Philosophy of Action > Practical Reason > Practical Reason, Misc > Practical and Theoretical Reasoning

Practical and Theoretical Reasoning

Edited by Jonathan Way (University of Southampton)
About this topic
Summary

What is the relationship between theoretical and practical reason? For instance, might requirements of practical reason be grounded in requirements of practical reason, or vice-versa? Or do theoretical and practical reason form distinct domains? Other issues falling under this topic include questions about the similarities and differences between practical and theoretical reason, and about connections between them (for instance, about ways in which what you ought (have reason, justification…) to do depends on what you ought (have reason, justification…) to believe, and vice-versa).
Key works For influential defences of the idea that some or all requirements of practical reason are grounded in requirements of theoretical reason, see Harman 1997 and Velleman 1989. For discussion see Bratman 1991, Setiya 2003, and Ross 2009. For discussion of the idea that requirements of epistemic reason are grounded in practical reason see Foley 1987 and Kelly 2003.
Introductions Wallace 2008, Wiland 2012, and Brunero & Kolodny 2013 include some discussion of this topic.
Related categories
Siblings:
Jobs in this area
Professor of Applied Ethics and IDEA Centre Director
Chairperson - Political Science, Philosophy, and Religion
Just Transformations Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship
Jobs from PhilJobs

270 found
Order:
1 — 50 / 270
  1. The Extended Theory of Instrumental Rationality and Means-Ends Coherence.John Brunero - forthcoming - Philosophical Inquiries.
    In Rational Powers in Action, Sergio Tenenbaum sets out a new theory of instrumental rationality that departs from standard discussions of means-ends coherence in the literature on structural rationality in at least two interesting ways: it takes intentional action (as opposed to intention) to be what puts in place the relevant instrumental requirements, and it applies to both necessary and non-necessary means. I consider these two developments in more detail. On the first, I argue that Tenenbaum’s theory is too narrow (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2. On the Practicality of Virtue Ethics.Daniel Coren - forthcoming - Journal of Value Inquiry:1-24.
    Using research in social psychology, philosophers such as Gilbert Harman and John Doris argue that human beings do not have – and cannot acquire – character traits such as virtues. Along with defenders of virtue ethics such as Julia Annas and Rachana Kamtekar, they assume that this constitutes a dangerous attack on virtue ethics. I argue that even if virtues and vices did not exist and everyone accepted that truth, (1) we would continue to make attributions of character traits in (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  3. Rational Norms for Degreed Intention (and the Discrepancy between Theoretical and Practical Reason).Jay Jian - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy:1-15.
    Given the success of the formal approach, within contemporary epistemology, to understanding degreed belief, some philosophers have recently considered its extension to the challenge of understanding intention. According to them, (1) intentions can also admit of degrees, as beliefs do, and (2) these degreed states are all governed by the norms of the probability calculus, such that the rational norms for belief and for intention exhibit certain structural similarity. This paper, however, raises some worries about (2). It considers two schemes (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. The Epistemic vs. the Practical.Antti Kauppinen - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Metaethics.
    What should we believe if epistemic and practical reasons for belief point in different directions? I argue that there’s no single answer, but rather a Dualism of Theoretical and Practical Reason is true: what we epistemically ought to believe and what we practically ought to believe may come apart, and both are independently authoritative. I argue in particular against recently popular views that subordinate the epistemic to the practical: it’s not the case that epistemic reasons bear on what we ‘just (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. Kant on Freedom and Rational Agency.Markus Kohl - forthcoming - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    In "Kant on Freedom and Rational Agency", I aim to give a comprehensive interpretation and a qualified defense of Kant’s doctrine of freedom as a systematic conception of rational agency. -/- Although my book follows Kant in focusing on the idea of free will as a condition of moral agency, it denies that moral freedom of will is the only relevant (transcendental) type of freedom. Human beings also exercise absolute freedom of thought (intellectual autonomy) in their theoretical cognition. Moreover, our (...)
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. The unity of reason.Clayton Littlejohn - forthcoming - In Clayton Littlejohn & John Turri (eds.), Epistemic Norms: New Essays on Action, Belief, and Assertion. Oxford University Press.
    Cases of reasonable, mistaken belief figure prominently in discussions of the knowledge norm of assertion and practical reason as putative counterexamples to these norms. These cases are supposed to show that the knowledge norm is too demanding and that some weaker norm ought to put in its place. These cases don't show what they're intended to. When you assert something false or treat some falsehood as if it's a reason for action, you might deserve an excuse. You often don't deserve (...)
    $74.61 new   (collection)    View on Amazon.com
