What are our reasons for acting? Morality purports to give us these reasons, and so do norms of prudence and the laws of society. The theory of practical reason assesses the authority of these potentially competing claims, and for this reason philosophers with a wide range of interests have converged on the topic of reasons for action. This volume contains eleven essays on practical reason by leading and emerging philosophers. Topics include the differences between practical and (...) theoretical rationality, practical conditionals and the wide-scope ought, the explanation of action, the sources of reasons, and the relationship between morality and reasons for action. The volume will be essential reading for all philosophers interested in ethics and practical reason. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that if and only if agents are motivated to act by good reasons for acting, they flourish, since, in so doing, they consciously act in accordance with their nature through virtuous actions. I offer an account of what good reasons for acting consist of reconsidering Aquinas’ natural inclinations. Based on a critical analysis of Anjum and Mumford’s work on dispositions in analytic metaphysics, I argue, contra Hume’s law, that Aquinas’ natural (...) inclinations show that metaphysics is foundational for ethics. I claim that agents flourish as human beings if and only if they consciously act in accordance with natural inclinations. Natural inclinations naturally tend towards goods that depend on the metaphysical structure of human nature, by virtue of which agents have some powers that they should actualise in order to flourish. Intellect and will are the rational powers that distinguish human beings from other living beings. The will naturally desires what is good. If the will, through the input of the intellect, desires what is genuinely good for human beings according to their nature, it also directs the other powers to their own actualisation. Natural inclinations do not strictly necessitate agents to act in accordance with them, because, by virtue of their rational powers, agents should also recognise that they have a reason for acting in accordance with them. Thus, I will suggest that we can best appreciate the importance of natural inclinations from the first-person perspective. (shrink)

Professionals in business and law, healthcare providers, educators, policymakers, consumers, and higher education practitioners value ethical reasoning skills. Because of this, we concentrated campus-wide reaccreditation efforts to help students actively engage in ER. In doing so, we re-conceptualized the ER process, implemented campus-wide ER interventions designed to be experienced by all undergraduate students, and created the ethical reasoning identification test to measure students’ ability to engage in a foundational step in the ER process. Using factor analysis, we demonstrated internal validity (...) evidence for ERIT scores. More specifically, confirmatory factor analysis provided support for a unidimensional factor structure, meaning stakeholders can report and analyze ERIT total scores. The unidimensional factor structure was replicated using two independent samples. Across all samples, ERIT scores demonstrated reliability consistent with professional standards. In addition, we collected external validity evidence for ERIT scores. The ERIT was sensitive to slight differences in ER training. That is, students experiencing a 75-min intervention performed better on the test compared to students without this experience. Overall, results suggested that our ER intervention may effectively increase students ER abilities and the ERIT demonstrated great potential for assessing foundational ethical reasoning skills. To further examine validity, researchers should consider known groups analyses with varying “doses” of the ER intervention, as well as measurement invariance studies. (shrink)

This book provides an argumentation model for means-end reasoning, a distinctive type of reasoning used for problem-solving gand decision-making. Means-end reasoning is modeled as goal-directed argumentation from an agent's goals and known circumstances, and from an action selected as a means, to a decision to carry out the action. Goal-based reasoning for argumentation provides an argumentation model for this kind of reasoning, showing how it is employed in settings of intelligent deliberation where agents try to collectively arrive at (...) a conclusion on what they should do to move forward in a set of circumstances. The book explains how this argumentation model can help build more realistic computational systems of deliberation and decision-making and shows how such systems can be applied to solve problems posed by goal-based reasoning in numerous fields, from social psychology and sociology, to law, political science, anthropology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems, and robotics." -- Back cover. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a new account of teleological reasons, i.e. reasons to perform a particular action because of the outcomes it promotes. Our account gives the desired verdict in a number of difficult cases, including cases of overdetermination and non-threshold cases like Parfit’s famous _Drops of water._ The key to our account is to look more closely at the metaphysics of causation. According to Touborg (_The dual nature of causation_, 2018), it is a necessary condition (...) for causation that a cause increases the security of its effect. Building on this idea, we suggest, roughly, that you have a teleological reason to act in a certain way when doing so increases the security of some good outcome. This represents a middle way between the proposal that you have a reason to act in a certain way just in case this _would_ cause a good outcome and the proposal that you have a reason to act in a certain way just in case this _could_ cause a good outcome. (shrink)

In this paper we describe an approach to practical reasoning, reasoning about what it is best for a particular agent to do in a given situation, based on presumptive justifications of action through the instantiation of an argument scheme, which is then subject to examination through a series of critical questions. We identify three particular aspects of practical reasoning which distinguish it from theoretical reasoning. We next provide an argument scheme and an associated set of critical questions which is (...) able to capture these features. In order that both the argument scheme and the critical questions can be given precise interpretations we use the semantic structure of an Action-Based Alternating Transition System as the basis for their definition. We then work through a detailed example to show how this approach to practical reasoning can be applied to a problem solving situation, and briefly describe some other previous applications of the general approach. In a second example we relate our account to the social laws paradigm for co-ordinating multi-agent systems. The contribution of the paper is to provide firm foundations for an approach to practical reasoning based on presumptive argument in terms of a well-known model for representing the effects of actions of a group of agents. (shrink)

The agent-relative/agent-neutral distintion is widely and rightly regarded as a philosophically important one. Unfortunately, the distinction is often drawn in different and mutually incompatible ways. The agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction has historically been drawn three main ways: the ‘principle-based distinction’, the ‘reason-statement-based distinction’ and the ‘perspective-based distinction’. Each of these approaches has its own distinctive vices (Sections 1-3). However, a slightly modified version of the historically influential principle-based approach seems to avoid most if not all of these vices (Section 4). The distinction (...) so understood differs from numerous other distinctions with which it might easily be confused (Section 5). Finally, the distinction so drawn is important to normative theorizing for a variety of reasons (Section 6). (shrink)

Donald Davidson opens ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’ by asking, ‘What is the relation between a reason and an action when the reason explains the action by giving the agent's reason for doing what he did?’ His answer has generated some confusion about reasons for action and made for some difficulty in understanding the place for the agent's own reasons for acting, in the explanation of an action. I offer here a different account of (...) the explanation of action, one that, though minimal and formal, preserves the proper role for the agent's own reasons for acting. (shrink)

Modern philosophical literature distinguishes between explanatory reasons and justifying reasons. The former are reasons we appeal to in attempting to explain actions and attitudes. The latter are reasons we appeal to in attempting to justify them.

