Switch to: References

Citations of:

Appearances of the Good: An Essay on the Nature of Practical Reason

New York: Cambridge University Press (2007)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. The Abductive Case for Humeanism over Quasi-Perceptual Theories of Desire.Derek Clayton Baker - 2014 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 8 (2):1-29.
    A number of philosophers have offered quasi-perceptual theories of desire, according to which to desire something is roughly to “see” it as having value or providing reasons. These are offered as alternatives to the more traditional Humean Theory of Motivation, which denies that desires have a representational aspect. This paper examines the various considerations offered by advocates to motivate quasi-perceptualism. It argues that Humeanism is in fact able to explain the same data that the quasi-perceptualist can explain, and in one (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • What are Theories of Desire Theories of?Tamar Schapiro - 2014 - Analytic Philosophy 55 (2):131-150.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  • (1 other version)Guise of the Good.Sergio Tenenbaum - 2013 - In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Murdoch on the Sovereignty of Good.Kieran Setiya - 2013 - Philosophers' Imprint 13.
    Argues for an interpretation of Iris Murdoch on which her account of moral reasons has Platonic roots, and on which she gives an ontological proof of the reality of the Good. This reading explains the structure of Sovereignty, how Murdoch's claims differ from a focus on "thick moral concepts," and how to find coherent arguments in her book.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Diachronic constraints of practical rationality.Luca Ferrero - 2012 - Philosophical Issues 22 (1):144-164.
    In this paper, I discuss whether there are genuinely *diachronic* constraints of practical rationality, that is, pressures on combinations of practical attitudes over time, which are not reducible to mere synchronic rational pressures. Michael Bratman has recently argued that there is at least one such diachronic rational constraint that governs the stability of intentions over time. *Pace* Bratman, I argue that there are no genuinely diachronic constraints on intentions that meet the stringent desiderata set by him. But I show that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • Fitting Inconsistency and Reasonable Irresolution.Simon D. Feldman & Allan Hazlett - 2020 - In Berit Brogaard & Dimitria Electra Gatzia (eds.), The Philosophy and Psychology of Ambivalence: Being of Two Minds. New York, NY: Routledge.
    The badness of having conflicting emotions is a familiar theme in academic ethics, clinical psychology, and commercial self-help, where emotional harmony is often put forward as an ideal. Many philosophers give emotional harmony pride of place in their theories of practical reason.1 Here we offer a defense of a particular species of emotional conflict, namely, ambivalence. We articulate an conception of ambivalence, on which ambivalence is unresolved inconsistent desire (§1) and present a case of appropriate ambivalence (§2), before considering two (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Knowing the Good and Knowing What One is Doing.Sergio Tenenbaum - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (S1):91-117.
    Most contemporary action theorists accept – or at least find plausible – a belief condition on intention and a knowledge condition on intentional action. The belief condition says that I can only intend to ɸ if I believe that I will ɸ or am ɸ-ing, and the knowledge condition says that I am only intentionally ɸ-ing if I know that I am ɸ-ing. The belief condition in intention and the knowledge condition in action go hand in hand. After all, if (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Reason and Desire: The Case of Affective Desires.Attila Tanyi - 2010 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6 (2):67-89.
    The paper begins with an objection to the Desire-Based Reasons Model. The argument from reason-based desires 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 this argument by Ruth Chang. Chang invokes a counterexample: affective desires. The aim of the paper is to see if (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 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  
  • Intention.Kieran Setiya - 2009 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Philosophical perplexity about intention begins with its appearance in three guises: intention for the future, as when I intend to complete this entry by the end of the month; the intention with which someone acts, as I am typing with the further intention of writing an introductory sentence; and intentional action, as in the fact that I am typing these words intentionally. As Elizabeth Anscombe wrote in a similar context, ‘it is implausible to say that the word is equivocal as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   54 citations  
  • Resisting 'Weakness of the Will'.Neil Levy - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 82 (1):134 - 155.
    I develop an account of weakness of the will that is driven by experimental evidence from cognitive and social psychology. I will argue that this account demonstrates that there is no such thing as weakness of the will: no psychological kind corresponds to it. Instead, weakness of the will ought to be understood as depletion of System II resources. Neither the explanatory purposes of psychology nor our practical purposes as agents are well-served by retaining the concept. I therefore suggest that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   34 citations  
  • (1 other version)Action.George Wilson - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    If a person's head moves, she may or may not have moved her head, and, if she did move it, she may have actively performed the movement of her head or merely, by doing something else, caused a passive movement. And, if she performed the movement, she might have done so intentionally or not. This short array of contrasts (and others like them) has motivated questions about the nature, variety, and identity of action. Beyond the matter of her moving, when (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • (1 other version)Sympathy for the devil.Kieran Setiya - 2010 - In Sergio Tenenbaum (ed.), Desire, Practical Reason, and the Good. , US: Oxford University Press. pp. 82--110.
