An Implication of Michael Smith’s Convergence Claim for Reasons for Action
In “Internal Reasons” Michael Smith relies on an account of what it means for an agent to be fully
rational to argue that the contents of agents’ subjective motivational sets, S’s, will converge and thus that agents,
insofar as they are rational, all have the same reasons to act and that these reasons are internal reasons. In
Section I of this paper I will give Smith’s account of what it is for an agent to be fully rational. In Section II I
will examine Smith’s argument that the S’s of rational agents converge, which leads to Smith’s argument that
rational agents have the same internal reasons to act and the same obligations. It is in this section that I will
speculate as to what Smith can have in mind as the possible contents of an agent’s S. This will be done in order
to make Smith’s argument about convergence more plausible. In Section III I will argue that if Smith’s
argument about convergence is successful, then the agent-relative /agent-neutral question does not really arise.
That is, each account will yield the same answer as to what constitutes a reason for action. It is here that
Smith’s distinction between de se and de dicto reasons will become relevant.
Section I: Smith’s Account of Rationality
Within his discussion of the internalism requirement, which he takes to be the requirement that there is
an analytic connection between an agent’s desires and his or her reasons, Smith discusses what it is to be fully
rational. Smith relies on this account and his version of the internalism requirement in his convergence
argument, which is discussed in Section II.
Smith begins his discussion of what it means to be fully rational by giving what he takes to be Bernard
Williams’ three criteria of rationality. Smith takes Williams’ three criteria to be “(i) the agent must have no
false beliefs,” “(ii) the agent must have all relevant true beliefs,” and “(iii) the agent must deliberate correctly”
(Smith 1995: 112). Smith says that he agrees fairly straightforwardly with requirements (i) and (ii) but argues
that the third requirement needs amendment and supplementation (Smith 1995: 114). Still, there is at least one
significant difference in how Smith takes the first two requirements to work when compared to Williams, which
comes out in the examination of Smith’s discussion of each requirement.
Regarding requirement (i), that the agent has no false beliefs, Smith says that “if our desire to do
something is wholly dependent on false beliefs, then we ordinarily suppose that it isn’t really desirable to do that
thing,” (Smith 1995: 112). Smith says that if an agent is fully rational, namely, has no false beliefs, inter alia,
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an agent would not desire to do something that would be desirable based only on false beliefs (Smith 1995:
112). For example, if an agent falsely believes that there is gin in a glass and thus desires to drink from it, that
desire is based on a belief that there is gin in the glass and not petrol. But if the agent were fully rational, that is,
not having that (or any other) false belief, inter alia, the agent would no longer have the desire to drink what is
in the glass (Smith 1995: 112). Thus, drinking what is in the glass is not desirable.
The second criterion can be similarly explained. Smith says that “if we fail to desire something, and our
failure to do so is wholly dependent on our failure to believe something that is true, then we ordinarily suppose
that that thing may yet be desirable” (Smith 1995: 112). Smith goes on to say that provided with all the relevant
true beliefs, inter alia, a fully rational agent would desire the thing in question (provided that it is in fact
desirable) (Smith 1995: 113). He takes an example similar to the gin and petrol case to be illustrative; if an
agent is ignorant of the fact that the glass on the table contains “the most delicious drink imaginable” then
“despite the fact that [the agent does] not desire to drink from the glass, doing so may yet be desirable” (Smith
1995: 113). This is because if the agent were fully rational, having all the relevant true beliefs, inter alia, the
agent would in fact desire to drink what is in the glass.1
The second requirement works similarly on Smith’s account, namely, that if the agent were fully
rational the agent’s desires would include the one in question given the knowledge of all true relevant beliefs
(Smith 1995: 113).2 Smith focuses on the desires that a fully rational agent would have given no false beliefs
and all true relevant beliefs. This will become important for Smith’s argument for convergence because this
account allows that hypothetical derived desires come from an agent’s beliefs.
1
It is worthwhile to note a significant difference between Smith’s and Williams’ interpretations of how requirements (i)
and (ii) work. Williams says that a desire will not give an agent a reason to  “if the existence of [the desire] is dependent
on false belief” (Williams 1981: 103). Williams takes this to mean that the agent in this case falsely believes an internal
reason statement about him or herself given the false belief (Williams 1981:103). This is a different consequence than the
one Smith gives. Smith argues that the agent loses the desire to  altogether, once it is acknowledged that the desire is
based on a false belief and the thing in question is thus, not desirable. The loss of the agent’s desire is dependent on
recognizing the false belief and Smith’s claim that there is an “analytic connection between what we have reason to do in
certain circumstances and what we would desire to do in those circumstances if we were fully rational” (Smith 1995: 109).
