UCLA

Facts about us—what we are motivated by and what we are able to do—can change our responsibilities and obligations. But how and why? This dissertation takes up these questions.In Chapter I, I consider the suggestion that, because we cannot simply choose what to see as reason-giving, the reasons for which an agent acts cannot be relevant to the permissibility of the agent’s conduct. I argue this is false. I reach this conclusion by first considering the agency we have over acting-for-certain-reasons. I argue that, even if we cannot simply choose what to see as reasons, we can often simply choose whether to act-for-certain-reasons. That is to say, we can often choose to act-for-certain-reasons just as readily as we can choose to act in a way that can be identified independently of the reasons for which it is done. It follows from this acknowledgement that facts about the reasons for which an agent acts can be relevant to the permissibility of her conduct in just the same way other facts about that conduct can be relevant.In Chapter II, I take up the claim that a contractualist in particular should not think that the permissibility of an agent’s conduct can turn on the reasons for which she acts. This is mistaken. The contractualist has a straightforward explanation of why the reasons for which we act can change whether we act permissibly: because we have interests not only in what happens to us, but also, at least at times, in why they happen, we can be constrained not only in how we act but also in the reasons for which we act.In Chapter III, I turn to the relationship between what we can do and what we are obligated to do. According to a familiar proposal, considerations of fairness settle this issue clearly: it would be unfair to require agents to act in ways they cannot. I first show that this proposal has a costly implication: that whether agents facing vicious or demeaning conduct can demand to be treated better depends on the abilities of those who mistreat them. I then offer an alternative way of thinking about how considerations of fairness bear on our obligations—one that avoids this implication while still explaining what seems right about the familiar proposal.