This thesis is an investigation into the nature of epistemic justification. It brings together themes from traditional, individual-centred epistemology, and collective, group-centred epistemology. The first half of the thesis is concerned with the question of whether rationality is epistemically permissive; that is, whether one body of evidence can rationalise more than one doxastic attitude. In chapter 1, I argue that permissive cases are best understood as epistemic standard conflicts. Doing so provides us with a novel understanding of the arbitrariness objection (...) against permissivism and enables us to reduce questions about epistemic permissibility to questions about the nature of incommensurability. In chapter 2, I show that the defended understanding of permissive cases generalises by defending it against an objection from self-fulfilling beliefs. In chapter 3, I demonstrate that we can use this view of epistemic rationality to generate so-called divergence arguments which show that the epistemic status of group-level attitudes and member-level attitudes can rationally diverge. In the second half of the thesis, I develop a novel evidentialist theory of epistemic justification, called Continuous Evidentialism. Continuous Evidentialism is inspired by some general methodological reflections (chapter 4), which suggest that we should opt for a theory of epistemic justification that analyses the epistemic status of group-level attitudes and member-level attitudes continuously. According to Continuous Evidentialism, to have a justified belief is to possess sufficient evidence and utilise that evidence in an epistemically responsible way when forming the belief. While I argue that we can reduce epistemic responsibility to higher-order evidentialist requirements. In chapter 5, I develop a theory of evidence, evidence possession and epistemic basing. Chapters 6 - 8, discuss various complications of the proposed theory, having to do with the alleged defeasibility of justification (chapter 6), epistemic responsibility (chapter 7), and the proposed reduction of epistemic responsibility (chapter 8). In chapter 9, I compare Continuous Evidentialism to various extant accounts. (shrink)

Algorithm Decision Making (ADM) systems designed to augment or automate human decision-making have the potential to produce better decisions while also freeing up human time and attention for other pursuits. For this potential to be realised, however, algorithmic decisions must be sufficiently aligned with human goals and interests. We take a Principal-Agent (P-A) approach to the questions of ADM alignment and trust. In a broad sense, ADM is beneficial if and only if human principals can trust algorithmic agents to act (...) faithfully on their behalf. This mirrors the challenge of facilitating P-A relationships among humans, but the peculiar nature of human-machine interaction also raises unique issues. The problem of asymmetric information is omnipresent but takes a different form in the context of ADM. Although the decision-making machinery of an algorithmic agent can in principle be laid bare for all to see, the sheer complexity of ADM systems based on deep learning models prevents straightforward monitoring. We draw on literature from economics and political science to argue that the problem of trust in ADM systems should be addressed at the level of institutions. Although the dyadic relationship between human principals and algorithmic agents is our ultimate concern, cooperation at this level must rest against an institutional environment which allows humans to effectively evaluate and choose among algorithmic alternatives. (shrink)

Gideon Rosen, Brian Leiter, and Catarina Dutilh Novaes raise deep questions about the arguments in Morality and Mathematics (M&M). Their objections bear on practical deliberation, the formulation of mathematical pluralism, the problem of universals, the argument from moral disagreement, moral ‘perception’, the contingency of our mathematical practices, and the purpose of proof. In this response, I address their objections, and the broader issues that they raise.

When you are indifferent between two options, it’s rationally permissible to take either. One way to decide between two such options is to flip a fair coin, taking one option if it lands heads and the other if it lands tails. Is it rationally permissible to employ such a tie-breaking procedure? Intuitively, yes. However, if you are genuinely risk-averse—in particular, if you adhere to risk-weighted expected utility theory (Buchak in Risk and rationality, Oxford University Press, 2013) and have a strictly (...) convex risk-function—the answer will often be no: the REU of deciding by coin-flip will be lower than the REU of choosing one of the options outright (so long as at least one of the options is a nondegenerate gamble). This turns out to be a significant worry for risk-weighted expected utility theory. I argue that it adds real bite to established worries about diachronic consistency afflicting views, like risk-weighted expected utility theory, that violate Independence. And that, while these worries might be surmountable, surmounting them comes at a price. (shrink)

