Parity, Moral Options, and the Weights of Reasons

Abstract

The (moral) permissibility of an act is determined by the relative weights of reasons, or so I assume. But how many weights does a reason have? Weight Monism is the idea that reasons have a single weight value. There is just the weight of reasons. Weight Pluralism holds that reasons have at least two weight values and these values aren’t always equivalent. The simplest versions of Weight Monism hold that the weight of each reason is either equal to, weightier than, or less weighty than every other reason. We’ll see that this simple view leads to paradox. We must complicate the picture somehow.