The following line of thought is plausible. One never simply chooses something just because it is good. Instead, one chooses it because of some thicker good: the choice is a generous one, the situation is a relaxing one, the activity is a chaste one, the food is nourishing and hearty, etc.
But some plausible claims are false, and this is one of them. For instance, I take Mark Murphy to be an authority on the good. If he were to tell me, in a definitive tone of voice, that some option was good, without his having the time to explain the thicker way in which it is good, I would likely form the belief that the option is good, and I would be able to pursue the option because of its being good. Of course, I would be apt to think the option to be good in some thicker way, on the grounds that anything that is good is good because it is good in some thicker way, but I wouldn't pursue it on account any thicker good, since I wouldn't know which thicker good is promoted by it.
It would be a mistake to read this situation as one where the thicker good is an option recommended by an authority. For the authority here is epistemic, and it is not a part of my reason for action that the epistemic authority has recommended the action—it is a part of my reason for belief.
Or suppose that I have thought about a situation, and decided, after a long and complex argument, that a certain action would either be generous or just. That gives me a reason to do the action. But the reason is, plausibly, a thin good. Plausibly, there are no disjunctive goods. So if I do something because I believe it would be generous or just, the way to interpret the action is that I thereby conclude that the action is good, or maybe significantly good (since both generosity and justice are significant values), and then do the action because it is (thinly) good or (still thinly) significantly good.
2 comments:
It would be a mistake to read this situation as one where the thicker good is an option recommended by an authority. For the authority here is epistemic, and it is not a part of my reason for action that the epistemic authority has recommended the action—it is a part of my reason for belief.
This would seem to assume that something can't be both part of a reason for action and part of a reason for belief. (Or am I misreading you here?) Is there a reason for thinking that? Cf. danger: an authority on something, e.g., mushrooms, tells us that one kind is very dangerous (poisonous to touch and taste); this would seem to be simultaneously a reason for believing it dangerous and a reason for avoiding it as dangerous.
Brandon:
I agree that something can be a reason in both ways. But here we have an epistemic authority, which yields an epistemic reason.
That x says that H is good is not by itself any kind of reason to pursue H. That x has epistemic authority when x says that H is good gives me good reason to believe that x is correctlysaying that H is good. But even that x is correctly saying that H is good is no reason. The real reason is the entailed claim that H is good.
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