    Argues that, while human beings may act "under the guise of the good," this is not true of rational agents, as such. Themes discussed along the way – extending the argument of "Reasons without Rationalism" (Princeton, 2007) – include: desires as appearances of the good, the intelligibility of vice, and the kind of essentialist claim that permits exceptions.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   37 citations  
  • Hedonic Consciousness and Moral Status.Declan Smithies - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind.
    Which beings have moral status? I argue that moral status requires some capacity for hedonic feelings of pleasure or displeasure. David Chalmers rejects this view on the grounds that it denies moral status to Vulcans, which are defined as conscious creatures with no capacity for hedonic feelings. On his more inclusive view, all conscious beings have moral status. We agree that only conscious beings have moral status, but we disagree about how to explain this. I argue that we cannot explain (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (1 other version)Hunger, Homeostasis, and Desire.Mohan Matthen - 2023 - Mind and Language 40:1–18.
    Hunger is a psychological state that serves physiological energy homeostasis. I argue that it is a pure underived desire to eat and examine its role in homeostasis. After scene-setting explanations of homeostasis and desire, I argue that hunger is a close phenomenological match with underived desire. Then, I show why desire is an apt instrument for energy homeostasis. Finally, I argue that energy homeostasis is a multi-factorial future-regarding behavioural strategy. Hunger is a special purpose sensory state that serves only to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Between ‘Indubitably Certain’ and ‘Quite Detrimental’ to Philosophy: Kant on the Guise of the Good Thesis.Vinicius Carvalho - 2023 - Kantian Review 28 (4):537-553.
    Kant clearly endorses some version of the ‘old formula of the schools’, according to which all volition is sub ratione boni. There has been a debate whether he holds this only for morally good actions. I argue that a closer look at the distinction between the good and the agreeable does not support this conclusion. Considering Kant’s account of the detrimental and the correct use of this thesis, I argue that rational beings always will sub ratione boni, even when they (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Knowing what you Want.Eric Marcus - forthcoming - In Lucy Campbell (ed.), Forms of Knowledge. Oxford.
    How do you know what you want? Philosophers have lately developed sophisticated accounts of the practical and doxastic knowledge that are rooted in the point of view of the subject. Our ability to just say what we are doing or what we believe—that is, to say so authoritatively, but not on the basis of observation or evidence—is an aspect of our ability to reason about the good and the true. However, no analogous route to orectic self-knowledge is feasible. Knowledge of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Bernard Williams on the guise of the good.Francesco Orsi - forthcoming - European Journal of Philosophy.
    The guise of the good is the thesis that an agent can only want, or intentionally do or pursue something, if and because this seems good to the agent in some respect or other. Bernard Williams criticizes the guise of the good in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. In this paper I reconstruct and assess his hitherto unnoticed critical remarks. Williams's opposition is based on the idea that it takes an “extra step” to go from desiring or pursuing something (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Armchair Evaluative Knowledge and Sentimental Perceptualism.Michael Milona - 2023 - Philosophies 8 (3):51.
    We seem to be able to acquire evaluative knowledge by mere reflection, or “from the armchair.” But how? This question is especially pressing for proponents of sentimental perceptualism, which is the view that our evaluative knowledge is rooted in affective experiences in much the way that everyday empirical knowledge is rooted in perception. While such empirical knowledge seems partially explained by causal relations between perceptions and properties in the world, in armchair evaluative inquiry, the relevant evaluative properties are typically not (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Desire-As-Belief and Evidence Sensitivity.Kael McCormack - 2023 - Theoria. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science 38 (2):155-172.
    Alex Gregory (2017a; 2017b; 2018; 2021) provides an ingenious, systematic defence of the view that desires are a species of belief about normative reasons. This view explains how desires make actions rationally intelligible. Its main rival, which is attractive for the same reason, says that desires involve a quasi-perceptual appearance of value. Gregory (2017a; 2018; 2021) has argued that his view provides the superior explanation of how desires are sensitive to evidence. Here, I show that the quasi-perceptual view fairs better (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Kant on Freedom.Owen Ware - 2023 - Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
    Kant’s early critics maintained that his theory of freedom faces a dilemma: either it reduces the will’s activity to strict necessity by making it subject to the causality of the moral law, or it reduces the will’s activity to blind chance by liberating it from rules of any kind. This Element offers a new interpretation of Kant’s theory against the backdrop of this controversy. It argues that Kant was a consistent proponent of the claim that the moral law is the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Attitudinalist Challenge to Perceptualism about Emotion.Michael Milona - forthcoming - Dialectica.
