In this paper I explore the epistemic significance of practical reasons to inquire. I have in mind the range of practical reasons one might have to do such things as collect (additional) evidence, consult with various sources, employ certain methods or techniques, double-check one’s answer to a question, etc. After expanding the diet of examples in which subjects have such reasons, I appeal to features of these sorts of reason in order to question the motivation (...) for pragmatic encroachment in epistemology. Once we reject pragmatic encroachment, it can seem that we are forced to treat practical reasons to inquire as having no distinctly epistemic significance. This is not so; I conclude by sketching an alternative account of what the epistemic significance of such reasons might be. (shrink)

In this paper, I raise two questions about epistemic commitments, and thus, indirectly, about our epistemic agency. Can we rationally defend such commitments when challenged to do so? And if so, how?

Postema's article discusses, lucidly and probingly, a central jurisprudential idea, which he calls the autonomy thesis. In its general form it is shared by many writers who otherwise support divergent accounts of the nature of law. It is, according to Postema, a thesis that is meant to account for a core idea, that the law's “defining aim is to … unify public political judgment and coordinate social interaction.” In some form or another this core idea is probably supported by Postema (...) himself. However, in this article his concern is to criticize what he takes to be the widespread belief that it is explained by the autonomy thesis. The autonomy thesis is flawed and must be rejected. In arguing to that conclusion he succumbs to one of the unattractive tendencies of contemporary legal and political philosophy, namely he does not discuss anyone's view, but a family of views. This allows one to construct one's target by selecting features from a variety of authors so that the combined picture is in fact no one's view, and all those cited as adhering to it would disagree with it. (shrink)

There is an explanatory constraint on practical reasons: practical reasons have to be the kinds of things that we can act for. Some philosophers, notably Bernard Williams, have argued that the explanatory constraint favours internalism about reasons: for an agent to have a reason to x, it is at least a necessary condition that she would, after ideal deliberation, be motivated to x. Internalism suggests that naturalism about reasons is more plausible for, in this (...) view, reasons are psychological states. However, reasons must not only be the kinds of things we can act for, at least some reasons must be good reasons, i.e. normative requirements. Derek Parfit argues that internalist, naturalist accounts cannot capture the normative aspect of reasons. He takes this to be a point in favour of his own externalist, non-naturalist account. I ask first whether Williams' account does fail to account for the normativity of reasons as Parfit argues, and second whether Parfit's externalist account can adequately meet the explanatory constraint. Although I claim that the answer to the first question is yes and the second no, the answer to both questions turns on the nature of practical rationality. My case stands if practical rationality is procedural, and falls if practical rationality is substantive. I argue, however, that the burden of proof is on those who, like Parfit, wish to defend a substantive account of practical rationality. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.24(2) 2005: 97-108. (shrink)