The degrees of belief of rational agents should be guided by the evidence available to them. This paper takes as a starting point the view—argued elsewhere—that the formal model best able to capture this idea is one that represents degrees of belief using Dempster–Shafer belief functions. However degrees of belief should not only respect evidence: they also guide decision and action. Whatever formal model of degrees of belief we adopt, we need a decision theory that works with it: that takes (...) as input degrees of belief so represented. The task of this paper is to develop such a decision theory for the belief function model of degrees of belief. This is not the first paper to attempt that task, but compared to the existing literature it takes a more abstract route to its destination, via a consideration of the very idea of rational decision making in light of one’s beliefs and desires. After presenting the new decision theory and comparing it to existing views, the paper goes on to consider diachronic decision situations. (shrink)

Why should a lottery be used in the allocation of an indivisible good to which participants in the lottery have an equally strong claim? Stone argues that when indeterminacy arises, in which it is impossible to satisfy the equality condition requiring like cases to be treated alike, the impartiality principle suggests that the agent responsible for the allocation task should not intend to favor one over another on the basis of invalid reasons. In this article, I argue that the impartiality (...) principle is neither sufficient nor necessary to explain the fairness of lotteries. Instead, the fairness of lotteries is explained by the sanitizing effect that lotteries generate to screen out the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation that claimants might otherwise have if they do not obtain the good in question. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Consequentialist theories often neglect reasons for action. They offer theories of the rightness or the goodness of actions, or of virtue, but they typically do not include theories of reasons. However, consequentialists can give plausible accounts of reasons. This chapter examines some different ways in which such accounts might be developed, focusing on Act Consequentialism and Rule Consequentialism and on the relationship between reasons and rightness. It notes that adding claims about reasons to consequentialist theories may introduce a welcome kind (...) of complexity, and in doing so may help to make consequentialist approaches to ethics more appealing. For example, it may help consequentialists to explain the ideas of moral constraints and moral options. (shrink)

Reflection on the relationship between free will and consciousness has mainly revolved around Libet-style experiments, for example by criticizing the claim that conscious intentions never cause what we do. Less attention has been paid to whether this response captures the sense in which consciousness is relevant for free will, however. In this paper I argue that scholars seem to accept two assumptions they should reject: (1) that the relationship between free will and consciousness is best characterized in terms of conscious (...) states and/or processes being part of the causal chain leading up to the action, and (2) that the third-person perspective is a suitable means to capturing the relationship between free will and consciousness. I provide an alternative proposal of how free will and consciousness may be related, in which an agent’s self-understanding of what she is doing and why, while acting, takes center stage. In order to capture the relationship between the two, I argue, the first-person perspective should be investigated instead of explained away. (shrink)

The problem known as Buridan’s Ass says that a hungry donkey equipoised between two identical bales of hay will starve to death. Indecision kills the ass. Some philosophers worry about human analogs. Computer scientists since the 1960s have known about the computer versions of such cases. From what Leslie Lamport calls ‘Buridan’s Principle’—a discrete decision based on a continuous range of input-values cannot be made in a bounded time—it follows that the possibilities for human analogs of Buridan’s Ass are far (...) more wide-ranging and securely provable than has been acknowledged in philosophy. We are never necessarily decisive. This is mathematically provable. I explore four consequences: first, increased interest of the literature’s solutions to Buridan’s Ass; second, a new asymmetry between responsibility for omissions and responsibility for actions; third, clarification of the standard account of akrasia; and, fourth, clarification of the role of credences in normative decision-theory. (shrink)

