Abstract:

It is supposed to be uncontroversial that desires sometimes play a role in explaining what reasons we have. For example, since Ronnie, but not Bradley, desires to dance, the fact that there will be dancing at the party tonight is a reason for Ronnie, but not Bradley, to go there. The Humean Theory of Reasons is the theory that all reasons are explained by desires in the same way as Ronnie's is--that reasons are slaves to the passions .

But different versions of the Humean theory accept different explanations of how Ronnie's reason is explained by his desire. So these different theories have different commitments about how other reasons are to be explained. This dissertation defends a version of the Humean theory that I call Hypotheticalism . Hypotheticalism is distinguished by its distinctive account of how Ronnie's reason is explained by his desires. This distinctive view renders it unsusceptible to a wide range of apparently deep objections to the Humean theory.

The moral is that a lot is at stake when we ask what explains Ronnie's reason, that there are many more possible views about this matter than have been well articulated or properly defended in the literature, and that these views affect how we think about a wide range of other questions.