Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Cognitivism and the argument from evidence non-responsiveness.John Eriksson & Marco Tiozzo - forthcoming - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice:1-18.
    Several philosophers have recently challenged cognitivism, i.e., the view that moral judgments are beliefs, by arguing that moral judgments are evidence non-responsive in a way that beliefs are not. If you believe that P, but acquire (sufficiently strong) evidence against P, you will give up your belief that P. This does not seem true for moral judgments. Some subjects maintain their moral judgments despite believing that there is (sufficiently strong) evidence against the moral judgments. This suggests that there is a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • A State of Besire.Iskra Fileva - 2021 - Philosophia 49 (5):1973-1979.
    I argue that there is at least one genuine state of besire.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Foundations of Epistemic Decision Theory.Jason Konek & Ben Levinstein - 2019 - Mind 128 (509):69-107.
    According to accuracy-first epistemology, accuracy is the fundamental epistemic good. Epistemic norms — Probabilism, Conditionalization, the Principal Principle, etc. — have their binding force in virtue of helping to secure this good. To make this idea precise, accuracy-firsters invoke Epistemic Decision Theory (EpDT) to determine which epistemic policies are the best means toward the end of accuracy. Hilary Greaves and others have recently challenged the tenability of this programme. Their arguments purport to show that EpDT encourages obviously epistemically irrational behavior. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • Ethical Judgment and Motivation.David Faraci & Tristram McPherson - 2018 - In Tristram Colin McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics. New York: Routledge. pp. 308-323.
    This chapter explores the relationship between ethical judgement writ large (as opposed to merely moral judgement) and motivation. We discuss arguments for and against views on which ethical judgement entails motivation, either alone or under conditions of rationality or normalcy, either at the individual or community level.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • The "Guise of the Ought to Be": A Deontic View of the Intentionality of Desire.Federico Lauria - 2017 - In Federico Lauria & Julien Deonna (eds.), The Nature of Desire. New York, USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 352.
    How are we to understand the intentionality of desire? According to the two classical views, desire is either a positive evaluation or a disposition to act. This essay examines these conceptions of desire and argues for a deontic alternative, namely the view that desiring is representing a state of affairs as what ought to be. Three lines of criticism of the classical pictures of desire are provided. The first concerns desire’s direction of fit, i.e. the intuition that the world should (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • "The Logic of the Liver". A Deontic View of the Intentionality of Desire.Federico Lauria - 2014 - Dissertation, University of Geneva
    Desires matter. How are we to understand the intentionality of desire? According to the two classical views, desire is either a positive evaluation or a disposition to act: to desire a state is to positively evaluate it or to be disposed to act to realize it. This Ph.D. Dissertation examines these conceptions of desire and proposes a deontic alternative inspired by Meinong. On this view, desiring is representing a state of affairs as what ought to be or, if one prefers, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Blame and the Humean Theory of Motivation.Adam R. Thompson - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (3):1345-1364.
    A classic, though basically neglected question about motivation arises when we attempt to account for blame’s nature—namely, does the recognition central to blame need help from an independent desire in order to motivate the blame-characteristic dispositions that arise in the blamer? Those who have attended to the question think the answer is yes. Hence, they adopt what I call a Humean Construal of blame on which blame is (a) a judgment that an individual S is blameworthy and (b) an independent (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • In a Fitter Direction: Moving Beyond the Direction of Fit Picture of Belief and Desire.John Milliken - 2008 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (5):563-571.
    Those working within the tradition of Humean psychology tend to mark a clear distinction between beliefs and desires. One prominent way of elucidating this distinction is to describe them as having different “directions of fit” with respect to the world. After first giving a brief overview of the various attempts to carry out this strategy along with their flaws, I argue that the direction of fit metaphor is misleading and ought to be abandoned. It fails to take into account the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • On the Very Idea of Direction of Fit.Kim Frost - 2014 - Philosophical Review 123 (4):429-484.
    Direction of fit theories usually claim that beliefs are such that they “aim at truth” or “ought to fit” the world and desires are such that they “aim at realization” or the world “ought to fit” them. This essay argues that no theory of direction of fit is correct. The two directions of fit are supposed to be determinations of one and the same determinable two-place relation, differing only in the ordering of favored terms. But there is no such determinable (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  • Perceptual justification and assertively representing the world.Jochen Briesen - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (8):2239-2259.
