Contrastive reasons

"Justin Snedegar develops and defends contrastivism about reasons. This is the view that normative reasons are fundamentally reasons for or against actions or attitudes only relative to sets of alternatives. Simply put, reasons are always reasons to do one thing rather than another, instead of simply being reasons to do something, full stop. Work on reasons has become central to several areas of philosophy and yet this view has not been widely discussed ... Snedegar develops three kinds of arguments for contrastivism. First, contrastivism gives us the best account for our ordinary discourse about reasons. Second, contrastivism best makes sense of widespread ideas about what reasons are, including the idea that they favor the things they are reasons for and the idea that they involve the promotion of certain kinds of objectives. Third, contrastivism has attractive applications in different areas of normative philosophy in which reasons are important. These include debates in both epistemology and practical reasoning about the rationality of withholding or suspending belief and intention"--Jacket.

Contrastivism and Reasons -- Reasons and Contrastivism -- Reasons and the Contrastivist Program -- The Plan -- Reason Claims -- A Simple Argument -- A Stronger Argument -- Contrastivism -- Other 'Rather than' Ascriptions -- Negative Reason Existentials -- Looking Forward -- Favoring -- Why Resist Contrastivism? -- Shallow Contrastivism -- Favoring -- Contrastive Reasons and Favoring -- Looking Forward -- Promotion -- The Need for Constraints -- Promotion -- Contrastive Reasons and Promotion -- Contrastive Reasons as Better Reasons? -- Providing the Constraints -- Non-Promotional Reasons -- Where we Are -- Intransitivity -- Transitivity and Reasons -- In transitivity -- Intransitivity and Contrastivism -- Contrast-Sensitive importance -- Remaining Questions -- Conclusion -- Withholding -- Withholding Belief and Contrastive Reasons -- Withholding Intention -- Wrap Up.