The existing literature on the rational underdetermination problem often construes it as one resulting from the ubiquity of objective values. It is therefore sometimes argued that subjectivists need not be troubled by the underdetermination problem. But on closer examination, it turns out, they should. Or so I will argue. The task of the first half of this paper is explaining why. The task of the second half is finding a subjectivist solution the rational underdetermination problem. The basic problem, I argue, (...) is as follows. Idealizing subjectivism generates too many ideal selves to deliver determinate or commensurable options regarding what non-ideal deliberating agents ought to do. My solution: these idealized options should be assessed from the only perspective we can, in fact, occupy, namely, that of our non-ideal, actual selves. Deciding what to do therefore becomes, in part, an exercise in deciding who to be. But one might now worry this just moves the arbitrariness bump in the rug. Privileging the perspective of our actual self seems contrary to the rationale for idealizing in the first place. I consider two solutions to the problem, one democratic, the other modelled on trusteeship. In the end, I argue, our actual self has complete freedom to choose the ideal self it grants rational authority. In the final part of the paper, I present my positive proposal as a solution to the underdetermination problem confronting the idealizing subjectivist and then argue that, so understood, this account vindicates a tidied-up version of how some reflective people already do deliberate in their everyday lives. This, in turn, suggests that a decision-procedure closely connected to the account is both possible and attractive. (shrink)

This paper presents a decision problem called the holiday puzzle. The decision problem is one that involves incommensurable goods and sequences of choices. This puzzle points to a tension between three prima facie plausible, but jointly incompatible claims. I present a way out of the trilemma which demonstrates that it is possible for agents to have incomplete preferences and to be dynamically rational. The solution also suggests that the relationship between preference and rational permission is more subtle than standardly assumed.

This dissertation addresses a debate about the proper relationship between democratic theory and institutions. The debate has been waged between two rival approaches: on the one side is an aggregative and economic theory of democracy, known as constitutional economics, and on the other side is deliberative democracy. The two sides endorse starkly different positions on the issue of what makes a democracy legitimate and stable within an institutional setting. Constitutional economists model political agents in the same way that neoclassical economists (...) model economic agents, that is, as self-regarding, rational maximizers; so that evaluations of democratic legitimacy and stability depend on the extent to which the design of institutional rules and practices maximize individual utility by promoting efficient schemes of collective choice. Deliberative democrats, on the other hand, understand political agents as communicative reason-giving subjects who justify their preferences and positions on issues that jointly affect them in a process of consensus-directed discourse, or deliberation; so that evaluations of democratic legitimacy and order depend on the degree to which institutional norms and practices promote deliberation and draw upon deliberated public judgment. I argue that despite the numerous incompatibilities between constitutional economics and deliberative democracy—which amount to a 'deep divide'—an opportunity to produce a genuine synthesis of the two approaches arises inasmuch as it is possible to overcome several points of opposition in their separate research programmes. The central thesis of the dissertation is that it is possible to construct a bridge spanning the divide between constitutional economists and deliberative democrats, and that Dewey and Bentley's transactional view can facilitate this bridge-building project. Pursuant to this end, the points of opposition between the v research programmes are mediated by way of five concepts which, on balance, favor deliberative democracy and its feasible institutionalization. (shrink)

How is what we believe related to how we act? That depends on what we mean by ‘believe’. On the one hand, there is what we're sure of: what our names are, where we were born, whether we are sitting in front of a screen. Surety, in this sense, is not uncommon — it does not imply Cartesian absolute certainty, from which no possible course of experience could dislodge us. But there are many things that we think that we are (...) not sure of. For example, you might think that it will rain sometime this month, but not be sure that it will. Both what we're sure of and what we think have important normative connections to action. But the connections are quite different. This paper explores these issues with respect to assertion, inquiry, and decision making. We conclude by arguing that there is no theoretically significant notion of ‘full belief’ intermediate in strength between thinking and being sure. (shrink)

According to a widely held view, rationality demands that the preferences of a person be transitive. The transitivity assumption is an axiom in standard theories of rational choice. It is also prima facie very plausible. I argue here that transitivity is not a necessary condition of rationality; it is a constraint only in some cases. The argument presented here is based on the non-linearity of differential utility functions. This paper has four parts. First, I present an argument against the transitivity (...) assumption (I, II). Second, I discuss some objections; this will also bring out some features of the view defended here, like the essentially comparative nature of choice (III). Then, I discuss certain proposals that promise to avoid my conclusion (IV). Finally, I go into some implications concerning the nature of rational decision making (V). To accept some intransitivities as rational does not make our life easier; it can even lead to hard choices. However, it does not lead to skepticism about rational choice. (shrink)

