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  1. (3 other versions)Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.
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  • (1 other version)Why Be Rational&quest.Niko Kolodny - 2005 - Mind 114 (455):509-563.
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  • Instrumental desires, instrumental rationality.Michael Smith - 2004 - Supplement to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 78 (1):93-109.
    The requirements of instrumental rationality are often thought to be normative conditions on choice or intention, but this is a mistake. Instrumental rationality is best understood as a requirement of coherence on an agent's non-instrumental desires and means-end beliefs. Since only a subset of an agent's means-end beliefs concern possible actions, the connection with intention is thus more oblique. This requirement of coherence can be satisfied either locally or more globally, it may be only one among a number of such (...)
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  • (1 other version)Intention.G. E. M. Anscombe - 1957 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 57:321-332.
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  • The Ring of Gyges: Overridingness and the Unity of Reason.David Copp - 1997 - Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1):86-106.
    Does morality override self-interest? Or does self-interest override morality? These questions become important in situations where there is conflict between the overall verdicts of morality and self-interest, situations where morality on balance requires an action that is contrary to our self-interest, or where considerations of self-interest on balance call for an action that is forbidden by morality. In situations of this kind, we want to know what we ought simpliciter to do. If one of these standpoints over-rides the other, then (...)
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  • Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality.Alex Worsnip - 2021 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Some combinations of attitudes--of beliefs, credences, intentions, preferences, hopes, fears, and so on--do not fit together right: they are incoherent. A natural idea is that there are requirements of "structural rationality" that forbid us from being in these incoherent states. Yet a number of surprisingly difficult challenges arise for this idea. These challenges have recently led many philosophers to attempt to minimize or eliminate structural rationality, arguing that it is just a "shadow" of "substantive rationality"--that is, correctly responding to one's (...)
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  • Deflationary Normative Pluralism.Evan Tiffany - 2007 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 33 (sup1):231-262.
    Let us give voice to this new demand: we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values should itself, for once, be examined. -Friedrich NietzscheAnyone who, stimulated by education, has come to feel the force of the various obligations in life, at some time or other comes to feel the irksomeness of carrying them out, and to recognize the sacrifice of interest involved; and, if thoughtful, he inevitably puts to himself the question: “Is there really a reason (...)
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  • (1 other version)Why be rational.Niko Kolodny - 2005 - Mind 114 (455):509-563.
    Normativity involves two kinds of relation. On the one hand, there is the relation of being a reason for. This is a relation between a fact and an attitude. On the other hand, there are relations specified by requirements of rationality. These are relations among a person's attitudes, viewed in abstraction from the reasons for them. I ask how the normativity of rationality—the sense in which we ‘ought’ to comply with requirements of rationality—is related to the normativity of reasons—the sense (...)
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  • Inquiry and Belief.Jane Friedman - 2017 - Noûs 53 (2):296-315.
    In this paper I look at belief and degrees of belief through the lens of inquiry. I argue that belief and degrees of belief play different roles in inquiry. In particular I argue that belief is a “settling” attitude in a way that degrees of belief are not. Along the way I say more about what inquiring amounts to, argue for a central norm of inquiry connecting inquiry and belief and say more about just what it means to have an (...)
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  • Question‐directed attitudes.Jane Friedman - 2013 - Philosophical Perspectives 27 (1):145-174.
    In this paper I argue that there is a class of attitudes that have questions (rather than propositions or something else) as contents.
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  • The scope of rational requirements.John Brunero - 2010 - Philosophical Quarterly 60 (238):28-49.
    Niko Kolodny has argued that some (local) rational requirements are narrow-scope requirements. Against this, I argue here that all (local) rational requirements are wide-scope requirements. I present a new objection to the narrow-scope interpretations of the four specific rational requirements which Kolodny considers. His argument for the narrow-scope interpretations of these four requirements rests on a false assumption, that an attitude which puts in place a narrow-scope rational requirement somewhere thereby puts in place a narrow-scope rational requirement everywhere. My argument (...)
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  • Skepticism about Ought Simpliciter.Derek Baker - 2016 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 13.
    There are many different oughts. There is a moral ought, a prudential ought, an epistemic ought, the legal ought, the ought of etiquette, and so on. These oughts can prescribe incompatible actions. What I morally ought to do may be different from what I self-interestedly ought to do. Philosophers have claimed that these conflicts are resolved by an authoritative ought, or by facts about what one ought to do simpliciter or all-things-considered. However, the only coherent notion of an ought simpliciter (...)