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  7. Sharing non-observational knowledge.Guy Longworth - forthcoming - Tandf: Inquiry:1-21.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  8. The Explanatory Problem for Cognitivism about Practical Reason.Errol Lord - forthcoming - In Conor McHugh Jonathan Way & Daniel Whiting (eds.), Normativity: Epistemic and Practical.
    Cognitivists about practical reason hold that we can explain why certain wide-scope requirements of practical rationality are true by appealing to certain epistemic requirements. Extant discussions of cognitivism focus solely on two claims. The first is the claim that intentions involve beliefs. The second is that whenever your intentions are incoherent in certain ways, you will be epistemically irrational. Even if the cognitivist successfully defends these claims, she still needs to show that they entail certain practical requirements. That is, she (...)
    $54.86 new   $73.54 used   (collection)    View on Amazon.com
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  9. Problems on the Legalization of LGBT Marriage in the Communist Block - A Preliminary Legal Review.Yang Immanuel Pachankis - forthcoming - Scientific Research Publishing.
    The article analyzes the legislative issues on equal marriage in P. R. China. It adopts a path dependency analysis on the liberal institutional order’s effects to the regime’s structural discrimination on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) population. The research adopted a duo-lingual paradigm on Christianity with intercultural and transnational interpretations, and the research found the mis-adaption of language in the Chinese text of the United Nations charter is the key source to the suppression of the LGBT population in (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  10. Kant on Reason as the Capacity for Comprehension.Karl Schafer - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy:1-19.
    This essay develops an interpretation of Kant’s conception of the faculty of reason as the capacity for what he calls "comprehension" (Begreifen). In doing so, it first discusses Kant's characterizations of reason in relation to what he describes as the two highest grades of cognition—insight and comprehension. Then it discusses how the resulting conception of reason relates to more familiar characterizations as the faculty for inference and the faculty of principles. In doing so, it focuses on how the idea of (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  11. Competing Reasons.Justin Snedegar - forthcoming - In Jessica Brown & Mona Simion (eds.), Reasons, Justification, and Defeat. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    This chapter investigates different ways that pro tanto reasons bearing on our options can compete with one another in order to determine the overall normative status of those options. It argues for two key claims: (i) any theory of this competition must include a distinct role for reasons against, in addition to reasons for, and (ii) any theory must allow for comparative verdicts about how strongly supported the options are by the reasons, rather than simply which options are permissible or (...)
    $44.29 new   $71.40 used   (collection)    View on Amazon.com
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  12. Guided by Guided by the Truth: Objectivism and Perspectivism in Ethics and Epistemology.Daniel Whiting - forthcoming - In A. K. Flowerree & Baron Reed (eds.), Towards an Expansive Epistemology: Norms, Action, and the Social Sphere. Routledge.
    According to ethical objectivism, what a person should do depends on the facts, as opposed to their perspective on the facts. A long-standing challenge to this view is that it fails to accommodate the role that norms play in guiding a person’s action. Roughly, if the facts that determine what a person should do lie beyond their ken, they cannot inform a person’s deliberations. This paper explores two recent developments of this line of thought. Both focus on the epistemic counterpart (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  13. Isolating Correct Reasoning.Alex Worsnip - forthcoming - In Magdalena Balcerak Jackson & Brendan Balcerak Jackson (eds.), Reasoning: New Essays on Theoretical and Practical Thinking. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    This paper tries to do three things. First, it tries to make it plausible that correct rules of reasoning do not always preserve justification: in other words, if you begin with a justified attitude, and reason correctly from that premise, it can nevertheless happen that you’ll nevertheless arrive at an unjustified attitude. Attempts to show that such cases in fact involve following an incorrect rule of reasoning cannot be vindicated. Second, it also argues that correct rules of reasoning do not (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  14. Should Intro Ethics Make You a Better Person?Katharina Nieswandt - 2023 - In Christian Kietzmann (ed.), Teleological Structures in Human Life: Essays in Honor of Anselm W. Müller. New York: Routledge. pp. 113–134.
    There is a common demand that moral theory be 'practical', voiced both in- and outside of philosophy. Neo-Humeans, Kantian constitutivists and Aristotelian naturalists have all advocated the idea that my knowledge that I ought to do something must lead me to actually do it—an idea sometimes called the “practicality requirement” for moral theory. Some university administrators apply this idea in practice, when they force students who violate the code of conduct to complete classes in moral theory, hoping that the knowledge (...)
    $137.00 new   $140.80 from Amazon    $240.00 used   (collection)    View on Amazon.com
