1

Buck-Passing Accounts
Jonas Olson
It is a common view that there is an intimate tie between evaluative properties like
goodness, badness, and betterness and appropriate responses to bearers of such
properties. For instance, if an object is good there are reasons to favor it, or as some
say, a favorable response would be fitting. Similarly, many people take there to be a
close tie between deontic properties like rightness and wrongness and appropriate
responses: if an action is wrong, there are reasons to respond disfavorably, e.g., to
blame agents for performing actions of that type. According to buck-passing accounts
(henceforth BPA), evaluative and deontic properties do not themselves provide
reasons for responses. Rather, reasons to respond in various ways are provided by
good-, bad-, better-, right-, and wrong-making properties.
To illustrate, suppose that George takes pleasure in something innocent, such as
reading Principia Ethica or watching a Seinfeld episode. This is a good state of affairs,
we may assume, but its goodness does not provide a further reason to favor it, in
addition to the reason provided already by Georges property of feeling pleasure.
Similarly, suppose Dick tortures a captive for fun. This action is wrong, we may
assume, but its wrongness does not provide a further reason to blame Dick, in
addition to the reason already provided by the captives property of feeling pain and
Dicks property of taking pleasure in his pain.In other words, buck-passers pass the
normative buck on to the properties on which evaluative and deontic properties
supervene (see supervenience, moral).
Many buck-passers make the further claim that evaluative and deontic concepts can
be analyzed in terms of reasons to respond. For an object to have an evaluative or deontic
property just is for that object to have properties that provide reasons to respond favorably or disfavorably. It is sometimes said that BPA reduce the evaluative to the deontic.
This presupposes that the concept of a reason, and that of fittingness, belong in the category of deontic concepts (see evaluative vs. deontic concepts). One might query
whether these concepts are clearly deontic, but the essential idea at this point is that
evaluative concepts like goodness and badness and deontic concepts like rightness and
wrongness are analyzable in terms of more primitive normative concepts like fittingness,
or that of a reason. How to categorize these concepts is not of immediate importance but,
as we shall see below, it might have implications for certain challenges to BPA.
The general appeal of BPA is the promise to enhance our understanding of the
evaluative and the deontic; whereas some accounts take the concepts of goodness
and wrongness to be primitive and unanalyzable, BPA offer illuminating analyses. In
addition BPA give an intuitively compelling picture of the reason-providing relation
and demystify the normative compellingness of evaluative and deontic properties.
BPA also possess the virtue of theoretical parsimony. These features will be further
The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Edited by Hugh LaFollette, print pages 625636.
2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ 9781444367072.wbiee083

discussed in the third section, which considers and assesses five main arguments for
BPA. The fourth section describes five main challenges BPA face. Before we get there
a brief background along with a more detailed outline of BPA is given, and then the
second section discusses briefly the scope of BPA. It should be noted that BPA have
mostly been discussed as accounts of the evaluative, in particular final and
instrumental value (see below), but as has already been indicated, if one accepts
buck-passing about the evaluative it is fairly natural to accept buck-passing about
the deontic too. For ease of exposition we shall mostly talk about the evaluative, but
it should be clear that most of the virtues and vices of evaluative BPA are equally
virtues and vices of deontic BPA.

