Expressivism promises an illuminating account of the nature of normative judgment. But worries about the details of expressivist semantics have led many to doubt whether expressivism's putative advantages can be secured. Drawing on insights from linguistic semantics and decision theory, I develop a novel framework for implementing an expressivist semantics that I call ordering expressivism. I argue that by systematically interpreting the orderings that figure in analyses of normative terms in terms of the basic practical attitude of conditional weak preference, (...) the expressivist can explain the semantic properties of normative sentences in terms of the logical properties of that attitude. Expressivism's problems with capturing the logical relations among normative sentences can be reduced to the familiar, more tractable problem of explaining certain coherence constraints on preferences. Particular attention is given to the interpretation of wide-scope negation. The proposed solution is also extended to other types of embedded contexts—most notably, disjunctions. (shrink)

Humean promotionalists about reasons think that whether there is a reason for an agent to ϕ depends on whether her ϕ-ing promotes the satisfaction of at least one of her desires. Several authors have recently defended probabilistic accounts of promotion, according to which an agent’s ϕ-ing promotes the satisfaction of one of her desires just in case her ϕ-ing makes the satisfaction of that desire more probable relative to some baseline. In this paper I do three things. First, I formalize (...) an argument, due to Jeff Behrends and Joshua DiPaolo, to the effect that Mark Schroeder’s and Stephen Finlay’s probabilistic accounts of promotion cannot be correct. Next, I extend this argument to a recent alternative offered by D. Justin Coates and show how Coates’ attempt to avoid the argument by introducing a distinction between ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ probability doesn’t help. Finally, I suggest an alternative way of understanding promotion in terms of increase in degree of fit between the causal upshot of an action and the content of a desire. I show how this view, disjunctively paired with probabilism about promotion, solves the problems with previous accounts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Theory ofMotivation — Part 2 Daniel Shaw Introduction and Summary of Part 1 In an earlier paper of the same title1 1 defended a Humean theory of motivation against rationalist views ofB. Stroud and T. Nagel.2 In this paper I shouldlike to relate my theory tomore recent writings, explain its implications for the topic ofmoral motivation and provide further support for the main argument ofmy original paper. To (...) begin with, a summary of my previous discussion: while two critics of Hume's theory, B. Stroud and T. Nagel, disagree about the role ofreason inaction(Stroudaccepts, Nagelrejectsthe Humeanclaim thatreason alone can never produce action) theyboth agree inrejecting Hume's view thatmotivating desire essentially involves feelings which are identifiable by the agent, in his conscious experience, by introspection, as something extra, something over and above any purely rational considerations he may have for taking action. As an alternative to this Humean, experiential view ofmotivating desire, Stroud argues that the concept of motivating desire should be analysednotinterms ofanyintrinsic propertyknowablein experience, butratherin terms ofits function in leading, along withbelief, to action. In Stroud's words: "It might well be that to have a desire for or a propensity towards E is simply to be in a state such that when you come to believe that a certain action will lead to E you are moved to perform that action."3 In a similar spirit4 Nagel claims, contrary to Hume, that there do exist at least some cases (for example, actions motivated by a person's prudential consideration of his own future interests) in which reason alone—that is, the agent's grasp of certain purely rational considerations—is all that motivates action. In the context of these purely rationally motivated actions, Nagel argues, our talk of desire does not refef to anyadditional inclination towards, or preferences for, or sentiment about some goal that we have, but is either just another way of saying that the act is motivated, that is, that we are in some state which disposes us to do whatever we think will lead to a certain result, or else indicates some structural feature ofthe reasoningbehind our behaviour; for example, indicates the fact that in view of purely rational considerations which confront us, it would be irrational of us not to perform the act in question. Volume XVII Number 2 19 DANIEL SHAW Against any such account ofmotivating desire which denies the necessity of the experiential component (that is, of Hume's introspectible sentiment), I argued that all such accounts have a false implication. They all falsely imply that some purely rational consideration, a bare behef, could, all on its own (unaccompanied by any actual or potential pro- or con-attitude), motivate a purposive action. With the help ofa counter-example I argued5 that although it is logically possible for bare beliefs of that kind to produce overt behaviour, such pure rationalist 'action' never in fact happens; and, more importantly, ifwe carefully consider what such 'action' would be like ifit didhappen, we findit would not count as voluntary, purposive action, in the fullest sense. So Hume, I concluded, was right to maintain that motivating desire essentially involves introspectible feehngs. However, the standard interpretation of Hume's view about the relation between desires and feelings yields an indefensible theory of motivated action. On the standard reading, desires simply are feehngs, and the Humean is left with no adequate reply to the obvious objection that, often enough, for example, when acting after calm deliberation, or when performing routine habit-actions, we are not aware of the occurrence of any such feehng immediately prior to or at the time of action. Hume tells us that in all such cases there is—in addition to the operation of reason—a calm passion present—a passion so calm as to be readily confused with and mistaken for the determinations of reason. But on the standard reading of 'calm passions' as very faint or imperceptible feelings, this is a lame argument. As Stroud points out,6 not only is there no independent justification for the claim that in all such cases there always are such faint or imperceptible feehngs,7 but also that claim is inconsistent... (shrink)

