“Reason” En Masse
Name
Philosophical Perspectives - 2025 - Watkins - Reason En Masse.pdf
Size
350.13 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c906b5cd78dedae61dab991bc4b9932a
Author(s)
Watkins, Eliot
Date Issued
August 3, 2025
Journal
Philosophical Perspectives
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
Watkins, E.. 2024. “ “Reason” En Masse.” Philosophical Perspectives 38, no. 1: 38, 222–236.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We can use “reason,” with its normative sense, as both a count noun (“there is a reason for her to Φ”) and a mass noun (“there is plenty of reason for her to Φ”). How are the count and mass senses of “reason” related? Daniel Fogal argues that the mass sense is fundamental: Just as lights are merely those things that give light and anxieties are merely those things that give anxiety, reasons are merely those things that give reason. In this article, I develop an opposing analysis of the mass noun “reason” that puts reasons first. Just as the detail on the Mona Lisa is composed of particular details (brushstrokes and colors) and the crime in L.A. is composed of particular crimes (pickpocketings and speeding offenses), so the reason for you to go to the dentist is composed of your reasons to go. Reasons stand to reason as parts to a whole. Such a picture makes reasons fundamental once more, but it has a cost of entry. In order to accommodate the behavior of “reason” in comparative constructions, you need to abandon the idea that reasons are facts we can count up. On the contrary: They're not facts, and you can't count them.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Philosophy
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12209