Brief Historical Background and Outline of BPA

The idea that the evaluative can be analyzed in terms of a normative componentsuch
as reasons, fittingness, ought, should and a psychological component such as
favorable and disfavorable responses is sometimes called the fitting attitude (FA)
approach (Rabinowicz and Rnnow-Rasmussen 2004; see value, fitting-attitude
account of). The history of the FA approach goes back at least to Franz Brentano,
who analyzed the good as that which can be loved with a love that is correct
(Brentano 1969: 18, emphases added). Henry Sidgwick took ultimate good on the
whole to mean what a rational being should desire and seek to realize, assuming [such a being] to have an equal concern for all existence (1981: 112, emphases
added). An important advocate of the FA approach is A. C. Ewing (1939, 1947; see
ewing, a. c.). Ewing argued in a series of writings that to say that an object is good
is to say that it is a fitting object of a pro-attitude, where pro-attitude is an umbrella
term covering any favourable attitude to something, [such as] choice, desire, liking,
pursuit, approval, admiration (1947: 149).
Ewing was also a precursor of BPA. According to Ewing, the ground [for a
pro-attitude] lies not in goodness, but in the concrete, factual characteristics of
what we pronounce good. Certain characteristics are such that the fitting response
to what possesses them is a pro-attitude, and that is all there is to it (1947: 172).
In the literature there is no universal agreement on how the FA approach relates
to BPA, but the latter are commonly taken to be variants of the former. The renewed
interest in the FA approach is largely due to T. M. Scanlon (1998: 97), who invented
the label buck-passing for his analysis of value. What has since become known as
the buck-passing account is a conjunction of the following two theses, one of which
concerns the reason-providing relation (RR) and one of which concerns analysis of
the concept of value (A):
RR
A

Reasons to favor good objects and disfavor bad objects are provided by goodand bad-making properties. Evaluative properties provide no such reasons.
For an object to be good (bad) is not for that object to possess an unanalyzable property of goodness (badness), but to possess other properties that
provide reasons to favor (disfavor) that object.

(According to BPA about the deontic, we should accept the corresponding deontic
analogues of RR and A.)
Note three things about BPA thus formulated. First, RR and A are logically
independent. One could accept RR while maintaining that goodness is unanalyzable, thus rejecting A. Conversely, one could accept A while maintaining that an
objects property of having other properties that provide reasons to favor or
disfavor the object itself provides a reason, thus rejecting RR. Some authors call
such reasons derivative and maintain that such reasons have no weight of their
own. In understanding and assessing the arguments for BPA it is helpful to keep
in mind that RR and A are logically independent. We will get back to this in the
third section below.
Second, the kind of reasons buck-passers have in mind are normative or justifying,
as opposed to motivating or explanatory, reasons (see reasons, motivating and
normative). Many buck-passers hold that the notion of a (normative) reason is
conceptually primitive, but admits certain paraphrases. In particular, it is a popular
view that a reason for adopting some attitude or performing some action is a consideration that counts in favor of adopting that attitude or performing that action
(Scanlon 1998; Parfit 2001; see reasons). Third, BPA are noncommittal with respect
to the main metaethical views, since the notions of a reason, and that of fittingness,
allow for cognitivist and non-cognitivist, as well as naturalist and nonnaturalist,
analyses (see cognitivism; non-cognitivism; naturalism, ethical; nonnaturalism, ethical). Even error theorists can accept BPA about evaluative and deontic
concepts (see error theory).

The Scope of BPA

There are several questions about the scope of BPA. We have already noted that if
one accepts buck-passing about the evaluative it is rather natural to accept
buck-passing about the deontic. Not everyone agrees, though. Scanlon (1998: 11)
rejects buck-passing about wrongness, while Dancy (2000) takes buck-passing about
rightness and wrongness to be more plausible than buck-passing about goodness.
An early attempt at deontic buck-passing is found in Ewing (1939, 1947).
Another question about scope concerns whether BPA apply both to thin evaluative
and deontic concepts (such as goodness, badness, betterness, rightness, wrongness,
etc.) and to thick concepts (such as kindness, cruelty, fairness, etc.) (see thick and
thin concepts). In the tradition going back to Brentano through Ewing and
onward the main concern has been to analyze thin concepts, but more ambitious
buck-passers set out to analyze both the thinly and the thickly evaluative and deontic
(Schroeder 2010; Skorupski 2010). Distinctions between thick concepts are
sometimes subtle and a challenge for ambitious buck-passers is consequently to
identify the right kinds of distinct attitudes and responses to enable discrimination
between distinct thick concepts (Crisp 2005).
Buck-passers about the evaluative also need to say whether they aim to analyze
both predicative goodness (as in Pleasure is good) and attributive goodness (as in

