• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.117
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• pp.113-136
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• 2011

According to the thesis of the publicity of reasons, practical reasons are public in their nature: the normative force of reasons may extend across different agents. Wallace argues that the normative mode of public reasons can be exhausted by what he calls the requirement of non-interference. I argue that the publicity thesis as he presents it equally applies to both (non-special) interpersonal relations and special relationships. At first, Wallace's version of the publicity thesis may seem incompatible with the fact that there exists reasons of positive aid. He says that when these reasons obtain in the case of interpersonal relations, they are accommodated by relevant specific moral principles. I defend this claim by showing that there is a kind of internal relation between the publicity thesis and moral principles in question. It is true that the reasons of positive aid obtain in the case of special relationships as well. I show that in this case such reasons are grounded by the requirements of the given special relationships themselves. I argue that the logical consequence of these claims is what I call the dualistic conception of our practical reasoning about what to do and that this dualism does not raise a serious challenge to the publicity thesis. The overall arguments of this paper, I believe, make us to be "realistic" about the philosophical significance of the thesis in question in moral discourses.