Sometimes, agents do the right thing for the right reason. What’s the normative significance of this phenomenon? According to proponents of the special status view, when an agent acts for the right reason, her actions enjoy a special normative status, namely, worthiness. Proponents of this view claim that self-effacing forms of consequentialism cannot say this plausible thing, and, worse, are blocked from having a perspicuous view of matters by the self-effacing nature of their consequentialism. In this paper, I argue that (...) this claim is based on an illicit assumption. I show that whatever version of the special status view proponents of that view prefer, self-effacing consequentialists can adopt a version of it. Moreover, I show that proponents of extant versions of the special status view have reason to prefer the specific version of that view I articulate on behalf of self-effacing consequentialists. (shrink)

Argues for a conception of reasons as premises of practical reasoning. This conception is applied to questions about ignorance, advice, enabling conditions, "ought," and evidence.

Argues for a causal-psychological account of acting for reasons. This view is distinguished from a more ambitious causal theory of action, clarified as far as possible, and motivated—against non-reductive, teleological, and behaviourist alternatives—on broadly metaphysical grounds.

Argues that Hume was a sceptic about practical reason only on a rationalist account of what it would have to be. (This version differs substantially from the published paper.).

Argues that, in acting for a reason, one takes that reason to explain one's action, not to justify it: reasons for acting need not be seen "under the guise of the good". The argument turns on the need to explain the place of "practical knowledge" - knowing what one is doing - in intentional action. A revised and expanded version of this material appears in Part One of "Reasons without Rationalism" (Princeton, 2007).

A key component of much current research in behavioral ecology, cognitive science, and economics is a model of the mind at least partly based on beliefs and desires. However, despite this prevalence, there are still many open questions concerning both the structure and the applicability of this model. This is especially so when it comes to its ‘desire’ part: in particular, it is not yet entirely clear when and why we should expect organisms to be desire-based—understood so as to imply (...) that they consult explicit tokenings of what they ought to do—as opposed to being drive-based—understood so as to imply that they react to the world using behavioral reflexes. In this paper, I present the beginnings of an answer to this question. To do this, I start by showing that an influential recent attempt to address these issues—due to Kim Sterelny—fails to be fully successful, as it does not make sufficiently clear what the relative benefits and disadvantages of drive-based and desire-based cognitive architectures are. I then present an alternative account of this matter based on the idea that organisms that can follow explicit behavioral rules (i.e. which have desires) avoid having to memorize a large set of state of the world–action connections—which can (though need not) be adaptive. Finally, I apply this account to the question of what the cognitive value of mental representations should be seen to be; here, I conclude that—contrary to some recent claims—relying on mental representations can make decision making easier, not harder, but also that—in line with these recent claims—whether it does so depends on the details of the case. (shrink)

