What is it for an agent to have a reason to do a certain action? Does this mean that she would desire to do the action under specified conditions, or that there is some external consideration, which she ought to follow? The former affective (i.e., desire-based) theory is ascribed to Humeans, whereas the latter cognitive theory is adopted by Kantians. The debate between the two views has seemingly ended up in a theoretical standoff, and most of the theorists of practical (...) reason have recently turned their attention to the motivational attitude—preceded either by affective attitudes or by cognitive attitudes—as a necessary constituent of having a reason. They contend that an agent has a reason to f only if, on certain occasions, she would be motivated to f: I refer to it as Motivation Reason Internalism. In this paper, I argue that Motivation Reason Internalism is a mirage; it does not obtain necessarily. I classify major versions of Motivation Reason Internalism into three idealized counterfactual versions, arguing that they obtain only contingently, since they all face counterexamples. The Motivation Reason Internalist might attempt to dodge the counterexamples by appealing to Contextual Motivations Reason Internalism, but I show that this move also fails. I discuss a third cause for motivation, some unconscious cause, other than cognitive or affective attitudes, which can still be a motivation maker or breaker. These unconscious causes, such as an underlying biological inclination or psychological bias, functions as motivation maker/breaker but not a reason maker/breaker. This makes room for a variety of cases in which we have reason to perform an action in the absence of any kind (i.e., actual or counterfactual) of motivation. (shrink)

Constitutivists explicitly emphasize the importance of self-reflection for rational agency. Interestingly enough, there is no clear account of how and why self-reflection plays such an important role for these views. My aim in this paper is to address this underappreciated problem for constitutivist views and to determine whether constitutivist self-reflection is normatively oriented. Understanding its normative features will allow us to evaluate a potential way that constitutivism may meet its purported metaethical promise. I begin by showing why constitutivism, as exemplified (...) by Korsgaard’s and Velleman’s respective views, takes self-reflection to be a constitutive feature of rational agency. Closer examination of this claim suggests three underappreciated problems for the constitutivist’s apparent reliance on self-reflection. First, we have no picture of the specific role that self-reflection plays. Second, it is unclear in what sense it is a requirement for full-fledged agency and, thereby, for self-constitution. Third, it is not clear whether it has any necessary normative features, even given the often cited moral normativity associated with constitutivism. In §1, I will address the first and second questions. §2 will be dedicated to considering the third question. (shrink)

I provide an account of the cognitive attitude of trust that explains the role trust plays in the planning of rational agents. Many authors have dismissed choosing to trust as either impossible or irrational; however, this fails to account for the role of trust in practical reasoning. A can have therapeutic, coping, or corrective reasons to trust B to ${\phi}$ , even in the absence of evidence that B will ${\phi}$ . One can choose to engage in therapeutic trust to (...) inspire trustworthiness, coping trust to simplify one’s planning, or corrective trust to avoid doing a testimonial injustice. To accommodate such types of trust, without accepting doxastic voluntarism, requires an account of the cognitive attitude of trust broader than belief alone. I argue that trust involves taking the proposition that someone will do something as a premise in one’s practical reasoning, which can be a matter of believing or accepting the proposition. I defend this account against objections that it (i) provides insufficient rational constraints on trust, (ii) conflates trust and pretense of trust, and (iii) cannot account for the rationality of back-up planning. (shrink)

Sometimes a belief that p promotes having true beliefs, whether or not p is true. This gives reasons to believe that p, but most epistemologists would deny that it gives epistemic reasons, or that these reasons can epistemically justify the belief that p. Call these reasons to believe “truth promoting non-evidential reasons for belief.” This paper argues that three common views in epistemology, taken together, entail that reasons of this sort can epistemically justify beliefs. These three claims are: epistemic oughts (...) are normative, epistemic oughts have a source, and the source of epistemic oughts is an end that has true belief as a necessary component. These claims would be hard for many epistemologists to deny, but accepting them, and thus accepting that truth promoting non-evidential reasons can justify beliefs, has significant consequences for epistemology. The paper considers accounts of epistemic oughts that endorse these claims but might seem to avoid the consequence that truth promoting non-evidential reasons generate real epistemic oughts, and shows that none do. (shrink)