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  • Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind.John R. Searle - 1983 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    John Searle's Speech Acts (1969) and Expression and Meaning (1979) developed a highly original and influential approach to the study of language. But behind both works lay the assumption that the philosophy of language is in the end a branch of the philosophy of the mind: speech acts are forms of human action and represent just one example of the mind's capacity to relate the human organism to the world. The present book is concerned with these biologically fundamental capacities, and, (...)
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  • Why Suspend Judging?Jane Friedman - 2017 - Noûs 51 (2):302-326.
    In this paper I argue that suspension of judgment is intimately tied to inquiry and in particular that one is suspending judgment about some question if and only if one is inquiring into that question.
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  • Accuracy and the Laws of Credence.Richard Pettigrew - 2016 - New York, NY.: Oxford University Press UK.
    Richard Pettigrew offers an extended investigation into a particular way of justifying the rational principles that govern our credences. The main principles that he justifies are the central tenets of Bayesian epistemology, though many other related principles are discussed along the way. Pettigrew looks to decision theory in order to ground his argument. He treats an agent's credences as if they were a choice she makes between different options, gives an account of the purely epistemic utility enjoyed by different sets (...)
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  • Rationality Through Reasoning.John Broome (ed.) - 2013 - Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
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  • Willing, Wanting, Waiting.Richard Holton - 2009 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    Richard Holton provides a unified account of intention, choice, weakness of will, strength of will, temptation, addiction, and freedom of the will. Drawing on recent psychological research, he argues that, rather than being the pinnacle of rationality, the central components of the will are there to compensate for our inability to make or maintain sound judgments. Choice is understood as the capacity to form intentions even in the absence of judgments of what action is best. Weakness of will is understood (...)
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  • Weighing Goods: Equality, Uncertainty and Time.John Broome - 1991 - Wiley-Blackwell.
    This study uses techniques from economics to illuminate fundamental questions in ethics, particularly in the foundations of utilitarianism. Topics considered include the nature of teleological ethics, the foundations of decision theory, the value of equality and the moral significance of a person's continuing identity through time.
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  • Instrumental Rationality.John Brunero & Niko Kolodny - 2013 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • (1 other version)The Importance of Being Rational.Errol Lord - 2013 - Dissertation, Princeton University
    My dissertation is a systematic defense of the claim that what it is to be rational is to correctly respond to the reasons you possess. The dissertation is split into two parts, each consisting of three chapters. In Part I--Coherence, Possession, and Correctly Responding--I argue that my view has important advantages over popular views in metaethics that tie rationality to coherence (ch. 2), defend a novel view of what it is to possess a reason (ch. 3), and defend a novel (...)
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  • Intention as a Model for Belief.Richard Holton - 2014 - In Manuel Vargas & Gideon Yaffe (eds.), Rational and Social Agency: The Philosophy of Michael Bratman. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    This paper argues that a popular account of intentions can be extended to beliefs. Beliefs are stable all-out states that allow for planning and coordination in a way that is tractable for cognitively limited creatures like human beings. Scepticism is expressed that there is really anything like credences as standardly understood.
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  • Suspended judgment.Jane Friedman - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 162 (2):165-181.
    Abstract In this paper I undertake an in-depth examination of an oft mentioned but rarely expounded upon state: suspended judgment. While traditional epistemology is sometimes characterized as presenting a “yes or no” picture of its central attitudes, in fact many of these epistemologists want to say that there is a third option: subjects can also suspend judgment. Discussions of suspension are mostly brief and have been less than clear on a number of issues, in particular whether this third option should (...)
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  • (1 other version)Theory of Probability: A Critical Introductory Treatment.Bruno de Finetti - 1970 - New York: John Wiley.
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  • (1 other version)Rationality, Normativity, and Commitment.Jacob Ross - unknown
    Is rationality normative, in the sense that we ought to be rational, in our actions and attitudes? Recently, the claim that rationality is normative has faced several challenges. In this paper, I will take up these challenges, and aim to vindicate the normativity of rationality in the face of them. I will begin, in part 1, by outlining these challenges, and then discussing, and criticizing, some that have been offered to them in the literature. Then, in part 2, I will (...)
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  • (1 other version)Intention.G. E. M. Anscombe - 1957 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
    This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.
