It is a popular view thatpractical deliberation excludes foreknowledge of one's choice. Wolfgang Spohn and Isaac Levi have argued that not even a purely probabilistic self-predictionis available to thedeliberator, if one takes subjective probabilities to be conceptually linked to betting rates. It makes no sense to have a betting rate for an option, for one's willingness to bet on the option depends on the net gain from the bet, in combination with the option's antecedent utility, rather than on the (...) offered odds. And even apart from this consideration, assigning probabilities to the options among which one is choosing is futile since such probabilities could be of no possible use in choice. The paper subjects these arguments to critical examination and suggests that, appearances notwithstanding, practical deliberation need not crowd outself-prediction. (shrink)

It is a popular view thatpractical deliberation excludes foreknowledge of one's choice. Wolfgang Spohn and Isaac Levi have argued that not even a purely probabilistic self-predictionis available to thedeliberator, if one takes subjective probabilities to be conceptually linked to betting rates. It makes no sense to have a betting rate for an option, for one's willingness to bet on the option depends on the net gain from the bet, in combination with the option's antecedent utility, rather than on the (...) offered odds. And even apart from this consideration, assigning probabilities to the options among which one is choosing is futile since such probabilities could be of no possible use in choice. The paper subjects these arguments to critical examination and suggests that, appearances notwithstanding, practical deliberation need not crowd outself-prediction. (shrink)

Bobier argued that hope is necessary for practical deliberation. I will demonstrate that Bobier’s argument for this thesis fails. The problem is that one of its main premisses rests on a sufficient condition for hoping that is subject to counterexamples. I consider two ways to save the argument, but show that they are unsuccessful in doing so.

J.G. Fichte’s 1798 System of Ethics is seldom read, despite the fact that it remains, after more than two centuries, one of the most original and insightful efforts at a systematic normative ethical theory on Kantian foundations. Part of the reason for its obscurity lies in the perceived implausibility of Fichte’s account of practical deliberation and of the authority of individual conscience. The view typically attributed to Fichte is a conjunction of four claims: that moral deliberation consists (...) entirely in consultation of one’s conscience; that conscience is a faculty that gives immediate epistemic access to substantive moral truths; that conformity with the verdict of conscience is the sole criterion of the moral worth of actions; and that an individual’s conscientious decision is therefore morally incorrigible. This set of views is indeed implausible; but Fichte in fact held none of them. Hegel was the first to attribute them to him and, incredibly, Hegel’s has remained for 200 years the dominant interpretation, even among scholars of Fichte. In this paper I explain how Fichte actually thought about practical deliberation and the role of conscience, and diagnose the sources of appeal of the Hegelian interpretation. (shrink)

Joint practical deliberation is the activity of deciding together what to do. In this dissertation, I argue that several speech acts that we can use to alter our moral obligations – promises, offers, requests, demands, commands, and agreements – are moves within joint practical deliberation. -/- The dissertation begins by investigating joint practical deliberation. The resulting account implies that joint deliberation is more flexible than we usually recognize, in two ways. First, we can (...) make joint decisions not only about what we will do together, but also about what you or I will do alone. Second, we can deliberate by means of two distinct methods: propose-and-ratify, in which a proposed joint decision must be explicitly accepted to come into effect, and propose-and-challenge, in which a proposed joint decision comes into force unless it is explicitly challenged. -/- Varying these parameters generates a botany of different kinds of proposals we can make within joint deliberation. When we look at these proposals more closely, we make a surprising discovery: for each kind of proposal we can make in joint practical deliberation, there is an everyday speech act with the very same properties. A certain kind of proposal to make a joint decision regarding one’s own actions has the same normative effects, under the same conditions, as a promise. One kind of proposal to make a joint decision regarding one’s addressee’s actions has all the essential features of a command; another kind of deliberative proposal – with the same content but a different method of evaluation – looks exactly like a request. And so on. -/- These similarities are too systematic to be coincidental. The only explanation, I argue, is that these ordinary speech acts are identical to their doppelgängers within joint practical deliberation. Promises and offers are proposals to make joint decisions about what I will do. Commands, demands, and requests are proposals to make joint decisions about what you will do. And agreements are joint decisions about what we will do. Call this the deliberative theory of these speech acts. -/- Considering each speech act in turn, I defend the deliberative theory by arguing that it provides a uniquely powerful explanation of its targets’ social and moral significance. Once we see how naturally these speech acts fall out of our practice of joint deliberation, theories that treat them as sui generis – as many moral philosophers now do – will come to seem redundant and nonexplanatory. Conversely, thinking of promises, offers, commands, demands, requests, and agreements as moves within joint practical deliberation allows us to give an elegant and generative theory of these phenomena that have confounded moral philosophers for so long. (shrink)