A key component of much current research in behavioral ecology, cognitive science, and economics is a model of the mind at least partly based on beliefs and desires. However, despite this prevalence, there are still many open questions concerning both the structure and the applicability of this model. This is especially so when it comes to its ‘desire’ part: in particular, it is not yet entirely clear when and why we should expect organisms to be desire-based—understood so as to imply (...) that they consult explicit tokenings of what they ought to do—as opposed to being drive-based—understood so as to imply that they react to the world using behavioral reflexes. In this paper, I present the beginnings of an answer to this question. To do this, I start by showing that an influential recent attempt to address these issues—due to Kim Sterelny—fails to be fully successful, as it does not make sufficiently clear what the relative benefits and disadvantages of drive-based and desire-based cognitive architectures are. I then present an alternative account of this matter based on the idea that organisms that can follow explicit behavioral rules avoid having to memorize a large set of state of the world–action connections—which can be adaptive. Finally, I apply this account to the question of what the cognitive value of mental representations should be seen to be; here, I conclude that—contrary to some recent claims—relying on mental representations can make decision making easier, not harder, but also that—in line with these recent claims—whether it does so depends on the details of the case. (shrink)

Abstract:I address an overlooked question about the structure of the cognitive/conative model of the mind that underlies much of the work in economics, psychology and philosophy: namely, whether conative states are fundamentally monistic (desire-like) or comparative (preference-like). I argue that two seemingly promising sets of theoretical considerations – namely, the structure of Rational Choice Theory, and considerations of computational efficiency – are unable to resolve this debate. Given this, I suggest that a consideration that speaks in favour of the preference-based (...) view is the fact that it makes it easier to explain certain empirically observed patterns in decision making. (shrink)

The propositional attitudes are attitudes such as believing and desiring, taken toward propositions such as the proposition that snow flurries are expected, or that the Prime Minister likes poutine. Collectively, our views about the propositional attitudes make up much of folk psychology, our everyday theory of how the mind works.

To desire is to be in a particular state of mind. It is a state of mind familiar to everyone who has ever wanted to drink water or desired to know what has happened to an old friend, but its familiarity does not make it easy to give a theory of desire. Controversy immediately breaks out when asking whether wanting water and desiring knowledge are, at bottom, the same state of mind as others that seem somewhat similar: wishing never to (...) have been born, preferring mangoes to peaches, craving gin, having world conquest as one's goal, having a purpose in sneaking out to the shed, or being inclined to provoke just for the sake of provocation. These varied states of mind have all been grouped together under the heading of ‘pro attitudes’, but whether the pro attitudes are fundamentally one mental state or many is disputed. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Christian Wolff’s conception of motivating and normative reasons. My aim is to show that in the discussion of error cases, Wolff pursues a strategy that is strikingly similar to the strategy of contemporary defenders of nicht-psychologist accounts of motivating reasons. According to many nicht-psychologist views, motivating reasons are facts. My aim is to show that Wolff’s motivation in pursuing this strategy is very different. The point is that due to his commitment to the Principle of (...) Sufficient Reason, Wolff has to show that error cases are compatible with the PSR. The issue is worth discussing because it is not yet sufficiently explored what motivating reasons are, according to Wolff, and how they relate, in substance, to normative reasons. Methodologically, my approach can be characterized as one of “mutual illumination”: I think it is possible to highlight some crucial ambiguities of Wolff’s conception against the backdrop of the contemporary conception of motivating reasons, but also to question the importance and role of the ontological question of what motivating reasons are in contemporary discussions against the backdrop of Wolff’s position. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the relevance of judgment for practical considerations by discussing Christian August Crusius’s conception of rational desire. According to my interpretation of Crusius’s distinction between rational and non-rational desire, we are responsible at least for our rational desires insofar as we can control them. And we can control our rational desires by judging whether what we want complies with our human nature. It should become clear that Crusius’s conception of rational desire is normative in that we (...) necessarily desire things that are compatible with our nature, such as our own perfection. Therefore, a desire is rational if the desired object is apt to satisfy the desires compatible with our nature. From a contemporary perspective, such a normative conception of rational desire might not appear very attractive; it is apt, however, to stimulate a debate on the normative criteria and the role of judgment for rational desire, which is the ultimate aim of this paper. (shrink)

I examine a dispute about the nature of practical reason, and in particular moral reason, generated by Thomas Nagel's proposal of an internalist rationalism which claims we can explain motivation in terms of reason and belief alone. In opposition, Humeans contend that such explanations must also appeal to further desires. Arguments on either side of this debate typically assume that a rationalist or Humean conclusion can be reached independently of a claim about the nature of moral judgment. I'll maintain, to (...) the contrary, that a resolution of this dispute can only be achieved on the basis of such a claim. (shrink)

