Practical Rationality

There Are No "Reasons for Acting"

by J. David Velleman

Parts of this paper were incorporated into "Time for Action"

The title says it all. The title says it all.

Agency, Necessity, and Normativity

by Antti Kauppinen

This is a draft of a paper that was originally to be a blog post, but grew too long. Comments would be very welcome.

According to constitutivists like Korsgaard and Velleman, moral requirements can be (roughly speaking) derived from... more According to constitutivists like Korsgaard and Velleman, moral requirements can be (roughly speaking) derived from what is constitutive of agency, so we have internal reason to act morally simply in virtue of being agents. This is challenged by David Enoch, who argues that even if agency is inescapable and has a constitutive aim, it doesn't follow we have reason to care about or act on it. I argue that while Enoch's criticisms hit the mark, it may be possible to formulate a requirement of rationality that allows a kind of successful bootstrapping from agency to reasons even though we have no reason to be agents.

Aristotle and Kant on practical reason. An annotation to Korsgaard

by Ana Marta González

Acta Philosophica, vol. I, nº. 18, pp. 99-112, 2009. ISSN 1121-2179; ISSN electrónico 1825-6562

Aristotle and Kant on practical reason. An annotation to Korsgaard

by Ana Marta González

Acta Philosophica, vol. I, nº. 18, pp. 99-112, 2009. ISSN 1121-2179; ISSN electrónico 1825-6562

2009, « Habitus, Freedom and Reflexivity », in Theory and Psychology Volume 19, no. 6, pp. 728-755.

by Mathieu Hilgers

The question of freedom is recurrent in the theory of habitus. In this paper I propose that the notion of freedom is... more The question of freedom is recurrent in the theory of habitus. In this paper I propose that the notion of freedom is an essential and necessary component for the coherence of the analyses which mobilize habitus both in terms of their theoretical articulation and in terms of their grounding in empirical reality. This argument can seem surprising considering that the theory of habitus has often been accused of being deterministic. Yet I show that, from an epistemological point of view, habitus theory is not deterministic. Bourdieu’s treatment of this concept implies at least three principles that exclude determinism: (1) the production of an infinite number of behaviors from a limited number of principles, (2) permanent mutation, and (3) the intensive and extensive limits of sociological understanding. After identifying and describing these principles, I show the reason for their incompatibility with a deterministic perspective and consider their implications for the corresponding model of action. I illustrate this analysis by a discussion of Loïc Wacquant’s carnal sociology of the pugilistic universe which reveals why it is essential to understand and explain the relation between habitus and freedom.

Moral Judgement Internalism Explained (Away)

by Guy Fletcher

ABSTRACT: The debate between moral judgement internalism and moral judgement externalism is a central battleground in... more ABSTRACT: The debate between moral judgement internalism and moral judgement externalism is a central battleground in meta-ethics. The standard story is that metaethical cognitivists face difficulties combining that view with moral judgement internalism, given a background assumption of the Humean theory of motivation. Herein I argue for a negative conclusion and a positive conclusion. My negative conclusion is that the evidence taken to support moral judgement internalism really supports only a much weaker thesis and that the apparent plausibility of moral judgement internalism can be explained by the plausibility of this weaker thesis. My more positive conclusion is that this weaker form of moral judgement internalism might be true.

Intelligence, Community and Cartesian Doubt. Humanism Today (1999) 13:31-48.

by H.G. Callaway

This paper attempts some integration of two perspectives on questions about rationality and irrationality: the... more This paper attempts some integration of two perspectives on questions about rationality and irrationality: the classical conception of irrationality as sophism and themes from the romantic revolt against Enlightenment reason. However, since talk of "reason" and "the irrational" often invites rigid dualities of reason and its opposites (such as feeling, intuition, faith, or tradition), the paper turns to "intelligence" in place of "reason," thinking of human intelligence as something less abstract, less purely theoretical, and more firmly rooted in practice, including communicative practice. "Intelligence" is "reason" naturalized.

