and Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–55Google Scholar; and Scanlon, T. M., What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 41–55.Google Scholar

³ On this latter point, see Scanlon, , What We Owe to Each Other, 39–41.Google Scholar

⁴ Pettit, and Smith, , “Backgrounding Desire.”Google Scholar

⁵ I take the term “deliberative field” from Herman, Barbara, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 193–207.Google Scholar

⁶ Nagel, , The Possibility of Altruism, 29–30.Google Scholar

⁷ Nagel argues that this is true, for example, of moral and prudential reasons. Ibid., 29.

⁸ Or, at least, it is guaranteed that we ought to believe the truth on some matter if we have any beliefs on it at all. For discussion of the idea that belief has this “constitutive aim” and of whether desire does, see Velleman, J. David, “The Possibility of Practical Reason,” Ethics 106, no. 4 (1996): 707–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A problem with the view in the text might be that even if belief's constitutive aim is correct representation, it cannot follow directly that we ought to believe truths (or not believe falsehoods), because such an ‘ought’ would have to be categorical, and for that to follow it would also have to be true that belief's aim is one we ought to have. An alternative picture might be to treat it as a conceptual truth that beliefs ought to be regulated by the truth (or the world), since, from the first-person point of view, deliberation about what to believe is no different from inquiry into what is true. Whatever the details, however, what seems clear is that it is of the nature of belief that it is regulated by something (truth, or the world) that is what it is independently of norms for belief. I am indebted here to some work by, and discussion with, Nishiten Shah.

⁹ As David Velleman puts it, “When someone believes a proposition … his acceptance of it is regulated in ways designed to promote acceptance of the truth,” whereas, for example, when “someone assumes a proposition, he or his cognitive faculties are disposed to regulate his acceptance of it in ways designed to promote the ends of argument or inquiry,” and so on. Velleman, J. David, “The Guise of the Good,” Noûs 16, no. 1 (1992): 14.Google Scholar

¹⁰ See, for example, Smith, Michael, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 111–19.Google Scholar Smith cites Platts, Mark, Ways of Meaning (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), 256–57Google Scholar; Platts attributes the idea to Anscombe, G. E. M., Intention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957).Google Scholar

¹¹ See note 8 above.

¹² The “value” at issue here is not “agent-relative value” (that is, not value to the agent — either value-as-the-agent-sees-it, or value from the agent's point of view, or benefit to the agent [the agent's good]), but rather what is called “agent-neutral value” or value period. For the distinction between “agent-relative” and “agent-neutral” generally, see Nagel, Thomas, “The Limits of Objectivity,” in McMurrin, Sterling M., ed., The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 1 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1980), 97–139Google Scholar; Nagel, Thomas, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 164–88Google Scholar; Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 3–14Google Scholar; Scheffler, Samuel, The Rejection of Consequentialism, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McNaughton, David and Rawling, Piers, “Agent-Relativity and Terminological Inexactitudes,” Utilitas 7, no. 2 (1995): 319–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the relevance of this distinction to value in particular, see Sen, Amartya, “Evaluator Relativity and Consequential Evaluation,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12, no. 2 (1983): 113–32.Google Scholar

¹³ Using ‘desire’ in the broad functionalist sense given by its direction of fit. So understood, desires will include many things that could usefully be distinguished in a more fine-grained analysis: intentions, instances of norm acceptance, emotions, and so on.

¹⁴ Unless, of course, the satisfaction of desire has value in itself, but, as I discuss further in Section IV, this seems implausible when we reflect on desire's direction of fit.

By a “subjectively reasonable” view of the world, I mean whatever beliefs are supported by evidence available to the person.

¹⁵ That is, they fail to give anyone what we might call objective reasons. They would still give anyone who reasonably thought they tracked real value subjective reasons (that is, evidence of objective reasons).

¹⁶ Unless, of course, it matters period that it matters to her (or to someone else). I discuss this case four paragraphs below.

¹⁷ For an important discussion of these matters in a more general context, see Nagel, , The View from Nowhere.Google Scholar

¹⁸ For discussion of this distinction between “substantive” and merely “formal” aims in relation to belief and desire, see Velleman, , “The Possibility of Practical Reason,” 714–15.Google Scholar

¹⁹ In “The Guise of the Good,” Velleman suggests that the “attainable” might provide a substantive constitutive aim for desire; however, that would provide no help in this context.