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. Wisdom: A Skill Theory.Cheng-Hung Tsai - 2023 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    What is wisdom? What does a wise person know? Can a wise person know how to act and live well without knowing the whys and wherefores of his own action? How is wisdom acquired? This Element addresses questions regarding the nature and acquisition of wisdom by developing and defending a skill theory of wisdom. Specifically, this theory argues that if a person S is wise, then (i) S knows that overall attitude success contributes to or constitutes well-being; (ii) S knows (...)
    $22.00 new   $28.05 used    View on Amazon.com
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  16. Practical reasons, theoretical reasons, and permissive and prohibitive balancing.John Brunero - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-23.
    Philosophers have often noted a contrast between practical and theoretical reasons when it comes to cases involving equally balanced reasons. When there are strong practical reasons for A-ing, and equally strong practical reasons for some incompatible option, B-ing, the agent is permitted to make an arbitrary choice between them, having sufficient reason to A and sufficient reason to B. But when there is strong evidence for P and equally strong evidence for ~ P, one isn’t permitted to simply believe one (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17. Reasons and Defeasible Reasoning.John Brunero - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1):41-64.
    According to the Reasoning View, a normative reason to φ is a premise in a pattern of sound reasoning leading to the conclusion to φ. But how should the Reasoning View account for reasons that are outweighed? One very promising proposal is to appeal to defeasible reasoning. On this proposal, when a reason is outweighed, the associated pattern of sound reasoning is defeated. Both Jonathan Way and Sam Asarnow have recently developed this idea in different ways. I argue that this (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18. Practical cognition as volition.Jeremy David Fix - 2022 - European Journal of Philosophy 30 (3):1077-1091.
    Practical cognitivism is the view that practical reason is the self-conscious will and that practical cognition is self-conscious volition. This essay addresses two puzzles for practical cognitivism. In akratic action, I act as I understand is illegitimate and not as I understand is legitimate. In permissible action, I act as I understand is legitimate and also do not act as I understand is legitimate. In both types of action, practical cognition seems to come apart from volition. How, then, can practical (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  19. The Role of Picturing In Sellars’s Practical Philosophy.Jeremy Randel Koons & Carl B. Sachs - 2022 - Journal of Philosophical Research 47:147-176.
    Picturing is a poorly understood element of Sellars’s philosophical project. We diagnose the problem with picturing as follows: on the one hand, it seems that it must be connected with action in order for it to do its job. On the other hand, the representational states of a picturing system are characterized in descriptive and seemingly static terms. How can static terms be connected with action? To solve this problem, we adopt a concept from recent work in Sellarsian metaethics: the (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. Imprecise Credences and Acceptance.Benjamin Lennertz - 2022 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9.
    Elga (2010) argues that no plausible decision rule governs action with imprecise credences. I follow Moss (2015a) in claiming that the solution to Elga’s challenge is found in the philosophy of mind, not in devising a special new decision rule. Moss suggests that in decision situations that involve imprecise credences, we must identify with a precise credence, but she says little about identification. By reflecting on the common conception of identification and on what is necessary for Moss’s solution to succeed, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  21. Why Should LGBTQI Marriage Be Legalized.Yang Pachankis - 2022 - Academia Letters 4 (5157).
    Traditional paradigm on marriage equality focused on a humanitarian appeal and was set as a path dependency model on marriage equality for the suppressed regions. However, such gender based focus has largely neglected the multilateral movements underlying the macro- political-economic structures that shaped law as a power political means. Consequentially, LGBTQI existence became marginalized from the public consciousness with structural realist state hierarchies that further undermines the fundamental freedoms of the LGBTQI popula- tion. This makes the question on LGBTQI equal (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  22. Emotions and their reasons.Laura Silva - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Although it is now commonplace to take emotions to be the sort of phenomena for which there are reasons, the question of how to cash out the reason- responsiveness of emotions remains to a large extent unanswered. I highlight two main ways of thinking about reason-responsiveness, one that takes agential capacities to engage in norm-guided deliberation to underlie reason-responsiveness, and another which instead takes there to be a basic reason-relation between facts and attitudes. I argue that the latter approach should (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23. Emotions and their reasons.Laura Silva - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Although it is now commonplace to take emotions to be the sort of phenomena for which there are reasons, the question of how to cash out the reason-responsiveness of emotions remains to a large extent unanswered. I highlight two main ways of thinking about reason-responsiveness, one that takes agential capacities to engage in norm-guided deliberation to underlie reason-responsiveness, and another which instead takes there to be a basic reason-relation between facts and attitudes. I argue that the latter approach should be (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24. The Practicality of Practical Inference.Will Small - 2022 - In Adrian Haddock & Rachael Wiseman (eds.), The Anscombean Mind. New York, NY, USA: pp. 253–290.