Constructivism as a distinct metaethical position has garnered significant interest in recent years due in part to Sharon Street’s theory, Humean metaethical constructivism. According to Street’s account, practical reasons are constructed by individual valuing entities. On this view, then, whether a particular reason applies to an individual is completely contingent upon what that individual actually values. In this article I argue for the recognition of multiple sources of practical reasons and values, including both individuals and communities. (...) The resulting view, which I call layered constructivism, strengthens the constructivist project and begins to resolve some of the common critiques leveled against Street’s Humean constructivism. To begin, layered constructivism retains many of the benefits of Street’s approach, such as providing a naturalistic picture of normativity and maintaining a close tie between practical reasons and individual motivation. Moreover, the inclusion of collective sources of normativity and the importance of the resulting values for individuals is supported by recent empirical research on norms. Layered constructivism can also respond to the common concerns that Humean constructivism fails to adequately account for the immense influence our social lives have on our normative reasons and values, and that it entails an objectionable level of contingency. Finally, acknowledging the existence of differently constructed reasons helps us make sense of the pervasive human experience of navigating a variety of seemingly incommensurable normative reasons. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Confronted with the “wrong kind of reason problem”, several proponents of the fitting attitude analysis of emotional values have argued in favor of an epistemic approach. In such a view, an emotion fits its object because the emotion is correct. However, I argue that we should reorient our search towards a practical approach because only practical considerations can provide a satisfying explanation of the fittingness of emotional responses. This practical approach is partially revisionist, particularly because it (...) is no longer an analysis of final value and because it is relativistic. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.The FA Analysis of Emotional Values and Practical Reasons*Volume 51, Issue 1Stephane Lemaire DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000224Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. The FA Analysis of Emotional Values and Practical Reasons*Volume 51, Issue 1Stephane Lemaire DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000224Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. The FA Analysis of Emotional Values and Practical Reasons*Volume 51, Issue 1Stephane Lemaire DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000224Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Jedno od najznačajnijih pitanja u filozofiji morala jest predstavljaju li moralni zahtjevi ujedno i razloge za djelovanje prema kojima se trebaju ravnati sve racionalne osobe. Prema jednoj koncepciji, moralni apsolutizam tvrdi da sve racionalne osobe imaju dovoljan razlog da poštuju moralne zahtjeve. Prema tom shvaćanju, moralni relativizam je tvrdnja da neće svi racionalni djelatnici imati dovoljan razlog da poštuju iste moralne zahtjeve. manje je istraženo pitanje što se događa ako pokušamo povezati filozofski naturalizam s pitanjem daju li moralni zahtjevi razloge (...) za djelovanje svim racionalnim djelatnicima. u ovom radu bavimo se potonjim pitanjem. neki autori smatraju da prihvaćanje filozofskog naturalizma nije važno za ovo pi- tanje. Drugi autori smatraju da filozofski naturalizam implicira relativizam u pogledu praktičnih razloga koji nije spojiv s moralnim apsolutizmom. u radu argumentiramo za to da su oba gledišta donekle ispravna. tvrdimo da ako se naturalizam shvati kao ontološka tvrdnja onda se možemo složiti s time da naturalizam ne igra ulogu u razrješenju debate između relativista i apsolutista. međutim, ako se naturalizam shvati kao metodološko gledište, onda smatramo da naturalizam podržava relativizam u pogledu praktičnih razloga, tj. ideju da moralni zahtjevi ne pružaju razloge za djelovanje svim racionalnim djelatnicima. (shrink)

A compact edition of Mr. Beck's excellent translation of the second Critique, slightly revised, together with a helpful short introduction and a bibliography.--V. C. C.

A long debate in aesthetics concerns the reasoned nature of criticism. The main questions in the debate are whether criticism is based on (normative) reasons, whether critics communicate reasons for their audience’s responses, and if so, how to understand these critical reasons. I argue that a great obstacle to making any progress in this debate is the deeply engrained assumption, shared by all sides of the debate, that reasons can only be either theoretical reasons (i.e., (...) those that explain what to believe or what propositions are true) or practical reasons (i.e., those that explain what is to be done or what actions are good/required/called for/otherwise worthy of doing). My aims are (1) to put pressure on this assumption that, if there are critical reasons, they must be either theoretical or practical (the EITHER/OR assumption), and (2) to suggest that, if there are critical reasons, the most central among them are neither theoretical nor practical (NEITHER/NOR). (shrink)

We often say that one reason is stronger, or weightier, than another. These are metaphors. What does normative strength or weight really consist in? Scanlon (2014) offers a novel answer to this question. His answer appeals to counterfactuals of various kinds. I argue that appealing to counterfactuals leads to deep problems for his view.

Some things are reasons for us to perform certain actions. That it will spare you great pain in the future, for example, is a reason for you to go to the dentist now, and that you are already late for work is a reason for you not to read the next article in the morning paper. Why are such considerations reasons for or against certain actions? Constructivism offers an intriguing answer to this question. Its basic idea is often (...) encapsulated in the slogan that reasons are not discovered but made by us. This book elaborates the constructivist idea into a fully fledged account of practical reasons, makes its theoretical commitments explicit, and defends it against some well-known objections. It begins with an examination of the distinctive role that reason judgements play in the process of practical reasoning. This provides the resources for an anti-representationalist conception of the nature of those judgements, according to which they are true, if they are true, not because they accurately represent certain normative facts, but because of their role in sound reasoning. On the resulting view, a consideration owes its status as a reason to the truth of the corresponding reason judgement and thus, ultimately, to the soundness of a certain episode of reasoning. Consequently, our practical reasons exhibit a kind of mind-dependence, but this does not force us to deny their objectivity. (shrink)

According to a common thesis about normative reasons for action, you have a reason to perform a given action only if you can act for that reason. This thesis has long had broad appeal and i...