Davidson's account of weakness of will dependsupon a parallel that he draws between practicaland theoretical reasoning. I argue that theparallel generates a misleading picture oftheoretical reasoning. Once the misleadingpicture is corrected, I conclude that theattempt to model akratic belief on Davidson'saccount of akratic action cannot work. Thearguments that deny the possibility of akraticbelief also undermine, more generally, variousattempts to assimilate theoretical to practicalreasoning.

In this paper I seek to defend libertarianism about free will and moral responsibility against two well-known arguments: the luck argument and the Mind argument. Both of these arguments purport to show that indeterminism is incompatible with the degree of control necessary for free will and moral responsibility. I begin the discussion by elaborating these arguments, clarifying important features of my preferred version of libertarianism—features that will be central to an adequate response to the arguments—and showing why a strategy of (...) reconciliation (often referred to as “deliberative libertarianism”) will not work. I then consider four formulations of the luck argument and find them all wanting. This discussion will place us in a favorable position to understand why the Mind argument also fails. (shrink)

Metaethical constitutivists explain reasons or normativity in terms of what is constitutive of agency. In Velleman’s paradigmatic constitutivist theory, that is the aim of self-understanding. The best-known objection to constitutivism is Enoch’s shmagency objection: constitutivism cannot explain normativity because a constitutive aim of agency lacks normative significance unless one has reason to be an agent rather than a “shmagent”. In response, Velleman argues that the constitutive aim is self-validating. I argue that this claim is false. If the constitutive aim of (...) self-understanding structures an agent’s practical deliberation as Velleman describes, then some correctly deliberating agents will regard that aim as normatively arbitrary or unjustified. Moreover, I argue that the self-invalidation of the constitutive aim undermines or significantly qualifies Velleman’s claim that his constitutivism reconciles internalism with a kind of objectivity about reasons. Internalists typically hold that motives from which an agent is alienated do not generate reasons, but in cases of self-invalidation, agents are alienated from the aim of self-understanding in just this way. Thus, the larger cost of the constitutive aim’s possible self-invalidation is that Velleman’s constitutivism does not satisfy a plausible and widely accepted constraint on an internalist account of reasons. (shrink)

Event-causal libertarians maintain that an agent’s freely bringing about a choice is reducible to states and events involving him bringing about the choice. Agent-causal libertarians demur, arguing that free will requires that the agent be irreducibly causally involved. Derk Pereboom and Meghan Griffith have defended agent-causal libertarianism on this score, arguing that since on event-causal libertarianism an agent’s contribution to his choice is exhausted by the causal role of states and events involving him, and since these states and events leave (...) it open which decision he will make, he does not settle which decision occurs, and thus “disappears.” My aim is to explain why this argument fails. In particular, I demonstrate that event-causal libertarians can dismantle the argument by enriching the reductive base in their analysis of free will to include a state that plays the functional role of the self-determining agent and with which the agent is identified. (shrink)

This paper criticizes two closely connected rationalist views about human agency. The first of these views, rationalism about agential control, claims that the capacities for agential control in normal adult human beings are rational capacities. The second view, rationalism about action, claims that the capacities for agential control in virtue of which the things we do count as our actions are rational capacities. The arguments of the paper focus on aspects of technical skills that control integral details of skillful action, (...) like the details of a baseball player’s pitching technique. I argue that these aspects of technical skills are largely non-rational capacities, but are nonetheless capacities for agential control, and can help make the things we do count as actions. While rational capacities do have a central role in human agency, their importance should not lead us to neglect the significant constitutive role of non-rational capacities in our agency. (shrink)

