On the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), internal proper parts of an agent such as desires and intentions are causally responsible for actions. CTA has increasingly come under attack for its alleged failure to account for agency. A recent version of this criticism due to François Schroeter proposes that CTA cannot provide an adequate account of either the executive control or the autonomous control involved in full-fledged agency. Schroeter offers as an alternative a revised understanding of the proper role of (...) consciousness in agency. In this paper we criticize Schroeter’s analysis of the type of consciousness involved in executive control and examine the way in which the conscious self allegedly intervenes in action. We argue that Schroeter’s proposal should not be preferred over recent versions of CTA. (shrink)

Ethical theories and theories of the person constrain each other, in that a proposition about the person may be a reason for or against an ethical proposition, and conversely. An important class of such propositions about the person concern the boundaries of the person. These boundaries enclose a person 's defining properties, which constitute his identity. A person 's identity may partly determine and partly be determined by his ethical judgments. An equilibrium between one's identity and one's ethical judgments is (...) the counterpart, at the personal level, of the philosophical ideal of reflective equilibrium between a theory of the person and an ethical theory. (shrink)

Wittgenstein suggested that considering the context in which a word or sentence is used may help show the limitations of some ways of setting up a philosophical problem. In this article, I explore the role this suggestion may have in moral (philosophical) reflection, through a consideration of a literary example taken from Jeanette Winterson’s novel, Written on the Body (2001). Using the example to elucidate ways of speaking in love that seem to embody an important truth and ways of acting (...) and thinking that appear to be a denial of that truth, I discuss and attempt to show how different ways of attending to context may reveal the moral dimensions of this language use. I also consider one point at which attention to context seems to come to a halt and when acknowledging what is ethically significant seems to demand something different from us. (shrink)

Transhumanistická koncepcia lásky obecne predpokladá, že by sme mali romantickú lásku transformovať prostredníctvom súčasných možností vedy a techniky. Zástancovia transhumanistickej koncepcie lásky zvyčajne tvrdia, že správna technologická transformácia biologických základov lásky môže vyriešiť niektoré naše súčasné problémy s láskou. Proponenti transhumanistickej koncepcie lásky sa preto zvyčajne domnievajú, že korektná realizácia ich návrhu by taktiež viedla k vylepšeniu romantickej lásky. Hlavný zámer tejto štúdie spočíva v kritickej analýze niektorých filozofických a konceptuálnych nedostatkov, ktoré sú spojené s predstavou, že je vhodné aby (...) pokročilé technológie transformovali lásku. Prvá časť štúdie je venovaná deskripcii filozofie transhumanistickej koncepcie lásky. Druhá časť štúdie je zameraná na analýzu predpokladov transhumanistickej koncepcie lásky. Tretia časť článku je sústredená na problémy prípadného zneužitia transhumanistickej lásky. V poslednej časti štúdie sa pokúsim ukázať, že aj korektná realizácia transhumanistickej lásky môže viesť k dôsledkom, ktoré sú problematické z hľadiska filozofických domnienok o výhodách transhumanistickej lásky. (shrink)

According to recently influential conceptions of public reasoning, citizens have the right to demand of each other ‘public justifications’ for controversial political action. On this view, only arguments that all reasonable citizens can affirm from within their diverse ethical standpoints can count as legitimate justifications for political action. Both proponents and critics often assume that the case for this expectation derives from the special justificatory burden created by the systematically coercive character of political action. This paper challenges that assumption. While (...) conceding that citizens who propose to deploy the coercive apparatus of the state to enforce controversial legislation owe their fellows a justification that overcomes the strong presumption against coercing agents, it denies that this consideration can explain why public justifications are also required. Having argued that the public justification requirement is not among the justification conditions for public coercion, the paper then proposes an alternative rationale for the expectation that political action be publicly justified. On this alternative, the case for the public justification requirement depends on democratic citizens’ standing as legislative co-authors, and not on considerations having to do with their liability as private individuals to coercion at the hands of the state. (shrink)