George is a good philosopher) (see goodness, varieties of). Traditionally, the

focus has been on predicative goodness only, but more ambitious buck-passers
extend the view to attributive goodness (Skorupski 2010). Buck-passers who restrict
the view to predicative goodness might be accused of infusing an unwarranted
heterogeneity into the concept of goodness. On the other hand, these buck-passers
can respond that this restriction gains theoretical support from the intuitive
difference between predicative and attributive goodness. It might be suggested that
the former, but not the latter, is normative in the sense that it entails reasons for
responses. And this in turn explains the intuitive difference between the two.
Note finally that BPA about the evaluative aim to analyze various types of value,
such as instrumental, intrinsic, and final value (see instrumental value; intrinsic
value). According to BPA, an object, x, is instrumentally valuable just in case there
are reasons to favor x on account of what x brings about or prevents; x is intrinsically
valuable just in case there are reasons to favor x on account of its intrinsic properties;
x is finally valuable just in case there are reasons to favor x as an end or for its own
sake. It might be difficult to pin down exactly the attitude of favoring something as
an end or for its own sake, but intuitively we can at least say that it is an attitude of
favoring an object on account of properties that have nothing to do with what the
object brings about, prevents, or signals.
In sum, there is not much consensus among buck-passers concerning the exact
scope of BPA. But most buck-passers about the evaluative agree that BPA cover at
least the thin concepts of final and instrumental goodness and badness. Similarly,
most buck-passers about the deontic agree that BPA cover at least the thin concepts
of moral rightness and wrongness.

Arguments for BPA

This section considers five prominent arguments for BPA: (1), (3), and (4) support
thesis A; (2) supports RR; and (5) supports both A and RR.

1 The open question argument

Scanlon says that he was led to buck-passing about goodness by reflecting on Moores
open question argument (Scanlon 1998: 96f.; see open question argument). We
can explain the open feel of questions like x is pleasant but is it good? by assuming that asking whether some object is good is asking the normative question
whether it has properties that provide reasons to favor it.
But we can turn the matter around and explain the open feel of questions like xis
pleasant but are there reasons to favor it? by assuming that asking whether there is
reason to favor some object is asking the evaluative question whether the object
isgood or whether the favorable attitude would be good. Hence there is no immediate route from the open question argument to BPA, although buck-passers can perhaps maintain that their account gives the better explanation of the open feel of the
relevant kinds of questions.

2 The redundancy argument

Scanlon also says:
The fact that a resort is pleasant is a reason to visit it or to recommend it to a friend,
and the fact that a discovery casts light on the causes of cancer is a reason to applaud it
and to support further research of that kind. These natural properties provide the
reasons we have for reacting in these ways to things that are good or valuable. It is not
clear what further work could be done by special reason-providing properties of
goodness and value, and even less clear how these properties could provide reasons.
(1998: 97)

This has become known as the redundancy argument for BPA (Crisp 2005). It is
generally taken to have considerable intuitive force. It highlights that when it comesto
providing reasons, natural properties do all the work and it puts the onus on critics of
BPA to explain what further normative work evaluative and deontic properties do.

The demystification argument

Recall that we said in the opening section that it is a common view that there is an
intimate link between evaluative properties and appropriate responses to bearers of
such properties. BPA readily explain and thereby demystify this normative compellingness of value (Rabinowicz and Rnnow-Rasmussen 2004: 391f.) since BPA hold
that for an object to be valuable just is for that object to have properties that provide
reasons to favor it. Analogously, BPA about the deontic demystify the normative
compellingness of deontic properties like wrongness, since BPA hold that for an
action to be wrong just is for that action to have properties that provide reasons not
to perform it and to blame agents for performing it.
Lest the demystification argument be misunderstood, note that the thought is
that BPA demystify the link between on the one hand evaluative and deontic
properties and on the other hand reasons to respond. The thought is not that BPA
demystify evaluative and deontic properties. A normative skeptic can still object that
goodness and wrongness are queer properties because normative reasons are
metaphysically queer. Stratton-Lake and Hooker (2006) argue that BPA allay worries
about queerness and supervenience, but see Olson (2009) for a critique (see queerness, argument from). Note also that the demystification argument does not
lendexclusive support to BPA. An alternative to BPA is the view propounded by
G. E. Moore in Principia Ethica (1903: 1), according to which all normative
notions,including reasons, are reducible to goodness (see moore, g. e.). This view
too can appeal to the demystification argument.