I reject three theories of practical reason according to which a rational agent's ultimate reasons for acting must be unchanging: that one is rationally obliged in each choice (1) to be prudent--to advance all the desires one foresees ever having (the self-interest theory), rather than just those one has at the time of choice, or (2) to cause states of affairs that are good by some timeless, impersonal measure (Thomas Nagel), or (3) to obey permanent, universalizable deontic principles (...) (Kant). Whether a rational agent's reasons consist in her desires, in the goodness of certain states, or in deontic principles, her reasons now can ask her to take different, conflicting things as reasons later; and contradiction results of rationally obliging her not to take the new things for reasons. (shrink)

This collection of new essays explores in depth how and why we act when we follow practical standards, particularly in connection with the authority of legal texts and lawmakers. The essays focus on the interplay of intentions and practical reasons, engaging incisive arguments to demonstrate both the close connection between them, and the inadequacy of accounts that downplay this important link. Their wide-ranging discussion includes topics such as legal interpretation, the paradox of intention, the relation between moral (...) and legal obligation, and legal realism. The volume will appeal to scholars and students of legal philosophy, moral philosophy, law, social science, cognitive psychology, and philosophy of action. (shrink)

Practical reasoning is a process of reasoning that concludes in an intention. One example is reasoning from intending an end to intending what you believe is a necessary means: 'I will leave the next buoy to port; in order to do that I must tack; so I'll tack', where the first and third sentences express intentions and the second sentence a belief. This sort of practical reasoning is supported by a valid logical derivation, and therefore seems uncontrovertible. A (...) more contentious example is normative practical reasoning of the form 'I ought to φ, so I'll φ', where 'I ought to φ' expresses a normative belief and 'I'll φ' an intention. This has at least some characteristics of reasoning, but there are also grounds for doubting that it is genuine reasoning. One objection is that it seems inappropriate to derive an intention to φ from a belief that you ought to φ, rather than a belief that you ought to intend to φ. Another is that you may not be able to go through this putative process of reasoning, and this inability might disqualify it from being reasoning. A third objection is that it violates the Humean doctrine that reason alone cannot motivate any action of the will. This paper investigates these objections. (shrink)

This essay promotes the superiority of cognitivist expressivism over noncognitivism and normative realism. Cognitivist expressivism regards normative judgments as emotionally reasonable but non-truth-apt. It stresses a distinction between normative differences and disagreements and rejects several contrasting views: communicative rationalism, discursive nonnaturalism, and moral universalism. It also explains why moral thinking often appears to display a progressive direction but questions the proposition that previous social practices embodied moral errors demonstrable from the standpoint of the present. The result is that philosophers have (...) not earned a right to make normative knowledge claims. Rather, practical reasonableness requires a form of intellectual modesty that promotes honest discussion and moral compromise among moral and political antagonists. (shrink)

Normative judgments are typically subject to emotional reasons that cannot be justified by reference to facts alone. As a result, practical disputes sometimes go unsettled in ways that support James Lenman's view of moral inquiry as politics. An important consequence is that reasonableness is often preferable to truth as a criterion of good practical judgment. Although the role of emotions suggests metaethical expressivism as preferable to realism for analysing practical reasoning, reasonableness transforms expressivism from a form (...) of noncognitivism into a theory that recognizes cognitively rich forms of approval and disapproval. Defensible normative intuitions have good justifying reasons even when these reasons permit faultless differences of political opinion and ethical practice. Despite implying deep normative pluralism, however, a cognitivist form of expressivism explains how deliberative agents can construct and maintain reasonable moral communities. (shrink)

Practical Reason and Norms focuses on three problems: In what way are rules normative, and how do they differ from ordinary reasons? What makes normative systems systematic? What distinguishes legal systems, and in what consists their normativity? All three questions are answered by taking reasons as the basic normative concept, and showing the distinctive role reasons have in every case, thus paving the way to a unified account of normativity. Rules are a structure of reasons (...) to perform the required act and an exclusionary reason not to follow some competing reasons. Exclusionary reasons are explained, and used to unlock the secrets of orders, promises, and decisions as well as rules. Games are used to exemplify normative systems. Inevitably, the analysis extends to some aspects of normative discourse, which is truth-apt, but with a diminished assertoric force. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Hume accepts two claims. The first is that it is not possible for a human agent, having adopted an end, to remain committed to it, have it in view, and be indifferent to what he or she acknowledges as the proper means of realizing it, where indifference is the absence of a favoring attitude.1 The second is that, other things being equal, an agent who fails through weak resolve to take the acknowledged means to (...) an acknowledged end violates a norm of practical agency akin to Kant’s hypothetical imperative understood as a command to take the means—that is, to do what has the prospect of realizing the ends one happens to have adopted. I begin with the first claim because some.. (shrink)