Often, when there is a reason for you to do something, it is the kind of thing to motivate you to do it. For example, if Max and Caroline are deciding whether to go to the Alcove for dinner, Caroline might mention as a reason in favor, the fact that the Alcove serves onion rings the size of doughnuts, and Max might mention as a reason against, the fact that it is so difficult to get parking there this time of (...) day. It is some sign—perhaps not a perfect sign, but some sign—that each of these really is a reason, that Max and Caroline feel the tug in each direction. Mention of the Alcove's onion rings makes them feel to at least some degree inclined to go, and mention of the parking arrangements makes them feel to at least some degree inclined not to. According to some philosophers, reasons for action always bear some relation like this to motivation. This idea is variously known as ‘ reasons internalism’, ‘internalism about reasons ’, or ‘the internal reasons theory’. According to other philosophers, not all reasons are related to motivation in any of the ways internalists say. This idea is known as ‘ reasons externalism’ or ‘externalism about reasons ’. (shrink)

Pluralist pragmatists claim that there are both practical and epistemic reasons for belief, but should they also claim that there are both kinds of reasons for action? I argue that the pluralist pragmatist faces a puzzle here. If she accepts that there are epistemic reasons for action, she must explain a striking asymmetry between action and belief: while epistemic reasons play a large role in determining which beliefs one all-things-considered ought to have, they (...) don’t play much of a role in determining which action one all-things-considered ought to perform. But if the pluralist pragmatist denies that there are epistemic reasons for action, she has trouble explaining why there are no such reasons. After motivating this puzzle, I propose a solution to it. I argue that the pluralist can accept that there are epistemic reasons for action while nonetheless explaining why they don’t matter much to how we all-things-considered ought to act because, if there are epistemic reasons for action, they are so ubiquitous that in most choice situations we have equally strong epistemic reasons for doing anything, which makes any action epistemically permitted, but not required. (shrink)

Introduces various distinctions: between the reasons why we should act, those for which we act, and the reasons why we act. It also distinguishes between Humeanism and anti‐Humeanism in the theory of motivation, psychologism, and anti‐psychologism in the theory of motivation, internalism, and externalism and desire‐based and value‐based theories of normative reasons.