    In Intention, Anscombe says that practical reasoning is practical, not by virtue of its content, but rather by virtue of its form. But in her later essay ‘Practical Inference’, she seems to take this back, claiming instead that (1) the practicality of practical reasoning (or inference) resides in the distinctive use it makes of the premises, and (2) ‘it is a matter of indifference’ whether we say that it exemplifies a distinctive form. I aim to show that Anscombe is right (...)
    $56.95 new   (collection)    View on Amazon.com
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  25. Making space for the normativity of coherence.Alex Worsnip - 2022 - Noûs 56 (2):393-415.
    This paper offers a new account of how structural rationality, or coherence, is normative. The central challenge to the normativity of coherence – which I term the problem of “making space” for the normativity of coherence – is this: if considerations of coherence matter normatively, it is not clear how we ought to take account of them in our deliberation. Coherence considerations don’t seem to show up in reasoning about what to believe, intend, desire, hope, fear, and so on; moreover, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  26. The Conclusion of Practical Reasoning.John Brunero - 2021 - The Journal of Ethics 25 (1):13-37.
    According to the Aristotelian Thesis, the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action. Critics argue against it by pointing to cases in which some interference or inability prevents the production of action, yet in which that interference or inability doesn’t impugn the success of an agent’s reasoning. Some of those critics suggest instead that practical reasoning concludes in an intention, while others suggest it concludes in a belief with normative content, such as a belief about what one has conclusive, or (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  27. Vom Sollen zum Sein.Nora Heinzelmann - 2021 - In Georgios Karageorgoudis and Jörg Noller (ed.), Sein und Sollen. Paderborn, Deutschland: pp. 199-220.
    ENGLISH. From statements about what is the case we cannot derive statements about what ought to be. This is only one way in which we can describe the dichotomy between Is and Ought that has preoccupied philosophers since Hume to the present day. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the question of whether statements about what ought to be may commit us to, or even imply, statements about what is. This paper aims to address this shortcoming. It pursues (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. An epistemic modal norm of practical reasoning.Tim Henning - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):6665-6686.
    When are you in a position to rely on p in practical reasoning? Existing accounts say that you must know that p, or be in a position to know that p, or be justified in believing that p, or be in a position to justifiably believe it, and so on. This paper argues that all of these proposals face important problems, which I call the Problems of Negative Bootstrapping and of Level Confusions. I offer a diagnosis of these problems, and (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  29. Broome on Enkrasia and Akrasia.Byeong D. Lee - 2021 - Logique Et Analyse 254:175-189.
    John Broome defends what he calls ‘Enkrasia’, which is roughly this: Rationality requires of you that if you believe that you ought to do A, you intend to do A. He provides two arguments for Enkrasia. First, he argues for what he calls ‘enkratic reasoning’: ‘I ought to do A. So I shall do A’. Second, he also provides the following line of argument: Enkrasia is the requirement not to be akratic; akrasia is irrational; so Enkrasia is a rational requirement. (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  30. The seductions of clarity.C. Thi Nguyen - 2021 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 89:227-255.
    The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understanding things. And we use that feeling, in the rough-and-tumble of daily life, as a signal that we have investigated a matter sufficiently. The sense of clarity functions as a thought-terminating heuristic. In that case, our use of clarity creates significant cognitive vulnerability, which hostile forces can try to exploit. If an epistemic manipulator can imbue a belief system with an exaggerated sense of clarity, then they (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  31. Why future-bias isn't rationally evaluable.Callie K. Phillips - 2021 - Res Philosophica 98 (4):573-596.
    Future-bias is preferring some lesser future good to a greater past good because it is in the future, or preferring some greater past pain to some lesser future pain because it is in the past. Most of us think that this bias is rational. I argue that no agents have future-biased preferences that are rationally evaluable—that is, evaluable as rational or irrational. Given certain plausible assumptions about rational evaluability, either we must find a new conception of future-bias that avoids the (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  32. Where Reasons and Reasoning Come Apart.Eva Schmidt - 2021 - Noûs 55:762-781.