Harry G. Frankfurt has put the problem of volitional conflict at the center of philosophical attention. If you care fundamentally about your career and your family, but these cares conflict, this conflict undermines the coherency of your decision standard and thereby your ability to choose and act autonomously. The standard response to this problem is to argue that you can overcome volitional conflict by unifying your foundational motivational states. As Frankfurt puts it, the ‘totality of things that an agent cares (...) about’ plus his ‘ordering of how important to him they are effectively specifies his answer to the question of how to live’ (The Reasons of Love(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 23). In this paper, I critically assess the three main reasons given for such a coherency requirement: 1) we can do only one action at a time; 2) our motivational states come with normative pressure towards coherency; and 3) conflicting motivational states provide us with an incoherent decision-making framework. I conclude that these reasons do not ground a coherency requirement for practical deliberation and argue that we can autonomously express ourselves as volitionally conflicted by acting on our conflicting motivational states over the course of multiple actions. (shrink)

Readers of Hobbes usually take his account of practical deliberation to be a passive process that does not respond to agents’ judgements about what normative reasons they have. This is ostensibly because deliberation is purely conative and/or excludes reasoning, or because Hobbesian reasoning is itself a process in which reasoners merely experience a succession of mental states (e.g. according to purely associative mental structures). I argue to the contrary that for Hobbes deliberation (and hence the basis (...) for voluntary action) is not purely conative and amongst humans it involves reasoning. Furthermore, while non-linguistic reasoning is passive, specifically linguistic reasoning is for Hobbes an active process in which reasoners affirm propositions from which they reason. The historical significance of Hobbes’s new account of agency lies in his attempt, in deploying the tool of language, to weld a materialist determinism to a cognitive account of practical deliberation that can involve reasoning and be reason-responsive. (shrink)

Accounts of practical deliberation tend to overlook any possible role for hope. I offer an argument showing that hope sets the ends of our practical deliberations and is thereby necessary for practical deliberation. It is because I hope to summit the mountain by midday that I deliberate about how to do so. Absent this particular hope, I could not deliberate about how to summit the mountain by midday.

Normative reasons for action are considerations that count in favor of actions. They are the considerations that determine what an agent should do in a given situation. If the agent acts on these considerations, they justify her action. This paper concerns accounts of normative reasons that separate the explanation of why a particular reason counts in favor of an agent’s performing some action from the content of that reason. Elements of this explanation of why the reason is a reason are (...) “background conditions” on that reason, rather than part of the reason itself. (shrink)

Bernard Williams questioned whether impartial morality “can allow for the importance of individual character and personal relations in moral experience.” Underlying his position is a distinction between factual and practical deliberation. While factual deliberation is about the world and brings in a standpoint that is impartial, practical deliberation is, he claims, radically first‐personal; it “involves an I that [is] intimately the I of my desires.” While it may be thought that Williams's claim implies an unpalatable (...) Humean subjectivism, the present article argues that this does not follow: That first‐person practical deliberation is directed both by the “I of my desires” and by the world. Drawing on Peter Winch's argument against the universalizability of moral judgments and D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, the article argues that practical deliberations involve discovering value in the world, but that what is revealed about the world depends constitutively on the first‐person deliberations and decisions of particular agents. (shrink)

The question of how to reason well is an important normative question,one which ultimately motivates some of our interest in the more abstracttopic of the principles of practical reason. It is this normative questionthat I propose to address by arguing that given the goal of an importantkind of deliberation, we will deliberate better if we develop certainvirtues. I give an account of the virtue of stability and I argue thatstability makes reasoners reason better. Further,I suggest at the end (...) of the paper that an account of virtues thatconduce to good reasoning might go a long way toward answering someof the traditional questions about the principles ofpractical reason. (shrink)