This paper takes a constitutivist approach to self-deception, and argues that this phenomenon should be evaluated under several dimensions of rationality. The constitutivist approach has the merit of explaining the selective nature of self-deception as well as its being subject to moral sanction. Self-deception is a pragmatic strategy for maintaining the stability of the self, hence continuous with other rational activities of self-constitution. However, its success is limited, and it costs are high: it protects the agent’s self by undermining the (...) authority she has on her mental life. To this extent, self-deception is akin to alienation and estrangement. Its morally disturbing feature is its self-serving partiality. The self-deceptive agent settles on standards of justification that are lower than any rational agent would adopt, and thus loses grip on her agency. To capture the moral dimension of self-deception, I defend a Kantian account of the constraints that bear on self-constitution, and argue that it warrants more discriminating standards of agential autonomy than other contemporary minimalist views of self-government. (shrink)

The indifference objection is one of the most powerful objections to sufficientarianism. Critics argue that sufficientarianism is objectionably indifferent to the distribution of benefits and burdens. This article focuses on the criticism of the latter, particularly the claim that sufficientarianism is indifferent to taxation. Contrary to this allegation, it is argued that sufficientarianism warrants progressive taxation, the reason being that even those who are sufficiently well off face the risk of being pushed below sufficiency. This risk decreases the better off (...) someone is as it is easier for those who are better off to deal with sufficiency-threatening circumstances. It is argued that the risk of insufficiency understood as a function of distance to the threshold justifies progressive taxation. The proposed line of reasoning corresponds to the sufficientarian belief that there should be no redistribution between the rich, as the differences in risk of insufficiency eventually become marginal among those who are very well off. Moreover, the proposed rationale for progressive taxation does not depend on prioritarian or egalitarian reasoning. Rather, it transpires that sufficientarianism is well-suited to justify the progressive redistributive system of the modern welfare state. (shrink)

مطابق دیدگاه کشف‌باوری در باب معنای زندگی، معنای زندگی هم وجود خارجی دارد و هم قابلیت کشف. طباطبایی اگرچه متعرض به این مسئله نشده، ولی شواهدی در آثارش وجود دارد که نشان می‌دهد به کشف‌باوری معتقد است. طباطبایی معتقد است فاعل، فعل و غایت در وجود واحد متحدند. غایت مرتبه‌ای بالاتر در سلسله‌مراتب وجودی است، و در نتیجۀ هدایت الهی غایت زندگی انسان است و غایت زندگی انسان لازمۀ وحدت فعل الهی است. تحلیل شاهد فوق نشان می‌دهد طباطبایی به چهار (...) پیشفرض واقع‌گرایی هستی‌شناختی، غایت‌باوری، عقل‌گرایی و نظریۀ صدق باور دارد که دیدگاه وی در باب کشفی بودن معنای زندگی را مشخص می‌سازد. تحلیل شواهد آثار طباطبایی مؤید قول ایشان به کشف‌باوری معنای زندگی است. (shrink)

The leading accounts of respect for others usually assume that persons have a rational nature, which is a marvelous thing, so they should be respected like other objects of ‘awesome’ value. Kant's views about the ‘value’ of humanity, which have inspired contemporary discussions of respect, have been interpreted in this way. I propose an alternative interpretation in which Kant proceeds from our own rational self‐regard, through our willingness to reciprocate with others, to duties of respect for others. This strategy, which (...) shares some similarities with moral contractualism, offers a way to justify other‐regarding moral requirements from self‐regarding rational dispositions. (shrink)

This paper proposes a reconciliation between libertarian freedomand causal indeterminism, without relying on agent-causation asa primitive notion. I closely examine Peter van Inwagen's recentcase for free will mysterianism, which is based in part on thewidespread worry that undetermined acts are too chancy to befree. I distinguish three senses of the term ‘chance’ I thenargue that van Inwagen's case for free will mystrianism fails,since there is no single construal of the term ‘change’ on whichall of the premises of his argument for (...) free will–causalindeterminism incompatibilism are true. By use of a particularevent-causal indeterminist account of free action, I support thecase for free will–indeterminism compatibilism. (shrink)