In the recent literature across philosophy, medicine and public health policy, many influential arguments have been put forward to support the use of randomization procedures to allocate scarce life-saving resources. In this paper, I provide a systematic categorization and a critical evaluation of these arguments. I shall argue that those arguments justify using RAND to allocate SLSR in fewer cases than their proponents maintain and that the relevant decision-makers should typically allocate SLSR directly to the individuals with the strongest claims (...) to these resources rather than use RAND to allocate such resources. (shrink)

Psychologists and philosophers have argued that the capacity for perseverance or “grit” depends both on willpower and on a kind of epistemic resilience. But can a form of hopefulness in one’s future success also constitute a source of grit? I argue that substantial practical hopefulness, as a hope to bring about a desired outcome through exercises of one’s agency, can serve as a distinctive ground for the capacity for perseverance. Gritty agents’ “practical hope” centrally involves an attention-fuelled, risk-inclined weighting of (...) two competing concerns over action: when facing the decision of whether to persevere, hopeful gritty agents prioritize the aim of choosing a course of action which might go very well over that of choosing a course of action which is very likely to go fairly well. By relying on the notion of a “risk-inclined attentional pattern” as a dimension of gritty agents’ practical hope, we can explain that form of hope’s contribution to their motivation and practical rationality, especially on a risk-weighted expected utility framework. The upshot is a more pluralistic view of the sources of grit. (shrink)

When does it make sense to act randomly? A persuasive argument from Bayesian decision theory legitimizes randomization essentially only in tie-breaking situations. Rational behaviour in humans, non-human animals, and artificial agents, however, often seems indeterminate, even random. Moreover, rationales for randomized acts have been offered in a number of disciplines, including game theory, experimental design, and machine learning. A common way of accommodating some of these observations is by appeal to a decision-maker’s bounded computational resources. Making this suggestion both precise (...) and compelling is surprisingly difficult. Toward this end, I propose two fundamental rationales for randomization, drawing upon diverse ideas and results from the wider theory of computation. The first unifies common intuitions in favour of randomization from the aforementioned disciplines. The second introduces a deep connection between randomization and memory: access to a randomizing device is provably helpful for an agent burdened with a finite memory. Aside from fit with ordinary intuitions about rational action, the two rationales also make sense of empirical observations in the biological world. Indeed, random behaviour emerges more or less where it should, according to the proposal. (shrink)

What makes a choice hard? I discuss and criticize three common answers and then make a proposal of my own. Paradigmatic hard choices are not hard because of our ignorance, the incommensurability of values, or the incomparability of the alternatives. They are hard because the alternatives are on a par; they are comparable, but one is not better than the other, and yet nor are they equally good. So understood, hard choices open up a new way of thinking about what (...) it is to be a rational agent. (shrink)

A standard liberal claim is that freedom of choice is not only instrumentally valuable but also intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable for its own sake. I argue that each one of five conditions is plausible if freedom of choice is intrinsically valuable. Yet there exists a counter-example to the conjunction of these conditions. Hence freedom of choice is not intrinsically valuable.