This paper argues that promises are proposals in joint practical deliberation, the activity of deciding together what to do. More precisely: to promise to ϕ is to propose (in a particular way) to decide together with your addressee(s) that you will ϕ. I defend this deliberative theory by showing that the activity of joint practical deliberation naturally gives rise to a speech act with exactly the same properties as promises. A certain kind of proposal to make (...) a joint decision regarding one's own actions turns out to have the very same normative effects, under the very same conditions, as a promise. I submit that this cannot be a coincidence: we should conclude that promises and the relevant kind of proposals in joint practical deliberation are one and the same. (shrink)

Moral conflicts are real, and while a deontic logic containing a modified "agglomeration rule" may be able to accommodate this fact, even the most sophisticated logic will still overlook much of what everyday normative reasoning involves.

According to Aristotle, character (êthos) and emotion (pathos) are constitutive features of the process of phronetic practical deliberation: in order to render a determinate action-specific judgement, practical reasoning cannot be simply reduced to logical demonstration (apodeixis). This can be seen by uncovering an important structural parallel between the virtue of phronêsis and the art of rhetoric. This structural parallel helps to show how Aristotle's account of practical reason and deliberation, which constructively incorporates the emotions, illuminates (...) key issues in contemporary democratic theory concerning deliberation at the political level. (shrink)

Abstract: Practical deliberation is deliberation concerning what to do governed by norms on intention (e.g. means-end coherence and consistency), which are taken to be a mark of rational deliberation. According to the theory of practical deliberation I develop in this paper we should think of the norms of rational practical deliberation ecologically: that is, the norms that constitute rational practical deliberation depend on the complex interaction between the psychological capacities of (...) the agent in question and the agent's environment. I argue that this view does a better job of justifying particular norms for practical deliberation than intrinsic or constitutivist theories. Finally, I argue against the Myth Theory of deliberation, which takes there to be no such norms on deliberation. (shrink)

Sometimes there is evidence about what we would decide to do from an improved deliberative position—one in which we have better information, say, or are subject to less bias, or are able to consider the relevant facts with greater vividness. I argue that in such situations we should act on that evidence, and that there are some important ethical and prudential applications for this idea. Following through with this suggestion allows us to respond to the fact that we are prone (...) to error by making the appropriate adjustments in our decision-making. A secondary goal is to explore the neglected role of vividness in our decision-making. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes has been frequently criticised for his account of deliberation that purportedly consists merely of, in his own words, an ‘alternate succession of appetite and fear’ and therefore lacks the judgement and reflection commentators think is essential if he is to provide an adequate treatment of practical rationality. In this paper Hobbes’s account of deliberation is analysed in detail and it is argued that it is not vulnerable to this critique. Hobbes takes so-called ‘mental discourse’ to (...) be partly constitutive of the process of practical deliberation, and this provides the cognitive judgement and reflection that critics have claimed it lacks. (shrink)

When a reasonable agent deliberates about what to do, she entertains only a limited range of possible courses of action. A theory of practical reasoning must therefore include an account of deliberative attention: an account that both explains the patterns of deliberative attention that reasonable agents typically display and allows us to see why these patterns of deliberative attention are reasonable. I offer such an account, built around two, central claims. A reasonable agent who cares about some end is (...) disposed to exclude courses of action which she believes to be incompatible with that end from the range of possibilities that she will entertain as options in practical deliberation. As I shall put it, an agent’s cares establish deliberative boundaries for her practical thought. The stability of a deliberative boundary varies with the depth of the care that explains it. These two claims motivate the Boundary-Driven Model of the path that a reasonable agent’s deliberative attention will take in temporally extended deliberation. If we locate the model within a maximizing conception of practical rationality, then boundary-driven deliberation, of the sort that the model describes, can be understood and justified instrumentally, as a heuristic device. But if we suppose that there is no single index of value that successful practical choice maximizes, then boundary-driven deliberation is partly constitutive of reasonableness in practical thought. It allows an agent facing plural and incommensurable values to frame her deliberative problems narrowly enough that, in conjunction with deliberative devices which are not part of the model but which are compatible with it, she may be able to reach a non-arbitrary decision – and so give a determinate, verdictive sense to the phrase “the best course of action available to me” in cases in which a determinate meaning for this phrase would otherwise be lacking. (shrink)

David Carr; Roughing Out the Ground Rules: reason and experience in practical deliberation, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 29, Issue 1, 30 May 2006.