Michael Smith's recent defence of the theory shows promise, in that it captures the most common reasons for accepting a Humean view. But, as I will argue, it falls short of vindicating the view. Smith's argument fails, because it ignores the role of rationality conditions on the ascription of motivating reason explanations. Because of these conditions, we must have a theory of rationality before we choose a theory of motivation. Thus, we cannot use Humean restrictions on motivation to argue for (...) a particular conception of rationality. I will not directly criticize using a Humean conception of rationality to defend a Humean theory of motivation. For my argument implies that such criticism must come more directly, as argument over the substantive content of rationality. (shrink)

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: (...) any kind of consciousness which presents its subject with reasons for action. (shrink)

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 (...) fails, largely because it operates with a strikingly attenuated view of the subjectivist theory. (shrink)

108 COWLEY RD, OXFORD, ENGLAND, OX4 1JF.

According to the ‘collapse’ argument, episodes of mental simulation necessarily involve tacit knowledge of folk psychological generalisations. In response, I show that there is little risk that the simulation of theoretical reasoning involves such generalisations. However, the case of practical reasoning is quite different. If practical reasoning is Humean, then the risk of collapse is very great indeed. Moreover, there are compelling reasons for thinking that practical reasoning is Humean. I close by replying, qua simulationist, to the (very real) prospect (...) of collapse. (shrink)

Normative realism faces a problem concerning the practicality of normative judgment, the presumptive view that normative judgments are motivational states. Normative judgments, for the normative realist, must be beliefs. This is problematic because it is difficult to see how any belief could have the necessary connection to motivation required to account for the practicality of normative judgment. After all, the Humean theory of motivation has it that motivated action is only brought about by a belief and a desire working in (...) tandem. Here I show how the normative realist, simply by embracing a certain philosophical psychology, can hold that normative judgments are both beliefs and motivational states, all consistent with the Humean theory of motivation. Given the plausibility of both the practicality of normative judgment and Humean psychology, a theory that allows the realist to reconcile them is preferable to any picture in which one must be rejected. The price to pay for this reconciliation is the acceptance of a strong form of cognitivism about intention, the doctrine that your intentions to act are beliefs about what you are going to do, and a small—yet highly plausible—adjustment to our theory of what it is to be a motivational state. (shrink)

How do we ensure that future generally intelligent AI share our values? This is the value-alignment problem. It is a weighty matter. After all, if AI are neutral with respect to our wellbeing, or worse, actively hostile toward us, then they pose an existential threat to humanity. Some philosophers have argued that one important way in which we can mitigate this threat is to develop only AI that shares our values or that has values that ‘align with’ ours. However, there (...) is nothing to guarantee that this policy will be universally implemented—in particular, ‘bad actors’ are likely to flout it. In this paper, I show how the predictive processing model of the mind, currently ascendant in cognitive science, may ameliorate the value-alignment problem. In essence, I argue that there are a plurality of reasons why any future generally intelligent AI will possess a predictive processing cognitive architecture (e.g. because we decide to build them that way; because it is the only possible cognitive architecture that can underpin general intelligence; because it is the easiest way to create AI.). I also argue that if future generally intelligent AI possess a predictive processing cognitive architecture, then they will come to share our pro-moral motivations (of valuing humanity as an end; avoiding maleficent actions; etc.), regardless of their initial motivation set. Consequently, these AI will pose a minimal threat to humanity. In this way then, I conclude, the value-alignment problem is significantly ameliorated under the assumption that future generally intelligent AI will possess a predictive processing cognitive architecture. (shrink)

The theory that practical reasoning is wholly instrumental says that the only practical function of reason is to tell agents the means to their ends, while their ends are fixed by something other than reason itself. In this essay I argue that Hume has an instrumentalist theory of practical reasoning. This thesis may sound as unexciting as the contention that Kant is a rationalist about morality. For who would have thought otherwise? After all, isn't the ‘instrumentalist’ line in contemporary discussions (...) of this topic descended directly from Hume himself? Contrast the following recent comment from Robert Audi's book on practical reasoning, holding the standard line, with the comment from Christine Korsgaard following it:Hume's conception of practical reasoning, so far as we can formulate it, can be located within … the foundationalist account of motivation in which reason plays the instrumentalist role … by virtue of arousing and directing our desires. (shrink)

Moran’s conception of self-knowledge, in his book Authority and Estrangement, is connected to an extremely rationalistic conception of intentional action. I will argue that this rationalistic commitment can be avoided without renouncing the most basic aspects in his account of self-knowledge.