On Williams’ view one may still desire, but have no reason to act.
2
Williams’ account is put in terms of reasons. He says that an agent “may not know some true internal reasons statement
about [him or herself]” (Williams 1981: 103). This can come about from two sources. First, the agent in question might
“be ignorant of some fact such that if he [or she] did know it he [or she] would, in virtue of some element in S, be disposed
to ” or the agent might be “ignorant of some element in S” (Williams 1981: 103).
2
Smith believes that Williams’ account of correct deliberation in the third criterion leaves out something
important in that it relies too heavily on the role of the imagination. One way to deliberate correctly according
to both Smith and Williams is means-ends reasoning. Williams includes other ways to deliberate correctly
(Williams 1981: 104), most notably, via the imagination, and it is with this that Smith takes issue.
Smith says that there are two ways in which Williams’ account needs supplementation. First, is that,
according to Smith, the role of emotion, in that it can affect what agents take themselves to have reason to do, is
not discussed (Smith 1995: 113-114). Second, and most important, Williams omits a discussion of
systematically justifying an agent’s S. This, according to Smith, “leads [Williams] to overstate the role of the
imagination in deliberation” (Smith 1995: 114). The inclusion of a systematically justifying process constitutes
both a supplementation, in that it is in addition to the imagination and other forms of deliberation, and an
amendment, for Smith thinks it is far more important than the imagination for an account of deliberation.
The process of systematic justification that Smith describes is one in which agents try to have the most
coherent and unified S (Smith 1995: 114). It is also the most important feature of rationality for Smith’s
argument about convergence. Smith says that sometimes when agents deliberate they “can try to decide whether
or not some particular underived desire that [they] have or might have is a desire to do something that is itself
non-derivatively desirable” (Smith 1995: 114). For convergence, Smith here confines the discussion to
underived desires.
Smith takes it that the coherence and unity of an agent’s S is itself a virtue (Smith 1995: 115). This
virtue, he says, “makes for the rationality of the set as a whole” (Smith 1995: 115). This is analogous, according
to Smith to the position often held regarding beliefs, that coherence and unity are rationally preferable for a set
of beliefs (Smith 1995: 115). Smith says “the thought [from Rawls] is that we might find that our specific value
judgements would be more satisfyingly justified and explained by seeing them as all falling under a more
general principle” (Smith 1995: 115). These new desires are arrived at by a rational method. He goes on to say
that “if the internalism requirement is right, the acquisition of a new evaluative belief will be the cognitive
counterpart of the acquisition of the new desire” (Smith 1995 115). This process, according to Smith, can
account for the addition and subtraction of desires in an agent’s S by a rational process other than those
Williams gives (Smith 1995: 115-116). It is important to note that Smith takes it that the kind of element of the
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agent’s S that is being affected by such a process is underived desires (Smith 1995: 116), that is, they are more
general than desires that are the ones prompting reasons for action in a particular situation.
Smith gives a statement of what it is to be fully rational before moving on to a further discussion. Smith
says “that an agent is fully rational just in case [he or] she has no false beliefs and all relevant true beliefs, and
just in case [he or she] deliberates correctly in light of these beliefs” (Smith 1995: 116). Smith takes it that for
an agent to deliberate correctly “[his or] her underived desires are systematically justifiable: that is, to a first
approximation, just in case [his or] her underived desires form a maximally coherent and unified desire set”
(Smith 1995: 116-117). This can serve as Smith’s account for what it is for an agent to be fully rational for the
purposes of this paper. One further note: given this, Smith seems to take all three requirements as possibly
corrective of the agent’s S.
Section II: Smith’s Convergence Claim
The convergence argument is intended to show that the S’s of fully rational agents will converge, and
thus, that all rational agents have the same reasons for action. Smith’s convergence argument relies on several
different conditions. These conditions include a specific interpretation of the internalism requirement; his
account of what it is to be fully rational; his understanding of internal reasons, which is non-relative; and a claim
that this discussion is conceptual rather than substantive. In this section it will be necessary to speculate on a
few of these aspects in order to make Smith’s case plausible.