    This paper argues that there is a problem for the justificatory significance of perceptions that has been overlooked thus far. Assuming that perceptual experiences are propositional attitudes and that only propositional attitudes which assertively represent the world can function as justifiers, the problem consists in specifying what it means for a propositional attitude to assertively represent the world without losing the justificatory significance of perceptions—a challenge that is harder to meet than might first be thought. That there is such a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Problems for pure probabilism about promotion (and a disjunctive alternative).Nathaniel Sharadin - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (5):1371-1386.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Against Moral Intellectualism.Zed Adams - 2013 - Philosophical Investigations 37 (1):37-56.
    This paper argues that non-cognitivism about moral judgements is compatible with moral realism. In order to reveal the possibility, and plausibility, of this hitherto under-explored position in metaethics, it surveys a series of four increasingly fine-grained formulations of the distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism. It argues that all but the last of these distinctions should be rejected, on the grounds that they lead advocates of non-cognitivism away from what initially motivated them to advocate non-cognitivism in the first place. One significant (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Appetitive besires and the fuss about fit.Steven Swartzer - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 165 (3):975-988.
    Some motivational cognitivists believe that there are besires—cognitive mental states (typically moral beliefs) that share the key feature of desire (typically desire’s ‘direction of fit’) in virtue of which they are capable of being directly motivational. Besires have been criticized by Humeans and cognitivists alike as philosophically extravagant, incoherent, ad hoc, and incompatible with folk psychology. I provide a response to these standard objections to besires—one motivated independently of common anti-Humean intuitions about the motivational efficacy of moral judgments. I proceed (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Causal and Logical Necessity in Malebranche’s Occasionalism.A. R. J. Fisher - 2011 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (4):523-548.
    The famous Cartesian Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) espoused the occasionalist doctrine that ‘there is only one true cause because there is only one true God; that the nature or power of each thing is nothing but the will of God; that all natural causes are not true causes but only occasional causes’ (LO, 448, original italics). One of Malebranche’s well-known arguments for occasionalism, known as, the ‘no necessary connection’ argument (or, NNC ) stems from the principle that ‘a true cause… is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Changing Direction on Direction of Fit.Alex Gregory - 2012 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (5):603-614.
    In this paper, I show that we should understand the direction of fit of beliefs and desires in normative terms. After rehearsing a standard objection to Michael Smith’s analysis of direction of fit, I raise a similar problem for Lloyd Humberstone’s analysis. I go on to offer my own account, according to which the difference between beliefs and desires is determined by the normative relations such states stand in. I argue that beliefs are states which we have reason to change (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • Weak Motivational Internalism, Lite: Dispositions, Moral Judgments, and What We're Motivated to Do.Jesse Steinberg - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (S1):1-24.
    I argue that there is a continuum of judgments ranging from those that are affectively rich, what might be called passionate judgments, to those that are purely cognitive and nonaffective, what might be called dispassionate judgments. The former are akin to desires and other affective states and so are necessarily motivating. Applying this schema to moral judgments, I maintain that the motivational internalist is wrong in claiming that all moral judgments are necessarily motivating, but right in regard to the subset (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Ethics of False Belief.Timothy Lane - 2010 - EurAmerica 40 (3):591-633.
    According to Allen Wood’s “procedural principle” we should believe only that which can be justified by evidence, and nothing more. He argues that holding beliefs which are not justified by evidence diminishes our self-respect and corrupts us, both individually and collectively. Wood’s normative and descriptive views as regards belief are of a piece with the received view which holds that beliefs aim at the truth. This view I refer to as the Truth-Tracking View (TTV). I first present a modest version (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Moral Cognitivism.Hallvard Lillehammer - 2002 - Philosophical Papers 31 (1):1-25.
    Abstract The paper explicates a set of criteria the joint satisfaction of which is taken to qualify moral judgements as cognitive. The paper examines evidence that some moral judgements meet these criteria, and relates the resulting conception of moral judgements to ongoing controversies about cognitivism in ethics.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Sobel on Pleasure, Reason, and Desire.Attila Tanyi - 2011 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 14 (1):101-115.
