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Philosophy

Selected Works

Prof. NAIR Gopal Shyam

2015

Obligations

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Conflicting Reasons, Unconflicting ‘Ought’S, Gopal Shyam Nair Dec 2015

Conflicting Reasons, Unconflicting ‘Ought’S, Gopal Shyam Nair

Prof. NAIR Gopal Shyam

One of the popular albeit controversial ideas in the last century of moral philosophy is that what we ought to do is explained by our reasons. And one of the central features of reasons that accounts for their popularity among normative theorists is that they can conflict. But I argue that the fact that reasons conflict actually also poses two closely related problems for this popular idea in moral philosophy. The first problem is a generalization of a problem in deontic logic concerning the existence of conflicting obligations. The second problem arises from a tension between the fact that reasons …


Conflicting Reasons, Unconflicting ‘Ought’S, Gopal Shyam Nair Dec 2015

Conflicting Reasons, Unconflicting ‘Ought’S, Gopal Shyam Nair

Prof. NAIR Gopal Shyam

One of the popular albeit controversial ideas in the last century of moral philosophy is that what we ought to do is explained by our reasons. And one of the central features of reasons that accounts for their popularity among normative theorists is that they can conflict. But I argue that the fact that reasons conflict actually also poses two closely related problems for this popular idea in moral philosophy. The first problem is a generalization of a problem in deontic logic concerning the existence of conflicting obligations. The second problem arises from a tension between the fact that reasons …