A plausible constraint on normative reasons to act is that it must make sense to use them as premises in deliberation. I argue that a central sort of deliberation – what Bratman calls partial planning – is question-directed: it is over, and aims to resolve, deliberative questions. Whether it makes sense to use some consideration as a premise in deliberation in a case of partial planning can vary with the deliberative question at issue. I argue that the best explanation for (...) this is that reasons are contrastive or relativized to deliberative questions. (shrink)

Big decisions in a person’s life often affect the preferences and standards of a good life which that person’s future self will develop after implementing her decision. This paper argues that in such cases the person might lack any reasons to choose one way rather than the other. Neither preference-based views nor happiness-based views of justified choice offer sufficient help here. The available options are not comparable in the relevant sense and there is no rational choice to make. Thus, ironically, (...) in many of a person’s most important decisions the idea of that person’s good seems to have no application. (shrink)

In their recently published book Nudge (2008) Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (T&S) defend a position labelled as ‘libertarian paternalism’. Their thinking appeals to both the right and the left of the political spectrum, as evidenced by the bedfellows they keep on either side of the Atlantic. In the US, they have advised Barack Obama, while, in the UK, they were welcomed with open arms by the David Cameron's camp (Chakrabortty 2008). I will consider the following questions. What (...) is Nudge? How is it different from social advertisement? Does Nudge induce genuine preference change? Does Nudge build moral character? Is there a moral difference between the use of Nudge as opposed to subliminal images to reach policy objectives? And what are the moral constraints on Nudge? (shrink)

Philosophers have recently argued that self-fulfilling beliefs constitute an important counter-example to the widely accepted theses that we ought not and cannot believe at will. Cases of self-fulfilling belief are thought to constitute a special class where we enjoy the epistemic freedom to permissibly believe for pragmatic reasons, because whatever we choose to believe will end up true. In this paper, I argue that this view fails to distinguish between the aim of acquiring a true belief and the aim of (...) believing what is true. While one cannot usually fail to establish that one will acquire a true belief without establishing the truth of the believed proposition, in the case self-fulfilling belief the two can come apart. I argue that insofar as the aim of belief has to do with determining whether the believed proposition is true, it will be both impossible and impermissible to believe for pragmatic reasons. (shrink)

This essay explores the features in virtue of which games are valuable or worthwhile to play. The difficulty view of games holds that the goodness of games lies in their difficulty: by making activities more complex or making them require greater effort, they structure easier activities into more difficult, therefore more worthwhile, activities. I argue that a further source of the value of games is that they provide players with an experience of freedom, which they provide both as paradigmatically unnecessary (...) activities and by offering opportunities for relatively unconstrained choice inside the ‘lusory’ world that players inhabit. (shrink)

This essay discusses implications of incommensurability of values for justified decision-making, ethics and justice. Under particular conditions incommensurability of values causes what might be called ‘incomplete comparability’ of options. Some leading theorists interpret this in terms of ‘imprecise equality’ and ‘imprecise comparability.’ This interpretation is mistaken and conceals the implications of incommensurability for practical and ethical reasoning. The aim of this essay is to show that, in many cases, incommensurability prevents the assignment of determinate weights to competing values. This may (...) have problematic consequences for a complete and impartial justification of decisions concerning conflicting values to the extent that they depend on the need of weighing them. (shrink)

I want to focus on some of the limits of decision theory that are of interest to the philosophical concern with practical reasoning and rational choice. These limits should also be of interest to the social-scientists’ concern with Rational Choice.

This introductory article describes the phenomena of incommensurability and incomparability, how they are related, and why they are important. Since incomparability is the more significant phenomenon, the paper takes that as its focus. It gives a detailed account of what incomparability is, investigates the relation between the incomparability of values and the incomparability of alternatives for choice, distinguishes incomparability from the related phenomena of parity, indeterminacy, and noncomparability, and, finally, defends a view about practical justification that vindicates the importance of (...) incomparability — assuming it exists — for practical reason. (shrink)

There have been different interpretations of satisficing rationality. A common view is that it is sometimes rationally permitted to choose an option one judges is good enough even when one does not know that it is the best option. But there is available a more radical view of satisficing. On this view, it is rationally permitted to choose an option one judges is good enough even when a better option is known to be available. In this paper I distinguish between (...) two possible interpretations of ‘genuine’ satisficing, a de re and a de dicto interpretation. I then argue that while de re genuine satisficing is always irrational, de dicto genuine satisficing might be rationally permissible. In fact, de dicto genuine satisficing does not appear to be covered by existing accounts of satisficing behaviour. (shrink)