²⁰ Since Moore can be read as giving special emphasis to the irreducible normativity of value (cf. his famous “open question” argument), it might seem odd that his views could underwrite the picture we are currently considering. The reason they might, as is now explained in the text, is that Moore's idea appears to be that value is normative, not for choice, desire, or action in the first instance, but for states of affairs. Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica, ed. Baldwin, Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 34.Google Scholar

²¹ Actually, this is insufficient, since assuming p also is a way of holding p true. What makes truth normative for belief is that belief is the kind of holding true that responds to truth (or evidence of it) in belief's distinctive way.

²² As Velleman puts it, “desire takes its propositional object as representing facienda — things that aren't the case but are to be brought about,” whereas “belief takes its prepositional object as representing facta — things that are the case and in virtue of which the proposition is true.” Velleman, , “The Possibility of Practical Reason,” 707.Google Scholar

²³ For this distinction, see the references in note 12 above.

²⁴ Again, we will be ignoring the difference between desiring something and adopting or willing it as an end. In doing this, we will be simplifying even more than we have to this point, since the instrumental reasoning we will be considering only holds, strictly speaking, for the case of willing something as an end, and not for the general case of desire. This will not affect the argument of this section, however. If we can show that the validity of instrumental reasoning does not entail that the fact that one wills an end is a reason to take the means to achieving it, we will be able to conclude a fortiori that it also does not entail that the fact that one desires something is a reason to take steps to realize what one desires.

²⁵ I discuss this point in Darwall, , Impartial Reason, 15–17, 43–50.Google Scholar For more extensive discussion, see Broome, John, “Normative Requirements,” Ratio 12, no. 4 (1999): 398–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁶ On this point, see Greenspan, Patricia, “Conditional Oughts and Hypothetical Imperatives,” Journal of Philosophy 72, no. 10 (1975): 259–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hare, R. M., “Wanting: Some Pitfalls,” in Binkley, Robert, Bronaugh, Richard, and Marras, Ausonio, eds., Agent, Action, and Reason (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

²⁷ I discuss this at greater length in Darwall, , Impartial Reason, chap. 6.Google Scholar

²⁸ This is Michael Smith's formulation, following Mark Platts; Smith, Michael, The Moral Problem, 116.Google Scholar

²⁹ Although this interpretation marks a gain in coherence, it may not mark a gain in clarity. Talk of the phenomenology of, say, color experience may be thought to have a clear sense that is lacking here. How, exactly, do things seem when it seems as if there is a standard to which the world must fit?

³⁰ Note that the agent might simultaneously have a conflicting desire, say, that not p, from which perspective it will seem that the world should be such that not p. It is also possible for him to have the desire that p, but regard it as entirely discreditable. In this case, although the desire presents him with a kind of “appearance” that the world ought to be such that p is true, like a knowledgeable viewer of the Müller-Lyer optical illusion, he gives this appearance no weight at all in his overall judgment of how the world should be. (The Müller-Lyer illusion is two lines of equal length that appear to be of different lengths because one is flanked by inward-pointing arrows and the other is flanked by outward-pointing arrows.)

³¹ The italicized portion is important. The mere having of a second-order desire for the satisfaction of one's desire that p would not necessarily involve its being to one as if it ought to be that p because one desires that p.

³² Unless, of course, she desires that p occur uncaused.

³³ Obviously, some means necessary for this state of affairs could not, as a logical matter, be taken by anyone other than her.

³⁴ Such a view would be an instance of “substantive realism,” as Christine Korsgaard calls it. For her discussion, see Korsgaard, Christine, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 35–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁵ Sometimes we say things like “It should not happen that children go to bed hungry,” even when there is nothing we can do that could prevent it. However, such talk can be understood in terms of norms for attitudes, if not for actions (e.g., “It is lamentable [undesirable, shameful, etc.] that children go to bed hungry”).

³⁶ Something like this is suggested by Scanlon's discussion of desire in the “directed-attention sense.” Scanlon, , What We Owe to Each Other, 39.Google Scholar

³⁷ This is, of course, the problem that Gilbert Harman raised in Harman, Gilbert, The Nature of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 3–10.Google Scholar

³⁸ I think Scanlon does not sufficiently appreciate this difficulty in Scanlon, , What We Owe to Each Other, 55–72Google Scholar, and, in any case, that the considerations adduced in Section VI provide a better account of how considerations of “the reasonable” can provide reasons for acting.

³⁹ It is consistent with this that in telling someone something, addressing him second-personally, the addresser may be able to give the addressee a reason for believing what the addresser says that that addressee would not have had if the addresser's saying it were considered only third-personally, as a mere assertion. A relation of trust between addresser and addressee might explain why telling something to someone could give the addressee reasons for belief that he would not have but for this second-personal address. Hinchman, Edward S., “Telling as Inviting to Trust,” unpublished.Google Scholar Even if it is possible for one person to give another a distinctive “fiduciary” reason second-personally, however, this reason is ultimately parasitic on evidence in the usual way. If the addressee has no reason to think that the addresser's beliefs have some reliable relation to the truth, nothing the addresser could tell the addressee could give him reason to believe anything.