In diesem Beitrag werde ich die Wege untersuchen, auf denen Moraltheoretiker philosophischen Sinn in der These entdecken könnten, daß das Gesetz die moralische Schlechtigkeit von Personen dadurch tolerieren sollte, daß es den Bürgern Rechte zuerkennt, moralisch Falsches zu tun. Dabei vernachlässige ich Fälle, in denen diese Toleranz deshalb angemessen erscheint, weil die Moralität des in Rede stehenden Verhaltens ungewiss oder jedenfalls unter gleichermaßen vernünftigen Personen hinreichend umstritten ist, so daß die Gewährung von Freiheit auch für den Staat als das angemessene (...) Mittel erscheint, die Problematik zu lösen. Stattdessen werde ich mich auf Fälle konzentrieren, in denen der Gesetzgeber davon überzeugt ist, daß das betreffende Verhalten tadelnswert ist, so daß weder Zweifel noch Uneinigkeit über die Bewertung des Verhaltens als ausreichende Gründe dafür genannt werden können, daß der Staat sich der Sache nicht annimmt.Wie ich im 1. Teil zeige, kann sowohl von konsequentialistischen als auch von deontologischen Moraltheorien angenommen werden, daß sie unmoralisches Verhalten erlauben, das keine Verletzung von konsequentialistischen bzw. deontologischen Pflichten darstellt. Regel-Konsequentialisten verlangen Toleranz für akt-konsequentialistisch betrachtete Verstöße, sofern sie im Rahmen ihrer Regeln erfolgen; und Deontologen fordern Toleranz für kategorisch erlaubte Taten, die sub-optimale Konsequenzen haben. Im Hinblick darauf, daß wir eine Tugenpflicht haben könnten, uns zu Personen zu entwickeln, die deontologische Erlaubnisse nicht mißbrauchen, untersuche ich eine Reihe von Gründen, die es nahe legen, daß diejenigen, die sich einer Moraltheorie der Tugendpflichten verbunden fühlen, die die Besorgnis um Handlungen durch eine Besorgnis um den Charakter der Person ersetzt, gleichwohl gute Gründe dafür hat, die Kultivierung eines guten Charakters außerhalb der Reichweite des Staates zu belassen.Die Problematik wird schwieriger, wenn wir von den unmoralischen Handlungen, die keine Pflichten verletzen , zu den unmoralischen Handlungen übergehen, die solche Pflichten verletzen. Kann ein Konsequentialist sich damit einverstanden erklären, daß der Staat Personen die Freiheit zugesteht, etwas zu tun, was konsequentialistisch verboten ist? Kann ein Deontologe nicht nur die Freiheit, Erlaubnisse zu missbrauchen, verteidigen, sondern auch die Freiheit, kategorische Verbote zu verletzen? Im 2. Teil des vorliegenden Beitrages vertrete ich die These, daß es durchaus einleuchtende Gründe dafür geben mag, daß Freiheit entweder intrinsisch oder instrumentell gut ist, um andere intrinsisch gute Dinge zu bewirken, in welchem Fall Konsequentialisten gute Gründe dafür haben, daß der Staat grundsätzlich moralische Schlechtigkeit tolerieren sollte, oder sie zumindest dann tolerieren sollte, wenn dies der Preis dafür ist, größeres Gutes zu befördern. Im 3. Teil behaupte ich, daß selbst unsere beste deontologische Theorie Maximen in sich aufnehmen kann, die es dem Gesetzgeber kategorisch verbieten, den Bürgern die Verletzung kategorischer Maximen zu verbieten. So kann es dem Gesetzgeber z.B. verboten sein, in die Privatsphäre der Bürger einzugreifen, um das Fehlverhalten von Bürgern zu ermitteln. Oder es kann dem Gesetzgeber auferlegt sein, nicht etwas zu verbieten, wenn er dieses Verbot nicht gegenüber allen Bürgern durchsetzen kann.Das Ergebnis meiner Analyse ist, daß die Theorie liberaler Toleranz nicht von der Behauptung vernünftigen Zweifels und der Uneinigkeit zwischen Gesetzgeber und Bürgern abhängt, wie es unter liberalen Politikwissenschaftlern oftmals voraus-gesetzt wird. Selbst dann, wenn vernünftige Personen sich darüber einig sind, daß eine bestimmte Art von Verhalten unmoralisch ist, und selbst dann, wenn bei dem Gesetzgeber kaum Zweifel an der Unmoralität des Verhaltens vorhanden sind, gibt es doch schwerwiegende moralische Gründe dafür, weshalb der Gesetzgeber moralisch verpflichtet sein kann, die Begehung unmoralischer Handlungen zu tolerieren. In this article I explore the ways in which moral theorists might make philosophical sense of the claim that the law ought to tolerate moral wickedness by according citizens legal rights to do moral wrongs. I set aside cases in which tolerance is proper because the morality of the conduct in question is uncertain or sufficiently contested by equally reasonable persons so as to make liberty the appropriate default solution for the state. Instead, I confine my inquiry to cases in which lawmakers are confident that the conduct in question is blameworthy, so that doubt and disagreement cannot be said to be sufficient reasons for staying the hand of the state. As I argue in Part I, both consequentialist and deontological moral theories can be thought to permit immoralities that are not violations of consequentialist or deontological obligations. Rule-consequentialists require tolerance of act-consequential wrongs that are done in the name of their rules; and deontologists require tolerance of consequentially sub-optimal deeds that are categorically permitted. While we may have aretaic obligations to become the kinds of persons who do not abuse deontological permissions, I explore a series of reasons to think that those who subscribe to an aretaic moral theory that substitutes concerns for character for concerns for actions will nevertheless have good grounds to place the cultivation of good character beyond the scope of the state. The question is harder when we move from immoralities that do not violate obligations to immoralities that do violate such obligations. Can consequentialists make sense of the state according persons liberty to do what is consequentially prohibited? Can deontologists defend not just the liberty to misuse permissions but the liberty to violate categorical prohibitions? I argue in Part II that there may be sound arguments for why liberty is either intrinsically good or instrumentally good for the achievement of other intrinsically good things, in which case, consequentialists have sounds reasons for supposing that the state ought to tolerate wickedness, tu cour , or tolerate it when it is a price that purchases greater goods. And I argue in Part III that our best deontological theory may contain within it maxims that categorically prohibit legislators from prohibiting violations of categorical maxims on the part of citizens. For example, they may be enjoined from invading citizens' privacy in the ways required to detect citizens' wrongdoing; or they may be enjoined not to prohibit what they cannot equally enforce against all. The upshot of my analysis is that a theory of liberal tolerance does not depend upon claims of reasonable doubt and disagreement amongst lawmakers and citizens, as is so often supposed amongst liberal political theorists. Even if reasonable persons agree that a kind of conduct is immoral, and even if lawmakers are in little doubt about its immorality, there are powerful moral reasons why lawmakers might be morally obligated to tolerate its persistence. (shrink)

We can often explain a person's action by citing some fact which prompted him to do what he did. For example:Tom quit his job because he was offered more money elsewhere;Dick took his daughter to the dentist because she had a toothache;Harry rushed out of the theater because it was on fire.In each case there are four elements which fit together in a characteristic pattern. The first is the fact that Tom has been offered more money, that Dick's daughter (...) has a toothache, or that the theater in which Harry is sitting is on fire. If the theater were not on fire, for example, then we would have to give a different sort of explanation of why Harry rushed out: we would have to say that he left because he thought it was on fire, not because it was on fire. I shall have more to say about this point later. The second is their knowledge of these facts. If Dick is unaware of the girl's toothache, he can hardly do anything on account of it; and of course the same goes for the other cases. The third element is the attitude which each agent has toward the existing state-of-affairs. Tom wants to earn more money; Dick loves his daughter and doesn't want her to suffer; and Harry, like the rest of us, doesn't want to be burned. Finally, there is the action which is being explained: Tom quits his job, Dick takes the girl to the dentist, and Harry rushes from the theater. (shrink)

This article endorses a familiar, albeit controversial, argument for the existence of group-based reasons for action, but then rejects two doctrines which other advocates of such reasons usually accept. One such doctrine is the willingness requirement, which says that a group-based reason exists only if (sufficient) other members of the group in question are willing to cooperate. Thus the paper argues that there is sometimes a reason, which derives from the rationality of some group action, to (...) play one's part unilaterally in that group action. This seems implausible only because we tend wrongly to accept a second doctrine, monism about the unit of agency. Monism claims that, for any given deliberative problem, there is only one unit of agency to which reasons attach. If we are monists who believe in group-based reasons, the willingness requirement will seem necessary in order to avoid recklessness. We should reject monism, and if we do so we can recognise genuine conflict between individual-based and group-based reasons, and in doing so we can explain, without endorsing the willingness requirement, why we should not act recklessly. (shrink)