Why do agent-relative reasons have authority over us, reflective creatures? Reductive accounts base the normativity of agent-relative reasons on agent-neutral considerations like ‘having parents caring especially for their own children serves best the interests of all children’. Such accounts, however, beg the question about the source of normativity of agent-relative ways of reason-giving. In this paper, I argue for a non-reductive account of the reflective necessity of agent-relative concerns. Such an account will reveal an important structural complexity of practical reasoning (...) in general. Christine Korsgaard relates the rational binding force of practical reasons to the various identities or self-conceptions under which we value ourselves. The problem is that it is not clear why such self-conceptions would necessitate us rationally, given the fact that most of our identities are simply given. Perhaps, Harry Frankfurt is right in arguing that we are not only necessitated by reason, but also, and predominantly by what we love. I argue, however, that “the necessities of love” (in Frankfurt’s phrase) are not to be separated from, but should be seen as belonging to the necessities of reason. Our loves, concerns and related identities provide for a specific and important structure to practical reflection. They function on the background of reasoning, having a specific default role: they would lose their character as concerns, if there was a need for them to be cited on the foreground of deliberation or if there was a need to justify them. This does not mean that our deep concerns cannot be scrutinised. They can only be scrutinised in an indirect way, however, which explains their role in grounding the normativity of agent-relative reasons. It appears that this account can provide for a viable interpretation of Korsgaard’s argument about the foundational role of practical identities. (shrink)

Paradoxically, the practical necessity of love seems to combine the personal character of psychological necessity with the inescapable and authoritative quality of moral necessity. Traditionally, philosophers have avoided this paradox by treating love as an amalgam of impersonal evaluative judgments and affective responses. On my account, love participates in a different form of practical necessity, one characterized by a non-moral yet normative type of expectation. This expectation is best understood as a kind of second-personal address that does not support derivative (...) third-personal demands. It is revealed when we react with hurt feelings instead of resentment upon its disappointment. (shrink)

In paediatric oncology, research and treatments are often closely combined, which may compromise voluntary informed consent of parents. We identified two key scenarios in which voluntary informed consent for paediatric oncology studies is potentially compromised due to the intertwinement of research and care. The first scenario is inclusion by the treating paediatric oncologist, the second scenario concerns treatments confined to the research context. In this article we examine whether voluntary informed consent of parents for research is compromised in these two (...) scenarios, and if so whether this is also morally problematic. For this, we employ the account of voluntary consent from Nelson and colleagues, who assert that voluntary consent requires substantial freedom from controlling influences. We argue that, in the absence of persuasion or manipulation, inclusion by the treating physician does not compromise voluntariness. However, it may function as a risk factor for controlling influence as it narrows the scope within which parents make decisions. Furthermore, physician appeal to reciprocity is not controlling as it constitutes persuasion. In addition, framing information is a form of informational manipulation and constitutes a controlling influence. In the second scenario, treatments confined to the research context qualify as controlling if the available options are restricted through manipulation of options. Although none of the influences is morally problematic in itself, a combination of influences may create morally problematic instances of involuntary informed consent. Therefore, safeguards should be implemented to establish an optimal environment for parents to provide voluntary informed consent in an integrated research-care context. (shrink)

According to the view we may term “strong cognitivism”, all reasons for action are rooted in normative features that the motivated subject takes objects to have independently of her attitudes towards these objects. The main concern of this paper is to argue against strong cognitivism, that is, to establish the view that conative attitudes do provide subjects with reasons for action. The central argument to this effect is a top-down argument: it proceeds by an analysis of the complex phenomenon of (...) love and derives a conclusion regarding the nature of more basic mental phenomena—particular desires. More specifically, its starting point is the crude intuition that the significance conferred by love upon its objects is of a distinctively personal kind—an intuition that is expressed by the apparent non-substitutability of two similar subjects only one of whom is loved with respect to their importance for the lover. I argue that the initial notion of non-substitutability can be refined and modified so as to form a real challenge to all versions of strong cognitivism and to establish the existence of attitude-dependent reasons. (shrink)

This paper challenges the idea that there is a natural opposition between self-interest and morality. It does by developing an account of self-love according to which we can have self-regarding reasons that (1) differ substantially from the standard conception of self-interest, and that (2) share enough crucial features with moral reasons to count as morally respectable.