    Proponents of the reasoning view analyze normative reasons as premises of good reasoning and explain the normativity of reasons by appeal to their role as premises of good reasoning. The aim of this paper is to cast doubt on the reasoning view by providing counterexamples to the proposed analysis of reasons, counterexamples in which premises of good reasoning towards φ‐ing are not reasons to φ.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  33. How can there be reasoning to action?John Schwenkler - 2021 - Analytic Philosophy 62 (2):184-194.
    In general we think of reasoning as a way of moving from some body of evidence to a belief that is drawn as a conclusion from it. But is it possible for reasoning to conclude in action, i.e., in a person’s intentionally doing one thing or another? In PRACTICAL SHAPE Jonathan Dancy answers 'Yes', on the grounds that "when an agent deliberates well and then acts accordingly, the action done is of the sort most favoured by the considerations rehearsed, taken (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  34. Arguments and Stories in Legal Reasoning: The Case of Evidence Law.Gianluca Andresani - 2020 - Archiv Fuer Rechts Und Sozialphilosphie 106 (1):75-90.
    We argue that legal argumentation, as the subject matter as well as a special subfield of Argumentation Studies (AS), has to be examined by making skilled use of the full panoply of tools such as argumentation and story schemes which are at the forefront of current work in AS. In reviewing the literature, we make explicit our own methodological choices (particularly regarding the place of normative deliberation in practical reasoning) and then illustrate the implications of such an approach through the (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  35. Minimal disturbance: in defence of pragmatic reasons of the right kind.Lisa Bastian - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (12):3615-3636.
    This paper draws attention to an important methodological shortcoming in debates about what counts as a reason for belief. An extremely influential distinction in this literature is between reasons of the ‘right kind’ and the ‘wrong kind’. However, as I will demonstrate, arguments making use of this distinction often rely on a specific conception of epistemic rationality. Shifting focus to a reasonable alternative, namely a coherentist conception, can lead to surprising consequences—in particular, pragmatic reasons can, against orthodoxy, indeed be reasons (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  36. Prassi, cultura, realtà. Saggi in onore di Pier Luigi Lecis.Vinicio Busacchi, Pietro Salis & Simonluca Pinna (eds.) - 2020 - Milano-Udine: Mimesis Edizioni.
    A collection of essays dedicated to Pier Luigi Lecis' retirement. Contributors include: Mariano Bianca, Silvana Borutti, Vinicio Busacchi, Massimo Dell'Utri, Rosaria Egidi, Roberta Lanfredini, Giuseppe Lorini, Diego Marconi, Francesco Orilia, Paolo Parrini, Alberto Peruzzi, Simonluca Pinna, Pietro Salis, Paolo Spinicci.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  37. Six Arguments Against ‘Ought Implies Can’.Jonah Goldwater - 2020 - Southwest Philosophy Review 36 (1):45-54.
    Opponents of ‘ought implies can’ (OIC) often proceed via cases or counterexamples; hypothetical situations are described in which one is unable to do what one intuitively ought to do. I proceed differently. I offer six arguments against OIC via general principles; no cases. Though each argument would suffice to refute OIC if sound, redundancy is always a failsafe.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  38. Why you cannot make people better by telling them what is good.Ulf Hlobil - 2020 - European Journal of Philosophy 28 (4):986-996.
    So-called optimists about moral testimony argue, against pessimists, that, ceteris paribus, we ought to accept and act in accordance with trustworthy, pure moral testimony. I argue that even if we grant this, we need to explain why moral testimony cannot make us more virtuous. I offer an explanation that appeals to the fact that we cannot share inferential abilities via testimony. This explanation is compatible with the core commitments of optimism, but it also allows us to see what is right (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  39. Reasoning's relation to bodily action.David Jenkins - 2020 - Ratio 33 (2):87-96.
    Recent philosophical work on the relation between reasoning and bodily action is dominated by two views. It is orthodox to have it that bodily actions can be at most causally involved in reasoning. Others have it that reasoning can constitutively involve bodily actions, where this is understood as a matter of non‐mental bodily events featuring as constituents of practical reasoning. Reflection on cases of reasoning out‐loud suggests a neglected alternative on which both practical and theoretical reasoning can have bodily actions (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  40. Perdurantism, fecklessness and the veil of ignorance.Michael Tze-Sung Longenecker - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (9):2565-2576.
    There has been a growing charge that perdurantism—with its bloated ontology of very person-like objects that coincide persons—implies the repugnant conclusion that we are morally obliged to be feckless. I argue that this charge critically overlooks the epistemic situation—what I call the ‘veil of ignorance’—that perdurantists find themselves in. Though the veil of ignorance still requires an alteration of our commonsense understanding of the demands on action, I argue for two conclusions. The first is that the alteration that is required (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  41. Constructing Practical Reasons.Andreas Müller - 2020 - Oxford, Vereinigtes Königreich: Oxford University Press.