David Carr; Roughing Out the Ground Rules: reason and experience in practical deliberation, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 29, Issue 1, 30 May 2006.

I begin by noting the disparate legacies of Thomas Hobbes (1588?1679) and Bishop Joseph Butler (1692?1752). I suggest that part of the reason Butler's arguments in Fifteen Sermons Preached at Rolls Chapel (2nd ed. 1729) have been comparatively neglected by contemporary philosophers is due to the genre in which they are presented, i.e. the sermon. Like other non-standard genres of philosophical writing (dialogue, disputatio, meditation, etc.) both the genre and the purpose towards which Butler puts it have become unfashionable in (...) contemporary philosophy, and, as a result, the subtlety of Butler's arguments are not fully appreciated. I attempt to rectify this situation by, first, explaining the general, complex purpose of Fifteen Sermons, and, second, by explaining the specific purpose of Sermon XI, ?Upon the Love of Our Neighbour? (the one sermon that has attracted sustained attention). In the first section of the paper I argue that the general purpose of Fifteen Sermons is as much rhetorical as it is philosophical, and that these are subsidiary to Butler's pastoral function first in relation to his congregation at Rolls Chapel and second to his readers. In particular, Butler portrays reflection as an essential condition for human virtue, and the sermons, which contain a theory of deliberation (or conscience) and virtue, are intended to encourage autonomous agency and guide it around certain traps of specious reflection. In the second section, I argue that the most serious trap is identified in Sermon X, ?Upon Self-Deceit,? the sermon prior to Sermon XI. In particular, the arguments in Sermon XI that are directed against universal selfishness are designed primarily to critique specious forms of practical deliberation, not theoretical accounts of psychological egoism. And moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs. The preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and that which was written was upright, even words of truth. The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd. And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil (Ecclesiastes 12, 9?14). (shrink)

The questions ‘Do I know p?’ and ‘shall I take p as a reason to act?’ seem to belong to different domains — or so claims Ernest Sosa in his Judgment and Agency, the latest version of his virtue epistemology. According to Sosa, we may formulate the first question in a purely epistemological way — a matter of knowledge “full stop” —, while the second one is necessarily intruded by pragmatic factors — a matter of “actionable knowledge”. Both should be (...) answered, in his view, considering the reliability of my belief, but the former could be faced in total abstraction from my personal practical concerns. In this paper I dispute Sosa’s view, and claim that no purely epistemic level of knowledge “full stop” is conceivable, at least within a reliabilist framework. A case is put forward in order to show that some given belief may not be considered as reliable by itself, as a token, but always as a member of a type, belonging to some class of reference of other beliefs. And the relevant class of reference may only be chosen considering personal practical interests. (shrink)

Suppose an agent has made a judgement of the form, 'all things considered, it would be better for me to do a rather than b (or any range of alternatives to doing a)' where a and b stand for particular actions. If she does not act upon her judgement in these circumstances would that be a failure of rationality on her part? In this paper I consider two different interpretations of all things considered judgements which give different answers to this (...) question, one suggested by Donald Davidson, the other by Paul Grice and Judith Baker. I argue that neither interpretation is adequate. However, a third interpretation that combines features of the Grice/Baker view with the Davidsonian view is possible. In the final section of the paper I defend this interpretation against two objections. (shrink)

Moral deliberation has been receiving more attention in nursing ethics. Several ethical conversation models have been developed. This article explores the feasibility of the so-called CARE (Considerations, Actions, Reasons, Experiences) model as a framework for moral deliberation in psychiatric nursing practice. This model was used in combination with narrative and dialogical approaches to foster discourse between various stakeholders about coercion in a closed admission clinic in a mental hospital in the Netherlands. The findings demonstrate that the CARE model (...) provides a substantial framework for structuring moral deliberations. Narratives and dialogue are useful tools for broadening issues in conversations, to engage various stakeholders (including patients), and to gain shared understandings. (shrink)

David Wiggins; II*—Deliberation and Practical Reason, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1 June 1976, Pages 29–52, https://doi.org/10.

