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  1. The Structures of Temporally Extended Agents.Luca Ferrero - 2022 - In Carla Bagnoli (ed.), Time in Action: The Temporal Structure of Rational Agency and Practical Thought. New York: Routledge. pp. 108-132.
    This paper offers an overview of the ways agents might extend over time and the characteristic structure of extended human agency. Agency can extend in two distinct but combinable modes: the ontological, which gives rise to simple continuous agents; and the conceptual, which gives rise to agents who conceive of and care about distal times, and have minimal planning abilities. Our extended form of agency combines both. But we are still limited by the temporal locality in the operation of our (...)
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  • What good is a diachronic will?Luca Ferrero - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 144 (3):403-430.
    There are two standard conceptions of the functioning of and rationale for the diachronic will, i.e., for an agent's capacity to settle on her future conduct in advance. According to the pragmatic-instrumentalist view, the diachronic will benefits us by increasing the long-term satisfaction of our rational preferences. According to the cognitive view, it benefits us by satisfying our standing desire for self-knowledge and self-understanding. Contrary to these views, I argue for a constitutive view of the diachronic will: the rationale for (...)
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  • Three Ways of Spilling Ink Tomorrow.Luca Ferrero - 2006 - In Elvio Baccarini (ed.), Rationality in Belief and Action,. Rijeka. pp. 95-127.
    There are three ways to control our future conduct: by causing it, by manipulating our future selves, or by taking future-directed decisions. I show that the standard accounts of future-directed decisions fail to do justice to their distinctive contribution in intentional diachronic agency. The standard accounts can be divided in two categories: First, those that conflate the operation of decisions with that of devices for either physical constraint or manipulative self-management. Second, accounts that, although they acknowledge the non-manipulative nature of (...)
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  • Against Time Bias.Preston Greene & Meghan Sullivan - 2015 - Ethics 125 (4):947-970.
    Most of us display a bias toward the near: we prefer pleasurable experiences to be in our near future and painful experiences to be in our distant future. We also display a bias toward the future: we prefer pleasurable experiences to be in our future and painful experiences to be in our past. While philosophers have tended to think that near bias is a rational defect, almost no one finds future bias objectionable. In this essay, we argue that this hybrid (...)
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  • Diachronic Structural Rationality.Luca Ferrero - 2014 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (3):311-336.
    In this paper I investigate whether there are genuine and irreducible pressures of diachronic rationality grounded on the structure of the subject rather than on substantive considerations, such as pragmatic ones. I argue that structural pressures of diachronic rationality have a limited scope. The most important pressure only tells against arbitrary interference with the mechanisms for the retention of attitudes over time. I then argue that in the practical case, a substantial account in terms of the agent's temporal identity appears (...)
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  • Temptation, Resolutions, and Regret.Chrisoula Andreou - 2014 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (3):275-292.
    Discussion of temptation has figured prominently in recent debates concerning instrumental rationality. In light of some particularly interesting cases in which giving in to temptation involves acting in accordance with one’s current evaluative rankings, two lines of thought have been developed: one appeals to the possibility of deviating from a well-grounded resolution, and the other appeals to the possibility of being insufficiently responsive to the prospect of future regret. But the current appeals to resolutions and regret and some of the (...)
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  • (1 other version)How Is Weakness of the Will Possible?Donald Davidson - 1969 - In Joel Feinberg (ed.), Moral concepts. London,: Oxford University Press.
    D. In doing x an agent acts incontinently if and only if: 1) the agent does x intentionally; 2) the agent believes there is an alternative action y open to him; and 3) the agent judges that, all things considered, it would be better to do y than to do x.
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  • Diachronic constraints of practical rationality.Luca Ferrero - 2012 - Philosophical Issues 22 (1):144-164.
    In this paper, I discuss whether there are genuinely *diachronic* constraints of practical rationality, that is, pressures on combinations of practical attitudes over time, which are not reducible to mere synchronic rational pressures. Michael Bratman has recently argued that there is at least one such diachronic rational constraint that governs the stability of intentions over time. *Pace* Bratman, I argue that there are no genuinely diachronic constraints on intentions that meet the stringent desiderata set by him. But I show that (...)
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  • rational self-commitment.Bruno Verbeek - 2007 - In Fabienne Peter (ed.), rationality and commitment. Oxford University Press USA.
    Abstract: The standard picture of rationality requires that the agent acts so as to realize her most preferred alternative in the light of her own desires and beliefs. However, there are circumstances where such an agent can predict that she will act against her preferences. The story of Ulysses and the Sirens is the paradigmatic example of such cases. In those circumstances the orthodoxy requires the agent to be ‘sophisticated’. That is to say, she should take into account her expected (...)
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  • Conspiracy, Commitment, and the Self.Edward Hinchman - 2010 - Ethics 120 (3):526-556.
    Practical commitment is Janus-faced, looking outward toward the expectations it creates and inward toward their basis in the agent’s will. This paper criticizes Kantian attempts to link these facets and proposes an alternative. Contra David Velleman, the availability of a conspiratorial perspective (not yours, not your interlocutor’s) is what allows you to understand yourself as making a lying promise – as committing yourself ‘outwardly’ with the deceptive reasoning that Velleman argues cannot provide a basis for self-understanding. Moreover, the intrapersonal availability (...)
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  • Diachronic agency and practical entitlement.Matthew Heeney - 2019 - European Journal of Philosophy 28 (1):177-198.
    As diachronic agents, we deliberate and decide in the present to perform future courses of action. Such future‐directed decisions normally enjoy a distinctive species of rational authority over subsequent thought and action. But what is the nature of this authority, and what underwrites its normative force? In this paper, I argue that our answer to this question must begin by situating future‐directed deciding within an intrapersonal model of cross‐temporal influence. The role of future‐directed deciding (and intending), then, is not to (...)