According to reductionists about agency, an agent’s bringing something about is reducible to states and events involving the agent bringing something about. Many have worried that reductionism cannot accommodate robust forms of agency, such as self-determination. One common reductionist answer to this worry contends that self-determining agents are identified with certain states and events, and so these states and events causing a decision counts as the agent’s self-determining the decision. In this paper I discuss J. David Velleman’s identification reductionist theory, (...) according to which an agent is identified with his desire to make most sense of himself. I develop two constraints that an adequate identification reductionist theory must satisfy and show that Velleman’s theory cannot satisfy both. In particular, I argue that Velleman’s account founders on cases of self-determined self-transformation. (shrink)

This is a POD only reprint of a 2002 philosophy monograph, which discusses themes related to motivation and human action.

It has often been claimed that ourbelieving some proposition is dependent uponour not being committed to a non-epistemicexplanation of why we believe that proposition.Very roughly, I cannot believe that p andalso accept a non-epistemic explanation of mybelieving that p. Those who have assertedsuch a claim have drawn from it a range ofimplications: doxastic involuntarism, theunacceptability of Humean naturalism, doxasticfreedom, restrictions upon the effectiveness ofpractical (Pascalian) arguments, as well asothers. If any of these implications are right,then we would do well to (...) have a precisestatement of the nature of this phenomenoncentral to first-person doxastic explanations,as well as of our reasons for believing that itholds. Both of these are lacking in theliterature. This paper is an attempt toelucidate and defend this claim. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that only a subset of the reason statementsWilliams defines as external must be rejected as false. `A has areason to '' is necessarily false when the ends and aimsconstitutive of A''s good close off the deliberative route from her S to the conclusion she has reason to . But when less important ends are at stake, it seems that a person''s needs generally provide reasons for action, contrary to Williams''s internalist account. I suspect, however, that (...) there may remain inexorable disagreementover these claims because people value things in two distinct ways. Tosupport my suspicion, I explain how people''s valuation can take either an agency-prioritizing or an end-prioritizing form. I then argue thatresolving the disagreement over Williams''s internalist account ofreasons depends on whether it can be established that the agency-prioritizingform is the rationally superior form of valuation. (shrink)

Mark Heller has recently offered a proposal in defense of a fairly strong version of doxastic voluntarism. Heller looks to the compatibilist theory of free will proposed by R.E. Hobart in the first half of the twentieth century for an account of doxastic control. Heller’s defense of Hobartian Voluntarism is motivated by an appeal to epistemic deontologism. In this paper I argue that Heller’s defense of a version of strong or direct doxastic voluntarism ultimately fails. I finally argue that the (...) failure of his theory of epistemic agency does not imply the untenability of epistemic deontologism. (shrink)

The answer to the title question is “No.” The first section argues, using the example of Huckleberry Finn, that rational agents need not be motivated by their explicit judgments of rightness and wrongness. Section II rejects a plausible argument to the conclusion that rational agents must have some moral concerns. The third section clarifies the relevant concept of irrationality and argues that moral incoherence does not equate with this common relevant concept. Section IV questions a rational requirement for prudential concern (...) and whether a requirement for moral concern would follow from it. Section V examines the rationality of amoralists and partial amoralists, and Sect. VI closes with speculation on why there might seem to be a rational requirement to be morally motivated. (shrink)

Kant asserts that the formula of the schools “nihil appetimus, nisi sub ratione boni” is undoubtedly certain when clearly expressed. Conversely, doubt reflects a failure clearly to express it. Once we comprehend the concepts of the formula, of the good and of desire, there is no doubting it. In recent times, the formula has fallen into doubt. If Kant is right, then this shows a lack of clarity with respect to the concepts the formula conjoins. I want to suggest that (...) Kant is right: the formula of the schools is undoubtedly certain. I first explain in Kant’s own terms why there is no such thing as doubting the formula. Then I approach it from a different angle, provided by what I take to be the unclarity that affects current thought on the topic. (shrink)