Our aim in this essay is to present some David Hume’s contributions on reasons for action’s debate. We tried to do this mainly from the discussions presented in the chapters “Of liberty and necessity”, from his An enquiry concerning human understanding, and “Of the general principles of morals” and “Concerning moral sentiment”, both from his An enquiry concerning the principles of morals. Starting from Bernard Williams' provocation in his description of what would be a “sub-Humean” model about (...) class='Hi'>reasons for action, we intend to present what the “properly Humean” model of understanding the subject would be. The efforts for this attempt were spent in three different ways, respectively concerning in to reconstruct the Humean argument. The relationships between feelings, sentiments, reason, actions, motivation for action and moral judgments are discussed, in the first section, while tributaries of the debate of the dispositions of the understanding about freedom and necessity that are related to Hume’s attempts to comprehend the human condition in its epistemological aspects. In the second and in the third sections, we seek to expose the possible understanding of the concepts mentioned above within the Humean framework to moral philosophy itself. From this, we can affirm that for Hume the reasons for action, that is, the elements that could be characterized as motivators for actions and behaviors can be said to reside ultimately in the subjectivity of the human condition and be originated from human sensitivity which is in turn constituted by passions, emotions, will, desires and moral sentiments. (shrink)

This chapter considers the centrality of principles in Kant’s moral philosophy, their distinctively ‘Kantian’ character, why Kant presents a ‘metaphysical’ system of moral principles and how these ‘formal’ principles are to be used in practice. These points are central to how Kant thinks pure reason can be practical. These features have often puzzled Anglophone readers, in part due to focusing on Kant’s Groundwork, to the neglect of his later works in moral philosophy, in which the theoretical preliminaries of that first (...) essay are properly articulated. In part, however, these puzzles stem, directly or indirectly, from Kant’s opposition to moral empiricism, which is bound to puzzle Anglophone readers, whose default orientation is empiricist. Accordingly, particular attention is paid to Kant’s reasons for rejecting moral empiricism and for developing an alternative to it, to Kant’s account of how his universalization tests serve as criteria of morally obligatory, permissible or prohibited actions and to his account of what is morally wrong with actions which violate those criteria. Examining these points provides a compelling synopsis of Kant’s system of moral principles, centring on the key terms ‘practical reason’, ‘law’, ‘maxim’ and ‘Categorical Imperative’. (shrink)

What sorts of consideration can be normative reasons for action? If we systematize the wide variety of considerations that can be cited as normative reasons, do we find that there is a single kind of consideration that can always be a reason? Desire-based theorists think that the fact that you want something or would want it under certain evaluatively neutral conditions can always be your normative reason for action. Value-based theorists, by contrast, think that what plays (...) that role are evaluative facts (or the facts that subvene them) about what you want, such as the fact that having it would be good in some way. This paper argues that value-based theorists are wrong; if we try to find a single kind of consideration that can always be normative reason, we find that sometimes our reason is the fact that we want something and not any corresponding evaluative fact. (shrink)

The reasons for which I act are normally my reasons; I represent goal states and the means to attaining them, and these guide me in action. Can your reason ever be the reason why I act? If I haven’t yet taken up your reason and made it mine by representing it for myself, then it may seem mysterious how this could be possible. Nevertheless, the paper argues that sometimes one is entitled to another’s reason and that what (...) one does is to be explained in terms of it. The case for this draws on aspects of the interplay between reasons and intentions in individual agency that have not received the attention they deserve. The paper closes by exploring the limits of interpersonal entitlement to reasons by formulating a hypothesis about which reasons one might be entitled to, and by considering how defeaters can undermine entitlement. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the claim that some desires provide reasons in virtue of their connection with conscious affective experiences like feelings of attraction or aversion. I clarify the nature of affective desires and several distinct ways in which affective desires might provide reasons. Against accounts proposed by Ruth Chang, Declan Smithies and Jeremy Weiss, I motivate doubts that it is the phenomenology of affective experiences that explains their normative or rational significance. I outline an alternative approach that centralises (...) the function of such experiences. (shrink)

This paper presents a series of studies (total N=579) which demonstrate that folk judgments concerning the reasonableness of decisions and actions depend strongly on whether they engender positive or negative consequences. A particular decision is deemed more reasonable in retrospect when it produces beneficial consequences than when it produces harmful consequences, even if the situation in which the decision was taken and the epistemic circumstances of the agent are held fixed across conditions. This finding is worrisome for the law, where (...) the reasonable person standard plays a prominent role. The legal concept of reasonableness is outcome-insensitive: whether the defendant acted in a reasonable fashion or not depends exclusively on her context of action, no matter how things play out. Folk judgments of reasonableness are thus inconsistent with the legal concept of reasonableness. Problematically, in common law jurisdictions, the decision whether a defendant’s behavior was reasonable or not is frequently (though not necessarily) delegated to a lay jury. (shrink)

This paper proposes and defends an account of what it is to act for reasons. In the first part, I will discuss the desire-belief and the deliberative model of acting for reasons. I will argue that we can avoid the weaknesses and retain the strengths of both views, if we pursue an alternative according to which acting for reasons involves taking something as a reason. In the main part, I will develop an account of what it is (...) to take something as a reason for action. On the basis of this, I will then offer a new account of what it is to act for reasons. (shrink)

Our aim in this essay is to make some reflections on John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian ethics’ possible contributions about the discussion on reasons for action. We tried to do this mainly exposing the arguments from the chapters “What utilitarianism is” and “Of the ultimate sanction of the principle of Utility” from his “Utilitarianism”. Our efforts for this attempt are spent at three different ways: in the first two, we tried to reconstruct the argument put forward by the Victorian (...) philosopher and, from this basis, the third way in turn consists in postulate some thoughts about these issues that in according to our observations can be asked in order to comprehend the structuring of human agency. In summary we argue that for Stuart Mill rationality of action constitutes itself in that: if happiness is the greatest good, individuals act for their own happiness, and because of that they seek their own good; however, as this is not an agent-relative perspective but insofar a neutral-agent one, this reasoning must be extended to the general scope. Thus, understanding happiness in the sense that it is a design of every single human act, Stuart Mill consequentialism argues regarding the whole general amount of happiness and not only subjective self-realization of a particular human being. Actions, therefore, which in the personal domain do not aim at anything other than the happiness or good of the own individual him/herself, have a rational justification to be guided in order to what promotes the good or general happiness, thus characterizing the principle of hedonic utility as a moral rule and reason for action as humanity's pattern of action. (shrink)