As discussed in Section I, Smith has a distinct interpretation of the internalism requirement. Given
Smith’s interpretation, he says that it suggests “that claims about an agent’s reasons are claims about [his or] her
hypothetical desires, not claims about [his or] her actual desires” (Smith 1995: 117). The sets of desires that are
to converge are the underived desires that are more general and have falling under them, hypothetical desires,
which also give agents reasons to act, as well as actual desires. Further, Smith says that the internalism
requirement implies that the agent “has a reason to  in certain circumstances C just in case he [or she] would
desire that he [or she] s in those circumstances if he [or she] were fully rational” given the advice model3
(Smith 1995: 117).
3
The advice model states that the fully rational agent advises the less-than-fully-rational self what to do given the actual
circumstances the actual agent is in (see Smith 1995: 110-112).
4
The sets of desires that are to converge, according to Smith’s account, are the general underived desires.
These, in turn, have more specific and derived desires that fall under them. These include hypothetical desires,
that is, desires a fully rational agent would have in some not-yet-actual circumstances. If the agent ends up
being in these circumstances he or she then, via the hypothetical desires, has reasons to act. Since all fully
rational agents, on Smith’s convergence account, have the same underived desires they have the same
hypothetical derived desires for any circumstances and thus have the same reasons to act.
Next, Smith needs his account of what it is to be fully rational. Although discussed in Section I, some
further implications need to be drawn out here. It is important to remember that Smith takes the deliberative
component of rationality, the systematic justifying process, to be corrective of agents’ S’s. Deliberation is
corrective in that through it, as a rational process, an agent can come to include new things in or exclude old
things from his or her S. Smith’s process of systematically justifying a maximally coherent and unified S has
implications that make his convergence argument more plausible.
On Smith’s account a fully rational agent’s belief that something is desirable, combined with the
internalism requirement, is a cause of the agent’s desiring that thing (Smith 1995: 126). Beliefs about some
thing’s desirability are capable of causing the agent’s desires of that thing. With this in place, the agent’s desire
to have a maximally coherent and unified S, combined with the systematically justifying process and that beliefs
can generate their corresponding desires in fully rational agents, the picture of convergence looks somewhat
different. What we have now is the case in which all fully rational agents have at least one desire in common, to
have a maximally coherent and unified S. This, combined with the corrective function of deliberation, allows
their belief sets (which contain no false beliefs and all true relevant beliefs) to generate corresponding desires to
act, thus arriving at reasons for action.
There are two further things to bring forward before completing Smith’s account of convergence. First
is his understanding of internal reasons as non-relative. Smith says that the ordinary conception of a reason is
non-relative, namely that some thing’s being a reason does not depend on the agent in question. This, Smith
thinks, is borne out by language use. He says that there is “a straightforward truth condition: it is desirable that
p in C just in case we would all desire that p in C if we were fully rational” (Smith 1995: 119). In this sense,
when different people talk about reasons for action, they are talking about the same thing (Smith 1995: 119).
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This kind of non-relative force is the same, according to Smith, for all normative concepts, of which internal
reasons is one (Smith 1995: 120).
Lastly, Smith reminds us that this is a conceptual, not a substantive claim (Smith 1995: 119). So we
should not be surprised to find that agents’ S’s do not in fact converge, for we are not fully rational. But to the
extent that we are rational, we can expect them to converge. And to the extent we accept the normativity of
certain concepts and what that entails, they do seem to converge.
Given that fully rational agents have only true beliefs and all relevant beliefs, and a desire to have a
maximally coherent and unified S that they can achieve by way of the corrective features of deliberation, they
have at their disposal a method by which they can figure out what fully rational agents would desire to do in
some set of circumstances. This takes the form of a belief that fully rational agents would desire to  in C.
Given this belief and that they are fully rational, it is also rational for them to desire to . This desire combined
with their belief gives them, and gives all fully rational agents, a reason to .
Now, what of the convergence itself? It must go something like this. Any fully rational agent, at the
very least has the desire for a maximally coherent and unified set of underived desires because, as Smith says,
this is itself a virtue (Smith 1995: 115). Given the corrective feature of deliberation and this one member of S,
certain things will be added and excluded from S via deliberation. With these underived desires being corrected
through deliberation to form a maximally unified set, the hypothetical derived desires fall under the underived
desires and are desires a fully rational agent would want to have in some set of circumstances. Smith says that
when an agent has a new derived desire, one way of testing its coherence with the other desires in S is to see if
the derived desire falls under a more general underived desire (Smith 1995: 114). This desire need not be one
that agent currently has, it might be one that through reflection the agent comes to have. It is these underived
desires that are supposed to converge, and by seeing if a derived desire, hypothetical or actual, better falls under
some more general underived desire, the deliberative process works toward convergence of the underived
desires for all rational agents performing the same deliberation.