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  • Deliberating for Our Far Future Selves.Jennifer M. Morton - 2013 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (4):809-828.
    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 (...)
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  • Willing, Wanting, Waiting, by Richard Holton.Sarah K. Paul - 2011 - Mind 120 (479):889-892.
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  • Temptation revisited.Michael Bratman - 2007 - In Bruno Verbeek (ed.), Reasons and Intentions. Ashgate.
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  • Reasons for action, decisions and norms.J. Raz - 1975 - Mind 84 (336):481-499.
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  • Rational Planning Agency.Michael E. Bratman - 2017 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 80:25-48.
    Our planning agency contributes to our lives in fundamental ways. Prior partial plans settle practical questions about the future. They thereby pose problems of means, filter solutions to those problems, and guide action. This plan-infused background frames our practical thinking in ways that cohere with our resource limits and help organize our lives, both over time and socially. And these forms of practical thinking involve guidance by norms of plan rationality, including norms of plan consistency, means-end coherence, and stability over (...)
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  • The good, the bad, and the trivial.Chrisoula Andreou - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 169 (2):209-225.
    Dreadful and dreaded outcomes are sometimes brought about via the accumulation of individually trivial effects. Think about inching toward terrible health or toward an environmental disaster. In some such cases, the outcome is seen as unacceptable but is still gradually realized via an extended sequence of moves each of which is trivial in terms of its impact on the health or environment of those involved. Cases of this sort are not only practically challenging, they are theoretically challenging as well. For, (...)
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  • Acting well.Anselm Winfried Müller - 2004 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 54:15-46.
    I am very happy indeed to contribute to this series of lectures, especially because I owe most of my training in philosophy to Elizabeth Anscombe, whose work has given the series its name. I am deeply indebted to the marvellous generosity of her teaching, to the example she set me of an unrelentingly thorough and serious thinker, to the unobtrusive way she introduced me to Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Through Elizabeth Anscombe I also made the acquaintance of my friend Philippa Foot, (...)
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  • Narrative and the Stability of Intention.Edward S. Hinchman - 2015 - European Journal of Philosophy 23 (1):111-140.
    This paper addresses a problem concerning the rational stability of intention. When you form an intention to φ at some future time t, you thereby make it subjectively rational for you to follow through and φ at t, even if—hypothetically—you would abandon the intention were you to redeliberate at t. It is hard to understand how this is possible. Shouldn't the perspective of your acting self be what determines what is then subjectively rational for you? I aim to solve this (...)
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  • Trust and diachronic agency.Edward S. Hinchman - 2003 - Noûs 37 (1):25–51.
    Some philosophers worry that it can never be reasonable to act simply on the basis of trust, yet you act on the basis of self-trust whenever you merely follow through on one of your own intentions. It is no more reasonable to follow through on an intention formed by an untrustworthy earlier self of yours than it is to act on the advice of an untrustworthy interlocutor. But reasonable mistrust equally presupposes untrustworthiness in the mistrusted, or evidence thereof. The concept (...)
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  • Agency and Time.Abraham Sesshu Roth - 2022 - In Carla Bagnoli (ed.), Time in Action: The Temporal Structure of Rational Agency and Practical Thought. New York: Routledge. pp. 133-148.
    Is there something special about one’s attitude toward a prospective action when deciding or intending to do it? Philosophers often appeal to the idea of settling to distinguish intention from other attitudes toward some prospective action, such as expecting it, or desiring it. But 'settle' has become a term of art invoked in divergent ways. The first use of the term concerns the more immediate upshot of a decision on the psychology of the agent. Once a decision has been made (...)
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  • Toxin, temptation, and the stability of intention.Michael Bratman - 1998 - In Jules L. Coleman & Christopher W. Morris (eds.), Rational Commitment and Social Justice: Essays for Gregory Kavka. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 59--83.
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  • On self-governance over time.Sergio Tenenbaum - 2021 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 64 (9):901-912.
    ABSTRACT In Planning, Time, and Self-Governanace, Bratman argues that the notion of self-governance plays an important role in grounding the rational principles such as means-ends coherence in the synchronic case, and principles of stability and coherence through time in the case of self-governance over time. In this paper, I grant Bratman’s claim for the synchronic case, however I argue that it is not clear that one can extend the reasoning to the diachronic case. More specifically, I raise a number of (...)
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  • On the Normativity of Intentions.Bruno Verbeek - 2014 - Topoi 33 (1):87-101.
    Suppose you intend now to φ at some future time t. However, when t has come you do not φ. Something has gone wrong. This failing is not just a causal but also a normative failing. This raises the question how to characterize this failing. I discuss three alternative views. On the first view, the fact that you do not execute your intention to φ is blameworthy only if the balance of reasons pointed to φ-ing. The fact that you intended (...)
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  • Diachronic Incontinence is a Problem in Moral Philosophy.Sarah K. Paul - 2014 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (3):337-355.
    Is there a rational requirement enjoining continence over time in the intentions one has formed, such that anyone going in for a certain form of agency has standing reason to conform to such a requirement? This paper suggests that there is not. I argue that Michael Bratman’s defense of such a requirement succeeds in showing that many agents have a reason favoring default intention continence much of the time, but does not establish that all planning agents have such a reason (...)
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  • Assure and threaten.David Gauthier - 1994 - Ethics 104 (4):690-721.
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  • The authority of intention.Govert den Hartogh - 2004 - Ethics 115 (1):6-34.
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