Retributivism is often portrayed as a rights-respecting alternative to consequentialist justifications of punishment. However, I argue that the political legitimacy of retribution is doubtful precisely because retribution privileges a controversial conception of the good over citizens’ rights and more widely shared, publicly accessible interests. First, even if retribution is valuable, the best accounts of its value fail to show that it can override or partially nullify offenders’ rights to the fundamental forms of liberty of which criminal punishment paradigmatically deprives them. (...) Second, the importance of publicly justifying basic forms of coercion on the basis of broadly shared values is a good reason to think that the state should not punish for retribution even those citizens whose actions have created a state interest in punishing them that overrides or partially nullifies their presumptive rights. (shrink)

When performing an action of a certain kind, an agent typically has se- veral reasons for doing so. I shall borrow Davidson’s term and call these rationalising reasons (Davidson 1963, 3). These are reasons that allow us to understand what the agent regarded as favourable features of such an action. (There will also be reasons against acting, expressing unfavour- able features of such an action, from the agent’s point of view.) I shall say (...) that R is a rationalising reason of agent X’s for K-ing iff R consists of (i) a desire of X’s to L and (ii) a belief of X’s that K-ing promotes L-ing (to be discussed shortly). It is frequently said that when an agent X is K-ing and has several rationalising reasons for K-ing, not all of those reasons are reasons for which X is K-ing, that motivate X’s K-ing, or that explain X’s K-ing. In this paper I challenge this view. (shrink)

In this paper I consider whether there can be such things as epistemic reasons for action. I consider three arguments to the contrary and argue that none are successful, being either somewhat question-begging or too strong by ruling out what most epistemologists think is a necessary feature of epistemic justification, namely the epistemic basing relation. I end by suggesting a "non-cognitivist" model of epistemic reasons that makes room for there being epistemic reasons for action and (...) suggest that this model may support moral realism. (shrink)

It is often said nowadays that to understand pleasure we must understand it as affording us a reason for or an explanation of action. It is only from the standpoint of the agent that we can avoid being misled. Both Professor Nowell-Smith and Mr. Manser have argued along these lines; and Dr. Kenny has written that “pleasure is always a reason for action” and has elucidated what he means by a footnote: “I do not mean that a thing’s (...) being pleasant is always a sufficient reason for doing it; there may be strong reasons for abstaining. I mean merely that it is always silly to ask a man why he wants pleasure.” When I first saw this point made, I had the perhaps not uncommon philosophical experience of immediately finding it both lucid and convincing, but then, afterwards gradually becoming less and less clear about the source of my conviction. The reasons for my obfuscation are as follows. In one crucial sense anything can afford an agent with a reason for action. It depends upon what the agent wants and upon the projects in which he is engaged. Moreover, without having any strong reasons for abstaining from what will give me pleasure, I may not be at all moved by the prospect of pleasure. As I write this paper I can list a dozen activities or experiences which would afford me pleasure. I have no strong reason for abstaining; I do not particularly enjoy writing papers; I am not writing with a great sense of urgency; I have the time and the money to indulge myself. Yet I do not rush to open a Guinness or Mr. Alfred Grossman’s new novel. So that far from it being silly to ask me why I do not apparently want pleasure at the moment, it is a question that I find forced upon me. But if this question makes sense, there is at least a problem as to why “it is always silly to ask a man if he wants pleasure.” For one might expect the two questions to stand or fall together. This is the problem to which I address myself in this paper. But in order to do so I must first take up certain points from recent discussions which are in danger of preventing a solution. (shrink)

Actions to prepare for and prevent pandemics are a common topic for bioethical analysis. However, little attention has been paid to global catastrophic biological risks more broadly, including pandemics with artificial origins, the creation of agents for biological warfare, and harmful outcomes of human genome editing. What’s more, international policy discussions often focus on economic arguments for state action, ignoring a key potential set of reasons for states to mitigate global catastrophic biological risks: moral reasons. In this (...) paper, I frame the mitigation of such risks as a global public good, and I explore three possible categories of moral reasons that might motivate states to provide this global public good: nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and interstate obligations. Whilst there are strong objections to moral nationalism as a reason for states to act, moral cosmopolitanism may provide a broad reason which is further supplemented for individual states through the elaboration of interstate moral obligations. The obligations I consider are moral leadership, fairness, and reciprocity. Moral reasons for individual states action may more effectively or more appropriately motivate states to mitigate global catastrophic biological risks. (shrink)

This essay defends a realist account of normative reasons for action that can disclaim the need for a realist account of moral value. The account of reasons for action aims to undermine the widely held thought that such reasons must be constituted by, or at least derived from, some of the psychological states of the agent whose reasons they are. On the view defended here, there can be correct moral judgments that capture the (...) class='Hi'>reasons there are for acting in certain ways; and the reasons themselves are just some of the morally relevant facts of the situation about which the judgment is made. Establishing such an account relies essentially, I argue, on an appeal to substantive ethical theory, to a theory that allows for the attribution of truth to the practical judgments in question. The account can in fact be equally well supported by ethical theories as otherwise diverse as those of Aristotle and Kant. The resulting account of reasons for action is a version of moral realism, but one that is not committed to defending a realist account of the nature of moral value. (shrink)