4 The parsimony argument

An obvious attraction of BPA is that they reduce the metaphysically and epistemically
contested notions of goodness and wrongness to the notion of a reason. So what was
formerly a plurality of categories of contested and supposedly interrelated notions

are reduced to only one. Hence Ewing prided himself on having suggested the
minimum non-naturalistic theory of ethics, i.e., the theory other than naturalism
which admits least in the way of non-natural concepts (Ewing 1939: 14;
cf.Stratton-Lake and Hooker 2006: 157).
Like the previous argument, however, the parsimony argument does not lend
exclusive support to BPA. Moores Principia view is equally parsimonious as BPA.
Buck-passers might respond that reflection reveals that an unanalyzable notion of
goodness is intuitively more far-fetched than an unanalyzable notion of a reason
(cf.Ewing 1947: 174). But whether this is so is a contested issue.

5 The heterogeneity argument

It is a popular view that values are irreducibly heterogeneous. Good objects need
have nothing more in common than their goodness. Pluralist accounts of wrongness
take wrong actions to be similarly disparate; wrong actions need have nothing more
in common than being wrong. This irreducible heterogeneity fits well with BPA:
value and wrongness turn out as heterogeneous as the various responses there are
reasons to take up vis--vis objects and actions and the properties that provide such
reasons (Rabinowicz and Rnnow-Rasmussen 2004: 401f.). Irreducible heterogeneity
might be taken to support fundamental incomparability between kinds of values
and perhaps between kinds of wrong actions. Such incomparability might sit
uneasily with a view la Moore, according to which goodness is a homogeneous
unanalyzable property. These arguments for BPA of course presuppose that
irreducible heterogeneity and fundamental incomparability about goodness and
wrongness are plausible in the first place (see incommensurability [and
incomparability]; value pluralism).

Problems for BPA

This section considers five main problems facing BPA: (a) challenges RR; (b), (c),
(d), and (e) challenge A.

(a) Reason-providing evaluative properties

The claim that evaluative and deontic properties provide no reasons for responses
may seem obviously mistaken. It is highly plausible that a persons kindness provide
reasons to like that person and respond to her with kindness; a persons cruelty
provide reasons to shun and condemn that person for being cruel. In other words, it
seems plausible that thick evaluative and deontic properties do provide reasons.
This ties in with one of the questions about the scope of BPA that we considered
above, viz., whether BPA extend to the thickly evaluative and deontic. Scanlon
(2002: 513) has in fact declared that he intended his version of buck-passing to be an
analysis of the thinly evaluative only. Many will agree that it is a lot more plausible to
deny that goodness and wrongness are reason-providing properties than to deny
that kindness and cruelty are.

(b) Consequentialism/deontology distinction

Jonathan Dancy (2000) worries that BPA threaten to resolve prematurely the debate
between consequentialism and deontology (see consequentialism; deontology)
in favor of the former. This is because Dancy takes it to be a distinctive deontological
thesis that there are reasons that are not value-involving. BPA rule this possibility
out at the conceptual level since they identify being of value with having reasonproviding properties.
Whether BPA are biased against deontology clearly depends on how the disputed
distinction between consequentialism and deontology is drawn. To allay Dancys worry,
buck-passers could attempt to identify being of value not with having reason-providing
properties generally, but only with having properties that provide reasons for particular
value-related responses. But it is unclear whether this restriction can be spelled out in
a plausible and noncircular way. In any event, it is not obvious that Dancy has identified
a vice in BPA. Ewing noted that his analysis of goodness interms of the ought of fittingness resolves the debate between Rossian deontology (seeross, w. d.) and consequentialism in the sense that it dissolves the distinction between the two views, for to give
a list of our different prima facie duties will be to give a list of the different kinds of
things (including actions) which are intrinsically good (Ewing 1947: 188). In contrast
to Dancy, Ewing considered this an advantage of his account. At issue here is the
methodological question whether an adequate analysis of value shouldbe normatively
neutral (e.g., with respect to the debate between consequentialism anddeontology).
One view, which accentuates Dancys worry, is that it is an adequacy constraint on
formal accounts of value like BPA that they be normatively neutral. An alternative
view,which is well in line with Ewings, is that it is a virtue of BPA that they reconcile
intuitively plausible but apparently incompatible moral intuitions (e.g., consequentialist
and deontological intuitions). This remains a contested issue.

