Success for Dancy

We’ve looked at how the Davidsonian position might cope with the good case and I’ve put on the map two ways of developing the theory so as to cope with it. On each way of coping with it, theexplanans in the good case is a state of knowing, but only on one way of developing it does that get us the result that Williams’ Dictums is true. But now

let’s move on to examining Dancy’s Reductionist position. We’ll find, again, that there are two different ways of developing Dancy’s position which differ with respect to their relationship with Williams’ Dicta.

According to Dancy, we’re to think of the type exemplified by all rationalising expla- nations as neutral with respect to whether p is a normative reason for S toϕ. The way in

which things are made intelligible by rationalising explanations does not essentially in- volve reference to a normative reason. The type of explanation is to be thought of as an explanatory link between the agent’sϕ-ing and what they take to be a normative reason: p. The explanation is underwritten by a primitive type of non-causal relation which links p with the agent’sϕ-ing. The sort of relation holds even when p is false. This makes the explanation non-factive: it can be true even if its explanansis false, or does not obtain. The sort of explanation here is enabled by the subject believing that p and taking p to be a normative reason for them toϕ, even though neither of those conditions are part of the

explanansof the rationalising explanation.

Now let’s ask the following question: how should Dancy account for the success con- dition of ϕ-ing in response to the normative reason that p? First, Dancy will say that it involves the obtaining of an explanation that falls under the type rationalising explana- tion. But since Dancy conceives of that type as failing to suffice for the subject to be in the good case, his answer cannot stop there. He will have to say, in addition, that it involves p being true and being a genuine reason in favour of the agent’sϕ-ing. He will also have to acknowledge the point that the success condition requires knowing that p. How should he incorporate all of this into his account?

I suggest that the basic idea should be that the type of explanation which holds in the good case doesn’t require p to be true, or be a normative reason or that one knows that p. But the particular explanation does take the fact that p asexplanans. Dancy can then incorporate the epistemic point by saying that the belief which enables the explanation is a state of knowing. So in the good case, the explanation which holds explains why the agent ϕs by appeal to a fact which favours the agent’sϕ-ing, and the explanation is enabled by a piece of knowledge on the agent’s part.

However, there are two ways of developing this conception of the good case which give us different results. The variation depends on how Dancy thinks of facts. If, on the one hand, he thinks of facts as entities which exist across both good cases and bad, but which only obtain – only are facts – in the good case, then he can agree that theexplanansin the good case is identical to theexplanansin the bad case. If, on the other hand, Dancy thinks that the fact that p does not exist in the bad case, so that whatever facts are they are facts

essentially, then he is committed to thinking of theexplanansof rationalising explanations in the good case as distinct from theexplanans in bad cases and hence as the particular explanations as being different. In other words: if Dancy thinks that the identity of a fact can be held fixed whilst varying whether or not it obtains, then Dancy will be committed to saying that the particular explanation in the good case has the sameexplanansas in the bad case, and hence that the particular explanations are the same. If, on the other hand, Dancy were to say that the obtaining of a fact is an essential feature of it, then he will have to say that theexplanansin the good case is not the same as that in the bad case, and hence

that the two explanations are different.13,14

Again, there are two comments which need to be made about these possible devel- opments of Dancy’s basic position. First, they differ with respect to their relationship with Williams’ Dicta. The second way of developing Dancy’s basic idea is committed to Williams’ Dictumw but rejects Williams’ Dictums. It’s committed to the former because

it says that the form of explanation in each case is the same – a form which is neutral on whether p is a reason for the subject toϕ. It rejects the latter because it says that the ex- planation in the good case has a differentexplanansto the corresponding explanation in the bad – an essentially obtaining fact in the former, and a distinct entity, or perhaps no entity at all, in the latter. On the first way of developing the position, however, according to which theexplanansis a fact which obtains in the good case but the very same entity, just non-obtaining, in the bad, theexplanantiaare identical and so the particular explanations are identical too. Thus, both of Williams’ Dicta are accepted.

The second point to highlight is that, even though on both positions the normative reason that p thought of as a fact with a distinctive normative profile is theexplanansof the rationalising explanation in the good case, it cannot be that the normative reason explains

quafact orquaits normative status: the status of the normative reason as a fact is not an explanatorily relevant feature of theexplanansin the good case, and neither is its normative character. Again, this is because the very way in which the explanation makes the agent’s ϕ-ing intelligible makes no appeal to the status of p as a fact or as a normatively significant item. The form of explanation ignores those properties of theexplanansand hence those properties don’t do explanatory work for Dancy, however the position is developed in order to accommodate the good case. Rationalisers get to be rationalisers for Dancy just by dint of beingapparent normative reasons, not by dint of being the genuine article. That’s so even if the genuine article is what happens to do the explaining in the good case.