Douglas Walton has done extensive and valuable work on the concepts of presumption and practical reasoning. However, Walton’s attempt to model practical reasoning as presumptive is misguided. The notions of “inference” and of the burden of proof shifting back and forth between proponent and respondent are misleading and lead to counterintuitive consequences. Because the issue in practical reasoning is a proposal, not a proposition, there are, in the standard case, several perfectly good reasons on both sides (...) simultaneously, which implies that argument appraisal necessarily contains a subjective element—a fact argumentation theory needs to conceptualize. (shrink)

The judgement that provides the content of intention and coincides with the conclusion of practical reasoning is a normative judgement about what to do, and not, as Anscombe and McDowell argue, a factual judgement about what one is doing. Treating the conclusion of practical reasoning as expressing a recommendation rather than a verdict undermines McDowell’s argument; the special nature of practical reasoning does not preclude its conclusions being normative. Anscombe’s and McDowell’s claim that practical self-knowledge is (...) productive of action may be accommodated by identifying the content of practical knowledge not with the conclusion but with a premise of practical reasoning – a kind of practical reasoning that occurs within rather than before action. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction I II.

Widespread conceptions of practical reasoning confront us with a choice between its practicality and its objectivity: between its efficacious, world-changing character and its accountability to objective rational standards. This choice becomes unnecessary, I argue, on an alternative view embodied by the thesis that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action. I lay bare and challenge the assumptions underlying the rejection of that thesis and outline a defense of its picture of practical reasoning against common objections. On (...) such a picture, practical reasoning provides a principle not externally imposed upon an action but rather constitutive of it. (shrink)

Many philosophres have attempted to argue from the "Humean Theory of Motivation" (HTM) and the "Internalism Requirement" (IR) to the "Humean Theory of Practical Reason" (HTPR). This argument is familiar, but it has rarely been stated with sufficient precision. In this paper, I shall give a precise statement of this argument. I shall then rely on this statement to show two things. First, the HTPR is false: it is incompatible with some extremely plausible assumptions about weakness of will or (...) akrasia. Second, this argument for the HTPR is invalid: even if the HTM and the IR are true, they do not provide any support whatsoever to the HTPR. (shrink)

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant argues that morality obliges us to believe in the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. I argue, however, that in two late essays – “The End of All Things” and “On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy” – Kant provides moral counterarguments to that position: these beliefs undermine moral agency by giving rise to fanaticism or fatalism. Thus, I propose, the Kantian position on the justification of religious (...) belief is ultimately antinomial. One ought, moreover, to understand Kant’s considered position concerning the immortality of the soul and the existence of God to be similar to that he proposes concerning the theoretical ideas of reason in the Appendix to the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason: they are necessary as regulative ideas guiding moral action, not endorsed or even postulated as propositions. In other words, they are subject matters not of belief, but of hope. (shrink)

This book is a study of the role of intellect in human action as described by Thomas Aquinas. One of its primary aims is to compare the interpretation of Aristotle by Aquinas with the lines of interpretation offered in contemporary Aristotelian scholarship. The book seeks to clarify the problems involved in the appropriation of Aristotle's theory by a Christian theologian, including such topics as the practical syllogism and the problems of akrasia. Westberg argues that Aquinas was much closer to (...) Aristotle than is often recognized, and he puts forward important new interpretations of the relation of intellect and will in the stages of intention, deliberation, decision, and execution. In the concluding section of the book, he shows how this new interpretation yields fruitful insights on a range of theological topics, including sin, law, love, and the moral virtues. (shrink)

I argue here for a view I call epistemic separabilism , which states that there are two different ways we can be evaluated epistemically when we assert a proposition or treat a proposition as a reason for acting: one in terms of whether we have adhered to or violated the relevant epistemic norm, and another in terms of how epistemically well-positioned we are towards the fact that we have either adhered to or violated said norm. ES has been appealed to (...) most prominently in order to explain why epistemic evaluations that conflict with the knowledge norm of assertion and practical reasoning nevertheless seem correct. Opponents of such a view are committed to what I call epistemic monism , which states that there is only one way we can be properly evaluated as epistemically appropriate asserters and practical reasoners, namely in terms of whether we have adhered to or violated the relevant norm. Accepting ES over EM has two significant consequences: first, a “metaepistemological” consequence that the structure of normative epistemic evaluations parallels that found in other normative areas , and second, that the knowledge norms of assertion and practical reasoning are no worse off than any alternatives in terms of either explanatory power or simplicity. (shrink)

Practical Reasoning and Ethical Decision presents an account of practical reasoning as a process that can explain action, connect reasoning with intention, ...

