This essay criticizes Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority on the basis of its knowability condition. The condition states that for agents to be justified in following authoritative directives, they must be able to know (i.e., form reliable beliefs) that the authority issuing the directives is in fact legitimate. Three grounds for concern are identified. The first is that the satisfaction of the normal justification thesis (NJT), which states that the legitimacy of authorities hinges on whether their directives enable subjects to better conform to reason, only provides agents with reasons to believe that it is justified to act as if an authority were legitimate (i.e., on the assumption that it is). Based on the belief/acceptance distinction, the NJT allows for a gap between what is actually the case and what agents are willing to go along with in order to improve the likelihood of conforming to right reason. The independence condition (IC), which states that for those matters where the NJT obtains it must be better for a subject to improve such conformity than to decide for herself, must be satisfied in conjunction with the NJT, but suffers from its own particular problems. Thus, the second problem identified is that of incommensurable values, which appears when agents are not able to decide between the value of improving right reason—NJT—and the value of deciding for themselves—IC. Finally, the third problem is that of vagueness about right reason, where agents attempting to determine whether an authority meets the two conditions are not able to settle whether reason is improved. Together, these three problem areas of knowability serve to challenge Raz’s position.

中文翻译：

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Joseph Raz 的服务理念和可知性的极限

本文根据其可知性条件批判了约瑟夫·拉兹的服务权威概念。该条件规定，要使代理人有理由遵循权威指令，他们必须能够知道（即形成可靠的信念）发布指令的权威实际上是合法的。确定了三个令人担忧的理由。第一个是正常正当理由论题（NJT）的满足，它指出当局的合法性取决于他们的指令是否使主体能够更好地符合理性，它只为代理人提供了理由相信它是正当的，好像一个权威是合法的（即，假设它是合法的）。基于信念/接受度的区别，NJT 允许在实际情况与代理人愿意接受的情况之间存在差距，以提高符合正确理性的可能性。独立性条件 (IC) 规定，对于 NJT 获得的那些事项，主体提高这种一致性比自己决定要好，它必须与 NJT 一起满足，但存在其自身的特殊问题. 因此，确定的第二个问题是不可通约的价值，当代理人无法在改进正确理性的价值（NJT）和自行决定的价值（IC）之间做出决定时，就会出现这种问题。最后，第三个问题是关于正确理性的模糊性，如果代理人试图确定当局是否满足这两个条件，则无法确定理由是否得到改善。这三个已知问题领域共同挑战了 Raz 的立场。