Switch to: References

Citations of:

Instrumentalism

In Elijah Millgram (ed.), Varieties of Practical Reasoning. MIT Press. pp. 49--76 (2001)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. A Foundation for the Conception of Law as Practical Reason.Stefano Bertea - 2015 - Law and Philosophy 34 (1):55-88.
    This essay discusses a foundation of the connection argued to exist between law and practical reason that has proved to be highly influential and debated in contemporary legal philosophy – Alexy’s. After reconstructing Alexy’s conception of practical reason as well as its foundation, I criticise the weak transcendental-pragmatic argument Alexy uses to ground the authority of practical reason. This argument, I argue, can only show why occasionally, as opposed to necessarily, we ought to follow the guidance of practical reason, and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Desire satisfactionism and hedonism.Chris Heathwood - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 128 (3):539-563.
    Hedonism and the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare are typically seen as archrivals in the contest over identifying what makes one's life go best. It is surprising, then, that the most plausible form of hedonism just is the most plausible form of desire satisfactionism. How can a single theory of welfare be a version of both hedonism and desire satisfactionism? The answer lies in what pleasure is: pleasure is, in my view, the subjective satisfaction of desire. This thesis about pleasure is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   125 citations  
  • Sentientism, Motivation, and Philosophical Vulcans.Luke Roelofs - 2023 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 104 (2):301-323.
    If moral status depends on the capacity for consciousness, what kind of consciousness matters exactly? Two popular answers are that any kind of consciousness matters (Broad Sentientism), and that what matters is the capacity for pleasure and suffering (Narrow Sentientism). I argue that the broad answer is too broad, while the narrow answer is likely too narrow, as Chalmers has recently argued by appeal to ‘philosophical Vulcans’. I defend a middle position, Motivational Sentientism, on which what matters is motivating consciousness: (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • The Nature of Desire.Federico Lauria & Julien Deonna (eds.) - 2017 - New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
    Desires matter. What are desires? Many believe that desire is a motivational state: desiring is being disposed to act. This conception aligns with the functionalist approach to desire and the standard account of desire's role in explaining action. According to a second influential approach, however, desire is first and foremost an evaluation: desiring is representing something as good. After all, we seem to desire things under the guise of the good. Which understanding of desire is more accurate? Is the guise (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Subjectivism, instrumentalism, and prudentialism about reasons: On the normativity of instrumental transmission.Arash Abizadeh - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 27 (2):387-402.
    According to a subjectivist theory, normative reasons are grounded in facts about our desires. According to an instrumentalist theory, reasons are grounded also in facts about the relevant means to desired objects. These are distinct theories. The widespread tendency to conflate the normativity of subjective and instrumentalist precepts obscures two facts. First, instrumentalist precepts incorporate a subjective element with an objective one. Second, combining these elements into a single theory of normative reasons requires explaining how and why they are to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • “Yes, the theory is abstemious, but...”: A Critique of Yehezkel.Regan Lance Reitsma - 2017 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 13 (1):59-79.
    This article is a critique of Gal Yehezkel’s attempt to refute subjectivism about normative practical reasons, a school of thought inspired by Hume. Yehezkel believes reason, far from being, as Hume puts it, “the slave of the passions,” has the normative authority to be a critic of basic desires and argues that subjectivism lacks the theoretical resources both to acknowledge this alleged truth and to analyze the distinction between wanting an outcome and intending to pursue it. I contend his refutation (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • How Many Accounts of Act Individuation Are There?Joseph Ulatowski - 2008 - Dissertation, University of Utah
    The problem of act individuation is a debate about the identity conditions of human acts. The fundamental question about act individuation is: how do we distinguish between actions? Three views of act individuation have dominated the literature. First, Donald Davidson and G.E.M. Anscombe have argued that a number of different descriptions refer to a single act. Second, Alvin Goldman and Jaegwon Kim have argued that each description designates a distinct act. Finally, Irving Thalberg and Judith Jarvis Thomson have averred that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • (1 other version)Desire-Satisfaction Theories of Welfare.Chris Heathwood - 2005 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
    Theories of welfare answer the ancient question, What makes a person's life go well? Prominent among these are desire-satisfaction or preferentist theories, according to which welfare has to do ultimately with desire. This dissertation aims to criticize some recent popular arguments against standard desire-satisfaction theories of welfare, to develop and defend a novel version of the desire-satisfaction theory capable of answering the better objections, to defend the thesis that pleasure is reducible to desire, and to demonstrate an interesting link between (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (1 other version)What Would a Deontic Logic of Internal Reasons Look Like?Rufus Duits - 2016 - Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences 3 (4):351-373.
    The so-called ‘central problem’ of internalism has been formulated like this: one cannot concurrently maintain the following three philosophical positions without inconsistency: internalism about practical reason, moral rationalism, and moral absolutism. Since internalism about practical reason is the most controversial of these, the suggestion is that it is the one that is best abandoned. In this paper, I point towards a response to this problem by sketching a deontic logic of internal reasons that deflates moral normativity to the normativity of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Procedural and substantive practical rationality.Brad Hooker & Bart Steumer - 2004 - In Alfred R. Mele & Piers Rawling (eds.), The Oxford handbook of rationality. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 57--74.
    This chapter surveys the debate between philosophers who claim that all practical rationality is procedural and philosophers who claim that some practical rationality is substantive.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Killing to Prevent Killings?: An Exemplary Discussion of Deontic Restrictions' Place, Point, and Justifiability.Roland Hesse - 2020 - Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
