A Principle-based Analysis for Numerical Balancing

Abstract

The more recent philosophical literature concerned with foundational questions about normativity often appeals to the notion of normative reasons, or considerations that count in favor or against actions, and their interaction. The interaction between reasons is standardly conceived of in terms of weighing reasons on (normative) weight scales. Knoks and van der Torre [8] have recently proposed a formal framework that allows one to think about the interaction between reasons as a kind of inference pattern. This paper extends that framework by introducing and exploring what we call numerical balancing operators. These operators represent the weights or magnitudes of reasons by means of numbers, and they are particularly well-suited for capturing the intuition of aggregating and weighing reasons. We define a number of concrete classes of balancing operators and explore them using a principle-based analysis.