tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post4813961115903280774..comments2023-10-24T04:29:23.693-06:00Comments on Atheist Ethicist: A Dialogue on ReasonsAlonzo Fyfehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-35974265411251188712016-02-13T10:21:37.219-07:002016-02-13T10:21:37.219-07:00I should have added (again, not to suggest I am co...I should have added (again, not to suggest I am concerned exclusively with belief--although the adoption of a belief *is* a choice done for practical reasons), that is also legitimate to say "the reason the doctor prescribed pill A, known to be not the most effective possible drug, is that she didn't know which other drugs were more effective" and "the reason we split the water in the mineshaft, drowning 10 miners, is that we didn't know which of the other two options would save them all, and which would drown them all."ScottFhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15538514116957590262noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-45416302824529204852016-02-11T15:31:52.436-07:002016-02-11T15:31:52.436-07:00"I brought up that there is a distinction bet..."I brought up that there is a distinction between the two senses of the phrase "having a reason". However, in my writings, I have only been concerned with the first sense - the sense of what it is for an action to have value - the sense of what the goal or the purpose of the action happens to be."<br /><br />I don't think there's any "philosophical sin" here. :-) But I think you've done more than just show exclusive concern for the first sense. You've written repeatedly as if the first sense was the only *correct* sense of the phrase "P had a reason to A." Or perhaps--feel free to clarify or correct me on this--you think it is the central case (the other reasons being unusual or deviant), or the better way to use it, or most common, or most objectively interesting sense, but willing to allow that others might be interested in the latter. If so, then we can live and let live. But you seem to lean to the stronger claim that evidence-subjective "reasons" aren't reasons at all (and more or less obviously so). I think this is just incorrect.<br /><br />If all speakers of English had always used different words for these two concepts (1. what actual causal results of an action are valuable, in light of which we value the cause; 2. what patterns of evidence certain patterned responses thereto tend, over time, to deliver this same kind of value in what they cause, in light of which we value those response patterns both as standing dispositions and in their various instantiations--even in instances which do not deliver the hoped-for-value), then I would have no demand to change this practice. Perhaps unfortunately, we often use the same word for both: "reason." I only demand the right to use the word in the second sense--and the recognition that it is often so used, correctly, in non-philosophical English, as in "the scientific evidence gives us reason to believe in black holes, and Ptolemy had some reason to think that the planets moved in circles and epicycles."<br /><br />And I also think that the second kind of reason is by far the most interesting. But to each his own!ScottFhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15538514116957590262noreply@blogger.com