A Sensible Moral Rationalism

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This book addresses the rational status of morality—whether people do in fact have sufficient reason to do what morality demands of them. The answer, according to rationalism, is yes; the reasons that make an action morally required are the same reasons that make it reasonable and rational to choose. The main obstacle to vindicating rationalism is showing that rationality can generate the right content for morality—honesty, kindness, generosity, and so on. Given that this content is substantive, rationality must be substantive. It argues that we make judgments about such rationality when we assess whether one action or belief makes more sense than another, both as justification and as part of a psychologically explanatory interpretation of attitudes and actions. To play this role, rationality must be gradable and comparative, perspectival and evidence relative, essential to good motivating reason explanations, substantive and in one good sense more fundamental than the reasons that explain why one option is better than another. Reason or rationality’s fundamental normative roll is crucial to motivating reason explanations, and this allows us to use our judgments about such explanations to illuminate the substantive nature of rationality.</jats:p>