Richard Chappell on Raz on Reasons

(Raz is currently top of my reading list, which is to say I haven't read the original work Richard refers to here)

"If there’s value in the state of affairs of your having warranted attitudes, then this should be so whether this state of affairs came about as a result of shifting your attitudes to match the world, or by changing the world to match your attitudes. But this is absurd: if you feel fear, for example, there is nothing at all to be said for manipulating your situation to match your emotion by gratuitously exposing yourself to danger. Danger is a reason for fear, but fear is not a reason for (bringing about) danger. This asymmetry demonstrates that the reasons we have for feeling fear when in danger are adaptive reasons -- they do not assume that there is necessarily value in the combination of fear and danger."

A minor note: Talking about the value of warranted attitudes is misleading, because those who hold the view Richard/Raz has in mind are those who think that being warranted just is being valuable. They aren't warranted first and then valued. But I'll stick with this terminology.

There are two responses the target of this objection could make:

First, if the combination of fear and danger is only valuable when the danger arrives first, then we could build this into our picture of the value of fear. Perhaps what is valuable is not (fear&danger), as Raz supposes, but (danger->fear). In English, perhaps what is valuable is to either avoid danger or to be fearful. One can't create this valuable outcome by seeking out danger when one is fearful.

Second, one might quite sensibly reject the very premise that the discussion is grounded on, namely that danger is a reason for fear. Isn't there something admirable or rational about the person who responds to danger calmly and without fear? (Sure, we might admit, for many of us fear is a good motivating force that, all things considered, helps us to be motivated to avoid danger. But this doesn't require that danger is a reason for fear: it requires that danger is best avoided (is disvaluable) and that the best means to minimise this disvalue might be the adoption of a disposition to feel fear in the face of fanger. These claims do not commit us to thinking that danger is an unconditional reason for fear, which is, I take it, what Raz has in mind)