The paper deals with partiality flowing from special relationships. Two main problems are discussed. The first concerns the relationship between partiality and genuine moral obligations. If partiality can bring about such obligations only if it is reasonable, what requirements should it meet in order to be reasonable? The second problem is one of animal ethics. Can the concept of reasonable partiality help us articulate what is morally at stake in a current discussion about the treatment of domestic animals, viz. the (...) European discussion about the castration of pigs? (shrink)

Contemporary emotion research typically takes the phenomenon of emotion to be exhausted by a class of mental events that are intentional, conscious, and related to certain sorts of behaviour. Moreover, other affective phenomena, such as moods, are also considered to be relatively short-term, episodic, or occurrent states of the subject undergoing them. Emotions, and other putative emotional phenomena that common-sense takes as long-lasting, non-episodic, or dispositional are things that both philosophers and scientists sometimes recognise, but that are relatively neglected in (...) comparison to emotional episodes. This thesis aims at showing that this neglect is unjustified. I will argue that there is a class of entities, 'sentiments'—broadly characterised as dispositions to undergo emotional episodes—that are irreducible to emotional episodes or collections thereof and have properties that make them a suitable target of study by the emotion researcher.In the first chapter, I argue that an analysis of caring as a pattern of emotional episodes, while more plausible than alternative, non-emotional accounts, faces a number of counterexamples that motivate the search for an account of caring as related in a certain way to emotions but as irreducible to them. I argue that a dispositional account, according to which dispositions are conceived as distinct from their manifestations, is an account for which a strong case can be made.The second chapter is dedicated to defending a modest form of realism about dispositions in general and psychological dispositions in particular. According to realism, dispositions are genuine properties that, although perhaps reducible to non-dispositional properties, cannot be re-described in terms of events only. In the third chapter, I show in what ways emotional dispositions can positively contribute to the explanation of the occurrence of emotional episodes. In the fourth chapter, I argue that caring, understood as a species of sentiment, is not to be construed as a mere disposition to produce certain events; rather, we should allow that certain dispositions are genuinely mental or psychological. Assuming realism about the mental, I argue that some dispositions are mental in a way that others are not. I suggest that being intentional is the property that makes psychological dispositions genuinely mental. I end the chapter by drawing a connection between caring and the notion of character. On my view, caring is at least a necessary ingredient of certain character traits, in particular the virtues. In chapter five, I tackle a recent form of empirically informed scepticism about character and argue, on the basis of general considerations about psychological dispositions, that the sceptic’s case is not as strong as she makes out. Finally, in chapter six, I argue that at least certain forms of sentiment, for example romantic love, can be genuinely supported by reasons, thereby suggesting a way they can contribute to the value of our lives. Overall, the aim of this thesis is to establish the respectability of sentiments in a sophisticated account of the mind. (shrink)

Choice architecture is heralded as a policy approach that does not coercively reduce freedom of choice. Still we might worry that this approach fails to respect individual choice because it subversively manipulates individuals, thus contravening their personal autonomy. In this article I address two arguments to this effect. First, I deny that choice architecture is necessarily heteronomous. I explain the reasons we have for avoiding heteronomous policy-making and offer a set of four conditions for non-heteronomy. I then provide examples of (...) nudges that meet these conditions. I argue that these policies are capable of respecting and promoting personal autonomy, and show this claim to be true across contrasting conceptions of autonomy. Second, I deny that choice architecture is disrespectful because it is epistemically paternalistic. This critique appears to loom large even against non-heteronomous nudges. However, I argue that while some of these policies may exhibit epistemically paternalistic tendencies, these tendencies do not necessarily undermine personal autonomy. Thus, if we are to find such policies objectionable, we cannot do so on the grounds of respect for autonomy. (shrink)

The aim of this article is twofold: first, to identify and address three central divisions in the field of authentic education that introduce ambiguity and at times inconsistencies within the field of authentic education. These divisions concern a) the relationship between autonomy and authenticity; b) the division between the two basic attitudes towards ‘care’ in the authenticity literature, and; c) the well-worn division between objective and subjective realms of knowledge and identity construction. Addressing these divisions through Charles Taylor's distinction between (...) active and passive aspects of authenticity, I believe, will lead to a better understanding of the main issues involved in conceptualising and applying authenticity-based education. Second, to present what I call The Postconventional Authentic Relation-to-Self as a basis for overcoming and reconciling the above divisions. I shall conclude by providing some examples of the way the perspective envisioned by PARTS can be applied to educational practices. (shrink)