    Perceptualists maintain that emotions essentially involve perceptual experiences of value. This view pressures advocates to individuate emotion types (e.g. anger, fear) by their respective evaluative contents. This paper explores the Attitudinalist Challenge to perceptualism. According to the challenge, everyday ways of talking and thinking about emotions conflict with the thesis that emotions are individuated by, or even have, evaluative content; the attitudinalist proposes instead that emotions are evaluative at the level of attitude. Faced with this challenge, perceptualists should deepen their (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • A Disjunctive Account of Desire.Kael McCormack - 2022 - Dissertation, University of New South Wales
    This thesis motivates a novel account of desire as the best explanation of an intuitive datum. The intuitive datum is that often when an agent desires P she will immediately, outright know that she has a reason to bring P about. Existing explanations of the intuitive datum cannot simultaneously satisfy two desiderata. We want to explain how desires enable outright knowledge of reasons and also explain the fallibility of desires. Existing views satisfy the first desideratum at the expense of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Desire-Based Theories of Reasons and the Guise of the Good.Kael McCormack - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9 (47):1288-1321.
    I propose an account of desire that reconciles two apparently conflicting intuitions about practical agency. I do so by exploring a certain intuitive datum. The intuitive datum is that often when an agent desires P she will seem to immediately and conclusively know that there is a reason to bring P about. Desire-based theories of reasons seem uniquely placed to explain this intuitive datum. On this view, desires are the source of an agent’s practical reasons. A desire for P grounds (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Kant on Reason as the Capacity for Comprehension.Karl Schafer - 2023 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (4):844-862.
    This essay develops an interpretation of Kant’s conception of the faculty of reason as the capacity for what he calls "comprehension" (Begreifen). In doing so, it first discusses Kant's characterizations of reason in relation to what he describes as the two highest grades of cognition—insight and comprehension. Then it discusses how the resulting conception of reason relates to more familiar characterizations as the faculty for inference and the faculty of principles. In doing so, it focuses on how the idea of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Aesthetic Agency.Keren Gorodeisky - 2022 - In Luca Ferrero (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Agency. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 456-466.
    Until very recently, there has been no discussion of aesthetic agency. This is likely because aesthetics has traditionally focused not on action, but on appreciation, while the standard approach identifies ‘agency’ with the will, and, more specifically, with the capacity for intentional action. In this paper, I argue, first, that this identification is unfortunate since it fails to do justice to the fact that we standardly attribute beliefs, emotions, desires, and other conative and affective attitudes that aren’t formed ‘at will,’ (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Aesthetic knowledge.Keren Gorodeisky & Eric Marcus - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (8):2507-2535.
    What is the source of aesthetic knowledge? Empirical knowledge, it is generally held, bottoms out in perception. Such knowledge can be transmitted to others through testimony, preserved by memory, and amplified via inference. But perception is where the rubber hits the road. What about aesthetic knowledge? Does it too bottom out in perception? Most say “yes”. But this is wrong. When it comes to aesthetic knowledge, it is appreciation, not perception, where the rubber hits the road. The ultimate source of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Desire's Own Reasons.Uku Tooming - 2022 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 8 (2):259-277.
    In this essay I ask if there are reasons that count in favor of having a desire in virtue of its attitudinal nature. I call those considerations desire's own reasons. I argue that desire's own reasons are considerations that explain why a desire meets its constitutive standard of correctness and that it meets this standard when its satisfaction would also be satisfactory to the subject who has it. Reasons that bear on subjective satisfaction are fit to regulate desires through experience (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The guise of good reason.Ulf Hlobil - 2021 - Philosophical Explorations 24 (2):204-224.
    The paper argues for a version of the Guise of the Good thesis, namely the claim that if someone acts as the result of practical reasoning, then she takes her premises to jointly provide a sufficient and undefeated reason for her action. I argue for this by showing, first, that it is an application of Boghossian's Taking Condition on inference to practical reasoning and, second, that the motivations for the Taking Condition for theoretical reasoning carry over to practical reasoning. I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Hope: Conceptual and Normative Issues.Catherine Rioux - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 16 (3).
    Hope is often seen as at once valuable and dangerous: it can fuel our motivation in the face of challenges, but can also distract us from reality and lead us to irrationality. How can we learn to “hope well,” and what does “hoping well” involve? Contemporary philosophers disagree on such normative questions about hope and also on how to define hope as a mental state. This article explores recent philosophical debates surrounding the concept of hope and the norms governing hope. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Duality of motivation and the guise of the good in Kant’s practical philosophy.Sergio Tenenbaum - 2021 - Philosophical Explorations 24 (1):75-92.