According to an influential view of practical reason and rational agency, a person acts for a reason only if she recognizes some consideration to be a reason, where this recognition motivates her to act. I call this requirement the guidance condition on acting for a reason. Despite its intuitive appeal, the guidance condition appears to generate a vicious regress. At least one proponent of the guidance condition, Christine M. Korsgaard, is sensitive to this regress worry, and her appeal in recent (...) work to the constitutive principles of action can be seen, in part, as a response to it. I argue, however, that if we are to appeal to the constitutive principles of action to resolve the regress, then we must determine whether acting on such principles is also subject to the guidance condition. This raises a dilemma. If following these principles is subject to the guidance condition, then the regress remains unresolved. But if not, then the rationale for applying it to acting for a reason vanishes as well. I conclude that we should embrace an account of acting for a reason that rejects the guidance condition. (shrink)

The requirements of rationality are fundamental in practical and theoretical philosophy. Nonetheless, there exists no correct account of what constitutes rational requirements. This paper attempts to provide a correct constitutive account of ‘rationality requires’. I argue that rational requirements are grounded in ‘necessary explanations of subjective incoherence’, as I shall put it. Rationality requires of you to X if and only if your rational capacities, in conjunction with the fact that you not-X, explain necessarily why you have a non-maximal degree (...) of subjective coherence. (shrink)

The recent, influential Social Intuitionist Model of moral judgment (Haidt, Psychological Review 108, 814–834, 2001) proposes a primary role for fast, automatic and affectively charged moral intuitions in the formation of moral judgments. Haidt’s research challenges our normative conception of ourselves as agents capable of grasping and responding to reasons. We argue that there can be no ‘real’ moral judgments in the absence of a capacity for reflective shaping and endorsement of moral judgments. However, we suggest that the empirical literature (...) indicates a complex interplay between automatic and deliberative mental processes in moral judgment formation, with the latter constraining the expression and influence of moral intuitions. We therefore conclude that the psychological literature supports a normative conception of agency. (shrink)

This paper begins with a critical part and concludes with a constructive part. First, with reference to a definition of liberalism and using immanent critique, I show deficiencies in the claims of four selfprofessed postliberals to have articulated non-liberal positions. Then, I argue that postliberal political theory consists in acknowledging that in political contexts some voluntary groups as such can be moral, not merely political, agents. Analysis of what moral autonomy is for persons as empirical (not noumenal) agents reveals that (...) that account can be transposed to some groups. A key common element among the four rejected positions is their emphasis on the normative authority of some practices as over against principles. My proposal congeals that normative emphasis on the social into group-moral authority. Recognition of some voluntary groups’ episodic moral authority over their members is non-liberal but not anti-liberal. (shrink)

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

The basic approach to understanding shared agency has been to identify individual intentional states that are somehow “shared” by participants and that contribute to guiding and informing the actions of individual participants. But, as Michael Bratman suggests, there is a problem of stability and depth that any theory of shared agency needs to solve. Given that participants in a joint action might form shared intentions for different reasons, what binds them to one another such that they have some reason for (...) continuing to participate in the joint action in the face of conflicting reasons? This is particularly pressing in cases of joint actions that unfold over long periods of time. There are a variety of ways that the problem of stability and depth of shared intention might be addressed. We review some of those ways in section 1. We do not intend to challenge these approaches. Instead, in this article, we want to suggest that narrative is an additional, perhaps in some cases a predominant, way in which stability and depth are achieved. According to some theories, narrative plays a crucial role in the development of the self. Our suggestion is that the narratives we tell about our joint projects contribute to the development of a stable and deep “we.”. (shrink)

