In this paper, we raise and discuss a puzzle about the relationships among goods, reasons, and deontic status. Suppose you have it within your power to give someone something they would enjoy. The following claims seem platitudinous: (1) you can use this power to reward whatever kind of option you want, thereby making that option better and generating a reason for that person to perform it; (2) this reason is then weighed alongside and against the other reasons at play; and (3) altogether, the reasons determine the deontic statuses of that person’s options. We show, however, that in a certain class of cases at least one of these apparent platitudes must be false. In particular, we show that in a certain kind of case wrongfulness cannot be rewarded. In some cases, if one tries to reward wrongfulness, something surprising must go awry: either what you attempt to give as a reward would not, in fact, be good, or it would not generate a reason, or it would have a surprising effect (or non-effect) on the deontic status of the relevant options. The upshot is that the relationships among goods, reasons, and deontic status are complicated in ways that have not previously been remarked.

在本文中，我们提出并讨论了有关商品，原因和义务状态之间关系的难题。假设您有能力为某人提供他们会喜欢的东西。以下主张似乎是质朴的：（1）您可以使用此权力来奖励您想要的任何种类的选择，从而使该选择更好，并为该人执行该选择提供理由。（2）然后将这个原因与其他原因进行权衡；（3）总体而言，原因决定了该人选择权的债权状态。但是，我们证明，在某些情况下，这些明显的陈词滥调中至少有一个是错误的。特别是，我们表明在某种情况下，不法行为无法得到奖励。在某些情况下，如果人们试图奖励不法行为，那么一定会出奇的事情：实际上，您尝试给予的奖励是不好的，或者不会产生原因，或者会产生令人惊讶的效果（或不影响）相关选项的整体性状态。结果是，商品，原因和义务状态之间的关系以以前未曾提及的方式变得复杂。