Externalism about reasons and the problem of reasonable disagreement: a hybridist solution
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2026.e109066Palabras clave:
externalism about reasons, practical normativity, reasonable disagreement, hybridism about reasons, value pluralismResumen
This paper investigates the challenges that externalism about reasons faces in accounting for the source of practical normativity, with particular emphasis on the problem of reasonable disagreement. Externalism seeks ground reasons in objective normative facts, thereby securing their independence from agents’ desires or volitional states. Yet this framework struggles to explain cases in which rational, well-informed, and sincere agents reach divergent conclusions about what they have most reason to do. Such cases reveal an explanatory gap in externalism, which tends either to misrepresent disagreement as irrational or to overlook its structural role in our normative practices. The paper argues that hybridism about reasons offers a more adequate account by integrating both discovered and created reasons within a unified framework. Hybridism preserves the objectivity of most reasons while also recognizing the agent’s capacity to generate new reasons through acts of commitment when discovered reasons fail to settle the balance. This dual structure not only resolves practical conflicts in incommensurable and parity cases but also provides a richer explanation of how reasonable disagreement can coexist with normative objectivity. Finally, the article highlights the broader implications of this model for debates in moral and legal philosophy, suggesting that hybridism offers a principled way of reconciling value pluralism with the authority of law and morality.
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