Where does normativity come from? Or alternatively, in virtue of what do facts about what an agent has reason to do obtain? On one class of views, reason facts obtain in virtue of agents’ motivations. It might seem like a truism that at least some of our reasons depend on what we desire or care about. However, some philosophers, notably Derek Parfit, have convincingly argued that no reasons are grounded in this way. Typically, this latter, externalist view of reasons has been thought to enjoy the advantage of extensional adequacy—that is, the ability to account for all the reasons we intuitively think people have. This paper provides a novel argument against this assumption by considering a type of case wherein the relative strengths of the agent’s reasons can only be adequately explained by reference to what she cares about. Adding some further assumptions yields that there are at least some internally sourced reasons.

规范性从何而来？或者，根据关于代理人有理由做什么的事实获得什么？在一类观点上，理性事实是凭借代理人的动机而获得的。至少我们的一些理由取决于我们渴望或关心的东西，这似乎是一个不言而喻的真理。然而，一些哲学家，尤其是德里克·帕菲特，令人信服地认为，没有理由是这样建立的。通常，后一种外部主义的理由观点被认为享有外延充分性的优势——也就是说，能够解释我们直觉认为人们拥有的所有理由。本文通过考虑一种情况，即代理人的理由的相对强度只能通过参考她所关心的事情来充分解释，从而提供了一个反对这一假设的新论据。添加一些进一步的假设会产生至少有一些内部来源的原因。