(c) The polyadicity problem

The reason relation is a many-place relation; a reason is always a reason for some
agent to do something. It is less clear that goodness and wrongness are many-place
relations. The worry is that this throws doubt on the buck-passing project of
analyzing goodness and wrongness in terms of reasons. Dancy thinks that this is
especially worrisome for BPA about goodness since even granted that goodness is a
many-place relation, it has fewer places than reasons do. [G]oodness is less
polyadic than reasons [since] reasons belong to, are for, individuals. There are no
reasons hanging around waiting for someone to have them (2000: 170).
The polyadicity problem does not seem insurmountable, however. Note first that
Dancy presumably means that the reason relation is polyadic. On the common and
plausible assumption that reasons are facts it makes no sense to say that they are
polyadic or monadic. Now, buck-passers can grant that goodness is less polyadic
than the reason relation. For recall that BPA analyze goodness in terms of
reason-providing properties: for an object to be good is for that object to have the

higher-order property of having other properties that provide reasons to favor the
object (Scanlon 1998: 97). This higher-order property is monadic (nonrelational).
The reason-providing properties can be polyadic or monadic and their normative
reason-providing status is independent of whether there are in fact any agents
around. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that Da Vincis The Last Supper is
finally valuable and let us also suppose that all agents were suddenly to disappear
from the universe. This would not mean that The Last Supper would thereby cease
to be finally valuable, for it would still have properties vivacity, say that would
provide reasons to admire it for its own sake, for any agent who could so admire it.
(As we shall see in the next subsection, however, things get trickier if there could be
no agents who can take up the allegedly appropriate responses.)

(d) The solitary-goods problem

Consider the following state of affairs, S: there being happy egrets but no past, present,
or future agents (i.e., beings who can intentionally bring something about) (Bykvist
2009: 5). Let us assume that S is a good state of affairs. (Denying that S is good would
not be a wise tactic for buck-passers to take, since that would rule out by conceptual
fiat too many substantive theories of value, such as standard versions of hedonism
[see hedonism].) According to BPA this means that there are reasons to favor S. But
it is far from clear that there are such reasons. Remember that we use favor as an
umbrella term covering various kinds of positive responses. Is there a kind of
response that there is reason to take up vis--vis S? Krister Bykvist (2009) argues that
there is not and that, therefore, FA analyses of value, e.g., BPA, fail. It seems false that
there are reasons to bring about S since bringing about S would be logically impossible
(and since just as ought implies can, reasons imply can; see ought implies can). It
seems almost as doubtful that there can be reasons (of the right kind; see the next
subsection) to pursue or desire something that would be logically impossible to bring
about (Bykvist 2009: 57). So it seems false that Ss value can be analyzed in terms of
reasons to bring about, pursue, or desire S. Bykvist considers a number of other
possible kinds of responses but finds no plausible candidate.
Buck-passers might suggest that Ss value can be analyzed in terms of reasons for
some kind of positive emotions, e.g., some kind of love, vis--vis S. But Bykvist
argues that this does not help for it is plausible that agents have stronger reasons to
love or hate things, persons, states of affairs, etc. that are temporally, spatially, and
modally near rather than distant, although this has no bearing on the value of these
objects (Bykvist 2009: 1323). (This leads into the problem to be considered in the
next subsection.) Bykvist concludes that the only remaining option is to take
judgments about reasons to respond to be evaluative. But this means that BPA, and
FA analyses more generally, turn out to be circular.
This raises many issues too complex to be resolved here. Let us make two brief
concluding points. First, while the solitary-goods problem seems a hard nut to crack
for evaluative BPA there seems to be no analogous problem for deontic BPA. This is
because it cannot be right or wrong to perform actions that are logically impossible