This paper compares current ways of modeling the inferential structure of practical reasoning arguments, and proposes a new approach in which it is regarded in a modular way. Practical reasoning is not simply seen as reasoning from a goal and a means to an action using the basic argumentation scheme. Instead, it is conceived as a complex structure of classificatory, evaluative, and practical inferences, which is formalized as a cluster of three types of distinct and interlocked argumentation schemes. Using (...) two real examples, we show how applying the three types of schemes to a cluster of practical argumentation allows an argument analyst to reconstruct the tacit premises presupposed and evaluate the argumentative reasoning steps involved. This approach will be shown to overcome the limitations of the existing models of practical reasoning arguments within the BDI and commitment theoretical frameworks, providing a useful tool for discourse analysis and other disciplines. In particular, applying this method brings to light the crucial role of classification in practical argumentation, showing how the ordering of values and preferences is only one of the possible areas of deep disagreement. (shrink)

On a ‘comparative’ conception of practical reasons, reasons are like ‘weights’ that can make an action more or less rational. Bernard Gert adopts instead a ‘toggle’ conception of practical reasons: something counts as a reason just in case it alone can make some or other otherwise irrational action rational. I suggest that Gert’s conception suffers from various defects, and that his motivation for adopting this conception – his central claim that actions can be rational without (...) there being reasons for them – does not require adoption of the toggle conception. The more intuitive comparative conception of reasons for action can accommodate the insight. (shrink)

Rowbottom (2008) has recently challenged my definition of epistemic reasons for action and has offered an alternative account. In this paper, I argue that less than giving an 'alternative' definition, Rowbottom has offered an additional condition to my original account. I argue, further, that such an extra condition is unnecessary, i.e. that the arguments designed to motivate it do not go through.

Human life is infused with different kinds of normativity (e.g. instrumental, epistemic, conventional, moral). Different theorists have proposed vastly differing views on how to conceptualize the different kinds of normativity. Whereas social domain theorists have asserted that moral, conventional, and personal kinds of normativity constitute distinct thematic domains and are viewed as such even by young children, other theorists have denied that moral and nonmoral kinds of normativity are thematically distinguishable. The current paper proposes a third approach that may show (...) a way out of the controversy. Instead of viewing normative issues as belonging to one or more distinct thematic domains, it would be more accurate, both philosophically and psychologically speaking, to recognize that any given action may be grounded in multiple, non-exclusive reasons for action. Moral, conventional, and personal reasons for action may be defined in terms of what one believes one can respectively justify to all rational interlocutors, particular social partners, and oneself. The three kinds of reasons for action may accordingly be visualized as dimensions of normativity that together comprise a three-dimensional coordinate “space of reasons.” To illustrate the dimensions approach, 16 examples are given of actions whose values vary independently on each of the three dimensions. (shrink)

Social norms are based on social standards. The relevant standards come in two forms. Compliance with social standards of evaluation may be understood as goal-oriented behavior under the constraints of external and internal sanctions. Compliance with norms, which directly refer to specific ways of conduct, may not. Therefore, although norm-guided behavior may be consistent with utility maximizing, no satisfying account of norm compliance can be given within a Rational Choice framework or any other framework solely based on instrumental rationality.

The essays in the volume range from foundational issues of meta-ethics to the practical application of natural law theory to ethical problems such as nuclear ...

The morality of human actions consists in their reasonableness. An act is reasonable if doing that sort of thing under the circumstances is a reasonable application, in the particular circumstances, of general principles of action which are intelligible and obvious to virtually everyone. Such applications to particular events are conclusions, usually guided by derivative and subordinate principles of natural law and of human law, and do not, therefore, have the certitude of science; in fact, natural law principles occasionally have (...) exceptions. The sphere of human law, narrower than the sphere of natural law which includes the whole field of morality, is the interpersonal actions of men which bear some relation to the common good. Much of human law is an expression of or an application of the moral law. A human law is just only insofar as it is reasonably related to the achievement of the common good, the law has been enacted by a competent legislator and the burdens it imposes are not unreasonably distributed. The system of laws is effective to regulate conduct within society as a whole, not because of the individual’s fear of punishment, but because the society regards the law as a standard for right action. (shrink)

There is a problem with a very common theory of the nature of action. The problem stems from the fact that causation by practical reasons may be a necessary condition for being an intentional action, but it can’t be a sufficient condition. After all, desires and intentions are caused by practical reasons that rationalize them, but they’re clearly not actions. Even if all actions are events or changes and desires and intentions aren’t, the acquistion of a (...) desire or an intention is an event, but it isn’t always an action. If we can’t understand the nature of action in terms of causation by practical reasons, how should we understand it? The problem only arises if you believe that causation by practical reasons is not sufficient. Maybe the kinds of reasons that rationalize actions are different from the kinds of reasons that rationalize desires and intentions. It’s natural to suppose that reasons for A-ing have to be about A-ing. If the mental state that causes you to turn on the light counts as a reason for turning on the light, then the notion of turning on the light has to figure in the content of the cause. You might believe that turning on the light is a means to an end. Or you might just want to turn on the light. If reasons for A-ing are always about A-ing, but reasons for desiring or intending are only about the objects of desire or intention, if they’re first-order rather than secondorder, then maybe the kinds of reasons that rationalize actions are different from the kinds of.. (shrink)

What kind of thing is a reason for action? Are reasons for action subjective states of the agent, such as desires and/or beliefs? Or are they, rather, objective features of situations that favor certain actions? The suggestion offered in this article is that neither strategy satisfies. What is needed is a third category for classifying reasons which makes them out to be neither purely subjective nor purely objective. In brief: a reason for action is a (...) feature of the situation that matters to the agent. On this proposal, subjective states of the agent are indeed indispensable in characterizing reasons for action. Precisely which set of situational features matter to an agent—precisely what shape the agent experiences the situation as having—depends on the agent's psychological makeup. Those features themselves are not psychological states, however, and it is precisely those features that constitute the agent's reasons for action. (shrink)

Ingmar Persson offers an original view of the processes of human action: deliberating on the basis of reasons for and against actions, making a decision about what to do, and implementing the decision in action in a way that makes the action intentional.