    The paper begins with a well-known objection to the idea that reasons for action are provided by desires. The objection holds that since desires are based on reasons (first premise), which they transmit but to which they cannot add (second premise), they cannot themselves provide reasons for action. In the paper I investigate an attack that has recently been launched against the first premise of the argument by David Sobel. Sobel invokes a counterexample: hedonic desires, i.e. the likings and dislikings (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Directions of fit and the Humean theory of motivation.Mary Clayton Coleman - 2008 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (1):127 – 139.
    According to the Humean theory of motivation, a person can only be motivated to act by a desire together with a relevantly related belief. More specifically, a person can only be motivated to ϕ by a desire to ψ together with a belief that ϕ-ing is a means to or a way of ψ-ing. In recent writings, Michael Smith gives what has become a very influential argument in favour of the Humean claim that desire is a necessary part of motivation, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Pain for objectivists: The case of matters of mere taste.David Sobel - 2005 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8 (4):437 - 457.
    Can we adequately account for our reasons of mere taste without holding that our desires ground such reasons? Recently, Scanlon and Parfit have argued that we can, pointing to pleasure and pain as the grounds of such reasons. In this paper I take issue with each of their accounts. I conclude that we do not yet have a plausible rival to a desire-based understanding of the grounds of such reasons.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  • (1 other version)Why Moral Error Theorists Should Become Revisionary Moral Expressivists.Toby Svoboda - 2015 - Journal of Moral Philosophy (1):1-25.
    Moral error theorists hold that morality is deeply mistaken, thus raising the question of whether and how moral judgments and utterances should continue to be employed. Proposals include simply abolishing morality, adopting some revisionary fictionalist stance toward morality, and conserving moral judgments and utterances unchanged. I defend a fourth proposal, namely revisionary moral expressivism, which recommends replacing cognitivist moral judgments and utterances with non-cognitivist ones. Given that non-cognitivist attitudes are not truth apt, revisionary expressivism does not involve moral error. Moreover, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Moral Sentimentalism.Antti Kauppinen - 2002 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
  • Against representations with two directions of fit.Arto Laitinen - 2014 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13 (1):179-199.
    The idea that there are representations with a double direction of fit has acquired a pride of place in contemporary debates on the ontology of institutions. This paper will argue against the very idea of anything at all having both directions of fit. There is a simple problem which has thus far gone unnoticed. The suggestion that there are representations with both directions of fit amounts to a suggestion that, in cases of discrepancy between a representation and the world, both (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • A Puzzle About Desire.Chase B. Wrenn - 2010 - Erkenntnis 73 (2):185-209.
    The following four assumptions plausibly describe the ideal rational agent. (1) She knows what her beliefs are. (2) She desires to believe only truths. (3) Whenever she desires that P → Q and knows that P, she desires that Q. (4) She does not both desire that P and desire that ~P, for any P. Although the assumptions are plausible, they have an implausible consequence. They imply that the ideal rational agent does not believe and desire contradictory propositions. She neither (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Motivation in agents.Christian Miller - 2008 - Noûs 42 (2):222–266.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  • Bibliography.[author unknown] - 2008 - In Elizabeth Schmidt Radcliffe (ed.), A Companion to Hume. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 529–552.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for Action.David Sobel - 2001 - Social Philosophy and Policy 18 (2):218.
    These days, just about every philosophical debate seems to generate a position labeledinternalism. The debate I will be joining in this essay concerns reasons for action and their connection, or lack of connection, to motivation. The internalist position in this debate posits a certain essential connection between reasons and motivation, while the externalist position denies such a connection. This debate about internalism overlaps an older debate between Humeans and Kantians about the exclusive reason-giving power of desires. As we will see, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   34 citations  
  • The Many Faces of Besire Theory.Gary Edwards - unknown
    In this paper, I analyze the concept of a besire. I argue that distinguishing between different types and interpretations of besires is a critical tool for adequately assessing besire theories of moral judgment. I argue for this by applying the results of this conceptual analysis of a besire to David Brink’s version of the moral problem and to objections against besire theories made by Michael Smith, Simon Blackburn, and Nick Zangwill.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Moral Mistakes.Zed Adams - 2010 - Philosophical Investigations 34 (1):1-21.
