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.

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.     

Mackie on Practical Reason

I argue that John Mackie’s treatment of practical reason is both attractive and unjustly neglected. In particular, I argue that it is importantly different from, and much more plausible than, the kind of instrumentalist approach famously articulated by Bernard Williams. This matters for the interpretation of the arguments for Mackie’s most famous thesis: moral scepticism, the claim that there are no objective values. Richard Joyce has recently defended a version or variant of moral scepticism by invoking an instrumentalist theory like Williams’. I argue that this is a serious strategic mistake.

Brandom on Practical Reason

Robert Brandom claims that language expressing pro-attitudes makes explicit proprieties of practical inference. This thesis is untenable, especially given certain premises which Brandom himself endorses. Pro-attitude vocabulary has the wrong grammatical structure; other parts of vocabulary do the job he ascribes to pro-attitude vocabulary; the thesis introduces implausible differences between the inferential consequences of desires and intentions, and distorts the interpretation of conditional statements. Rather, I suggest, logical vocabulary can make proprieties of practical inference explicit, just as the inferentialist says it can for theoretical inference.     

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.     

康德实践理性的事实概念及其对自由的证明

康德实践理性的事实概念指的是道德律或道德律的意识,而道德律本身实际上是道德律的意识。道德律是某种自身肯定的东西,它作为事实肯定了纯粹实践理性的客观实在性,并通过理性的这一积极的概念,证明了它自身在实践上的客观实在性。正是通过道德律这一事实,在思辨哲学那里只具有消极性的自由的原因性的概念,在实践哲学中获得了积极的规定,也成为了一个“事实”。     

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.     

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.     

Practical Reason,Sympathy and Reactive Attitudes

This paper has three aims. First, I defend, in its most radical form, Hume's scepticism about practical reason, as it applies to purely self‐regarding matters. It's not always irrational to discount the future, to be inconstant in one's preferences, to have incompatible desires, to not pursue the means to one's ends, or to fail to maximize one's own good. Second, I explain how our response to the “irrational” agent should be understood as an expression of frustrated sympathy, in Adam Smith's sense of sympathy, rather than a genuine judgement about Reason. We judge these people because we cannot imaginatively identify with their desires and attitudes, and this is frustrating. Third, compared to the standard cognitive view, my account better explains the nature of our criticism of the “irrational,” and, by portraying “irrationality” as a cause of upset to other people, provides a better normative basis for being “rational.”     

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.     

Response to Gert on Practical Reason

This is a response to Joshua Gert’s criticisms of my book Reasons from Within and defense of his own contrasting position.     

Transcendental Arguments and Practical Reason in Indian Philosophy

This paper examines some Indian philosophical arguments that are understandable as transcendental arguments—i.e., arguments whose conclusions cannot be denied without self-contradiction, insofar as the truth of the claim in question is a condition of the possibility even of any such denial. This raises the question of what kind of self-contradiction is involved—e.g., pragmatic self-contradiction, or the kind that goes with logical necessity. It is suggested that these arguments involve something like practical reason—indeed, that they just are arguments against the primacy of “theoretical reason.” This characterization illuminates a characteristically Indic appeal to ordinary language.

Desiring at Will and Humeanism in Practical Reason

Hume's farmer's dilemma is usually construed as demonstrating the failure of Humeanism in practical reason and as providing an argument in favor of externalism or the theory of resolute choice. But thedilemma arises only when Humeanism is combined with the assumptionthat direct and intentional control of our desires – desiring atwill – is impossible. And such an assumption, albeit widely accepted,has little in its support. Once we reject that assumption we can describe a solution to the dilemma within the bounds of Humeanism. Moreover, wefind in this new solution as argument for the idea of desiring at will.     

Practical Reason,Instrumental Irrationality,and Time

Standard models of practical rationality face a puzzle that has gone unnoticed: given a modest assumption about the nature of deliberation, we are apparently frequently briefly irrational. I explain the problem, consider what is wrong with several possible solutions, and propose an account that does not generate the objectionable result.