Reasons and Attitude Intensity

Suppose you have most reason to worry. Then you ought to worry. But how worried should you be? This chapter gives an explanation of facts about appropriate attitude intensity in terms of facts about reasons. A package of principles is defended according to which every reason to hold (or not hold) an attitude is a reason to hold (or not hold) the attitude above various intensities. It is argued that these principles give an elegant explanation of the facts at issue, once they’re combined with the idea that reasons derivatively favour the optimal ways of doing what they non-derivatively favour (Kiesewetter & Gertken 2021). By appealing to reasons, we can not only explain which attitudes we ought to hold, but also how strongly we ought to hold them.