    Is it possible to show that a moral claim is mistaken without taking a moral stand with regard to it? A striking number of contemporary metaethicists suppose that it is. In this paper, I argue against a prominent line of support for this supposition. My goal is to cast suspicion on a general tendency to think that the epistemic standing of moral claims is something that can be assessed from outside the practices of making and critically evaluating moral judgements. I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (1 other version)Why Moral Error Theorists Should Become Revisionary Moral Expressivists.Toby Svoboda - 2015 - New Content is Available for Journal of Moral Philosophy (1):48-72.
    _ Source: _Page Count 25 Moral error theorists hold that morality is deeply mistaken, thus raising the question of whether and how moral judgments and utterances should continue to be employed. Proposals include simply abolishing morality, adopting some revisionary fictionalist stance toward morality, and conserving moral judgments and utterances unchanged. I defend a fourth proposal, namely revisionary moral expressivism, which recommends replacing cognitivist moral judgments and utterances with non-cognitivist ones. Given that non-cognitivist attitudes are not truth apt, revisionary expressivism does (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Motivating Emotional Content.Benjamin Sheredos - unknown
    Among philosophers of the emotions, it is common to view emotional content as purely descriptive – that is, belief-like or perception-like. I argue that this is a mistake. The intentionality of the emotions cannot be understood in isolation from their motivational character, and emotional content is also inherently directive – that is, desire-like. This view’s strength is its ability to explain a class of emotional behaviors that I argue, the common view fails to explain adequately. I claim that it is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The inertness of reason and Hume’s legacy.Elizabeth S. Radcliffe - 2012 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 42 (S1):117-133.
    Hume argues against the seventeenth-century rationalists that reason is impotent to motivate action and to originate morality. Hume's arguments have standardly been considered the foundation for the Humean theory of motivation in contemporary philosophy. The Humean theory alleges that beliefs require independent desires to motivate action. Recently, however, new commentaries allege that Hume's argument concerning the inertness of reason has no bearing on whether beliefs can motivate. These commentaries maintain that for Hume, beliefs about future pleasurable and painful objects on (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Emotional Actions Without Goals.Isaac Wiegman - 2020 - Erkenntnis 87 (1):393-423.
    Recent accounts of emotional action intend to explain such actions without reference to goals. Nevertheless, these accounts fail to specify the difference between goals and other kinds of motivational states. I offer two remedies. First, I develop an account of goals based on Michael Smith’s arguments for the Humean theory of motivation. On this account, a goal is a unified representation that determines behavior selection criteria and satisfaction conditions for an action. This opens the possibility that mental processes could influence (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Motivational Cognitivism and the Argument from Direction of Fit.Hilla Jacobson-Horowitz - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 127 (3):561-580.
    An important argument for the belief-desire thesis is based on the idea that an agent can be motivated to act only if her mental states include one which aims at changing the world, that is, one with a “world-to-mind”, or “telic”, direction of fit. Some cognitivists accept this claim, but argue that some beliefs, notably moral ones, have not only a “mind-to-world”, or “thetic”, direction of fit, but also a telic one. The paper first argues that this cognitivist reply is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Figurative Speech: Pointing a Poisoned Arrow at the Heart of Semantics.Stephen Barker - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (1):123-140.
    I argue that figurative speech, and irony in particular, presents a deep challenge to the orthodox view about sentence content. The standard view is that sentence contents are, at their core, propositional contents: truth-conditional contents. Moreover, the only component of a sentence’s content that embeds in compound sentences, like belief reports or conditionals, is the propositional content. I argue that a careful analysis of irony shows this view cannot be maintained. Irony is a purely pragmatic form of content that embeds (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • What Kind of Theory is the Humean Theory of Motivation?Caroline T. Arruda - 2017 - Ratio 30 (3):322-342.
    I consider an underappreciated problem for proponents of the Humean theory of motivation. Namely, it is unclear whether is it to be understood as a largely psychological or largely metaphysical theory. I show that the psychological interpretation of HTM will need to be modified in order to be a tenable view and, as it will turn out, the modifications required render it virtually philosophically empty. I then argue that the largely metaphysical interpretation is the only a plausible interpretation of HTM's (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations