Internal Reasons and Agent‐Neutrality

ABSTRACT The first aim of this paper is to argue that Bernard Williams's argument against external reasons is best understood as a rejection of Thomas Nagel's (apparently tangential) notion of a universal agent‐neutral reason for anyone and everyone to promote/desire the occurrence of the event to which the reason applies. To the extent that the reconstruction of this dialectic highlights an inconsistency in Nagel's position—Nagel cannot maintain the truth of his neo‐Kantian cognitive internalism while defending the idea that agent‐neutral reasons are necessarily part of the subjective motivational set of all rational agents—the second, conciliatory aim is to offer a theoretically neutral way of understanding the distinction between agent‐neutral and agent‐relative reasons that is compatible with Williams's internal reasons constraint. Drawing the distinction in this way enables us to resituate the conflict between Kantians and their anti‐rationalist internalist opponents (traditionally your archetype Humean, desire‐based reason theorists) as one concerning the (alleged) categorical force of all moral reasons, not merely agent‐neutral reasons.