Pass the Buck to Reasons for What? On How to Characterise the Response Component of the Buck‐Passing Analysis of Value
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20142763 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marta Johansson Werkmäster (0000-0003-4990-5153, Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies Umeå University Umeå Sweden), Jakob Green Werkmäster (0000-0001-7210-6857, Department of Philosophy Lund University Lund Sweden, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-15 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Theoria (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/theo.70094 |
| OpenAlex | W7161252536 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 43 |
According to defenders of the popular buck‐passing account of value (the BPA of value), values should be understood in terms of reasons for pro‐ and con‐responses. While much has been said about how to understand the normative component of the BPA of value, that is, how to understand ‘reasons’, including how to distinguish between reasons that imply value (the ‘right’ kind of reasons) and those that do not (the ‘wrong’ kind of reasons), less has been said about how to understand the response component, that is, how to interpret ‘pro‐ and con‐responses’. Contrary to common usage in the debate, we argue against understanding values in terms of reasons for attitudes and reasons for action. Briefly, we contend that including reasons for action is unnecessary, has undesirable consequences for the debate on the wrong kind of reason problem, and enables us to generate novel yet mundane cases of the wrong kind of value problem. An important upshot of the paper is that it supports an alternative, prima facie attractive picture of the hierarchy of the normative landscape, in which reasons for attitudes are explanatorily prior to value and to our value‐related reasons for action
Action (physics) · Component (thermodynamics) · Hierarchy · Normative · Value (mathematics) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
Emotions, Values, and Agency
The Strike of the Demon
There Are No Reasons for Affective Attitudes
Fittingness First
Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion.
The Domain of Reasons
Circular Definitions of ‘Good’ and the Good of Circular Definitions
Kriegel on Brentano on value and fittingness
Explaining value
The subtleties of fit
Which Attitudes for the Fitting Attitude Analysis of Value
The Right Version of ‘the Right Kind of Solution to the Wrong Kind of Reason Problem’
Personal Value
Ethics Without Principles
Wrong Kind of Reasons and Consequences
Transmission and the Wrong Kind of Reason
The Right Kind of Solution to the Wrong Kind of Reason Problem
The Normative and the Evaluative
Buck-Passing and the Right Kind of Reasons
The right and the wrong kind of reasons
Buck-Passing and the Wrong Kind of Reasons
Fittingness, Value, and Trans-World Attitudes
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |