现实理性：一个理解经济行为的框架

该将人类理性的现实表现作为理解经济行为的框架。该框架强调,主观上人类有效用最大化的追求,但由于感知觉和思维加工能力的缺陷,行为表现经常偏离理论理性。章从认知心理学的角度介绍Kahneman和Tversky的主要研究成果,包括影响最大的前景理论,其他有关算法式和偏误的研究,以及决策和情绪的关系。章的最后还介绍对Kahneman和Tversky的批评。     

Freedom and Practical Reason

Practical reasons, roughly, are reasons to have our desires and goals, and to do what might secure these goals. I argue for the view that lack of freedom to do otherwise undermines the truth of judgments of practical reason. Thus, assuming that determinism expunges alternative possibilities, determinism undercuts the truth of such judgments. I propose, in addition, that if practical reason is associated with various values in a specified way, then determinism precludes such values owing to determinism's imperiling practical reason.

Practical Reason and the Stability Standard

Practical reasoning, reasoning about what to do, is a very familiar activity. When we think about whether to cook or to go out for dinner, to buy a house or rent, or to study law or business, we are engaged in practical reasoning. If the kind of reasoning we engage in is truly a rational process, there must be some norms or standards that govern it; the process cannot be arbitrary or random. In this paper I argue that one of the standards that governs practical reasoning is the stability standard. The stability standard, I argue, is a norm that is constitutive of practical reasoning: insofar as we do not take violations of this norm to be relevant considerations, we do not count as engaged in reasoning at all. Furthermore, I argue that it is a standard we can explicitly employ in order to deliberate about our ends or desires themselves. Importantly, this standard will not require that some ends are prescribed or determined by reason alone. The stability standard, therefore, allows us to retain some of the attractive features of instrumentalism without accepting the implication that there is no rational way to evaluate ends.     

Theories of Practical Reason

Leading theories of practical reason can be grouped into one of four families: psychologism, realism, compatibilism, and Aristotelianism. Although there are many differences among the theories within each family, I ignore these in order to ask which family is most likely to deliver a satisfactory philosophical account of reasons for action. I articulate three requirements we should expect any adequate theory of practical reason to meet: it should account for (1) how reasons explain action, (2) how reasons justify action, and (3) how an agent can act for the reason that justifies her action. Only the Aristotelian theory, however, can meet all three requirements. It avoids the problems that plague the other theories by grounding reasons neither in psychological states nor in facts totally independent of the agent in question, but in the nature of the kind of creature the agent is. Our explanations of action need descend to the biographical only when explaining why a human being does not act in ways characteristic of her kind. The Aristotelian view of practical reason, then, appears to be the most promising program for future work.     

Beyond Assimilation and Multiculturalism: A Critical Review of the Debate on Managing Diversity

In the past few years, both assimilationist and multiculturalist approaches to the management of immigration and diversity have been called into question. This article is an attempt to critically review and examine the key points of the debate regarding assimilationism and multiculturalism, while arguing for an interculturalist model of socio-cultural incorporation that reconciles cultural diversity with social cohesion. This paper looks at both European and North American cases and contends that when support for diversity occurs within a framework of social justice and political equality, and when all members of society are permitted to fully participate in the public space, the result is a more cohesive, albeit plural, civic community.     

Analytical Dispositionalism and Practical Reason

The paper examines the plausibility of analytical dispositionalism about practical reason, according to which the following claims are conceptual truths about common sense ethical discourse: i) Ethics: agents have reasons to act in some ways rather than others, and ii) Metaphysical Modesty: there is no such thing as a response independent normative reality. By elucidating two uncontroversial assumptions which are fundamental to the common sense commitment to ethics, I argue that common sense ethical discourse is most plausibly construed as committed to the denial of metaphysical modesty, and thereby as committed to the existence of a response independent normative reality.     

Sentimentalist Practical Reason and Self-Sacrifice

ABSTRACT

For obvious reasons sentimentalists have been hesitant to offer accounts of moral reasons for action: the whole idea at least initially smacks of rationalist notions of morality. But the sentimentalist can seek to reduce practical to sentimentalist considerations and that is what the present paper attempts to do. Prudential reasons can be identified with the normal emotional/motivational responses people feel in situations that threaten them or offer them opportunities to attain what they need. And in the most basic cases altruistic/moral reasons involve the empathic transfer of one person’s prudential reasons and emotions to another person or persons who can help them. Practical/moral reasons for self-sacrifice also depend on empathic transfer and can vary in strength with the strength of the transfer.     

Revisionary Dispositionalism and Practical Reason

This paper examines the metaphysically modest view that attributionsof normative reasons can be made true in the absence of a responseindependent normative reality. The paper despairs in finding asatisfactory account of normative reasons in metaphysically modestterms.     

Practical Reason and Ethics Above the Line

In John McDowell's recent Woodbridge Lectures at Columbia University, he characterizes Wilfrid Sellars's master thought, in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, as drawing a line between two types of characterizations of states that occur in people's mental lives: Above the line are placings in the logical space of reasons, and below it are characterizations that do not do that (McDowell, 1998, p. 433). In this essay, I ask what would be required for ethics to be above the line. More precisely, what would be necessary to characterize episodes as actions, and persons as agents, so as for them to be answerable to moral criticism in light of rationally relevant considerations. The requirements are twofold: that practical reason motivate in virtue of the content of its deliverances; and that there be a will which is sensitive to those deliverances, and which chooses freely. A widespread procedural account of practical reason is examined and found insufficient to place ethics above the line; and a suspicion is raised that McDowell himself, and Jonathan Dancy, do not have a robust enough conception of will to avoid the below the line ethics they accuse their opponents of defending.     

Pleasure,Desire and Practical Reason

This paper examines the role of stability in the constitution of pleasure and desire, its relevance to the intimate ways the two are related and to their role in the constitution of practical reason.     

Psychologism, Practical Reason and the Possibility of Error

Psychologism is the view that practical reasons are psychological states. It is widely thought that psychologism is supported by the following principle governing explanation:
TF. The difference between false and true beliefs on A's part cannot alter the form of the explanation which will be appropriate to A's actions. (TF) seems to imply that we always need to cite agents' beliefs when explaining their actions, no matter whether those beliefs are true or false. And this seems to vindicate psychologism. I argue, however, that the standard argument for psychologism which includes (TF) as a premise in fact fails to establish its intended conclusion. As a result, the overall case for psychologism is not as strong as it may initially seem.     

Skepticism about Practical Reason: Transcendental Arguments and Their Limits

Transcendental arguments offer a particularlypowerful strategy for combating skepticism. Such arguments, after all, attempt to show thata particular skepticism is not simply mistakenbut inconsistent or self-refuting. Whilethus tempting to philosophers struggling withskepticism of various sorts, the boldconclusions of these arguments have longrendered them suspicious in the eyes of many. In fact, in a famous paper from 1968 BarryStroud develops what is often taken to be adecisive case against transcendental argumentsin general. Recent work in the area of practical reason,however, suggests that such arguments stillhave their defenders. Theorists such as JamesDreier and Christine Korsgaard have reliedexplicitly on transcendental arguments tojustify certain principles of practical reason. Can such arguments overcome Stroud's objection? In what follows, I argue that they can. However effective Stroud's general criticismmay be in other areas, it does not apply in therealm of practical reason. Nevertheless, thereare strict limits on how far transcendentalarguments can take us. In particular, despiteKorsgaard's efforts, they cannot succeed inestablishing a rational foundation formorality.