The Relevance of the Wrong Kind of Reasons

There is a wide-ranging discussion of two kinds of reasons for attitudes, which are sometimes called the right and wrong kinds of reasons. The distinction, some think, applies to a whole range of different attitudes such as beliefs and intentions, as well as so-called pro-attitudes, e.g. admiration or desire in similar ways. Explaining it may therefore contribute significantly to understanding the nature of reasons and normativity in general. In this paper, I argue for two claims: (1) we should sharply distinguish the wrong kind of reasons problem as it arises for fitting attitude theories from any other problem that comes under the same name, and (2) the wrong kind of reasons problem outside of fitting attitude theory doesn’t have a very clear shape, if indeed there is such a problem at all. In particular, there is no similarity between reasons to believe and reasons to intend in this regard, and therefore no hope for a unified explanation of the alleged phenomenon.