We have it on the authority of Aristotle that “reason (nous) is the best thing in us” (EN X.7, 1177a20). This idealization of reason permeates his account of eudaimonia, a term commonly translated as ‘happiness’, which Aristotle identifies with living and doing well (EN I.4, 1095a18-20). In harmony with a certain intellectualism peculiar to the mainstream of ancient philosophical accounts of eudaimonia, Aristotle holds that living well requires the unique practical application of rationality of which only humans are capable (...) (EN I.7, 1098a13-15/EE I.7, 1217a25-27). This dissertation investigates Aristotle’s substantive view on the practical application of reason by examining how, according to him, human agents use reason to decide what to do, what kind of person to be, and indeed how to live well. A distinctively human way of making decisions is deliberation (bouleusis), an exercise of practical reason par excellence. The first chapter reconstructs Aristotle’s account of deliberation from a wide range of texts in the corpus. It argues that deliberation is a complex decision-making process that, for the most part, unfolds into four stages: (1) positing a provisional goal; (2) constructing a set of alternatives; (3) identifying the best alternative; (4) forming an intention to do the most proximate action as identified in the penultimate stage. This reading offers a comprehensive representation of Aristotle’s theory while rendering his theory more sophisticated—and indeed more modern—than the alternatives in recent years. Deciding what to do often requires that we confront the question, “Which is preferable (hairetōteron) or better (beltion) between two or more options?” In Topics III, a text widely acknowledged as the inaugural treatment of the logic of preference, Aristotle articulates a set of principles to guide our preference-ranking. While scholars pay historical homage to Aristotle, there is little engagement with his treatment of preference logic. The second chapter addresses the need for a current study and reassessment of Aristotle’s preference-ranking principles. It argues that, despite differences in scope and methodology between the Aristotelian and modern systems, the description inaugural treatment of preference logic comfortably, and accurately, applies to Topics III. When one looks at the role that Aristotle allows reason to play in the production and motivation of action, it is tempting to conclude that Aristotle endorses the Humean division of labor. For Aristotle claims that deliberation is about “the things towards the goal” (EN III.3, 1112b11-16) and that virtue (aretē) makes our goals right (EN VI.12, 1144a7-9). Chapter three seeks to show, against a recent influential quasi-Humean interpretation, that the primary function of practical reason is mapping the landscape of value corresponding to the agent’s reasoned conception of what eudaimonia consists in, as a rational being that she is. Aristotle notoriously defends the political subordination of individuals he believes to have a defective deliberative capacity. In Politics I.13, he claims that the deliberative faculty is undeveloped in children and “ineffectual” (akuron) in women (1260a12). The concluding chapter considers a puzzle about the development of the female’s deliberative faculty: How do women become ineffective in their deliberation, but freemen do not, given that all children have deliberative faculties that are unperfected? Drawing from the theories defended in previous chapters, I argue that the female’s deliberative defect is primarily due to her lack of moral education rather than inalterable sexual, biological differences—a thesis widely endorsed by scholars lately. (shrink)