Would you want to be operated on by a surgeon trained at a medical school that did not evaluate its students? Would you want to fly in a plane designed by people convinced that the laws of physics are socially constructed? Would you want to be tried by a legal system indifferent to the distinction between fact and fiction? These questions may seem absurd, but these are theories being seriously advanced by radical multiculturalists that force us to ask them. These (...) scholars assert that such concepts as truth and merit are inextricably racist and sexist, that reason and objectivity are merely sophisticated masks for ideological bias, and that reality itself is nothing more than a socially constructed mechanism for preserving the power of the ruling elite. In Beyond All Reason, liberal legal scholars Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry mount the first systematic critique of radical multiculturalism as a form of legal scholarship. Beginning with an incisive overview of the origins and basic tenets of radical multiculturalism, the authors critically examine the work of Derrick Bell, Catherine MacKinnon, Patricia Williams, and Richard Delgado, and explore the alarming implications of their theories. Farber and Sherry push these theories to their logical conclusions and show that radical multiculturalism is destructive of the very goals it wishes to affirm. If, for example, the concept of advancement based on merit is fraudulent, as the multiculturalists claim, the disproportionate success of Jews and Asians in our culture becomes difficult to explain without opening the door to age-old anti-Semitic and racist stereotypes. If historical and scientific truths are entirely relative social constructs, then Holocaust denial becomes merely a matter of perspective, and Creationism has as much "validity" as evolution. The authors go on to show that rather than promoting more dialogue, the radical multiculturalist preferences for legal storytelling and identity politics over reasoned argument produces an insular set of positions that resist open debate. Indeed, radical multiculturalists cannot critically examine each others' ideas without incurring vehement accusations of racism and sexism, much less engage in fruitful discussion with a mainstream that does not share their assumptions. Here again, Farber and Sherry show that the end result of such thinking is not freedom but a kind of totalitarianism where dissent cannot be tolerated and only the naked will to power remains to settle differences. Sharply written and brilliantly argued, this book is itself a model of the kind of clarity, civility, and dispassionate critical thinking which the authors seek to preserve from the attacks of the radical multiculturalists. With far-reaching implications for such issues as government control of hate speech and pornography, affirmative action, legal reform, and the fate of all minorities, Beyond All Reason is a provocative contribution to one of the most important controversies of our time. (shrink)

Would you want to be operated on by a surgeon trained at a medical school that did not evaluate its students? Would you want to fly in a plane designed by people convinced that the laws of physics are socially constructed? Would you want to be tried by a legal system indifferent to the distinction between fact and fiction? These questions may seem absurd, but there are theories being seriously advanced by radical multiculturalists that force us to ask such questions. (...) These scholars assert that such concepts as truth and merit are inextricably racist and sexist, that reason and objectivity are merely sophisticated masks for ideological bias, and that reality itself is nothing more than socially constructed mechanism for preserving the power of the ruling elite. In Beyond All Reason, liberal legal scholars Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry mount the first systematic critique of radical multiculturalism as a form of legal scholarship. Beginning with an incisive overview of the origins and basic tenets of radical multiculturalism, the authors critically examine the work of Derrick Bell, Catherine MacKinnon, Patricia Williams, and Richard Delgado, and explore the alarming implications of their theories. Farber and Sherry push these theories to their logical conclusions and show that radical multiculturalism is destructive of the very goals it wishes to affirm. If, for example, the concept of advancement based on merit is fraudulent, as the multiculturalists claim, the disproportionate success of Jews and Asians in our culture becomes difficult to explain without opening the door to age-old anti-Semitic and racist stereotypes. If historical and scientific truths are entirely relative social constructs, then Holocaust denial becomes merely a matter of perspective, and Creationism has as much "validity" as evolution. The authors go on to show that rather than promoting more dialogue, the radical multiculturalist preferences for legal storytelling and identity politics over reasoned argument produces an insular set of positions that resist open debate. Indeed, radical multiculturalists cannot critically examine each others' ideas without incurring vehement accusations of racism and sexism, much less engage in fruitful discussion with a mainstream that does not share their assumptions. Here again, Farber and Sherry show that the end result of such thinking is not freedom but a kind of totalitarianism where dissent cannot be tolerated and only the naked will to power remains to settle differences. Sharply written and brilliantly argued, this book is itself a model of the kind of clarity, civility, and dispassionate critical thinking which the authors seek to preserve from the attacks of the radical multiculturalists. With far-reaching implications for such issues as government control of hate speech and pornography, affirmative action, legal reform, and the fate of all minorities, Beyond All Reason is a provocative contribution to one of the most important controversies of our time. (shrink)

