PHILOS 2 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Kumquat
Document Summary
Explain nagel"s idea that judgments about reasons are implicitly general. Nagel means that in a specific set of circumstances, everyone would have the same reasons for action. In the case of the kumquat, if the circumstances held for all people, e. g. the person was hungry and liked kumquats, then all people would have the same reason to eat the kumquat, namely to alleviate their hunger. Explain the difference between an agent-relative reason and an agent-neutral reason; use the example of pain to illustrate the distinction. An agent-relative reason is one that is a reason for one person but not for everyone else. Example: if pain is agent-relative, then my pain is only a reason for me to try and alleviate that pain. For anyone else, they would only try to help me if they had their own agent- relative reason such as if my screaming were making it hard from them to study.