According to second-personal approaches to moral obligation, the distinctive normative features of moral obligation can only be explained in terms of second-personal relations, i.e. the distinctive way persons relate to each other as persons. But there are important disagreements between different groups of second-personal approaches. Most notably, they disagree about the nature of second-personal relations, which has consequences for the nature of the obligations that they purport to explain. This article aims to distinguish these groups from each other, highlight their (...) respective advantages and disadvantages, and thereby indicate avenues for future research. (shrink)

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

Event-causal libertarians maintain that an agent’s settling of whether certain states-of-affairs obtain on a particular occasion can be reduced to the causing of events by certain mental events or states, such as certain desires, beliefs and/or intentions. Agent-causal libertarians disagree. A common critique against event-causal libertarian accounts is that the agent’s role of settling matters is left unfilled and the agent “disappears” from such accounts—a problem known as the disappearing agent problem. Recently, Franklin has argued that an “enriched” event-causal account (...) can overcome this problem. Franklin, however, doesn’t consider whether, as Pereboom argues, the agent as decider of “torn decisions” disappears from even enriched accounts. As I show here, Franklin’s enriched account takes some modifying if it is to overcome Pereboom’s torn decision problem—a special case of the disappearing agent problem. However, as I also show, there is a more fundamental problem facing event-causal libertarian accounts. It is implausible that an agent qua event or state simultaneously settles whether and how she intervenes. The upshot is that events and/or states lack an ability essential to completely fulfilling an agent’s role qua settler. This isn’t a problem for agent-causal accounts like the one offered by Steward because in as much as an agent qua substance settles whether her body moves in certain ways on certain occasions she simultaneously settles whether and how she intervenes. As a consequence, event-causal libertarians face a dilemma, or rather several, that agent-causal libertarians do not. This may ultimately be explained by the irreducibility of causation by agents to causation by events. (shrink)

Decoupling a modestly construed Narrative Self Shaping Hypothesis from Strong Narrativism this paper attempts to motivate devoting our intellectual energies to the former. Section one briefly introduces the notions of self-shaping and rehearses reasons for thinking that self-shaping, in a suitably tame form, is, at least to some extent, simply unavoidable for reflective beings. It is against this background that the basic commitments of a modest Narrative Self-Shaping Hypothesis are articulated. Section two identifies a foundational commitment—the central tenet—of all Strong (...) Narrativist proposals, those that posit a necessary link between narrative self-shaping and narrative self-experience. As will be shown, in the hands of Strong Narrativists the latter notion is unpacked in stronger or weaker ways by appeal to the notion of implicit Narrativizing. Section three reminds the reader of Strawson’s challenge to Strong Narrativism. It is revealed that Strawson’s objections are most effective if they target Strong Narrativism’s central tenet construed as a phenomenological revelation about what is necessary for self-experience and not merely the psychological Narrativity thesis, construed as an empirical hypothesis about typical Narrativizing proclivities. Having set the stage, section four critically examines two different strategies, pursued by Rudd and Schechtman respectively, for escaping the horns Strawson’s dilemma poses for Strong Narrativism. In the end both strategies invoke the notion of implicit Narrativizing at a crucial juncture. Section five reveals that a substantive proposal about what implicit Narrativizing might be is lacking, hence we have no reason to believe that it actually occurs. It is concluded that, as things stand, Strong Narrativism has no way of avoiding the horns of Strawson’s dilemma. Brief concluding remarks in the final section are a reminder why, despite their modesty, softer versions of the NSSH—when coupled with a developmental proposal about the narrative basis of our folk psychological competence—are non-trivial and worthy of further development and investigation. (shrink)

John MacFarlane explores how we might make sense of the idea that truth is relative. He provides new, satisfying accounts of parts of our thought and talk that have resisted traditional methods of analysis, including what we mean when we talk about what is tasty, what we know, what will happen, what might be the case, and what we ought to do.

