Quo vadis, reasons first? From weight monism to weight pluralism to thresholds

Abstract In this paper, I discuss and explore two responses to problems that arise for a simple, weight monist version of reasons first in the practical domain. These responses—weight pluralism and threshold reasons first—attempt to provide a more nuanced account of reasons and all-things-considered deontic statuses. The first problem for weight monism is that it lacks the resources to predict the intuitively correct deontic statuses for the agent's options in cases of supererogation, of practical latitude, and of moral dilemmas. The second problem is that weight monism cannot distinguish requirements from oughts. I sketch how weight pluralists try to do justice to the problem cases, as well as to distinguish requirements and oughts, by introducing several independent dimensions of a reason's weight. However, as I argue, weight pluralism faces problems of its own—it cannot uphold the entailment from requirement to ought (on some variants); it problematically casts ought as an evaluative notion (on another variant); and it undermines the action-guidingness of reasons. In the end, I explore a more sophisticated weight monist alternative, threshold reasons first, that holds some promise to avoid all of these problems.