⁴⁰ Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, Foundations of Natural Right, ed. Neuhouser, Frederick, trans. Baur, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 29–52.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Ibid., 32. Christine Korsgaard makes a similar point in Korsgaard, , The Sources of Normativity, 139–43.Google Scholar

⁴² Compare here Adam Smith's contrast between the distinctively human capacity for independent, second-personal “exchange” as opposed to the attempts of animals to gain the goodwill of humans “by every servile and fawning attention.” Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1981), 1:26.Google Scholar

⁴³ Although sympathy is not required, empathy, placing oneself in the other's shoes, is. Arguably, however, empathy is required for second-personal reciprocal recognition in the first place. For the differences between empathy and sympathy, see Darwall, Stephen, “Empathy, Sympathy, Care,” Philosophical Studies 89, no. 2 (1998): 261–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁴ Pufendorf, Samuel, De Jure Naturae et Gentium Libri Octo (On the law of nature and nations), trans. Oldfather, C. H. and Oldfather, W. A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), I.i, sees. 2–6, pp. 4–7Google Scholar; I.vi, sec. 4, p. 89. I discuss this aspect of Pufendorf's views in Darwall, Stephen, “Autonomy in Modern Natural Law,” unpublished.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ This claim is implicit in Pufendorf's distinction between coercion and being under an obligation. Many things can “influence the will to turn to one side” or the other, but other evils “bear down the will as by some natural weight, and on their removal [the will] returns of itself to its former indifference.” Obligation, however, “affects the will morally,” so that it “is forced of itself to weigh its own actions, and to judge itself worthy of some censure, unless it conforms to a prescribed rule.” In effect, Pufendorf here invokes a notion of internal blame or censure, that is, accepting blame as justified (blaming oneself in authorizing the view of the other who blames one). Pufendorf, , De Jure Naturae et Gentium Libri Octo, I.vi, sec. 5, p. 91.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ There may seem to be many obvious counterexamples to this statement. Most vividly, what about orders to children or to slaves? It is important to distinguish, again, the pure claim from any attempt simply to cause a certain action or response. Claims are issued with the aim of getting a certain response in virtue of a recognition that the validity of the claim creates a reason so to respond. Thus, a pure order is issued to gain a response by virtue of a recognition that the validity of the order (one's authority to issue such an order) gives a reason. By their very nature, then, claims are issued to beings who are implicitly regarded as competent to recognize their valid, reason-giving character and to freely act on them. Of course, one can issue a claim even if one does not believe that the addressee is thus competent — the point is that one regards or treats him as though he were. Frequently, of course — for example, with children — this is done to insinuate proleptically the very recognition on the addressee's part that is necessary for the claim to “come off.”

Still, the suggestion that participants in any second-personal claim-making implicitly regard each other as (equally) free and rational may seem implausible. What, again, about masters and slaves? Here we should recall Hegel on “lordship and bondage.” Hegel claims that there is a contradiction in the master's second-personal address since he asserts a superiority that is belied by the recognition he seeks from the slave. Hegel, G. W. F., Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A. V. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 111–19.Google Scholar Any pure order presupposes a free recognition of the validity of the order. If, of course, the master can expect that the slave will freely respect the authority his order presupposes, then no contradiction need be involved. However, see the next paragraph.

⁴⁷ Rawls, John, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 9 (1980): 543.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁸ Korsgaard, Christine, “The Normativity of Instrumental Reason,” in Cullity, Garrett and Gaut, Berys, eds., Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 246.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ Although I agree with John Broome, and against Korsgaard, that, taken by itself, instrumental reasoning does not entail that the agent's desires or will provide reasons, as I argued in Section III. See Broome, , “Normative Requirements,” 417–19.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Kant, Immanuel, Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Gregor, Mary J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 95 (Ak. p. 448).Google Scholar

⁵² See note 34 above.

⁵³ “Autonomy of the will is the property of the will by which it is a law to itself (independently of any property of the objects of volition).” Kant, , Groundwork, 89 (Ak. p. 441).Google Scholar

⁵⁴ “Consciousness of this fundamental law may be called a fact of reason.” Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Practical ReasonGoogle Scholar, in Kant, , Practical Philosophy, 164 (Ak. p. 31).Google Scholar