Although choice and preference are distinct categories, it may in some contexts be a useful idealization to treat choices as fully determined by preferences. In order to construct a general model of such preference-based choice, a method to derive choices from preferences is needed that yields reasonable outcomes for all preference relations, even those that are incomplete and contain cycles. A generalized choice function is introduced for this purpose. It is axiomatically characterized and is shown to compare favourably with alternative (...) constructions. (shrink)

In this paper an empirical theory about the nature of intention is sketched. After stressing the necessity of reckoning with intentions in philosophy of action a strategy for deciding empirically between competing theories of intention is exposed and applied for criticizing various philosophical theories of intention, among others that of Bratman. The hypothesis that intentions are optimality beliefs is defended on the basis of empirical decision theory. Present empirical decision theory however does not provide an empirically satisfying elaboration of the (...) desirability concepts used in these optimality beliefs. Based on process theories of deliberation two hypotheses for filling this gap are developed. (shrink)

I present and defend (1) an account of ethical judgments as judgments about our reasons to feel specific motivationally laden attitudes, (2) an account of what an agent should do in terms of what would achieve ends that she has reason to be motivated to pursue, and (3) an account of an agent’s reasons for motivation (and thus action) in terms of the prescriptions of the most fundamental principles that guide her deliberations. Using these accounts, I explain the connection between (...) ethics and reasons for action, how ethical judgments are both descriptive and intrinsically motivating, and how ethical facts arise from facts about agents’ deliberations. (shrink)

This paper evaluates Peter Klein’s objection to foundationalism. According to Klein, foundationalism fails because it allows arbitrariness “at the base.” I first explain that this objection can be interpreted in two ways: either as targeting dialectical foundationalism or as targeting epistemic foundationalism. I then clarify Klein’s concept of arbitrariness. An assertion or belief is assumed to be arbitrary if and only if it lacks a reason that is “objectively and subjectively available.” Drawing on this notion, I evaluate Klein’s objection. I (...) first argue that his objection construed as targeting dialectical foundationalism fails, since nothing prevents dialectical foundationalism from ruling out arbitrary assertions. I then argue that the objection seen as targeting epistemic foundationalism cannot be disqualified in the way some foundationalists believe. However, I show that also the objection so construed does not succeed, since epistemic foundationalism need not countenance arbitrary beliefs. (shrink)

Deliberation is often seen as the site of human freedom, but the binding power of rationality seems to imply that deliberation is, in its own way, a deterministic process. If one knows the starting preferences and circumstances of an agent, then, assuming that the agent is rational and that those preferences and circumstances don’t change, one should be in a position to predict what the agent will decide. However, given that an agent could conceivably confront equally attractive alternatives, it is (...) an open question whether rational choice theory can ever eliminate indeterminacy. The clearest support for such a limitation comes from the “Buridan’s ass” scenario, where an agent is confronted with two (or more) equally attractive/unattractive options. Does rationality by itself have the resources needed to prevent such paralysis of action? Those who cannot accept the idea of decisional impotence devise various ways to avoid it: postulating a neutral valence, tipping the utilities, positing sub-personal influences, and bunching the options. I argue that each of these responses is either unwarranted or flawed. All parties to the debate agree that, factually, paralysis of action is not a pervasive phenomenon. This is either because (i) the utilities one assigns to two or more options can never be balanced or because (ii) thanks to some non-rational faculty (say, the will), we would not be stuck even if those utilities were perfectly counterpoised. By looking critically at four untenable responses, I aim to show that (i) is often just a dogma and (ii) is by no means a silly position. (shrink)