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  • Intention, plans, and practical reason.Michael Bratman - 1987 - Cambridge: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    What happens to our conception of mind and rational agency when we take seriously future-directed intentions and plans and their roles as inputs into further practical reasoning? The author's initial efforts in responding to this question resulted in a series of papers that he wrote during the early 1980s. In this book, Bratman develops further some of the main themes of these essays and also explores a variety of related ideas and issues. He develops a planning theory of intention. Intentions (...)
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  • The Humean theory of motivation.Michael Smith - 1987 - Mind 96 (381):36-61.
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  • (1 other version)A nonpragmatic vindication of probabilism.James M. Joyce - 1998 - Philosophy of Science 65 (4):575-603.
    The pragmatic character of the Dutch book argument makes it unsuitable as an "epistemic" justification for the fundamental probabilist dogma that rational partial beliefs must conform to the axioms of probability. To secure an appropriately epistemic justification for this conclusion, one must explain what it means for a system of partial beliefs to accurately represent the state of the world, and then show that partial beliefs that violate the laws of probability are invariably less accurate than they could be otherwise. (...)
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  • What are degrees of belief.Lina Eriksson & Alan Hájek - 2007 - Studia Logica 86 (2):185-215.
    Probabilism is committed to two theses: 1) Opinion comes in degrees—call them degrees of belief, or credences. 2) The degrees of belief of a rational agent obey the probability calculus. Correspondingly, a natural way to argue for probabilism is: i) to give an account of what degrees of belief are, and then ii) to show that those things should be probabilities, on pain of irrationality. Most of the action in the literature concerns stage ii). Assuming that stage i) has been (...)
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  • A solution for Russellians to a puzzle about belief.Sean Crawford - 2004 - Analysis 64 (3):223-29.
    According to Russellianism (or Millianism), the two sentences ‘Ralph believes George Eliot is a novelist’ and ‘Ralph believes Mary Ann Evans is a novelist’ cannot diverge in truth-value, since they express the same proposition. The problem for the Russellian (or Millian) is that a puzzle of Kaplan’s seems to show that they can diverge in truth-value and that therefore, since the Russellian holds that they express the same proposition, the Russellian view is contradictory. I argue that the standard Russellian appeal (...)
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  • (3 other versions)Freedom of the will and the concept of a person.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1971 - Journal of Philosophy 68 (1):5-20.
    It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will. Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, men may also want to have certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the (...)
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  • The aim of belief.Ralph Wedgwood - 2002 - Philosophical Perspectives 16:267-97.
    It is often said, metaphorically, that belief "aims" at the truth. This paper proposes a normative interpretation of this metaphor. First, the notion of "epistemic norms" is clarified, and reasons are given for the view that epistemic norms articulate essential features of the beliefs that are subject to them. Then it is argued that all epistemic norms--including those that specify when beliefs count as rational, and when they count as knowledge--are explained by a fundamental norm of correct belief, which requires (...)
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  • Suspension, Higher-Order Evidence, and Defeat.Errol Lord & Kurt Sylvan - 2021 - In Jessica Brown & Mona Simion (eds.), Reasons, Justification, and Defeat. Oxford Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  • Precise Credences.Michael Titelbaum - 2019 - In Richard Pettigrew & Jonathan Weisberg (eds.), The Open Handbook of Formal Epistemology. PhilPapers Foundation. pp. 1-55.
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  • Friedman on suspended judgment.Michal Masny - 2020 - Synthese 197 (11):5009-5026.
    In a recent series of papers, Jane Friedman argues that suspended judgment is a sui generis first-order attitude, with a question as its content. In this paper, I offer a critique of Friedman’s project. I begin by responding to her arguments against reductive higher-order propositional accounts of suspended judgment, and thus undercut the negative case for her own view. Further, I raise worries about the details of her positive account, and in particular about her claim that one suspends judgment about (...)
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  • (3 other versions)Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2):452-458.
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  • Erratum: Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional Probabilities.David Lewis - 1976 - Philosophical Review 85 (4):561.
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  • The Calendar Paradox.Sam Shpall - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (3):801-825.
    Presents an analogue of the Preface Paradox for intention, and discusses possible implications for the philosophy of action.
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  • Structural Irrationality.Thomas Scanlon - 2007 - In Geoffrey Brennan (ed.), Common minds: themes from the philosophy of Philip Pettit. New York: Oxford University Press.
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  • Probabilities of conditionals and conditional probabilities.David Lewis - 1976 - Philosophical Review 85 (3):297-315.
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  • Agnosticism as settled indecision.Verena Wagner - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (2):671-697.