Further, since this convergence of the underived desires on Smith’s account involves the use of
hypothetical desires of fully rational agents, Smith seems to assume that each fully rational agent will reason
correctly given the deliberative processes available and will thus reach the same conclusions as to what
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underived desires to have. This means that all fully rational agents will have the same reasons in the same
circumstances. This is the important element of convergence for Smith. Rational agents with all relevant true
beliefs will have the corresponding desires to those beliefs in their S’s and thus will have the same reasons to act
in the same circumstances as other fully rational agents have. Smith’s convergence claim does not seem to be
that all fully rational agents have all the same contents of S all the time, i.e., actual derived desires. But, as long
as they have the same underived desires in a circumstance in which they need to make a decision of some kind,
they would all have all the relevant true beliefs, the same desires corresponding to their beliefs, and thus have
the same reasons to act.
Subjective motivational sets include the derived desires and they come to include other desires given the
agent’s beliefs. If the agent is rational, then in any circumstance the agent has all the true relevant beliefs, which
engender corresponding desires. In this way rational agent’s S’s converge on the same underived desires, which
in turn allows for the same derived desires. Given some circumstance, all rational agents will have the same
reasons to act. The desires of concern here are hypothetical derived desires which converge with all the others
of fully rational agents. This picture of the agent’s S is necessary if we are to make plausible Smith’s claim that
fully rational agents have the same reasons to act. This addition is in the spirit of the argument Smith makes
(see p. 117). It seems to be something that he would readily agree to include.
Smith’s further point is that there is something in the nature of this kind of convergence that is related to
what we think rationality requires ordinarily. This is part of the driving force behind Smith’s argument for a
non-relative conception of reasons (Smith 1995: 118-119). Smith claims that there are two different distinct
conceptions of internal reasons. There is a relative conception in line with Hume and a non-relative “antiHumean or Kantian” conception he endorses (Smith 1995: 118). This non-relative conception states that “if we
are to engage in a process of systematically justifying our desires we would all eventually reason ourselves
toward the same conclusions as regards what is to be done … because this is, inter alia, what defines [us as]
‘rational’” (Smith 1995: 118).
Section III: The Agent-relative/Agent-neutral Distinction and De Se and De Dicto Considerations
If, for argument’s sake, we grant Smith’s argument that the S’s of fully rational agents converge onto
the same set of desires, then the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral accounts of reasons is
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moot. That is, if a question is posed about what constitutes a reason in a given situation, both agent-relative and
agent-neutral accounts will yield the same answer once circumstances are specified. Smith’s discussion of de se
and de dicto considerations will help to illustrate this.
Agent-relative accounts are those accounts that count as reasons available for action reasons that are
indexed to the agents involved. The reasons available for an agent to act depend on the particularities of the
agent in question. Agent-neutral accounts are accounts that can be described as objective, that is, they only
consider things about the circumstances for determinations about whether or not something counts as a reason.
The particularities of the agents involved are not reason-giving on agent-neutral accounts. A de dicto
consideration is one that does not contain any relativizing features. A de se consideration is one that
particularizes to the agents involved. It is a consideration for the agent or self due to some fact about the agent
in question.
To show that the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction is moot on Smith’s account, I will first
illustrate how de dicto and de se considerations come into play in having reasons to act. With this account in
place, I will analyze similar cases using agent-relative and agent-neutral accounts to show that if Smith’s
convergence account holds, then there is no longer a significant distinction between accounts of agent-relativity
and agent-neutrality.
Smith’s account of de dicto and de se considerations begins with the claim that the ordinary concept of
desirability is not relativised and it functions like other ordinary normative concepts (Smith 1995: 120). The
relativity that is apparent in statements of disagreements about reasons and desirability “signals the fact that
there is relativity built into the considerations that we use to rationality justify our choices [not that] our concept
of a reason is itself relative to the individual” (Smith 1995: 121).
The situation Smith describes is one in which an agent is standing on a beach and sees three people
drowning. If the agent swims to the left he or she can save two people. If the agent swims to the right he or she
can save one person. The agent cannot save all three. The agent swims to the right and justifies the choice by
saying that the one on the right is his or her child and the others to the left are strangers (Smith 1995: 121).