Many authors in ethics, economics, and political science endorse the Lottery Requirement, that is, the following thesis: where different parties have equal moral claims to one indivisible good, it is morally obligatory to let a fair lottery decide which party is to receive the good. This article defends skepticism about the Lottery Requirement. It distinguishes three broad strategies of defending such a requirement: the surrogate satisfaction account, the procedural account, and the ideal consent account, and argues that none of these (...) strategies succeed. The article then discusses and discharges some remaining grounds for resistance to these skeptical conclusions, as well as the possibility of defending a weaker version of a normative lottery principle. The conclusion is that we have no reason to believe that where equal claims conflict, we are morally required to hold a lottery, as opposed to simply picking one of the parties on more subjective grounds or out of pure whim. In addition to the practical consequences of this skeptical view, the article sketches some theoretical implications for debates about saving the greater number and about axiomatic utilitarianism. (shrink)

According to Peter Klein, foundationalism fails because it allows a vicious form of arbitrariness. The present article critically discusses his concept of arbitrariness. It argues that the condition Klein takes to be necessary and sufficient for an epistemic item to be arbitrary is neither necessary nor sufficient. It also argues that Klein's concept of arbitrariness is not a concept of something that is obviously vicious. Even if Klein succeeds in establishing that foundationalism allows what he regards as arbitrariness, this does (...) not yet mean that he confronts it with a sound objection. (shrink)

Inquiry, Volume 57, Issue 3, Page 384-411, June 2014.

This paper investigates the conceptual and empirical possibility of non-executed, non-conscious proximal intentions, i.e., non-conscious proximal intentions to act that do not turn into a final act, but perhaps are vetoed or overcome by an alternative action. It constructs a conceptual framework in which such cases are justifiably considered ‘proximal intentions’. This is achieved by combining Alfred Mele’s notion of non-conscious proximal intentions together with the notion of trying or striving taken from Brian O’Shaughnessy’s model of action. With this framework (...) in hand we analyze empirical electroencephalography (EEG) findings regarding ‘change of intention’ scenarios. Prior to EEG development (and other brain imaging techniques), one would never consider non-executed, non-conscious proximal intentions a case of intention at all. However, with technological and interpretable development of EEG, a whole group of so called ‘intentions’ appears, and the main aim of the paper is to justify this expanded usage. (shrink)

Sparrow argues that military robots capable of making their own decisions would be independent enough to allow us denial for their actions, yet too unlike us to be the targets of meaningful blame or praise—thereby fostering what Matthias has dubbed “the responsibility gap.” We agree with Sparrow that someone must be held responsible for all actions taken in a military conflict. That said, we think Sparrow overlooks the possibility of what we term “blank check” responsibility: A person of sufficiently high (...) standing could accept responsibility for the actions of autonomous robotic devices—even if that person could not be causally linked to those actions besides this prior agreement. The basic intuition behind our proposal is that humans can impute relations even when no other form of contact can be established. The missed alternative we want to highlight, then, would consist in an exchange: Social prestige in the occupation of a given office would come at the price of signing away part of one's freedoms to a contingent and unpredictable future guided by another agency. (shrink)

There exists an ongoing debate about the nature of incomparability. In this paper, I argue that incomparability is most usefully seen as a practical, rather than a metaphysical, issue. When confronted with an important choice between two options, an agent often will be at a loss as to how to decide between them. A common response to this problem is to assert that the options must therefore be equal, and that it is perfectly rational to be indifferent and decide between (...) them in some arbitrary fashion. Contrary to this common view, this paper shows that equality should be seen as the result of indifference and not the cause of it. I will show that the judgment between whether options are either equal or incomparable is actually a decision, made by an agent, that can in turn be judged as more or less rational. (shrink)

This paper presents an argument against the widespread view that ‘hard choices’ are hard because of the incomparability of the alternatives. The argument has two parts. First, I argue that any plausible theory of practical reason must be ‘comparativist’ in form, that is, it must hold that a comparative relation between the alternatives with respect to what matters in the choice determines a justified choice in that situation. If comparativist views of practical reason are correct, however, the incomparabilist view of (...) hard choices should be rejected. Incomparabilism about hard choices leads us to an implausible error theory about the phenomenology of hard choices, threatens an unattractive view of human agency, and leaves us in perplexity about what we are doing when we choose in hard choices. The second part of the argument explores the main competitor to comparativist views of practical reason, noncomparativist view, according tow which a choice is justified so long as it is not worse than any of the alternatives. This view is often assumed by rational choice theorists but has its best philosophical defense in work by Joseph Raz. On Raz’s view, incomparabilism about hard choices avoids the problems faced if comparativism is correct, but it faces different difficulties. I argue that Raz’s noncomparativist view mistakenly assimilates practical reason to more restricted normative domains such as the law. (shrink)