In this paper, I want to challenge some common assumptions in contemporary theories of practical rationality and intentional action. If I am right, the fact that our intentions can be rationalised is widely misunderstood. Normally, it is taken for granted that the role of rationalisations is to show the reasons that the agent had to make up her mind. I will argue against this. I do not object to the idea that acting intentionally is, at least normally, acting for reasons, (...) but I will propose a teleological reading of the expression ‘for reasons.’ On this reading, it is quite possible to act for reasons without having reasons to act. In a similar way, paradigmatic cases of cogent practical reasoning do not require the transference of justification from the premises to the practical conclusion. (shrink)

The recent philosophical literature on emotional action is divided between Humeans, who think that emotional action, for all its peculiarities, can in fact be explained along Humean lines, that is, with belief–desire pairs; and emotionists, who think that emotional actions can only be explained by appealing to emotions and some of their special features. After reviewing this philosophical discussion, I will argue, first, that none of the philosophical accounts of emotional action analysed, whether Humean or emotionist, is satisfactory enough. Second, (...) I will argue that this philosophical debate has reached a stalemate, which does not allow further progress and which has not been able to provide us with a compelling account of such emotional actions where it is not obvious which is the goal involved. Third, I will argue that in order to overcome this stalemate, we need to approach emotional action in a radically different way. Drawing on ideas from some psychologists, I will suggest that the relevant philosophical issue should be whether emotional action is, or is not, goal-directed. Finally, I will suggest how emotional actions, particularly the most puzzling ones, can be accounted for according to this new approach. (shrink)

This paper attempts to shed light on the dynamics of criminal adjudication. It starts by exploring some significant—and often ignored—similarities and dissimilarities between the practices and disciplines of, respectively, legal reasoning and fact finding. It then discusses the problem of defining the nature of these processes—legal reasoning, in particular—in terms of their being instances of practical or theoretical reasoning. Thus understood, the problem is shown to be distinct from two traditional questions of jurisprudence, namely whether law consists of facts and, (...) if so, whether these facts are social or moral. Two theses are proposed as solutions to the problem: 'in the majority of cases legal reasoning is theoretical', and 'when legal reasoning is practical it generally involves complex theoretical operations'. Finally, the paper shows how T1 and T2 can make sense of the phenomena presented at the outset. (shrink)

The rationality of individual agents is secured for the most part by their make-up or design. Some agents, however – in particular, human beings – rely on the intentional exercise of thinking or reasoning in order to promote their rationality further; this is the activity that is classically exemplified in Rodin’s sculpture of Le Penseur. Do group agents have to rely on reasoning in order to maintain a rational profile? Recent results in the theory of judgment aggregation show that under (...) a range of plausible conditions they do. In a slogan: group agents are made, not born. (shrink)

Some contemporary theories treat phenomena like weakness of will, compulsion and wantonness as practical failures but not as failures of rationality: say, as failures of autonomy or whatever. Other current theories-the majority see the phenomena as failures of rationality but not as distinctively practical failures. They depict them as always involving a theoretical deficiency: a sort of ignorance, error, inattention or illogic. They represent them as failures which are on a par with breakdowns of theoretical reason; the failures may not (...) have exact theoretical analogues, exact analogues in the breakdown of belief, but they are of essentially the same, cognitive kind. Our approach gives us quite a different view of things. The pathologies which we identify in our taxonomy are distinctively rational failures and distinctively practical failures; they are failures of pure practical reason. (shrink)