I defend the relatively orthodox view that reasons for action are premises in good practical reasoning, against recent counterexamples that suggest that, like “government house” moral justifications, some reasons are to be ignored in deliberation. I also explain, positively, what is right about the orthodoxy. Unless reasons are premises in good practical reasoning, reasons cannot be normative in the way they are usually taken to be, and relatedly, are unfit to play certain familiar theoretical and (...) related everyday roles that give many appeals to reasons their distinctive point. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.1 (2005) 55-57 [Access article in PDF] Unconscious Reasons Eric Matthews Keywords reason-explanation, consciousness, purpose It is argued that Church's puzzlement over the idea that we can have reasons that we do not know about is itself puzzling. In daily life, we find no difficulty in understanding this idea. The problems arise only when we try to give a theoretically satisfactory account of (...) the notion of "the unconscious" in the context of a Cartesian picture of the "mind" as synonymous with "consciousness." We need to see the difference between the rational/non-rational distinction and that between the conscious and the unconscious. We (and other animals) act for reasons, not because we have something called "consciousness," but because we have purposes: we are animals, not machines.Jennifer Church finds "something deeply puzzling" about the idea that we can have reasons that we do not know about. I find this puzzlement very surprising, as, I think, would many others. Most of our reasons for doing what we do are not, and could not be, consciously entertained, and we did not need to wait for Freud before we were aware that some of our reasons for acting are so deeply hidden that we need help from others to uncover them. Freud himself is supposed to have said about the unconscious (I'm afraid I can't give the reference for this quotation, which was dredged up from memory), "Das haben die Dichter immer gekannt"—that was always known by the poets.Because human beings are not machines, whose movements can be given a complete causal explanation in terms of the laws of physics, a reason-explanation for most of the ways they behave is called for. That is, they have reasons for doing what they do. If they had to "consciously think through," in Church's words, all of their reasons for acting, they would never get down to doing anything: before they did anything, they would have to think through their reasons for doing it; and, because thinking through is also an action for which they have reasons, they would have to think through their reasons for thinking through, and so on ad infinitum. I owe this point to Gilbert Ryle, and may as well give one of his typical examples (slightly adapted) to illustrate it. The good tennis player acts intelligently: she has reasons for the movements she makes, but of necessity she does not think through these reasons, otherwise the game of tennis would never get started, let alone finished. Indeed, she may well be unable to explain in words, even afterward, why she moves her racket this way or that.As for the "Freudian" sorts of examples, we are all familiar, both from literature and from life, with the phenomena of self-deception, or of simple lack of self-knowledge. Someone, for instance, believes himself to be motivated by the highest moral principle when he gives money to the beggar in the shop doorway: but perhaps his real reason is a desire to cultivate a certain image of himself, or to be seen by others to be doing the right thing, or a fear that the beggar might embarrass [End Page 55] him in some way if he does not give him something substantial. I am not suggesting that people always deceive themselves in this way, only that the situation described is perfectly intelligible to everyone and so not at all puzzling. Nor is it in the slightest degree unintelligible that people should sometimes act without being able to say why: "I did it on impulse," they say, or "I acted instinctively"—which is just another way of saying "I just don't know why I acted as I did."Church herself accepts that our explanations of behavior are "now replete with appeals to unconscious beliefs and desires": but why only "now"—haven't they always been? And if we resort to such appeals so commonly, if indeed, as Searle says, their explanatory power is so great, then that seems to imply that we understand perfectly well what... (shrink)

Resources for Feminist Research, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 44-45, 1985 In this brief article, written in 1984 and published the following year, Lucinda Vandervort sets out a comprehensive agenda for enforcement of sexual assault laws in Canada. Those familiar with her subsequent writing are aware that the legal implications of the distinction between the “social” and “legal” definitions of sexual assault, identified here as crucial for interpretation and implementation of the law of sexual assault, are analyzed at length in (...) “Mistake of Law and Sexual Assault: Consent and Mens Rea” (1986), published at (1987-88) 2(2) Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 233 309. In that article the author argued that most mistakes about consent are not mistakes about a “fact” that may sometimes negative mens rea, but are actually mistakes about the law that afford accused no excuse under either Canadian common law or statutory criminal law. She argued further that consent must be interpreted as “voluntary agreement” and must be affirmatively and unequivocally communicated in order to operate as an effective waiver of a person’s legal right to be free from interference with his or her bodily integrity. That article was a central reference point in the consultations leading to the 1992 amendments to the sexual assault provisions in the Canadian Criminal Code and in some key decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada in sexual assault cases in the 1990’s. As a result of a gradual transformation of theoretical analysis of the law of mens rea and consent in Canada, culpable awareness is now understood by many jurists and criminal law theorists quite differently than it was twenty-five years ago. As Vandervort acknowledged in her 1984 Agenda for Action, however, clarity in legal theory and legal doctrine is no guarantee of how sexual assault laws will operate in practice. Theory and practice, doctrine and its implementation, often diverge. This phenomenon is still seen in some decisions taken at the trial, pre-trial, and pre-charge stages in sexual assault cases. Police, prosecutors, and many trial judges, like accused, may often be influenced by traditional attitudes about sexual consent and mistaken about the law of consent. Accordingly, in her recent work Vandervort re-visits and re-examines the exercise of discretion by police, prosecutors, and the judiciary. An example is her 2009 article “Legal Subversion of the Criminal Justice Process? Judicial, Prosecutorial and Police Discretion in R. v. Edmondson, Kindrat and Brown” in Sexual Assault Law, Practice & Activism in a Post-Jane Doe Era, edited by Elizabeth Sheehy (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2012). In this and some of her other recent work, the distinctions between social and legal norms and questions of fact and law, previously analyzed with the objective of clarifying the law, are used to control the effects of social ignorance and partiality in the handling of sexual assault complaints by decision-makers in the criminal justice system at trial and pre-trial. Lucinda Vandervort’s published and unpublished legal and philosophical writings on sexual assault and sexual assault law illustrate the development of a socio-legal scholar’s “Agenda for Action” into a principled, pragmatic, open-ended exercise in “institutional design.” Across two centuries, from the revolutionary era of the 18th century to the present, other radical egalitarians would recognize both the impetus for the project and many features of the political and cultural resistance to it. (shrink)

This paper gives a new, proof-theoretic explanation of partial-order reasoning about time in a nonmonotonic theory of action. The explanation relies on the technique of lifting ground proof systems to compute results using variables and unification. The ground theory uses argumentation in modal logic for sound and complete reasoning about specifications whose semantics follows Gelfond and Lifschitz’s language. The proof theory of modal logic A represents inertia by rules that can be instantiated by sequences of time steps or events. (...) Lifting such rules introduces string variables and associates each proof with a set of string equations; these equations are equivalent to a set of partial-order tree-constraints that can be solved efficiently. The defeasible occlusion of inertia likewise imposes partial-order constraints in the lifted system. By deriving an auxiliary partial order representation of action from the underlying logic, not the input formulas or proofs found, this paper strengthens the connection between practical planners and formal theories of action. Moreover, the general correctness of the theory of action justifies partial-order representations not only for forward reasoning from a completely specified start state, but also for explanatory reasoning and for reasoning by cases. (shrink)