Can new technology enhance purpose-driven, democratic dialogue in groups, governments, and societies? Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice is the first book that attempts to sample the full range of work on online deliberation, forging new connections between academic research, technology designers, and practitioners. Since some of the most exciting innovations have occurred outside of traditional institutions, and those involved have often worked in relative isolation from each other, work in this growing field has often failed to reflect (...) the full set of perspectives on online deliberation. This volume is aimed at those working at the crossroads of information/communication technology and social science, and documents early findings in, and perspectives on, this new field by many of its pioneers. -/- CONTENTS: -/- Introduction: The Blossoming Field of Online Deliberation (Todd Davies, pp. 1-19) -/- Part I - Prospects for Online Civic Engagement -/- Chapter 1: Virtual Public Consultation: Prospects for Internet Deliberative Democracy (James S. Fishkin, pp. 23-35) -/- Chapter 2: Citizens Deliberating Online: Theory and Some Evidence (Vincent Price, pp. 37-58) -/- Chapter 3: Can Online Deliberation Improve Politics? Scientific Foundations for Success (Arthur Lupia, pp. 59-69) -/- Chapter 4: Deliberative Democracy, Online Discussion, and Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly) (Robert Cavalier with Miso Kim and Zachary Sam Zaiss, pp. 71-79) -/- Part II - Online Dialogue in the Wild -/- Chapter 5: Friends, Foes, and Fringe: Norms and Structure in Political Discussion Networks (John Kelly, Danyel Fisher, and Marc Smith, pp. 83-93) -/- Chapter 6: Searching the Net for Differences of Opinion (Warren Sack, John Kelly, and Michael Dale, pp. 95-104) -/- Chapter 7: Happy Accidents: Deliberation and Online Exposure to Opposing Views (Azi Lev-On and Bernard Manin, pp. 105-122) -/- Chapter 8: Rethinking Local Conversations on the Web (Sameer Ahuja, Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, and Andrea Kavanaugh, pp. 123-129) -/- Part III - Online Public Consultation -/- Chapter 9: Deliberation in E-Rulemaking? The Problem of Mass Participation (David Schlosberg, Steve Zavestoski, and Stuart Shulman, pp. 133-148) -/- Chapter 10: Turning GOLD into EPG: Lessons from Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism for Electronic Rulemaking and Other Ventures in Cyberdemocracy (Peter M. Shane, pp. 149-162) -/- Chapter 11: Baudrillard and the Virtual Cow: Simulation Games and Citizen Participation (Hélène Michel and Dominique Kreziak, pp. 163-166) -/- Chapter 12: Using Web-Based Group Support Systems to Enhance Procedural Fairness in Administrative Decision Making in South Africa (Hossana Twinomurinzi and Jackie Phahlamohlaka, pp. 167-169) -/- Chapter 13: Citizen Participation Is Critical: An Example from Sweden (Tomas Ohlin, pp. 171-173) -/- Part IV - Online Deliberation in Organizations -/- Chapter 14: Online Deliberation in the Government of Canada: Organizing the Back Office (Elisabeth Richard, pp. 177-191) -/- Chapter 15: Political Action and Organization Building: An Internet-Based Engagement Model (Mark Cooper, pp. 193-202) -/- Chapter 16: Wiki Collaboration Within Political Parties: Benefits and Challenges (Kate Raynes-Goldie and David Fono, pp. 203-205) -/- Chapter 17: Debian’s Democracy (Gunnar Ristroph, pp. 207-211) -/- Chapter 18: Software Support for Face-to-Face Parliamentary Procedure (Dana Dahlstrom and Bayle Shanks, pp. 213-220) -/- Part V - Online Facilitation -/- Chapter 19: Deliberation on the Net: Lessons from a Field Experiment (June Woong Rhee and Eun-mee Kim, pp. 223-232) -/- Chapter 20: The Role of the Moderator: Problems and Possibilities for Government-Run Online Discussion Forums (Scott Wright, pp. 233-242) -/- Chapter 21: Silencing the Clatter: Removing Anonymity from a Corporate Online Community (Gilly Leshed, pp. 243-251) -/- Chapter 22: Facilitation and Inclusive Deliberation (Matthias Trénel, pp. 253-257) -/- Chapter 23: Rethinking the ‘Informed’ Participant: Precautions and Recommendations for the Design of Online Deliberation (Kevin S. Ramsey and Matthew W. Wilson, pp. 259-267) -/- Chapter 24: PerlNomic: Rule Making and Enforcement in Digital Shared Spaces (Mark E. Phair and Adam Bliss, pp. 269-271) -/- Part VI - Design of Deliberation Tools -/- Chapter 25: An Online Environment for Democratic Deliberation: Motivations, Principles, and Design (Todd Davies, Brendan O’Connor, Alex Cochran, Jonathan J. Effrat, Andrew Parker, Benjamin Newman, and Aaron Tam, pp. 275-292) -/- Chapter 26: Online Civic Deliberation with E-Liberate (Douglas Schuler, pp. 293-302) -/- Chapter 27: Parliament: A Module for Parliamentary Procedure Software (Bayle Shanks and Dana Dahlstrom, pp. 303-307) -/- Chapter 28: Decision Structure: A New Approach to Three Problems in Deliberation (Raymond J. Pingree, pp. 309-316) -/- Chapter 29: Design Requirements of Argument Mapping Software for Teaching Deliberation (Matthew W. Easterday, Jordan S. Kanarek, and Maralee Harrell, pp. 317-323) -/- Chapter 30: Email-Embedded Voting with eVote/Clerk (Marilyn Davis, pp. 325-327) -/- Epilogue: Understanding Diversity in the Field of Online Deliberation (Seeta Peña Gangadharan, pp. 329-358). -/- For individual chapter downloads, go to odbook.stanford.edu. (shrink)

