Skepticism about reasons fundamentalism

Skepticism about Character Traits

Sartre (1956) describes ways in which one may present oneself to others as being a certain sort of person. In one of his examples, a waiter presents himself as a waiter by as it were acting the part of a waiter. More generally, Sartre argues that, wanting to be, or at least to appear to others to be, a person of a certain sort or character, one often acts the part of a person of that sort of ch...

Response to “Skepticism about desert”

Swartzer concludes the paper with the claim that desert is not a basic normative notion. It cannot “supply first principles of justice.” (p. 1) In other words, desert is to be defined in terms of justice, not the other way around. What we deserve just is what we are to receive according to the demands of justice. On this view, to say that a just distribution of goods is such that everyone recei...

Acquaintance and Skepticism about the Past

I consider the problem of skepticism about the past within Richard Fumerton’s acquaintance theory of noninferential justification. Acts of acquaintance occur within the fleeting present. But if the data for noninferential justification is limited to the fleeting present then the options for avoiding a far-reaching skepticism are quite limited. I consider Fumerton’s responses to skepticism about...

Some Skepticism About Normative Constitutional Advice

Being Realistic about Reasons

In my first lecture I listed seven questions about reasons that seemed to require answers. These were: Relational Character: Reasons are reasons for an agent. How is this relational character to be understood? Ground of Truth: In virtue of what are claims about reasons true, when they are true? Does the idea that claims about reasons are true or false, independent of our opinions about them, an...