    In this paper, I spell out a descriptive account of agnosticism that captures the intuitive view that a subject enters the mental state of agnosticism via an act or event called suspension. I will argue that agnosticism is a complex mental state, and that the formation of an attitude is the relevant act or event by which a subject commits to indecision regarding some matter. I will suggest a ‘two-component analysis’ that addresses two aspects that jointly account for the settled (...)
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  • Being neutral: Agnosticism, inquiry and the suspension of judgment.Matthew McGrath - 2021 - Noûs 55 (2):463-484.
    Epistemologists often claim that in addition to belief and disbelief there is a third, neutral, doxastic attitude. Various terms are used: ‘suspending judgment’, ‘withholding’, ‘agnosticism’. It is also common to claim that the factors relevant to the justification of these attitudes are epistemic in the narrow sense of being factors that bear on the strength or weakness of one’s epistemic position with respect to the target proposition. This paper addresses two challenges to such traditionalism about doxastic attitudes. The first concerns (...)
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  • Instrumental Rationality: The Normativity of Means-Ends Coherence.John Brunero - 2020 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Rationality requires that we intend the means that we believe are necessary for achieving our ends. Instrumental Rationality explores the formulation and status of this requirement of means-ends coherence. In particular, it is concerned with understanding what means-ends coherence requires of us as believers and agents, and why.
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  • Evidential Probabilities and Credences.Anna-Maria Asunta Eder - 2023 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 74 (1):1 -23.
    Enjoying great popularity in decision theory, epistemology, and philosophy of science, Bayesianism as understood here is fundamentally concerned with epistemically ideal rationality. It assumes a tight connection between evidential probability and ideally rational credence, and usually interprets evidential probability in terms of such credence. Timothy Williamson challenges Bayesianism by arguing that evidential probabilities cannot be adequately interpreted as the credences of an ideal agent. From this and his assumption that evidential probabilities cannot be interpreted as the actual credences of human (...)
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  • Reasons Fundamentalism and Rational Uncertainty – Comments on Lord, The Importance of Being Rational.Julia Staffel - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2):463-468.
    In his new book "The Importance of Being Rational", Errol Lord aims to give a real definition of the property of rationality in terms of normative reasons. If he can do so, his work is an important step towards a defense of ‘reasons fundamentalism’ – the thesis that all complex normative properties can be analyzed in terms of normative reasons. I focus on his analysis of epistemic rationality, which says that your doxastic attitudes are rational just in case they are (...)
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  • What is (In)coherence?Alex Worsnip - 2018 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 13:184-206.
    Recent work on rationality has been increasingly attentive to “coherence requirements”, with heated debates about both the content of such requirements and their normative status (e.g., whether there is necessarily reason to comply with them). Yet there is little to no work on the metanormative status of coherence requirements. Metaphysically: what is it for two or more mental states to be jointly incoherent, such that they are banned by a coherence requirement? In virtue of what are some putative requirements genuine (...)
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  • (1 other version)The normativity of rationality.Benjamin Kiesewetter - 2013 - Dissertation, Humboldt University of Berlin
    Sometimes our intentions and beliefs exhibit a structure that proves us to be irrational. This dissertation is concerned with the question of whether we ought (or have at least good reason) to avoid such irrationality. The thesis defends the normativity of rationality by presenting a new solution to the problems that arise from the common assumption that we ought to be rational. The argument touches upon many other topics in the theory of normativity, such as the form and the content (...)
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  • The Ubiquity of State-Given Reasons.Mark Schroeder - 2012 - Ethics 122 (3):457-488.
    Philosophers have come to distinguish between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ kinds of reasons for belief, intention, and other attitudes. Several theories about the nature of this distinction have been offered, by far the most prevalent of which is the idea that it is, at bottom, the distinction between what are known as ‘object-given’ and ‘state-given’ reasons. This paper argues that the object-given/state-given theory vastly overgeneralizes on a small set of data points, and in particular that any adequate account of the distinction (...)
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  • (3 other versions)Change in View: Principles of Reasoning.Gilbert Harman - 1986 - Studia Logica 48 (2):260-261.
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  • A Preface Paradox for Intention.Simon Goldstein - 2016 - Philosophers' Imprint 16.
    In this paper I argue that there is a preface paradox for intention. The preface paradox for intention shows that intentions do not obey an agglomeration norm, requiring one to intend conjunctions of whatever else one intends. But what norms do intentions obey? I will argue that intentions come in degrees. These partial intentions are governed by the norms of the probability calculus. First, I will give a dispositional theory of partial intention, on which degrees of intention are the degrees (...)
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