Many important thinkers in the philosophical tradition, like Aristotle or Hume, have used an explicit theory of action as the basis of their respective normative theories of practical rationality and morality. The idea behind this architecture of theories is that action theory can inform us about the origin, bonds, reach and limits of practical reason. The aim of this book is to revive this direct connection between action theory and practical philosophy, in particular to provide systematic action-theoretical (...) underpinnings for the discussion about the normative structure of practical reason. This book brings together a collection of specially commissioned essays from internationally prestigious scholars in the field and represents the state of the art in contemporary philosophy of action. The book is divided into three parts: i. conceptual work about what actions, intentions and intentional actions are; ii. empirical theory of practical deliberation; and iii.theories about the action theoretic features of autonomy. The volume significantly advances these three lines of research and offers important new contributions to each of them. (shrink)

The purpose of this dissertation is to show how it is that three interpreters of Aristotle's texts on deliberation and the practical syllogism come to views which differ considerably from each other. I argue that the differences are largely due to which set of texts the interpreter takes as most important in relation to Aristotle's theory of the practical syllogism. Neither G. E. M. Anscombe, John M. Cooper, nor Martha Craven Nussbaum has expressed adequately Aristotle's use of (...) the practical syllogism in his writings. I argue that the practical syllogism is one phenomenon for which Aristotle has different purposes in the different places that it appears in his texts. Due to its different appearances, it is sometimes given different interpretations because of the context in which it appears. ;In the first chapter I list several texts which are relevant to Aristotle's theory of deliberation and of the practical syllogism. I then state briefly the kinds of views that are held on the relationship between deliberation and the practical syllogism, which leads me to formulate the questions to which this dissertation is to offer answers. In order to respond to these questions, I develop a separate set of questions which guide my examination of the interpretations by Anscombe, Cooper, and Nussbaum on deliberation and the practical syllogism in Aristotle's texts. My elucidation of these three interpreters' views is shown in chapters two through four. In the fifth and final chapter, I return to the former questions and answer them according to my elucidations of the interpreters' views. I then take four passages from Aristotle--DA 434a16-21, MA 701a17-25, EN 1112b11-12, 15-20, and EN 1147a24-28--which passages are important to his theory of the practical syllogism, and show the differences among the interpretations of these passages by Anscombe, Cooper, and Nussbaum. This, in conjunction with what I have shown up to this point, enables me to offer a conclusion concerning the entire controversy. My conclusion is compatible with the view that the practical syllogism and deliberation are one phenomenon for Aristotle, which phenomenon he puts to several uses. (shrink)

The “participatory turn” cutting across technical approaches for appraising environment, risk, science, and technology has been accompanied by intense debates over the desired nature, extent, and quality of public engagement in science. Burgeoning work evaluating the effectiveness of such processes and the social study of science in society more generally is notable, however, for lacking systematic understanding of the very actors shaping these new forms science-society interaction. This paper addresses this lacuna by drawing on United Kingdom based in-depth empirical research (...) that made space for participatory appraisal experts to reflect on effective practice and novel questions of competence, expertise, and citizen-specialist relations within analytic-deliberative processes. Emerging practitioner principles warn that existing participatory models have not sufficiently considered constructivist perspectives on knowledge, analysis, and deliberation. Effective participatory appraisal under uncertainty needs to guard against the “technocracy of participation” by opening up to diversity, difference, antagonism, and uncertainties/indeterminacies. (shrink)

The “participatory turn” cutting across technical approaches for appraising environment, risk, science, and technology has been accompanied by intense debates over the desired nature, extent, and quality of public engagement in science. Burgeoning work evaluating the effectiveness of such processes and the social study of science in society more generally is notable, however, for lacking systematic understanding of the very actors shaping these new forms science-society interaction. This paper addresses this lacuna by drawing on United Kingdom based in-depth empirical research (...) that made space for participatory appraisal experts to reflect on effective practice and novel questions of competence, expertise, and citizen-specialist relations within analytic-deliberative processes. Emerging practitioner principles warn that existing participatory models have not sufficiently considered constructivist perspectives on knowledge, analysis, and deliberation. Effective participatory appraisal under uncertainty needs to guard against the “technocracy of participation” by opening up to diversity, difference, antagonism, and uncertainties/indeterminacies. (shrink)