    Some things are reasons for us to perform certain actions. That it will spare you great pain in the future, for example, is a reason for you to go to the dentist now, and that you are already late for work is a reason for you not to read the next article in the morning paper. Why are such considerations reasons for or against certain actions? Constructivism offers an intriguing answer to this question. Its basic idea is often encapsulated in (...)
    $64.90 new   $65.84 used   $75.74 from Amazon     View on Amazon.com
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  42. Risking Belief.John Schwenkler - 2020 - In Enoch Lambert & John Schwenkler (eds.), Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 196-211.
    This chapter discusses how we should think about experiences that threaten to radically transform our understanding of the world. While it can be rational to treat the “doxastically transformative” potential of an experience as a reason to choose against it, such a decision must be based in something more than the fact that this experience would alter one’s current beliefs. It only in light of knowledge of how things are that a person can choose rationally against transformative processes that would (...)
    $73.27 new   $81.16 used   $84.11 from Amazon    (collection)    View on Amazon.com
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  43. Meghan Sullivan, Time Biases: A Theory of Rational Planning and Personal Persistence.Travis Timmerman - 2020 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 17 (6):690-694.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  44. A puzzle about enkratic reasoning.Jonathan Way - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (10):3177-3196.
    Enkratic reasoning—reasoning from believing that you ought to do something to an intention to do that thing—seems good. But there is a puzzle about how it could be. Good reasoning preserves correctness, other things equal. But enkratic reasoning does not preserve correctness. This is because what you ought to do depends on your epistemic position, but what it is correct to intend does not. In this paper, I motivate these claims and thus show that there is a puzzle. I then (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  45. Reasoning: New Essays on Theoretical and Practical Thinking.Magdalena Balcerak Jackson & Brendan Balcerak Jackson (eds.) - 2019 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    This new volume addresses the central questions which surround the process of reasoning. This emerging topic of analytic philosophy intersects with numerous other areas of philosophy, such as epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and metaethics, and also psychological work on reasoning.
    $56.98 new   $70.77 used   $78.69 from Amazon     View on Amazon.com
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  46. Giving Reasons Does Not Always Amount to Arguing.Lilian Bermejo-Luque - 2019 - Topoi 38 (4):659-668.
    Both because of the vagueness of the word ‘give’ when speaking about giving reasons, and because we lack an adequate definition of ‘reasons’, there is a harmful ambiguity in the expression ‘giving reasons’. Particularly, straightforwardly identifying argumentation with reasons giving would make of virtually any interplay a piece of argumentation. Besides, if we adopt the mainstream definition of reasons as “considerations that count in favour of doing or believing something”, then only good argumentation would count as argumentation. In this paper, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  47. Logical Expressivism and Carroll's Regress.Corine Besson - 2019 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 86:35-62.
    In this paper, I address a key argument in favour of logical expressivism, the view that knowing a logical principle such as Modus Ponens is not a cognitive state but a pro-attitude towards drawing certain types of conclusions from certain types of premises. The argument is that logical expressivism is the only view that can take us out of Lewis Carroll's Regress – which suggests that elementary deductive reasoning is impossible. I show that the argument does not hold scrutiny and (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  48. Rawlsian Constructivism and the Assumption of Disunity.Johan Brännmark & Eric Brandstedt - 2019 - Journal of Political Philosophy 27 (1):48-66.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  49. Fittingness and Good Reasoning.John Brunero - 2019 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 16 (2).
    Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way have defended a view of good reasoning according to which good reasoning is explained in terms of the preservation of fittingness. I argue that their Fittingness View is incorrect. Not all fittingness-preserving transitions in thought are instances of good reasoning.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  50. An Existential Perspective on Addiction Treatment: A Logic-based therapy case study.Guy du Plessis - 2019 - International Journal of Philosophical Practice 5 (1):1-32.
    In this essay I argue that a comprehensive understanding of addiction and its treatment should include an existential perspective. I provide a brief overview of an existential perspective of addiction and recovery, which will contextualize the remainder of the essay. I then present a case study of how the six-step philosophical practice method of Logic-Based Therapy can assist with issues that often arise in addiction treatment framed through an existential perspective.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
1 — 50 / 270
BibTeX / EndNote / RIS / etc
Export this page:
Restrictions