A Unified Approach to the Organization of Cognitive Labor

by Rogier De Langhe

This paper received the PSA Graduate Student Essay Award 2009; to appear in Philosophy of Science

Rational self-commitment

by Bruno Verbeek

Rational Choice Virtues

by Bruno Verbeek

Three Paradigms of Rational Agency

by Robert Barnard

R. Barnard and T. Simon, "Three Paradigms of Rational Agency," Journal of Models and Modeling, 1:2 (April 2003): 31-54.

The Rationality of an Illusion

by Taner Edis

The Humanist, 60:4 28 (2000)

El desafío de Giges: tensiones entre ética y racionalidad

by Juan Antonio Fernández Manzano

Rodríguez López, Blanca. Fuera de equilibrio. Moralidad y racionalidad indirecta. Madrid: Ed. Complutense, 2008. 201 pp.

by Juan Antonio Fernández Manzano

Subjective Rationality and Its Value (Blind Review Format)*

by Michael Neal

Updated. Comments Appreciated.

Niko Kolodny makes the following claims. Claim 1: We don’t have reason, in general, to comply with rational... more Niko Kolodny makes the following claims. Claim 1: We don’t have reason, in general, to comply with rational requirements for their own sake. Claim 2: Even if we do have reason to comply with rational requirements, in general, for their own sake, it doesn’t follow that we have that same reason in any particular case. In this paper, I argue that both Claim 1 and Claim 2 are false. I provide a novel argument which explains why we have reason to comply with rational requirements (for their own sake) both in general, and in particular cases. The general structure of my argument looks like this:

The Value Argument
P1: If doing something would produce (or, constitute) something of (at least) pro tanto final value (where ‘final’ just means ‘valuable for its own sake’ and, thus, not merely instrumentally valuable), then that is, ceteris paribus, a reason to do it.
P2: Being subjectively rational (i.e. complying with rational requirements) is an achievement.
P3: Achievements have pro tanto final value.
Therefore, we have reason to be subjectively rational, for its own sake, both in general, and in particular cases.

In Defense of the Wide-Scope Instrumental Principle

by Simon Rippon

Published in the Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy, 2011. Open access.

I make the observation that English sentences such as “You have reason to take the bus or to take the train” do not... more I make the observation that English sentences such as “You have reason to take the bus or to take the train” do not have the logical form that they superficially appear to have. I find in these sentences a conjunctive use of “or,” as found in sentences like “You can have milk or lemon in your tea,” which gives you a permission to have milk, and a permission to have lemon, though no permission to have both. I argue that a confusion of genuine disjunctions with sentences of the above form has motivated the mistaken acceptance by some philosophers of principles like the one I call “Liberal Transmission.” This is the principle that if you have a reason to do something, then you have a reason to do it in each of the possible ways in which it can be done (though not more than one of them). I argue that Liberal Transmission and its close relatives are false. Wide-scope reasons are defined as reasons that have a conditional or other logical connective within the scope of the reason operator. For example, a wide-scope instrumental reason might be: reason(if you have an end, take the means). By refuting Liberal Transmission, I show that you could have wide-scope instrumental reasons like this while nevertheless lacking any narrow-scope reason to take the means, or narrow-scope reason to not have the end. This enables me to respond to two major objections to the wide-scope approach to the instrumental principle that have been developed by Joseph Raz and by Niko Kolodny.

Hot Passion and Cool Judgment: Relating Reason and Emotion in Democratic Politics

by Timothy Shaffer

Co-authored with Scott J. Peters and Theodore R. Alter

Economic rationality and health and lifestyle choices for people with diabetes

by Rachel Baker

Sidgwick's Dualism Defended Against Parfit

by Gianfranco Pellegrino

Draft only. Comments welcome.

The Centered Self

by J. David Velleman

Originally published in Self to Self (2006)

On being "grounded" or "centered", and its relation to trustworthiness. On being "grounded" or "centered", and its relation to trustworthiness.