The introduction of Autonomous Military Systems (AMS) onto contemporary battlefields raises concerns that they will bring with them the possibility of a techno-responsibility gap, leaving insecurity about how to attribute responsibility in scenarios involving these systems. In this work I approach this problem in the domain of applied ethics with foundational conceptual work on autonomy and responsibility. I argue that concerns over the use of AMS can be assuaged by recognising the richly interrelated context in which these systems will most (...) likely be deployed. This will allow us to move beyond the solely individualist understandings of responsibility at work in most treatments of these cases, toward one that includes collective responsibility. This allows us to attribute collective responsibility to the collectives of which the AMS form a part, and to account for the distribution of burdens that follows from this attribution. I argue that this expansion of our responsibility practices will close at least some otherwise intractable techno-responsibility gaps. (shrink)

The subject matter of this paper is the view that it is correct, in an absolute sense, to believe a proposition just in case the proposition is true. I take issue with arguments in support of this view put forward by Nishi Shah and David Velleman.

Some philosophers argue that Hume, given his theory of causation, is committed to an implausibly thin account of what it is like to act voluntarily. Others suggest, on the basis of his argument against free will, that Hume takes no more than an illusory feature of action to distinguish the experience of performing an act from the experience of merely observing an act. In this paper, I argue that Hume is committed to neither an unduly parsimonious nor a sceptical account (...) of the phenomenology of agency. (shrink)

In this paper, I will present and advocate a view about what we are doing when we attribute delusion, namely, say that someone is delusional. It is an “expressivist” view, roughly analogous to expressivism in meta-ethics. Just as meta-ethical expressivism accounts for certain key features of moral discourse, so does this expressivism account for certain key features of delusion attribution. And just as meta-ethical expressivism undermines factualism about moral properties, so does this expressivism, if correct, show that certain attempts to (...) objectively define delusion are misguided. I proceed as follows. I start by examining different attempts at defining delusion, separating broadly psychiatric attempts from epistemic ones. I then present a change of approach, according to which we question whether the term “delusion” is in the business of (merely) describing reality. I then support this proposal, first, by borrowing standard lines of argument from meta-ethics (including ontological reluctance, intrinsic motivation, and deep disagreement) but also, by inference to the best explanation of some the features we see when we try to theorise about delusion (namely that it is hard to define, and that our delusion attributions are elicited by a plurality of norms). (shrink)

According to the doctrine of infallibility, one is permitted to believe p if one knows that necessarily, one would be right if one believed that p. This plausible principle—made famous in Descartes’ cogito—is false. There are some self-fulfilling, higher-order propositions one can’t be wrong about but shouldn’t believe anyway: believing them would immediately make one's overall doxastic state worse.

The paper discusses the thesis of extended belief and its implications for the possibility of extending ordinary, personal level knowledge. A common worry is that knowledge will overextend, that there will be ‘cognitive bloat’. If the subject’s standing beliefs can be realized in devices such as notebooks and smart phones, what is there to prevent the conclusion that she knows everything stored on such devices? One response to this worry is to block the move from belief to knowledge, and argue (...) that these externally stored beliefs, although reliable, do not qualify as knowledge. I argue, instead, that the fundamental problem arises at the level of belief. We prevent bloating of knowledge by preventing the bloating of belief. To do so, I argue, we need to take seriously Clark and Chalmers’ suggestion that what is distinctive of belief is its role in folk psychological explanations. Paying attention to this role shows that the usual examples, such as Otto’s notebook information, do not qualify as beliefs. To qualify, the external information would have to be much more directly connected to, and deeply integrated into, the subject’s overall system of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