This, according to Smith is a de se consideration culminating in a de se reason (Smith 1995: 121). The content
of such a de se reason Smith gives as “there is a reason to save my child in particular” (Smith 1995: 121). Such
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a de se reason has a coordinating de dicto reason which has the content “there is a reason to save people quite
generally” (Smith 1995: 121). Smith goes on to say that
in these terms what is a reason for you, in this case, is not a reason for me in the
sense that, if it had been me standing on the beach rather than you, and if the
same people had been drowning, then the only consideration that would have
been relevant to my choice is the de dicto reason. The de se reason would not
have been relevant to my choice because the people who are in fact drowning
are all perfect strangers to me. (Smith 1995: 121-122)
But if the situation were reversed, both the de dicto and the de se considerations would have been relevant in
having a reason to act (Smith 1995: 122).
It is important to recognize, as Smith does, that the existence of de se reasons does not preclude
convergence. In fact, Smith says that “the existence of de se reasons may still require a convergence in the
desires that we would all have if we were fully rational” (Smith 1995: 122). The contents of de se reasons will
be available for convergence for rational agents. This means that the “my child” in the example above, would
be part of a de se reason for any rational agent in the appropriate circumstances. The de se reason is a special
application of some other de dicto reason.
Another example of the de dicto/de se distinction Smith gives concerns individual preferences.4 The
example Smith gives concerns one agent’s preference for wine and another’s preference for beer (Smith 1995:
122 ff.). The circumstances that are important for attributing reasons are those of the agent’s psychological
make-up—a preference for wine or a preference for beer. Smith states that “I can quite happily agree with you
that if I were in your circumstances—if I preferred wine to beer—then the fact that the local wine bar sells very
good wine would constitute a reason for me to go there as well, just as it constitutes a reason for you” (Smith
1995: 122). Notice what this means for Smith’s account of convergence. He says that if this above described
agent were rational and “rational agents would all converge on a desire which makes the preference [he or] she
in fact has relevant in that way to [his or] her choice” and then the agent has a non-relative reason to act (Smith
1995: 123).
On this account, rational agents are not required to have the same preferences, but rather they have the
same reasons for acting, the same hypothetically derived desires, if the desire one has makes the preference
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relevant to the choice of what to do. In this case, all rational agents would converge on the reason to go to the
wine bar given the circumstances specified, i.e., a preference for wine and the fact that the wine bar sells good
wine. This preference and this belief engender the corresponding desire to go to the wine bar and it is a
hypothetically derived desire because it is not necessary that the circumstances be actual for the agent to have
the reason. It is only necessary that a fully rational agent would have this desire in these circumstances from
some more general desire on which all rational agents converge. Individual preferences count as particular de se
considerations to the general de dicto consideration to take account relevant preferences in reasons for action.
The interesting result of the recognition of de dicto and de se considerations is that it makes moot the
distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral accounts of reasons, if there is the convergence Smith
claims. Some examples will show this. Suppose that you are in a position to do a favor for either person A or
person B. Whomever you do not do the favor for will be quite disappointed. You recognize that there is a de
dicto reason to do favors for others if one can. There is a further a de se reason to do favors for one’s friends in
particular. If the S’s of rational agents converge as Smith claims, then it does not matter which kind of account
of reasons, agent-relative or agent-neutral, we have. In this situation, a fully rational agent will know all the
relevant true beliefs needed to deliberate as to what are the reasons for action in this situation.5 These relevant
true beliefs include facts about the circumstances in which the agent finds him or herself. Let’s specify that
person A is a friend of the agent’s and person B is a stranger. The fully rational agent will thus have these true
relevant beliefs about his or her situation and will thus believe that both the de dicto and de se reasons apply.
On an agent-relative account such a fully rational agent acts according to the de se reason that he or she
has a reason to do favors for his or her friends in particular. The agent-relative account explains this by
reference to the agent’s relationships in the situation, and this takes as relevant the particular agent in question.
This is a distinguishing factor for the agent-relative account. By Smith’s account any fully rational agent would
recognize his or her position in the situation and would recognize that this would mean that the de se
considerations apply. The agent then has a reason to do a favor for person A. On an agent-neutral account a
4
This is especially important because it is on this point that many people sympathetic to a Williams’ style account will
press a non-Williams’ style account.
