Correspondence and dispositional relations

ABSTRACT

The Normative Competence Account characterizes acting for a normative reason as action which manifests the agent’s complex normative competence. But which role does the correspondence between the normative reason and the agent’s motivating reason play and how is correspondence to be understood in this context? In this response, I argue that correspondence is to be understood merely as an interesting by-product of manifesting normative competence, namely as a representational relation between a proposition believed by the agent and it’s truth maker (i.e. the fact that is the normative reason acted for). In this response, I will answer further questions about this relation of correspondence, such as whether it can be described in more substantial terms and whether the representation of the normative reason has to meet further conditions to play it’s role in the manifestation of competence.

KEYWORDS:

• Normative reason
• acting for normative reason
• normative competence
• correspondence
• representation
• weighing reasons

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Susanne Mantel

Dr. Susanne Mantel is a postdoctoral researcher at Saarland University, Germany. Her main research interests are action theory, normative theory, rationality, as well as political philosophy and applied ethics. Contact: [email protected]