Drawing on contemporary agency theory and the phenomenological-existential tradition, this paper uses Mr. Stevens, the narrator-butler of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, to examine the interplay and potential tensions between different aspects (and thus different standards) of human agency. Highlighting the problem of mission creep described by John Martin Fischer, in which a notion expands beyond the original purpose, I use Stevens’s thoughts on dignity to outline three different ways actions can (or can fail to) trace back to (...) agents—autonomy as self-control, authenticity as sincerity, and authenticity as ownership. I then propose that the way Stevens embraces and acts consistently within his subservient professional role (autonomy as self-control) weakens his ability to take responsibility for his life in the sense required by authenticity as ownership. Because the self-responsibility of authenticity requires normative flexibility (the ability to revise and reshape one’s commitments and values), when normatively inflexible agents act in self-controlled ways according to their roles or welfare standards, they may limit their ability to take responsibility for their lives. In addition to illuminating debates about whether robust human agency is compatible with subservience, the normative flexibility involved in authenticity has implications for human agency more broadly. (shrink)

How, if at all, does one's intention to realize an end bear on the justification for taking the means to that end? Theories that allow that intending an end directly provides a reason to take the means are subject to a well-known "bootstrapping" objection. On the other hand, "anti-psychologistic" accounts—which seek to derive instrumental reasons directly from the reasons that support adopting the end itself—have unacceptable implications where an agent faces multiple rationally permissible options. An alternative, predictive, role for intention (...) in means-end reasoning is considered and rejected. A new proposal is then developed, according to which instrumental reasons are not merely reasons to perform an act necessary for a given end, but to perform the act for the sake of that end. (shrink)

The fundamental principle of practical reasoning (if there is such a thing) must be a rule which we ought to follow in all our practical reasoning, and which cannot lead to irrational decisions. It must be a rule that it is possible for us to follow directly - that is, without having to follow any other rule of practical reasoning in order to do so. And it must be a basic principle, in the sense that the explanation of why we (...) rationally ought to follow this rule lies purely in the structure of our rational capacities themselves (and not, for example, in empirical evidence that we merely happen to have). This fundamental principle, it is argued, requires that you decide to do something only if the basis of your decision is such that (i) it is rational for you to believe that you have given the matter enough thought, and (ii) your actual deliberation does not warrant the conclusion that the chosen option is definitely worse than some other option that you have considered. A decision formed through reasoning is rational if and only if the agent followed this rule in making the decision. The claim that this is the fundamental principle of practical reasoning conflicts with Hobbesian approaches because it implies that practical reasoning aims not only at satisfying desires, but at forming beliefs about which options are better than others. It conflicts with Kantian approaches because it implies that to think of something as a good thing to do is not just to think of it as a rational thing to choose. This account also shows how to solve some famous controversies surrounding practical reason: the key is to understand how the rationality of concluding that one option is better than another is affected by our desires, our estimates of probabilities, and our moral judgments. (shrink)

Suppose that it is rational to choose or intend a course of action if and only if the course of action maximizes some sort of expectation of some sort of value. What sort of value should this definition appeal to? According to an influential neo-Humean view, the answer is “Utility”, where utility is defined as a measure of subjective preference. According to a rival neo-Aristotelian view, the answer is “Choiceworthiness”, where choiceworthiness is an irreducibly normative notion of a course of (...) action that is good in a certain way. The neo-Humean view requires preferences to be measurable by means of a utility function. Various interpretations of what exactly a “preference” is are explored, to see if there is any interpretation that supports the claim that a rational agent’s “preferences” must satisfy the “axioms” that are necessary for them to be measurable in this way. It is argued that the only interpretation that supports the idea that the rational agent’s preferences must meet these axioms interprets “preferences” as a kind of value-judgment. But this turns out to be version of the neo-Aristotelian view, rather than the neo-Humean view. Rational intentions maximize expected choiceworthiness, not expected utility. (shrink)

I argue that when perception plays a guiding role in intentional bodily action, it is a necessary part of that action. The argument begins with a challenge that necessarily arises for embodied agents, what I call the Many-Many Problem. The Problem is named after its most common case where agents face too many perceptual inputs and too many possible behavioral outputs. Action requires a solution to the Many-Many Problem by selection of a specific linkage between input and output. In bodily (...) action the agent perceptually selects, and in this way perceptually attends to, relevant information so as to guide the execution of specific movements. Since perceptual attention is a necessary part of solving the Many-Many Problem, it is a necessary part of bodily action. Indeed, the process of implementing a solution to the Many-Many Problem, as constrained by the agent's motivational state, just is the agent's performing an intentional bodily action in the relevant way. (shrink)

Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, through reflection, the question of what one is to do. Deliberation of this kind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical in its subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it is also practical in its consequences or its issue, insofar as reflection about action itself directly moves people to act. Our capacity for deliberative self-determination raises two sets of philosophical problems. First, there are (...) questions about how deliberation can succeed in being practical in its issue. What do we need to assume — both about agents and about the processes of reasoning they engage in — to make sense of the fact that deliberative reflection can directly give rise to action? Can we do justice to this dimension of practical reason while preserving the idea that practical deliberation is genuinely a form of reasoning? Second, there are large issues concerning the content of the standards that are brought to bear in practical reasoning. Which norms for the assessment of action are binding on us as agents? Do these norms provide resources for critical reflection about our ends, or are they exclusively instrumental? Under what conditions do moral norms yield valid standards for reasoning about action? The first set of issues is addressed in sections 1-3 of the present article, while sections 4-5 cover the second set of issues. (shrink)

If there is room for a substantial conception of the will in contemporary theorizing about human agency, it is most likely to be found in the vicinity of the phenomenon of normativity. Rational agency is distinctively responsive to the agent's acknowledgment of reasons, in the basic sense of considerations that speak for and against the alternatives for action that are available. Furthermore, it is natural to suppose that this kind of responsiveness to reasons is possible only for creatures who possess (...) certain unusual volitional powers, beyond the bare susceptibility to beliefs and desires necessary for the kind of rudimentary agency of which the higher animals are arguably capable. (shrink)

According to the Motive of Duty Thesis, a necessary condition for an action to have moral worth is that it be motivated at least in part by a normative assessment of the action. However, this thesis has been subject to two powerful objections. It has been accused of over-intellectualizing moral agency, and of giving the wrong verdict when it comes to people who hold false moral theories that convince them that their actions are in fact morally wrong. I argue that (...) both of these objections can be convincingly answered using resources from the Guise of the Good view, which holds that for an agent to intend to requires that they take Φing to be good. Furthermore, I argue that combining the motive of duty thesis with the Guise of the Good view allows us to recognize an important further condition on moral worth—namely, that the agent recognize that their reason for action requires, rather than merely permits, their action. Thus, while no action lacks moral worth in virtue of being motivated by no normative evaluation at all, an action can still lack moral worth in virtue of failing to be motived by the correct normative evaluation, namely that the action is required. (shrink)

I offer an account of how ideals motivate us. My account suggests that although emulating an ideal is often rational, it can lead us to do irrational things.

In this Part II, I investigate different approaches to the question of what makes imagining different from belief. I find that the sentiment-based approach of David Hume falls short, as does the teleological approach, once advocated by David Velleman. I then consider whether the inferential properties of beliefs and imaginings may differ. Beliefs, I claim, exhibit an anti-symmetric inferential governance over imaginings: they are the background that makes inference from one imagining to the other possible; the reverse is not true, (...) and this allows us to distinguish the two attitudes. I then go on to consider the action theory of imagining and the role that imaginings play in generating emotion. (shrink)

This paper claims that the standard characterization of the motivational role of belief should be supplemented. Beliefs do not only, jointly with desires, cause and rationalize actions that will satisfy the desires, if the beliefs are true; beliefs are also the practical ground of other cognitive attitudes, like imagining, which means beliefs determine whether and when one acts with those other attitudes as the cognitive inputs into choices and practical reasoning. In addition to arguing for this thesis, I take issue (...) with Velleman's argument that belief and imagining cannot be distinguished on the basis of motivational role. (shrink)