How Should We Understand the Balancing View of Ought?

Thomas Schmidt argues that a widely held combination of views about reasons and ought—the Balancing View of Ought and the claim that reasons against Q are reasons for not-Q—is extensionally adequate only if it is complemented by two principles of reasons transmission. In this paper I present three problems for Schmidt’s package of views and two problems for his transmission principles considered in isolation. I then defend a rival package of views—a version of the Balancing View and the claim that reasons against Q are reasons that bear on Q with negative weight—that avoids these problems and secures extensional adequacy without Schmidt’s principles. I conclude that friends of the Balancing View should prefer my package of views.