to perform. So even if the solitary-goods problem lacks a satisfactory solution, BPA

about rightness and wrongness survive intact. Second, the solitary-goods problem is
premised on the idea that BPA about value reduce the evaluative to the deontic
(Bykvist 2009: 3 n. 3). This is well in line with the approach many buck-passers
about value take. But others take a different tack and suggest that the evaluative as
well as the deontic are analyzable in terms of some more fundamental and primitive
normative notion, such as fittingness, correctness, or a more fundamental notion of
a reason (e.g., Brentano 1969; Ewing 1939, 1947; Danielsson and Olson 2007). Such
a primitive normative, but neither evaluative nor deontic, notion would avoid the
solitary-goods problem and the circularity problem. But there is no agreement on
whether this is a promising strategy; as Bykvist points out, it is well known that one
philosophers primitive is another philosophers mystery (2009: 24).

(e) The wrong kind of reasons problem

It seems obvious that there can be reasons to favor an object although this has no
bearing on the value of that object. Similarly, there can be reasons to blame or praise
agents for performing some action without this having any bearing on the deontic
status of that action. This presents a challenge both for evaluative and deontic BPA
(in this respect it is wider than the solitary-goods problem). To illustrate, imagine
that an evil demon threatens to torture your family unless you admire him, or unless
you blame a person for performing some laudable act, such as donating to Oxfam.
This is the notorious wrong kind of reasons (WKR) problem (see wrong kind of
reasons problem). The problem is to distinguish the right kind of reasons (i.e.,
reasons that do bear on the evaluative or deontic status of objects) from the wrong
kind of reasons. Here we shall briefly look at some proposed solutions that help
reveal the nature and magnitude of the problem. Most of the extensive recent debate
about WKR has concerned evaluative BPA and this will also be the focus of the
remainder of this subsection.
A radical response to the demon scenario is to deny that there is reason to admire
the demon. On this view, the demons threat only gives you reason to try to admire
him, or to bring about that you admire him. In other words, the demons threat is a
reason for action whereas value-implying reasons are reasons for attitudes (Skorupski
2010). But it is difficult to find a rationale for this view that does not seem ad hoc.
First, your family is spared from torture only if you actually admire the demon that
you try to admire him is not enough. Second, it seems odd to maintain that there is
reason for you to try to be, or bring about that you are, in a state you have no reason
to be in and perhaps even have reason not to be in (Rabinowicz and
Rnnow-Rasmussen 2004: 412; Danielsson and Olson 2007: 513f.).
Several proposed solutions trade in one way or other on the idea that right reasons
must be object-given rather than state- (or attitude-)given, i.e., the reason must be
provided by properties of the object of the attitude rather than by properties of the
attitude itself (Parfit 2001). One might think for instance that in a scenario in which
an evil demon threatens to torture your family unless you admire him, there is only

10

a state-given reason to admire the demon, since it is this state of admiration that will
save your family from being tortured. But as Rabinowicz and Rnnow-Rasmussen
(2004: 406) explain, there corresponds to every state-given reason for some response
an object-given reason. In the scenario under consideration this means that the
reason to admire the demon is also provided by a property of the demon, viz., his
property of being such that he will torture your family unless you admire him. Philip
Stratton-Lake (2005: 7924) has responded that this reasoning involves an
objectionable ontological profligacy of reasons. According to Stratton-Lake, if we
think that there is a state-given reason to admire the demon we cannot also think
there is an object-given reason to do so, since that would distort the debate about
how many reasons there are (Stratton-Lake 2005: 793). But we can indeed think
that there is a state-given reason and an object-given reason to admire the demon, if
we think that this reason is one and the same. The reason to admire the demon is the
fact that admiring him would save your family from being tortured. This reason is
provided by more than one property, so while Rabinowicz and Rnnow-Rasmussens
reasoning involves an unobjectionable profligacy of reason-providing properties, it
invites no ontological profligacy of reasons.
Other proposals for how to solve the WKR problem invoke the aforementioned
idea of a fundamental and primitive normative notion of correctness or fittingness
(see preceding subsection). This approach promises to solve both the WKR and the
solitary-goods problems. But as already observed, critics will object that this only
trades one mystery for another. The debate is still very much alive and a fair guess is
that the WKR problem will remain the most serious challenge to both evaluative
and deontic BPA for some time to come.