Viewing options


Open Category Editor
Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?

Create an account to enable off-campus access through your institution's proxy server.

Monitor this page
Be alerted of all new items appearing on this page. Choose how you want to monitor it:

Email   RSS feed
Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)

Area Editors:
David Bourget
Gwen Bradford
Berit Brogaard
Margaret Cameron
David Chalmers
James Chase
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Esa Diaz-Leon
Barry Hallen
Hans Halvorson
Jonathan Ichikawa
Michelle Kosch
Øystein Linnebo
JeeLoo Liu
Paul Livingston
Brandon Look
Manolo Martínez
Matthew McGrath
Michiru Nagatsu
Susana Nuccetelli
Giuseppe Primiero
Jack Alan Reynolds
Darrell P. Rowbottom
Aleksandra Samonek
Constantine Sandis
Howard Sankey
Jonathan Schaffer
Thomas Senor
Robin Smith
Daniel Star
Jussi Suikkanen
Aness Kim Webster

Other editors
Contact us
Learn more about PhilPapers

Home | New books and articles | Bibliographies | Philosophy journals | Discussions | Article Index | About PhilPapers | API | Contact us | Code of conduct

CDP Phiosophy Documentation Center
PhilPapers logo by Andrea Andrews and Meghan Driscoll.
This site uses cookies and Google Analytics (see our terms & conditions for details regarding the privacy implications).

Use of this site is subject to terms & conditions.
All rights reserved by The PhilPapers Foundation

Server: philpapers-web-6f7997868-74pdc N