When women become perpetrators of suicide bombing, their agency – their ability to act upon and affect the world – is often denied. There are a number of reasons for this and one this thesis considers is that – as females – they are not expected to be violent. Accordingly, such women are judged to be coerced or incompetent, and so unable to rule themselves sufficiently as agents. Models of autonomy propose various frameworks for assessing whether acts or persons are (...) self-governing, and the relational approach in particular has garnered much support recently. However, some aspects of the relational account remain under-theorised, including how autonomy might be measured. In this thesis, I aim to bring these two elements together by examining whether an extension of the relational model may offer a way in which to estimate the autonomy of the bombers in a more nuanced fashion. I make two claims. First, that the relational conception of the agent and autonomy ‘fits’ the bombers. Second, that my spectrum view, which is rooted in the relational approach, maps the bomber’s autonomy approximately but in detail. As such, my spectrum view is a befitting notion of autonomy and allows a graded and comparative representation of the bomber’s autonomy. (shrink)

The present study examines the influence of constrained autonomy and incentives on the experience of freedom in decision-making in everyday settings. We tested the prediction that both factors constitute independent influences on the experience of freedom against the alternative that an incentive might outbalance the influence of a constraint. The experimental setting incorporated a decision about whether to continue a psychological experiment. The choice set of the participant was either restricted or not and the tasks announced were either attractive or (...) unattractive. The results confirmed the original prediction by showing the primary effects of constraint and incentive on the experience of freedom in the decision. Additionally, positive affect completely mediated the effect of incentive, while constraint retained a significant direct effect. The study demonstrates the existence of differentiated influences on the experience of freedom, and illustrates the connections further re.. (shrink)

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 (...) a loving mother with a violent impulse thereby come to have a reason to harm her beloved child? Let’s grant, for the sake of argument, that there are basic desires, such as the mother’s, that fail to generate reasons. Can a subjectivist, a theorist in the Humean tradition, accept this thesis? Against the historical grain, I argue yes. I frame my discussion in terms of solving a puzzle in Harry Frankfurt’s subjectivist theory of rational agency and appeal to the concept of a personal ideal to reveal how a subjectivist, a follower of Hume, can countenance the existence of “rationally impotent basic desires.”. (shrink)

In this paper I try to undermine complacency with a predominant conception of desire, for the sake of refocusing attention on a philosophical problem. The predominant conception holds that to have a desire is to occupy an evaluative outlook, a perspective from which the agent 'sees' the world in practically salient terms. I argue that it is not clear what this theory is a theory of, because the concept of desire at its center is deeply ambiguous. Understood as a theory (...) of desire in what I call the "placeholder" sense, the evaluative outlook theory is at bottom a theory of action explanation. So construed, its claim is relatively uncontroversial, and falls far short of being a full theory of action explanation. Understood as a theory of desire in what I call the "substantive" sense, it does not even go so far as to acknowledge the central problem such a theory has to answer. That problem is how we can be passive (in a particular sense) with respect to our own motivation. (shrink)

Literature on the mental capacities and cognitive mechanisms of the great apes has been silent about whether they can act autonomously. This paper provides a philosophical theory of autonomy supported by psychological studies of the cognitive mechanisms that underlie chimpanzee behavior to argue that chimpanzees can act autonomously even though their psychological mechanisms differ from those of humans. Chimpanzees satisfy the two basic conditions of autonomy: (1) liberty (the absence of controlling influences) and (2) agency (self-initiated intentional action), each of (...) which is specified here in terms of conditions of understanding, intention, and self-control. In this account, chimpanzees make knowledge-based choices reflecting a richly information-based and socially sophisticated understanding of the world. Finally, two major theories of autonomy (Kantian theory and two-level theory) are rejected as too narrow to adequately address these issues, necessitating the modifications made in the present approach. (shrink)

The phenomenon of ambivalence is an important one for any philosophy of action. Despite this importance, there is a lack of a fully satisfactory analysis of the phenomenon. Although many contemporary philosophers recognize the phenomenon, and address topics related to it, only Harry Frankfurt has given the phenomenon full treatment in the context of action theory – providing an analysis of how it relates to the structure and freedom of the will. In this paper, I develop objections to Frankfurt's account, (...) all revolving around the charge that his account contains a serious ambiguity between willing and identifying. With such objections in place, I then develop an analysis that avoids the difficulties and ambiguities that Frankfurt's analysis is prey to. I briefly distinguish ambivalence from other types of internal conflict. This paper aims to offer conceptual clarification on the phenomenon of ambivalence, which will then allow for discussions about the normative merits and demerits of ambivalence, the effects of ambivalence on autonomous action, and methods of resolution of ambivalence. (shrink)

The content and boundaries of moral education the state may require schools to offer is a matter of contention. This article investigates whether the state may obligate schools to promote the pursuit of moral ideals. Moral ideals refer to (a cluster of) characteristics of a person as well as to situations or states that are believed to be morally excellent or perfect and that are not yet realised. Having an ideal typically means that the person is dedicated to realising the (...) type of situation or person to which the ideal refers. Therefore generating student enthusiasm for moral ideals may be an effective way to realise a morally excellent society. This article defends the position that schools may be required to promote the recognition of ideals that all reasonable citizens endorse. Reasonable citizens will not, however, accept that the state obligates schools to promote the pursuit of moral ideals. (shrink)

Many theorists claim that the reactive emotions, even in their private form, are communicative entities. But as widely endorsed as this claim is, it has not been redeemed: the literature lacks a clear and compelling account of the sense in which reactive attitudes qua private mental states are essentially communicative. In this paper, I fill this gap. I propose that it is apt to characterize privately held reactive attitudes as communicative in nature because they, like many paradigmatic forms of communication, (...) have representational content and the function of evoking uptake of this content in a recipient. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against certain dogmas about ambivalence and alienation. Authors such as Harry Frankfurt and Christine Korsgaard demand a unity of persons that excludes ambivalence. Other philosophers such as David Velleman have criticized this demand as overblown, yet these critics, too, demand a personal unity that excludes an extreme form of ambivalence (“radical ambivalence”). I defend radical ambivalence by arguing that, to be true to oneself, one sometimes needs to be radically ambivalent. Certain dogmas about alienation are (...) even more entrenched. Allen Wood’s entry on “alienation” in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy begins as follows: “A psychological or social evil, characterized by one or another type of harmful separation, disruption or fragmentation, which sunders things that belong together.” I think that it is not true that self-alienation is necessarily “harmful.” I argue that radical ambivalence is a form of self-alienation. Thus, because faithfulness to oneself sometimes requires radical ambivalence, to be true to oneself, one sometimes needs to be alienated from oneself. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have become convinced that the best way of trying to understand human agency is by arriving at an account of identification. My goal here is not to criticize particular views about identification, but rather to examine several assumptions which have been widely held in the literature and yet which, in my view, render implausible any account of identification that takes them on board. In particular, I argue that typically identification does not involve either reflective consideration of (...) our mental states or endorsement of those states. If it did, we would rarely be agents. (shrink)

The temporal period between the moment of deliberation and the execution of the intention varies widely—from opening an umbrella when one feels the first raindrops hit to planning and writing a book. I investigate the distinctive ability that adult human beings have to deliberate for their far future selves exhibited at the latter end of this temporal spectrum, which I term prospective deliberation. What grounds it when it is successful? And, why does it fail in some cases? I shall argue (...) that an agent is warranted in deliberating for a future self when her reasons give her the right kind of cross-temporal authority. I argue that this authority is distinctive and cannot be accounted for by theories of agential authority that take desires, value judgments, or willings as the ground of authority in standard cases of deliberation. According to the theory I propose having the right kind of cross-temporal agential authority is not only a matter of having epistemic access to a future self’s reasons or being the same metaphysical person as a future self, it requires confidence that the agent’s reasons support undertaking such a normative commitment and that that future self will see the normative force of those reasons as the agent sees them. In other words, cross-temporal agential authority requires that the past self and the future self share a normative perspective. I show that this further condition only obtains if the agent sees her reasons in deliberation as having certain features. (shrink)

On the one hand, it is commonly agreed that we make choices in which we are guided by a core of personal commitments, wishes, feelings, etc. that we take to express who we are. On the other, it is commonly agreed that some of these ‘existential’ choices constitute who we are. When confronting these two matters, the question of agency inevitably arises: Whether and in what sense can we choose ourselves? The paper will argue for a new perspective on existential (...) choice. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt and David Velleman have both offered accounts of paradigmatic action. That is, they have offered theories as to which capacities allow us to maximally express our agency. To greatly over simplify, Frankfurt ultimately roots our agency in our capacity to care, while Velleman places it in our cognitive capacity to make sense of ourselves. This paper contends that both have an important piece of the truth and that we should accept a pluralistic approach to paradigmatic agency. It argues (...) that we manifest a capacity that is distinctive of an agency when we have so fully embraced a motivation we are no longer capable of consciously controlling whether we act on it or not. (shrink)

This paper takes as its starting point a debate between Harry Frankfurt and J. David Velleman. Frankfurt argues that we need to resolve ambivalence since it necessarily threatens autonomy. Velleman challenges this claim, arguing that a desire to resolve ambivalence threatens autonomy when it prompts repression. I argue that the relationship between ambivalence and autonomy is more ambiguous than either theorist tends to acknowledge. In doing so, I recommend three features relevant for assessing whether or not ambivalence threatens autonomy.

In this essay I argue that sports at their best qualify as final ends, that is, as ends whose value is such that they ground not only the practices whose ends they are, but everything else we do as human agents. The argument I provide to support my thesis is derived from Harry Frankfurt's provocative work on the importance of the things we care about, more specifically, on his claim that it is by virtue of caring about things and practices, (...) really caring about them ? even loving them ? we are able to regard and treat them as final ends. Sports, I claim, are paradigmatic examples of practices cared about and loved in these deep ways, and as such deserve to be considered, rather than dismissed because of their supposed triviality, as one of those ends around which a life most worth living can be legitimately forged. (shrink)

According to reductionists about agency, an agent’s bringing something about is reducible to states and events involving the agent bringing something about. Many have worried that reductionism cannot accommodate robust forms of agency, such as self-determination. One common reductionist answer to this worry contends that self-determining agents are identified with certain states and events, and so these states and events causing a decision counts as the agent’s self-determining the decision. In this paper, I discuss Michael Bratman’s well-known identification reductionist theory (...) and his general strategy of grounding an agent’s identification at a time in the agent’s identity over time. I develop two constraints that an adequate identification reductionist theory must satisfy, argue that Bratman’s theory cannot satisfy both, and show that his general strategy for grounding an agent’s identification at a time in the agent’s identity over time is without merit. (shrink)

By meeting needs for individualized love and relatedness, the care we receive deeply shapes our social and economic chances and therefore represents a form of luck. Hence, distributive justice requires a fair distribution of care in society. I look at different ways of ensuring this and argue that full redistribution of care is beyond our reach. I conclude that a strong individual morality informed by an ethics of care is a necessary complement of well-designed institutions.

What kind of persons could engage in political torture? Not only the morally impaired who lack empathy or compassion, or even the merely obedient, but also the righteous who struggle with conscience, and the realists who set morality aside.

Theorists about love typically downplay the scale of persistent and possibly intractable disagreement about love. Where they have considered such disagreements at all, they have tended to treat them as an example of the lack of clarity surrounding the concept of love, a problem which can be resolved by philosophical analysis. In doing so, they invariably slip into prescriptive mode and offer moral injunctions in the guise of conceptual analyses.This article argues for philosophical modesty. I propose that the starting point (...) of any coherent philosophical investigation of love must be a willingness to take our disagreements seriously. These disagreements stem from profound moral differences: we disagree about love inasmuch as we disagree about how we should properly treat one another.With a series of examples drawn from philosophy, literature and real life I attempt to illustrate some of the disagreements that arise in relation to erotic love. Drawing upon the work of Wittgenstein, Friedrich Waissman and W.B. Gallie, I suggest that any robust theory of love needs to take account of its contestable nature and the integral role it plays in our moral life. (shrink)

In his early work, Frankfurt conceives of the will as a set of hierarchically organized desires. I argue that the hierarchical model fails to provide an adequate account of free will because it does not render the will determinate. In Frankfurt’s later work, he contends that love establishes the boundaries of the will by giving rise to a volitional necessity. I take this to suggest that the notion of love is introduced, in part, to eliminate the problematic indeterminacy implied by (...) the hierarchical model. However, I argue that the necessities of love may be understood in two importantly different ways, and on either interpretation of Frankfurt’s considered view, love does not provide the resources to account for the phenomenon of betrayal of love. I conclude that the introduction of love does not render the will determinate, and therefore fails to resolve a problem that beset the hierarchical model of the will. (shrink)

This monograph discusses the question of what it is to be a reason – mainly in practical ethics – and proposes an original contribution to metaethics.It critically examines theories of metaethical realism, constructivism and error theory and identifies several misunderstandings or unclarities in contemporary debates. Based on this examination, the book suggests a distinction between a conceptual question, that can be answered by pure first-personal thinking, and a material question, that targets responses to reasons as a natural phenomenon in space (...) and time and that can be answered by help of the sciences. While this book defends a sharp distinction between these approaches, it also argues that the insights gained by the distinct approaches can be fruitfully integrated into a comprehensive picture.The comprehensive picture promoted in this book, based on both philosophical analysis and resources from psychology and cognitive science, is a picture of reasons as items in a collective archive of mind – reconfiguring the “domain of reasons” as a collectively established and socially cultivated fund of considerations with normative weight. The developed Collective Archive View combines Reasons Fundamentalism as an answer to the conceptual question, with a social ontological proposal, similar to Haslanger’s critical realism, as an answer to the material question.Thereby, it introduces central ideas from the field of social metaphysics into metaethics. At the same time, it offers a way of settling some controversies within metaethics, going on between proponents of Reasons Fundamentalism and Constitutivism, realism and constructivism, as well as proponents of mind-dependence and mind-independence of normative facts. Finally, the proposal enables us to envision and conceptualize genuine normative change within a metaethical theory. (shrink)

Theories of identification explain which elements in our mental economy determine our authoritative standpoint and which elements are external. My evaluative theory explains this special authority by considering the holistic pattern of emotional evaluations and evaluative judgments without excluding Jaworska's so-called "marginal cases".

It is now a commonplace that emotions are not mere sensations but, rather, conceptually contentful states. In trying to expand on this insight, however, most theoretical approaches to emotions neglect central intuitions about what emotions are like. We therefore need a methodological shift in our thinking about emotions away from the standard accounts' attempts to reduce them to other mental states and toward an exploration of the distinctive work emotions do. I show that emotions' distinctive function is to engage us (...) with both objective and personal values. Attention to emotions' work reveals that it is precisely their “unruliness” that allows them to play meaningful roles in our lives. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to suggest that a necessary condition of autonomy has not been sufficiently recognized in the literature: the capacity to critically reflect on one’s practical attitudes (desires, preferences, values, etc.) in the light of new experiences . It will be argued that most prominent accounts of autonomy—ahistorical as well as history-sensitive—have either altogether failed to recognize this condition or at least failed to give an explicit account of it.

In this article we explore a notion of relationship which exists between humans. This notion of relationship takes as a point of departure that differences in human relations and interaction have to be safeguarded. Starting with the Irigarayan notion of ‘two’ as a gendered difference, opposed to an understanding of humans as one and same (gender), we elaborate an understanding of otherness which opens a space where both self and other are welcomed. This relational space cannot be appropriated by either (...) one for it to exist. We continue by drawing from Harry G. Frankfurt's discussion of care in order to understand human (inter)actions in this space. Through an elaboration of how love as a special form of care represents a motivational drive, a way in which a person's will is formed, we try to show how this attentiveness towards the other is possible. Our point of departure is two statements by female head teachers that prompted these theoretical inquiries into other possibilities for interpreting human (inter)action in leadership in education. (shrink)