    Is it permissible to kill an innocent person against her will in order to prevent several other innocent persons from being killed against their will? The answer to which this essay comes after extensive discussion is – under certain conditions and limitations – affirmative. On the way to this answer, the book offers a comprehensive in-depth discussion of so-called deontic restrictions – that is, the idea of an action’s being prohibited in circumstances in which performing it once would be the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (1 other version)The Normativity of Rationality.Benjamin Kiesewetter - 2017 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Kiesewetter defends the normativity of rationality by presenting a new solution to the problems that arise from the common assumption that we ought to be rational. He provides a defence of a reason-response conception of rationality, an evidence-relative account of reason, and an explanation of structural irrationality in relation to these accounts.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   141 citations  
  • Instrumentalism about practical reason: not by default.Thomas Schmidt - 2016 - Philosophical Explorations 19 (1):17-27.
    Instrumentalism is the view that all requirements of practical reason can be derived from the instrumental principle, that is, from the claim that one ought to take the suitable means to one's ends. Rationalists, by contrast, hold that there are requirements of practical reason that concern the normative acceptability of ends. To the extent that rationalists put forward these requirements in addition to the instrumental principle, rationalism might seem to go beyond instrumentalism in its normative commitments. This is why it (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • A Moorean paradox of desire.David Wall - 2012 - Philosophical Explorations 15 (1):63-84.
    Moore's paradox is a paradox in which certain kinds of belief or assertion, such as a belief that ?it is raining and I do not believe that it is raining?, are irrational despite involving no obvious contradiction in what is believed. But is there a parallel paradox involving other kinds of attitude, in particular desire? I argue that certain kinds of desire would be irrational to have for similar, distinctive reasons that having Moorean beliefs would be irrational to have. Hence, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Are There Passive Desires?David Wall - 2009 - Dialectica 63 (2):133-155.
    What is the relation between desire and action? According to a traditional, widespread and influential view I call ‘The Motivational Necessity of Desire’ (MN), having a desire that p entails being disposed to act in ways that you believe will bring about p. But what about desires like a desire that the committee chooses you without your needing to do anything, or a desire that your child passes her exams on her own? Such ‘self-passive’ desires are often given as a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Practical reason: A review of the current debate and problems. [REVIEW]Stefan Gosepath - 2002 - Philosophical Explorations 5 (3):229 – 238.
    In this review article I refer to some of the most relevant recent publications in the field of practical rationality, mainly drawing on two new anthologies by Wallace and Millgram that contain the principal arguments in the current debate, and on new books and articles by Bittner, Dancy, Nida-Rümelin and Raz. The purpose of the article is to offer an overview of the relevant positions in the current debate, to clarify the main arguments against the belief-desire model, and to situate (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Many Facets of the Theory of Rationality.Wolfgang Spohn - 2002 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 2 (3):249-264.
    Modern theory of rationality has truly grown into a science of its own. Still, the general topic remained a genuinely philosophical one. This essay is concerned with giving a brief overview. Section 2 explains the fundamental scheme of all rationality assessments. With its help, a schematic order of the main questions concerning the theory of rationality can be given; the questions turn out to be quite unevenly addressed in the literature. Section 3 discusses the fundamental issue that the theory of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • How a Modern-day Hume Can Reject a Desire Categorically: A Perplexity and a Theoretically Modest Proposal.Regan Lance Reitsma - 2014 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 9 (2):48-66.
    We often treat our basic, unmotivated desires as reason-giving: you’re thirsty and take yourself to have a reason to walk to the drinking fountain; you care intrinsically about your young daughter and take yourself to have a reason to feed and clothe her. We think these desires generate normative practical reasons. But are there basic desires that don’t? It might seem so, for we sometimes find ourselves impelled to do some very strange, and some very awful, things. For example, would (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Instrumental Rationality and Carroll's Tortoise.John Brunero - 2005 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8 (5):557-569.
    Some philosophers have tried to establish a connection between the normativity of instrumental rationality and the paradox presented by Lewis Carroll in his 1895 paper “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles.” I here examine and argue against accounts of this connection presented by Peter Railton and James Dreier before presenting my own account and discussing its implications for instrumentalism (the view that all there is to practical rationality is instrumental rationality). In my view, the potential for a Carroll-style regress just (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Desire and value in practical reasoning.Peter Fossey - 2014 - Dissertation, University of Warwick
    Intentional actions are those which are performed because the subject sees something to be said for performing them; the subject sees performing the action “in a positive light”. Intentional actions are therefore susceptible to a distinctive kind of explanation, which explains them as intentional; that is, which accounts for them in terms of their unique property, of being performed because the subject sees that there is something to be said for doing so. Practical reasoning is the process of figuring out (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • A defense of humeanism from Nagel's persimmon.Cei Maslen - 2002 - Erkenntnis 57 (1):41-46.
    This paper defends Humeanism: the view that an agent has a reason for an intentional action if and only if it fulfills, or is a means to fulfilling, a current desire of that agent. Thomas Nagel presents an example involving a short-lived desire for eating a persimmon tomorrow. He claims that, contrary to Humeanism, this example is a clear case of irrationality. Furthermore, the Humean cannot simply dismiss all current desires with future objects, because desires of this sort are crucial (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Breaking the law of desire.Joshua Gert - 2005 - Erkenntnis 62 (3):295-319.
    This paper offers one formal reason why it may often be inappropriate to hold, of two conflicting desires, that the first must be weaker than, stronger than, or of the same strength as the second. The explanation of this fact does not rely on vagueness or epistemological problems in determining the strengths of desires. Nor does it make use of the problematic notion of incommensurability. Rather, the suggestion is that the motivational capacities of many desires might best be characterized by (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations