When I see two owls and then two more owls and conclude that I see four owls, I am responding to reasons, and it better not be my choice to believe that two plus two always equals four. If I am a rational person, I will have that belief by necessity, whether I wanted to or not. So it's not that strange to discuss responding to reasons out of necessity.

If I am told my loving you had to happen because of some Freudian stuff about my childhood, that might be degrading or deflationary, but if I am told it had to happen because you are such a wonderful person that I couldn't possibly resist your charms, or because we are so incredibly compatible, then necessity seems very romantic.

Duties concern things that are voluntary. I do think that if you have a moral duty to bring me back the book you borrowed, that implies, roughly, that your doing so depends on your wanting to do so: if you want to bring me the book, you will. This is not the case if you are stuck at some airport due to a snowstorm, far away from me. This, however, is not the same as "ought" implying a metaphysical "can".

Other things being equal, ill will is worse than moral indifference (as in causing suffering for money vs causing suffering to cause suffering), though things are rarely equal.

Sometimes I suspect that there are two prototypes of philosophers who write about humans - I call them "celestials" and "terrestrials", without implying that celestials have their heads in the clouds or that terrestrials have theirs buried in the ground. The difference between these two types is not so much in their theories but in whether or not they would find it a very sad thing if it turned out that the only way a human is superior to a wolf is this: the human brain is significantly more capacious and complex.

I think it's ok to have wishes that conflict with each other - it's irrational to try to make them both come true, but not irrational simply to have them.

When I see two owls and then two more owls and conclude that I see four owls, I am responding to reasons, and it better not be my choice to believe that two plus two always equals four. If I am a rational person, I will have that belief by necessity, whether I wanted to or not. So it's not that strange to discuss responding to reasons out of necessity.