Balkan Journal of Philosophy

Volume 8, Issue 2, 2016

Julian Fink
Pages 99-106

Normative Lessons for the Debate on the Scope of Rational Requirements

A significant part of the debate concerning the nature of rational requirements centers on disambiguating ordinary articulations of conditional requirements of rationality. Particular focus has been put on the question of whether conditional requirements of rationality take a wide or a narrow logical scope. However, this paper shows that this focus is misguided and harmful to the debate. I argue that concentrating on syntactic scope renders us more likely to arrive at incorrect formulations of rational requirements and to overlook questions of greater philosophical importance.