ABSTRACT
There are different kinds of normative reason for action, including moral reasons and reasons of self-interest. There are also different kinds of normative requirement, including moral requirements and requirements of self-interest. Moreover, there are “conflict situations” in which these reasons and requirements point us in different directions, or so I shall assume. The “received position” is that, even in conflict situations, there can be truths about what a person ought “period” to do, “finally” and “in the end,” given all relevant considerations - and further, that such truths genuinely settle what she is to do. That is, as I will say, even in conflict situations, there can be truths about what a person ought simpliciter to do. This received position sits comfortably with a “unified view” of the nature of reasons and oughts. On this view, moral and self-interested oughts and reasons are based in different kinds of facts, but they are fundamentally alike and commensurable, so they can combine to yield a truth regarding what a person ought simpliciter to do. There is also, however, a “pluralist view” according to which normative reasons and oughts are all relative to some normative standpoint, such as morality or self-interest. It is difficult in the pluralist view to avoid a “strong pluralism” according to which there may be no fact as to what a person ought simpliciter to do. For, in the pluralist view, oughts simpliciter would also be relative to a normative standpoint, and this standpoint would need to have a kind of supremacy by comparison with all other standpoints. It is doubtful that we can make sense of the required kind of supremacy. This chapter presents an argument for the pluralist view and then presents an argument from the pluralist view to the strong pluralist view.