Adrian Piper argues that the Humean conception can be made to work only if it is placed in the context of a wider and genuinely universal conception of the self, whose origins are to be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. This conception comprises the basic canons of classical logic, which provide both a model of motivation and a model of rationality. These supply necessary conditions both for the coherence and integrity of the self and also for unified agency. (...) The Kantian conception solves certain intractable problems in decision theory by integrating it into classical predicate logic, and provides answers to longstanding controversies in metaethics concerning moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification that the Humean conception engenders. In addition, it sheds light on certain kinds of moral behavior – for example, the whistleblower – that the Humean conception is at a loss to explain. (shrink)

I defend a neo-Kantian view wherein we are capable of being completely autonomous and impartial and argue that this ability can ground normativity. As this view includes an existentialist conception of the self, I defend radical choice, a primary component of that conception, against arguments many take to be definitive. I call the ability to use radical choice “existentialist voluntarism” and bring it into a current debate in normative philosophy, arguing that it allows that we can be distanced from all (...) ends at once so as to be completely impartial. Finally, I indicate how this can be the source of normativity as it provides a purely impartial reason for being rational. (shrink)

The Humean conception of the self consists in the belief-desire model of motivation and the utility-maximizing model of rationality. This conception has dominated Western thought in philosophy and the social sciences ever since Hobbes’ initial formulation in Leviathan and Hume’s elaboration in the Treatise of Human Nature. Bentham, Freud, Ramsey, Skinner, Allais, von Neumann and Morgenstern and others have added further refinements that have brought it to a high degree of formal sophistication. Late twentieth century moral philosophers such as Rawls, (...) Brandt, Frankfurt, Nagel and Williams have taken it for granted, and have made use of it to supply metaethical foundations for a wide variety of normative moral theories. But the Humean conception of the self also leads to seemingly insoluble problems about moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification. Can it be made to work? (shrink)

More and more people seem to think that constructivism - in political philosophy, in moral philosophy, and perhaps in practical reasoning most generally - is the way to go. And yet it is surprisingly hard to even characterize the view. In this paper, I go to some lengths trying to capture the essence of a constructivist position - mostly in the realm of practical reason - and to pinpoint its theoretical attractions. I then give some reason to suspect that there (...) cannot be a coherent constructivist view about practical reason as a whole, at least not if it is to be interestingly constructivist, in a sense I make reasonably precise. (shrink)

According to the Desire-Based Reasons Model reasons for action are provided by desires. Many, however, are critical about the Model holding an alternative view of practical reason, which is often called valued-based. In this paper I consider one particular attempt to refute the Model, which advocates of the valued-based view often appeal to: the idea of reason-based desires. The argument is built up from two premises. The first claims that desires are states that we have reason to have. The second (...) argues that desires do not add to the stock of reasons the agent has for having them. Together the two theses entail that desires are based on reasons, which they transmit but to which they cannot add. In the paper I deal with a counterexample to the second premise: tie-breaking desires. I first distinguish two interesting cases and argue that only the second challenges the premise. Then I move onto analyze this challenge by focusing on Ruth Chang’s recent employment of it. I show that contrary to its counterintuitive appearance, the challenge can be sustained. However, I also argue that Chang overlooks the full potential of one particular response to the challenge: the introduction of higher-order reasons determining the normative significance of these desires. At the same time, I show that this response has a problem that Chang does not consider. As a result, the response can only partially disarm the challenge of tie-breaking desires; or not at all, depending on what significance we attribute to the counterexamples. (shrink)