On a Humean account, a person's reasons for action are determined by her desires---in the broadest sense of 'desires', that is, noncognitive pro-attitudes. In four essays, I defend this account against several prominent objections. The first essay addresses the concern that the Humean cannot account for rationalizing reasons . The next three essays concern justifying reasons : reasons for action that are more fully normative than those that merely make action intelligible. Instrumental reasons, prudential reasons, and intrinsic reasons are three (...) different sorts of reasons to which an agent can appeal in justifying her action. ;Each essay focuses on a specific attack against the Humean account. In the second essay I argue that the normatively of instrumental reasons is brute ; and that, contrary to the received view, this is compatible with Humeanism. In the third essay I consider prudential reasons and defend the Humean claim that all and only present concerns provide normative reasons for action. In the final essay I address the fundamental question considerations of deliberative relevance: what makes certain desires and considerations relevant to a specific decision-making context, that is, what puts them among a person's present active reasons. ;In addition to defending a broadly Humean account of practical reasons, I am concerned to expand the components of a plausible form of Humeanism. Specifically, I argue that desires alone are not always sufficient to ground an agent's reasons, and that affective states are sometimes also necessary. I call this view "thick Humeanism". In essays one and four especially, I urge that a central place be given to affective states in determining practical reasons. I also invoke recent studies in cognitive psychology to support my claims about the role of the emotions in practical deliberation. (shrink)

In the present paper, I want to contribute to a correct understanding of Aristotle's action theory by explaining just how two of the key concepts which it involves are connected and by showing that, contrary to what a number of commentators have said, there are causal concepts. The concepts in question are those of deliberation and the so-called "practical syllogism.".

Although both codes of practice and virtue ethics are integral to the ethos and history of “medical professionalism”, the two trends appear mutually incompatible. Hence, in the first part of the paper we explore and explicate this apparent conflict and seek a direction for medical education. The theoretical and empirical literature indicates that moral deliberation may transcend the incompatibilities between the formal and the virtuous, may enhance moral and other aspects of personal sensitivity, may help design and improve other (...) parts of the curricula, and may foster self-awareness and clarification of the professional role. Not only are these goals essential for good and conscientious doctoring, but they may also reduce physicians’ “burn-out”. We argue that medical education should focus on the ubiquitous practice of deliberation in contemporary medicine, and especially the practice of moral deliberation. (shrink)

Next SectionIncreasingly a focus of research as well as media reports and online forums, the use of placebos in clinical medicine extends beyond sugar pills and saline injections. Physician surveys conducted in various countries invariably report that placebos are routinely used clinically, impure placebos more frequently than the pure ones, and that physicians consider them to be of legitimate therapeutic value. Inconsistent study methodologies and physician conceptualisations of placebos may complicate the interpretation of survey data, but hardly negate the valuable (...) insights these research findings provide. Because impure placebos are often not recognised as such by practitioners, they remain at the fringe of many placebo-related debates, hence quietly absent from discussions concerning policy and regulation. The apparent popularity of impure placebos used in clinical practice thus presents unresolved ethical concerns and should direct future discussion and research. (shrink)

The question of what explains individual differences in expertise within complex domains such as music, games, sports, science, and medicine is currently a major topic of interest in a diverse range of fields, including psychology, education, and sports science, to name just a few. Ericsson and colleagues’ deliberate practice view is highly influential perspective in the literature on expertise and expert performance—but is it viable as a testable scientific theory? Here, reviewing more than 25 years of Ericsson and colleagues’ writings, (...) we document critical inconsistencies in the definition of deliberate practice, along with apparent shifts in the standard for evidence concerning deliberate practice. We also consider the impact of these issues on progress in the field of expertise, focusing on the empirical testability and falsifiability of the deliberate practice view. We then discuss a multifactorial perspective on expertise, and how open science practices can accelerate progress in research guided by this perspective. (shrink)

_Aristotle on Prescription_ explores Aristotle’s deep reflections on rule-making as a process that is both distinct from that of particular deliberation and decision-making and fundamental to it, operating at the level both of the individual and of society as a whole.