    Although Kant is clearly committed to some version of the Guise of the Good thesis, he only explicitly endorses a very weak version of it; namely, that under the direction of reason, we only p...
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • A puzzle for evaluation theories of desire.Alex Grzankowski - 2021 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 10 (2):90-98.
    How we evaluate things and what we desire are closely connected. In typical cases, the things we desire are things that we evaluate as good or desirable. According to evaluation theories of desire, this connection is a very tight one: desires are evaluations of their objects as good or as desirable. There are two main varieties of this view. According to Doxastic Evaluativism, to desire that p is to believe or judge that p is good. According to Perceptual Evaluativism, to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Desire and What It’s Rational to Do.Ashley Shaw - 2021 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 99 (4):761-775.
    It is often taken for granted that our desires can contribute to what it is rational for us to do. This paper examines an account of desire—the ‘guise of the good’— that promises an explanation of this datum. I argue that extant guise-of-the-good accounts fail to provide an adequate explanation of how a class of desires—basic desires—contributes to practical rationality. I develop an alternative guise-of-the-good account on which basic desires attune us to our reasons for action in virtue of their (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • The Intersection of Hopes and Dreams.Michael Milona - 2020 - Journal of Social Philosophy 51 (4):645-663.
    A familiar injunction is to follow your dreams. But what are these dreams? Despite their importance, philosophers have almost entirely ignored the topic. This paper fills this gap by advancing an account of the psychological makeup and the normative powers of dreams. To elucidate their psychology, I identify the salient features of dreams. I argue that these features are explained by the hypothesis that dreams are a species of hope. More specifically, the proposal is that dreams fit the standard model (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Guise of the Beautiful: Symposium 204d ff.Jonathan Fine - 2019 - Phronesis 65 (2):129-152.
    A crux of Plato’s Symposium is how beauty relates to the good. Diotima distinguishes beauty from the good, I show, to explain how erotic pursuits are characteristically ambivalent and opaque. Human beings pursue beauty without knowing why or thinking it good; yet they are rational, if aiming at happiness. Central to this reconstruction is a passage widely taken to show that beauty either coincides with the good or demands disinterested admiration. It shows rather that what one loves as beautiful does (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • On fundamental responsibility.Anna-Sara Malmgren - 2019 - Philosophical Issues 29 (1):198-213.
    Some psychological states—paradigmatically, beliefs and intentions—are rationally evaluable: they can be rational or irrational, justified or unjustified. Other states—e.g. sensations and gastrointestinal states—aren't: they're a‐rational. On a familiar but hard‐to‐make‐precise line of thought, at least part of what explains this difference is that we're somehow responsible for (having/being in) states of the former sort, in a way we're not for the others. But this responsibility can't be modeled on the responsibility we have for our (free, intentional) actions. So how should (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Demonic despair under the guise of the good? Kierkegaard and Anscombe vs. Velleman.Roe Fremstedal - 2023 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (5):705-725.
    The aim of this paper is to clarify Kierkegaard’s concept of demonic despair (and demonic evil) and to show its relevance for discussions of the guise of the good thesis (i.e. that in f-ing intentionally, we take f-ing to be good). Contemporary discussions of diabolic evil often emphasise the phenomena of despair and acedia as apparent counter-examples to the guise of the good. I contend that Kierkegaard’s analysis of despair is relevant to these discussions, because it reconciles demonic (extreme) despair (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • The Nature of Desire.Federico Lauria & Julien Deonna (eds.) - 2017 - New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
    Desires matter. What are desires? Many believe that desire is a motivational state: desiring is being disposed to act. This conception aligns with the functionalist approach to desire and the standard account of desire's role in explaining action. According to a second influential approach, however, desire is first and foremost an evaluation: desiring is representing something as good. After all, we seem to desire things under the guise of the good. Which understanding of desire is more accurate? Is the guise (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Essays in Philosophical Moral Psychology.Antti Kauppinen - 2008 - Dissertation, University of Helsinki
    This 183-page introductory part of my dissertation is an overview of some key debates in philosophical moral psychology and its methodology.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Inference as Consciousness of Necessity.Eric Marcus - 2020 - Analytic Philosophy 61 (4):304-322.