This paper approaches Humean accounts of desire from a perspective relatively unexplored in contemporary moral theory, namely Hegel’s ethical thought. I contend that Hegel’s treatment of desire is, ultimately, somewhat more Humean than Hegel himself recognized. But Hegel also goes further than contemporary Humeans in recognizing the sociality of the normative domain, and this difference has important implications for the Humean thesis of desire-based reasons. I develop a Hegelian critique of DBR and conclude by outlining a distinctively Hegelian approach to (...) understanding the normative import of desire. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide an account of how hunger motivates us to seek food and eat. It seems that the way that it feels to be hungry must play some role in it fulfilling this function. We propose that hunger is best viewed as a complex state involving both affective and somatic constituents, as well as, crucially, changes in the way in which the hungry agent’s attention is deployed. We argue that in order to capture the (...) distinctive way in which hunger motivates we need to articulate the relations amongst such components. The resulting account explains how hunger as an aversive affective reaction to a state of need motivates us specifically to eat and not to just to rid ourselves of the unpleasant sensations associated to it. We suggest, however, that there is more than this to the overall affective experience of the hungry agent, because hunger ordinarily facilitates the elicitation of other, positive affective reactions such as interest and appetite, and recruits them to further its function. (shrink)

The distinction between the space of reasons and the realm of law captures two familiar ways of making events intelligible, by reference to reasons or to natural laws, respectively. I describe a third way of making events intelligible, by explaining them in terms of an agent’s being motivated to do certain things. Explanations of this sort do not involve appealing to reasons for which the agent acts, nor to natural laws under which the event falls. To explain an event in (...) this way is to place it in the space of motivations. I outline the relation between the space of motivations and the space of reasons, and suggest that the space of motivations may serve as a common ground between the positions defended by McDowell and Dreyfus in their recent debate. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s notion of being motivated or solicited to act has recently been the focus of extensive investigation, yet work on this topic has tended to take the general notion of being motivated for granted. In this paper, I shall outline an account of what it is to be motivated. In particular, I shall focus on the relation between the affective character of states of being motivated and their intentional content, i.e. how things appear to the agent. Drawing on Husserl’s discussion (...) of perceptual awareness, I suggest that the intentional content of states of being motivated has a horizonal structure, in which both affective and perceptual features are implied. In states of being motivated, the agent becomes aware of certain possibilities for action, towards which they feel drawn. This structure is what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the “intentional arc” (1962, 136). (shrink)

Theses claiming a constitutive or necessary role for belief-desire pairs in the rationalizing, motivation or explanation of action, are generally known as Humean. The main purpose of this short paper is clearly to present the basic versions of Humeanism and lay bare their commitments and interrelations in preparation for a short general introduction to the debate over belief-desire explanation of action. After this, some influential arguments for and against a Humean account of action explanation are briefly discussed.

Theses claiming a constitutive or necessary role for belief‐desire pairs in the rationalizing, motivation or explanation of action, are generally known as Humean. The main purpose of this short paper is clearly to present the basic versions of Humeanism and lay bare their commitments and interrelations in preparation for a short general introduction to the debate over belief‐desire explanation of action. After this, some influential arguments for and against a Humean account of action explanation are briefly discussed.

What my suggestion rules out – if it is right – is the project of using some thesis about the conative or cognitive nature of motivation to argue for some thesis in meta-ethics. [...] facts about human motivation can be captured equally well with conativist or cognitivist language. And if that is true, then nothing about motivation either implies or rules out internalist moral realism.

John Hare’s central objections to secular theories of motivation arise via his ‘hateful nephew’ example, which, I argue, obscures important issues of scope:Who must be motivated (some/all)?How frequently must they be motivated (most/all of the time)?What is the extent of their motivation (act/tend to act)?Hare must adopt the stronger readings of these questions if his case against secular accounts of motivation is to succeed. But holding any account of motivationto such standards is misguided. Furthermore, Hare’s own theistic account of motivation (...) cannot meet the standards he applies to his primary secular interlocutor. This study opens into wider terrain as I (i) identify which of myriad moral gaps an account of motivation is alleged to bridge; (ii) explain how the dialectic between Hare and Shelly Kagan depends upon unarticulated assumptions about judgment externalism and judgment internalism; and (iii) criticize appeals to motivational versions of ‘ought implies can’ principles. (shrink)

The psychological mechanism of decision-making has traditionally been modeled with the help of belief-desire psychology: the agent has some desires (or other pro-attitudes) and some background beliefs and deciding between two possible actions is a matter of comparing the probability of the satisfaction of these desires given the background beliefs in the case of the performance of each action. There is a wealth of recent empirical findings about how we actually make decisions that seems to be in conflict with this (...) picture. My aim is to outline an alternative model that is consistent with these empirical findings. This alternative model emphasizes the role imagination plays in our decisions: when we decide between two possible actions, we imagine ourselves in the situation that we imagine to be the outcome of these two actions and then compare these two imaginings. (shrink)