Summary
BPA comprise two logically independent theses, one concerning the reasonproviding relation (RR) and one concerning analysis of evaluative and deontic
concepts and properties (A). Proponents of BPA take different views about its scope,
but buck-passers about the evaluative agree at least that BPA apply to thin evaluative
concepts like goodness, badness, and betterness. Buck-passers about the deontic
agree at least that BPA apply to thin deontic concepts like wrongness and rightness.
Much of the attraction of BPA probably stems from the thought that the notion of a
reason is in various respects less problematic than unanalyzable notions of goodness
and wrongness. But whether this thought is ultimately tenable is debatable. Finally,
we have seen that there are outstanding challenges for BPA. The solitary-goods
problem and the WKR problem are particularly forceful.
See also: cognitivism; consequentialism; deontology; error theory;
evaluative vs. deontic concepts; ewing, a. c.; goodness, varieties of;
hedonism; incommensurability (and incomparability); instrumental
value; intrinsic value; moore, g. e.; naturalism, ethical; noncognitivism; nonnaturalism, ethical; open question argument; ought

11

implies can; queerness, argument from; reasons; reasons, motivating and

normative; ross, w. d.; supervenience, moral; thick and thin concepts;
value, fitting-attitude account of; value pluralism; wrong kind of
reasons problem
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Scanlon, T. M. 2002. Reasons, Responsibility, and Reliance: Replies to Wallace, Dworkin,
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FURTHER READINGS
Bedke, M. S. 2011. Passing the Deontic Buck, in Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies
in Metaethics, vol. 6. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brnnmark, Johan 2008. Excellence and Means: On the Limits of Buck-Passing, Journal of
Value Inquiry, vol. 42, pp. 30115.
DArms, Justin, and Daniel Jacobson 2000. Sentiment and Value, Ethics, vol. 110, pp. 72248.

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Heuer, Ulrike 2006. Explaining Reasons: Where Does the Buck Stop? Journal of Ethics and
Social Philosophy, vol. 1. At www.jesp.org.
Lang, Gerald 2008. The Right Kind of Solution to the Wrong Kind of Reason Problem,
Utilitas, vol. 20, pp. 47289.
Olson, Jonas 2004. Buck-Passing and the Wrong Kind of Reason, Philosophical Quarterly,
vol. 54, pp. 295300.
Olson, Jonas 2006. G. E. Moore on Goodness and Reasons, Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, vol. 84, pp. 52534.
Rabinowicz, Wlodek, and Toni Rnnow-Rasmussen 2006. Buck-Passing and the Right Kind
of Reasons, Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 56, pp. 11420.
Skorupski, John 2007. Buck-Passing about Goodness, in Toni Rnnow-Rasmussen et al.
(eds.), Hommage Wlodek: 60 Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Wlodek Rabinowicz. At
www.fil.lu.se/hommageawlodek.
Stratton-Lake, Philip 2003. Scanlons Contractualism and the Redundancy Objection,
Analysis, vol. 63, pp. 706.
Suikkanen, Jussi 2009. Buck-Passing Accounts of Value, Philosophy Compass, vol. 4,
pp. 76879.
Vyrynen, Pekka 2006. Resisting the Buck-Passing Account of Value, in Russ Shafer-Landau
(ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 295324.
Zimmerman, M. J. 2007. The Good and the Right, Utilitas, vol. 19, pp. 32653.