Conor McHugh - Getting Things Right: Fittingness, Reasons, and Value

The ideas that were to become this book were first formulated in the summer of 2012. During the long journey from those first inchoate ideas, we have benefited from the feedback and encouragement of many people, to all of whom we are very grateful. They include Sophie Archer, Sam Asarnow, Olivia Bailey, Selim Berker, Davor Bodroi, John Brunero, Richard Chappell, Jean-Marie Chevalier, Justin DArms, Tyler Doggett, Fabian Dorsch (19742017), Tom Dougherty, Julien Dutant, Luke Elson, Pascal Engel, Davide Fassio, Giulia Felappi, Suki Finn, Guy Fletcher, Daniel Fogal, Magnus Frei, Jan Gertken, Javier Gonzlez de Prado Salas, Marie Guillot, Grace Helton, Frank Hoffman, Brad Hooker, Ulf Hlobil, Chris Howard, Thomas Hurka, Benjamin Kiesewetter, Uriah Kriegel, St.John Lambert, Dave Langlois, Woo Ram Lee, Yair Levy, Clayton Littlejohn, Arturs Logins, Errol Lord, Susanne Mantel, Beri Marui, Miriam McCormick, Anne Meylan, Jonas Olson, Hille Paakkunainen, David Plunkett, Meret Polzer, Franziska Poprawe, Jolle Proust, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Andrew Reisner, Susanna Rinard, Debbie Roberts, Simon Robertson, Rich Rowland, Nils Sfstrm, Eva Schmidt, Thomas Schmidt, Mark Schroeder, Kieran Setiya, David Shoemaker, Matthew Silverstein, Martin Smith, Daniel Star, Philip Stratton-Lake, Christine Tappolet, Naomi Thompson, Josefa Toribio, Lee Walters, Ralph Wedgwood, and Daniel Wodak.

A version of the whole manuscript was discussed by the Normativity Reading Group at Southampton in 201920, and by a Princeton-Humboldt Graduate Seminar co-organized by Thomas Schmidt and Michael Smith in 2021. In each case we received extensive, searching and constructive feedback. We also received detailed and helpful written comments on the whole manuscript from Philip Fox andas a then-anonymous reviewer for OUPJustin Snedegar. These comments all led to significant improvements.

Material from the book has been presented in various places, too numerous to list, over the years. The book has benefited a great deal from the helpful comments and discussion on these occasions.

There are doubtless many others besides those mentioned above who have provided feedback. We are no less grateful to them, and we apologize for their omission.

Special thanks are due to our Southampton colleagues Alex Gregory, Brian McElwee, Kurt Sylvan, and Daniel Whiting, with whom we have discussed material and issues from this book over many years. Without such insightful and generous interlocutors we would have produced a much worse book. More generally, our department at Southampton has been a tremendously stimulating, supportive, and collegial environment for this research. We are grateful to all our colleagues for making that the case.

Our editor at OUP, Peter Momtchiloff, was supportive and patient throughout the long development of this project. Many thanks to him. Thanks also to Saranya Ravi, our production manager, and Atus Mariqueo-Russell, who prepared the index.

Our research has been supported by several institutions and funders. The Arts and Humanities Research Council funded the project Normativity: Epistemic and Practical (201416, grant number AH/K008188/1) at the University of Southampton, during which central parts of the research for the book took shape. We were also lucky enough to spend periods of research leave at other institutions. Conor McHugh spent part of 201415 as a visiting researcher with the Logos group at the University of Barcelona. Jonathan Way spent two weeks in June 2018 at the Humboldt University of Berlin, funded by the Erasumus+ programme, and 201819 as a Murphy Fellow at Tulane University. We are grateful to these institutions for these invaluable opportunities.

Parts of the book include or are based on material from the following previously published works:

Fittingness First. Ethics, 126, 575606 (2016). Copyright The University of Chicago, DOI 10.1086/684712.

What is Good Reasoning? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 96, 153174 (2018). DOI 10.1111/phpr.12299.

All Reasons Are Fundamentally for Attitudes. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 21, 151174 (2022). DOI 10.26556/jesp.v21i2.1341.

Finally, we each want to express thanks of a different kind to those without whose personal support the writing of this book would have been, at least, harder and drearier.

Conor McHugh has been helped more than she knows by Marie Guillots inexhaustible kindness, patience, and encouragement. The arrival of ilis Guillot McHugh may not have accelerated the completion of the book, but it certainly made things more fun. It is Conors great good fortune, for which he is humbly grateful, to share his life with them both. His greatest debt is to his parents, Brianne and Reggie McHugh. He dedicates his contribution to this book to them, with love.

Jonathan Way would like to thank Hannah Young. Her love and support have made the final years of this projecta period of lockdowns as well as the challenges of completing a bookmuch easier, and very much happier. Above all, he is grateful to his family, and especially his parents, Frances Pitt-Brooke and David Way. He dedicates his contribution to this book to them, with love.