Agentive awareness is one's awareness of oneself as presently acting. Dominant accounts in cognitive science consider agentive awareness to be grounded in the states and processes underlying sensorimotor control. In this paper, I raise concerns for this approach and develop an alternative. Broadly, in the approach I defend, one is agentively aware in the virtue of intending to act. I further argue that agentive awareness is not constituted by intentions themselves but rather first-personal thoughts that are formed on the basis (...) of them. I develop this proposal, highlight some of its theoretical advantages, and show how it successfully meets various challenges. (shrink)

Although Donald Davidson is best known for his account of motivating reasons, towards the end of his life he did write about normative reasons, arguing for a novel form of realism we might call anomalous naturalism: anomalous, because it is not just non-reductive but also non-revisionary, refusing to compromise in any way on the thought that the prescriptive authority of normative reasons is objective and reaches to all possible agents; naturalism, because it still treats normative properties as perfectly ordinary causal (...) properties, and thus avoids many of the epistemological problems that bedevil realisms of the sort recently advanced by Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, and T. M. Scanlon. In the first section of the paper, I discuss Davidson’s understanding of objective prescriptivity and one important challenge that it faces. In the second section, I show how an answer to this challenge can be found in Davidson’s holism of the mental. As we shall see, Davidson’s holism of the mental makes the possibility of strongly prescriptive properties much easier to take seriously. In the final section of the paper, I take up various grounds for doubting that such properties could also be causal. (shrink)

I am going to argue that linking Hume’s name with instrumentalism is as inappropriate as linking Aristotle’s: that, as a matter of textual point, the Hume of the Treatise is not an instrumentalist at all, and that the view of practical reasoning that he does have is incompatible with, and far more minimal than, instrumentalism. Then I will consider Hume’s reasons for his view, and argue that they make sense when they are seen against the background of his semantic theory. (...) And finally, I will try to say why it is that Hume has nonetheless been read as he has. (shrink)

Nihilism about practical reasoning is the thesis that there is no such thing as practical rationality—as rationally figuring out what to do. While other philosophers have defended a theoretically oriented version of the thesis, usually called “error theory”, a case is made for a fully practical version of it: that we are so bad at figuring out what to do that we do not really know what doing it right would so much as look like. In particular, much of our (...) control of instrumental (or means-end) rationality is illusory, and we are almost entirely incompetent at managing the defeating conditions of our practical inferences—that is, of knowing when not to draw an apparently acceptable conclusion. If that is right, then instead of trying to reason more successfully, we should be trying to make failure pay. (shrink)

The Humean theory of motivation remains the default position in much of the contemporary literature in meta-ethics, moral psychology, and action theory. Yet despite its widespread support, the theory is implausible as a view about what motivates agents to act. More specifically, my reasons for dissatisfaction with the Humean theory stem from its incompatibility with what I take to be a compelling model of the role of motivating reasons in first-person practical deliberation and third-person action explanations. So after first introducing (...) some assumptions about the nature of agency in section one, I will turn to articulating and defending this account of motivating reasons in sections two through four of the paper. Section five then provides some background on the Humean theory before I argue directly against it in section six and critically examine the leading arguments for the view in section seven. Given limitations of space, however, I save the task of developing a positive anti-Humean view for another occasion. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to consider Joshua Gert’s novel view of subjective practical rationality in his book Brute Rationality. After briefly outlining the account, I present two objections to his view and then consider his own objections to a rival approach to understanding subjective rationality which I take to be much more plausible.

Our beliefs about which actions we ought to perform clearly have an effect on what we do. But so-called “Humean” theories—holding that all motivation has its source in desire—insist on connecting such beliefs with an antecedent motive. Rationalists, on the other hand, allow normative beliefs a more independent role. I argue in favor of the rationalist view in two stages. First, I show that the Humean theory rules out some of the ways we ordinarily explain actions. This shifts the burden (...) of proof onto Humeans to motivate their more restrictive, revisionary account. Second, I show that they are unlikely to discharge this burden because the key arguments in favor of the Humean theory fail. I focus on some of the most potent and most recent lines of argument, which appeal to either parsimony, the teleological nature of motivation, or the structure of practical reasoning. (shrink)