On some alleged problems for the distinction between two roles for reasons

Selim Berker argues that the distinction between requiring and justifying weight or strength is not in good standing. In this response I argue that all his worries, when directed at my view, can be answered. It is only certain mistaken or optional interpretive moves that lead him to have doubts in the first place. He interprets me as holding that the criterion for one reason having greater weight in a role than another involves counterfactual conditionals thought of in terms of possible worlds, which would leave me open to the charge than I am committing a version of Shope’s Conditional Fallacy. He also interprets my talk of intelligible objects of human motivation as being so wide as to include absolutely anything we can imagine a person being motivated by, even if it is the result of a “bizarre fixation”. And he interprets me as agreeing with his controversial monistic view of reasons, such that it makes sense to say that all reasons, by their nature, can be taken together to yield an overall verdict as to what one ought to do, simpliciter. In contrast to this, I hold that moral reasons are considerations that make systematic contributions to moral status, legal reasons are considerations that make systematic contributions to legal status, and generic practical reasons – which are the reasons I am concerned with – are considerations that make systematic contribution to rational status.