Might practical reason be a species of theoretical reason? Can we make sense of practical deliberation as a special kind of theoretical cogitation over what you will do? The prospects of such a reduction may appear dim: it seems like it is one thing to be weighing up what you should (intend to) do, in light of your various reasons for action, and quite another thing altogether to be figuring out what you should believe you will do, (...) in light of your evidence. Here I aim to show how this reduction of our powers of practical reason to a branch of theoretical reason might be defensibly pulled off. On the view to be defended, your intentions to act are really beliefs about what you are will do, practical reasoning is nothing over and above the enterprise of predicting what you are going to do in light of evidence alone, and the constitutive aim of action turns out to be the same as the constitutive object of theoretical reason – namely, to believe the truth. (shrink)

According to a suggestion by Williamson, outright belief comes in degrees: one has a high/low degree of belief iff one is willing to rely on the content of one’s belief in high/low-stakes practical reasoning. This paper develops an epistemic norm for degrees of outright belief so construed. Starting from the assumption that outright belief aims at knowledge, it is argued that degrees of belief aim at various levels of strong knowledge, that is, knowledge which satisfies particularly high epistemic standards. (...) This account is contrasted with and shown to be superior to an alternative proposal according to which higher degrees of outright belief aim at higher-order knowledge. In an “Appendix”, it is indicated that the logic of degrees of outright belief is closely linked to ranking theory. (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)

At least since Descartes's Meditations philosophers in the West have been concerned to defend the rationality of our beliefs from the threat of epistemological skepticism. The idea that there might be nothing which we know, or more radically, which we have even the slightest reason to believe, is one that many philosophers have thought to be deserving of serious attention. It seems somewhat odd, therefore, that there has not been similar attention given to what one might call practical skepticism. (...) Is it not also possible that there is nothing which we have even the slightest reason to do? Of course, there is a sense in which epistemological skepticism might be thought to be the more basic problem. If there is nothing which we have any reason to believe, then it will follow that there is nothing which we have any reason to do. If some proposition is a reason that we have for doing something it must at least be the case that we have some reason to believe that proposition. But is practical skepticism merely a species of epistemological skepticism? I doubt it. (shrink)

Presenting the most comprehensive and lucid account of the topic currently available, Robert Audi's "Practical Reasoning and Ethical Decision" is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of reason in ethics or the nature of human action. The first part of the book is a detailed critical overview of the influential theories of practical reasoning found in Aristotle, Hume and Kant, whilst the second part examines practical reasoning in the light of important topics in moral psychology (...) - weakness of will, self-deception, rationalization and others. In the third part, Audi describes the role of moral principles in practical reasoning and clarifies the way practical reasoning underlies ethical decisions. He formulates a comprehensive set of concrete ethical principles, explains how they apply to reasoning about what to do, and shows how practical reasoning guides moral conduct. (shrink)

Professors Richard Fumerton, Ausonio Marras, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong have provided valuable and challenging examinations of The Architecture of Reason, and I am grateful for their work in producing these critiques and for the insight and ingenuity they exhibit in pursuing some of the difficult issues. In the space I have, I cannot do full justice to all the questions and problems they raise, but I will indicate along what lines the resources of the book provide for responses that may advance (...) understanding of the topics in question. I will discuss the essays in the order that seems most natural given the overall picture of my account these replies are intended to sketch. (shrink)

A putative problem for the moral particularist is that he or she fails to capture the normative relevance of certain considerations that they carry on their face, or the intuitive irrelevance of other considerations. It is argued in response that mastery of certain topic-specific truisms about a subject matter is what it is for a reasonable interlocutor to be engaged in a moral discussion, but the relevance of these truisms has nothing to do with the particularist/generalist dispute. Given that (...) class='Hi'>practical reasoning is plausibly a form of abductive reasoning, and is therefore non-monotonic, any arbitrary addition of information can change the degree of support evidence offers for a conclusion. Given this arbitrariness, it is no objection to the particularist if he or she represents the ‘normative landscape as flat’ in a way that does not display the ‘obvious’ relevance of certain considerations. The normative landscape is flat and our best account of practical reasoning represents it precisely as such. Appealing to a distinction between practical reasoning and moral reasoning does not help to resurrect this pseudoproblem for particularism. Key Words: abductive inference • default reasons • moral particularism • practical reasoning. (shrink)