5
I make one further assumption, which is that what is in question does not need to be revised out of a rational agent’s S
such that it is excluded from the agent’s S, given the process by which they systematically justify their S’s.
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fully rational agent recognizes that a certain circumstance applies in the situation in question. The circumstance
is a state of affairs and is not dependent on the particular agent. The resultant reasons apply to any agent in the
same circumstances. This is a distinguishing factor for the agent-neutral account. Part of these circumstances is
that the agent has the true relevant beliefs that person A is his or her friend and a recognition of the de se
consideration. The agent then realizes that both the de dicto and the de se reasons apply, because of the
circumstances. The agent-neutral account explains this by reference to a set of circumstances. Any fully
rational agent would recognize the circumstances in question apply and thus that the agent has a reason to do a
favor for person A.
The conclusions of both the agent-relative and the agent-neutral accounts are the same. The minor
difference is exactly how the route to the conclusion can be explained. Agent-relative accounts reference the
agent’s place in a situation and agent-neutral accounts reference the circumstances. With Smith’s convergence
in place, though, this difference has no effect on the conclusion. Without the convergence, there is no guarantee
that the agents each come to the same conclusion because by an agent-neutral account there might be no
reference to the relevant circumstances, so it is possible for an agent to miss that the de se reason also applies.6
Let us now turn to an example similar to Smith’s example about the beer-drinker and the wine-drinker,
i.e., a case about a matter of preference. If I prefer jazz and you prefer modern art, then I have a reason to go to
the club while you have reason to go to the gallery. Still, though, if I am a fully rational agent I can recognize
that if the situation were reversed, I would have reason to go to the gallery and if you are fully rational you
would recognize that you would have reason to go to the club. An agent-relative account would explain this,
given Smith’s convergence, by stating that the agents in question have reason to do what will satisfy the
preferences they have and if they had difference preferences they would have different reasons to act. This
relies again on the particularities of the agents in question. Agent-neutral account would explain this by stating
that the agents in question have reason to do what will best fit with the circumstances they are in. If the
circumstances specify one particular set of psychological facts, which include preferences, rather than another,
Smith says “if we think a parent who fails to save her child in such circumstances fails to act on a reason available to her
-–as it seems to me that we do – then we are in fact obliged to assume the non-relative conception of internal reasons”
(Smith 1995: 121). In this case the mother of the drowning child fails to act on a de se reason available to her. This is a
6
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the agent will have reason to do what is in accord with those circumstances because given those beliefs they
would have the corresponding hypothetical desires in the agent’s S. This relies not on a particular agent, but the
specific facts of a set of circumstances and thus remains agent-neutral.
With Smith’s convergence claim for fully rational agents in place, the distinction between agent-relative
accounts and agent-neutral accounts is relatively minor because both kinds of accounts arrive at the same
reasons to act, the only difference is a minor one in the explanation. Asking then if an account is agent-relative
or agent-neutral does not tell us what kinds of reasons to expect the account to give. This claim depends on two
important features of Smith’s account – that the agents we are considering are fully rational and that the S’s of
fully rational agents converge.
Some may wonder about the significance of such a conclusion since it is fairly certain that there are no
fully rational agents. The significance, I think, is this – that agent-neutral accounts, which hold a somewhat
privileged or at least a better respected place in moral theory, are capable of yielding the same reasons to act as
agent-relative accounts, which to many have more pre-theoretic plausibility. Moral judgments that may have
seemed wrong via some formal moral theory could be vindicated because we no longer need to reference the
individual agent and his or her particularities to get the resultant reason to act, but we only need to give a
description of the circumstances and then fully rational agents will agree on the same reasons for any agent in
those circumstances. Now, this, of course, leaves open which reasons it is morally best to act on, but since both
methods arrive at the same set of reasons, there is nothing in the methods themselves that rules out certain kinds
of reasons from being morally evaluated a priori. This is, I think, a significant conclusion because it is not one
that has heretofore been readily recognized and gives a different picture of what agent-based moral theories
must deal with when deciding which reasons to act are morally justifiable.
Works Cited
Smith, Michael. 1995. "Internal Reasons." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (1): 109-131.
Williams, Bernard. 1981. "Internal and External Reasons." In Moral Luck, edited by B. Williams. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
case in which, on an agent-neutral account, without convergence, that the agent fails to see the circumstances apply and
thus would give rise to another reason to act.
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