    Consider the following three claims. (i) There are no truths of the form ‘p and ~p’. (ii) No one holds a belief of the form ‘p and ~p’. (iii) No one holds any pairs of beliefs of the form {p, ~p}. Irad Kimhi has recently argued, in effect, that each of these claims holds and holds with metaphysical necessity. Furthermore, he maintains that they are ultimately not distinct claims at all, but the same claim formulated in different ways. I find (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Normative Judgment and Rational Requirements: A Reply to Ridge.Francesco Orsi - 2018 - Analytic Philosophy 59 (2):281-290.
    I examine and rebut Ridge’s two arguments for Capacity Judgment Internalism (simply qua their particular character and content, first person normative judgments are necessarily capable of motivating without the help of any independent desire). First, the rejection of the possibility of anormativism (sec. 2), second, an argument from the rational requirement to intend to do as one judges that one ought to do (sec. 3). I conclude with a few remarks about the nature of this requirement and about verdicts of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • A Perceptual Theory of Hope.Michael Milona & Katie Stockdale - 2018 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5.
    This paper addresses the question of what the attitude of hope consists in. We argue that shortcomings in recent theories of hope have methodological roots in that they proceed with little regard for the rich body of literature on the emotions. Taking insights from work in the philosophy of emotions, we argue that hope involves a kind of normative perception. We then develop a strategy for determining the content of this perception, arguing that hope is a perception of practical reasons. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   39 citations  
  • The Perspective of Faith: It's Nature and Epistemic Implications.Blake McAllister - 2018 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 92 (3):515-533.
    A number of philosophers, going back at least to Kierkegaard, argue that to have faith in something is, in part, to have a passion for that thing—to possess a lasting, formative disposition to feel certain positive patterns of emotion towards the object of faith. I propose that (at least some of) the intellectual dimensions of faith can be modeled in much the same way. Having faith in a person involves taking a certain perspective towards the object of faith—in possessing a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Affective Experience, Desire, and Reasons for Action.Declan Smithies & Jeremy Weiss - 2019 - Analytic Philosophy 60 (1):27-54.
    What is the role of affective experience in explaining how our desires provide us with reasons for action? When we desire that p, we are thereby disposed to feel attracted to the prospect that p, or to feel averse to the prospect that not-p. In this paper, we argue that affective experiences – including feelings of attraction and aversion – provide us with reasons for action in virtue of their phenomenal character. Moreover, we argue that desires provide us with reasons (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Evaluative Beliefs First.Ben Bramble - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 8.
    Many philosophers think that it is only because we happen to want or care about things that we think some things of value. We start off caring about things, and then project these desires onto the external world. In this chapter, I make a preliminary case for the opposite view, that it is our evaluative thinking that is prior or comes first. On this view, it is only because we think some things of value that we care about or want (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • On Some Counter-Examples to the Guise of the Good-Thesis: Intelligibility without Desirability.Arto Laitinen - 2018 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (1):21-36.
    This paper argues that there are cases, which various guise of the good-theses concerning desires, intentions and actions would not allow. In these cases the agent acts for considerations that the agent does not regard as good reasons. The considerations render the actions intelligible but not desirable. These cases are atypical, but nonetheless show that those guise of the good-theses which do not allow them, should be revised. In typical cases the intelligibility of desires, intentions and actions co-varies with their (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Introduction. Reconsidering Some Dogmas About Desire.Federico Lauria & Julien Deonna - 2017 - In Federico Lauria & Julien Deonna (eds.), The Nature of Desire. New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
    Desire has not been at the center of recent preoccupations in the philosophy of mind. Consequently, the literature settled into several dogmas. The first part of this introduction presents these dogmas and invites readers to scrutinize them. The main dogma is that desires are motivational states. This approach contrasts with the other dominant conception: desires are positive evaluations. But there are at least four other dogmas: the world should conform to our desires (world-to-mind direction of fit), desires involve a positive (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 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  
  • Incommensurability, incomparability, and practical reason.Ruth Chang (ed.) - 1997 - Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard.
    Can quite different values be rationally weighed against one another? Can the value of one thing always be ranked as greater than, equal to, or less than the value of something else? If the answer to these questions is no, then in what areas do we find commensurability and comparability unavailable? And what are the implications for moral and legal decision making? This book struggles with these questions, and arrives at distinctly different answers.".
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   143 citations  
  • Agency and Normative Self-Governance.Matthew Silverstein - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (3):517-528.
    We are agents: we can deliberate about what to do, and then act on the basis of that deliberation. We are also capable of normative self-governance: we can identify and respond to reasons as reasons. Many theorists believe that these two capacities are intimately connected. On the basis of this connection they conclude that practical reasoning must be carried out under the guise of a justification. This paper explores two strategies for avoiding that conclusion. The first, which just denies the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations