Online research in philosophy

There is a problem with a very common theory of the nature of action. The problem stems from the fact that causation by practical reasons may be a necessary condition for being an intentional action, but it can’t be a sufficient condition. After all, desires and intentions are caused by practical reasons that rationalize them, but they’re clearly not actions. Even if all actions are events or changes and desires and intentions aren’t, the acquistion of a desire or an intention is an event, but it isn’t always an action. If we can’t understand the nature of action in terms of causation by practical reasons, how should we understand it? The problem only arises if you believe that causation by practical reasons is not sufficient. Maybe the kinds of reasons that rationalize actions are different from the kinds of reasons that rationalize desires and intentions. It’s natural to suppose that reasons for A-ing have to be about A-ing. If the mental state that causes you to turn on the light counts as a reason for turning on the light, then the notion of turning on the light has to figure in the content of the cause. You might believe that turning on the light is a means to an end. Or you might just want to turn on the light. If reasons for A-ing are always about A-ing, but reasons for desiring or intending are only about the objects of desire or intention, if they’re first-order rather than secondorder, then maybe the kinds of reasons that rationalize actions are different from the kinds of..

Having an intention can be analyzed in terms of certain causal powers possessed by an instance of one’s having a thought of a certain state of affairs, where a certain preference is what causes those powers to be present. A suitable understanding of such a prcference emerges from a discussion of Wayne A. Davis’ analysis of intending. However, Davis’ emphasis on belief and desire rather than on instances of having a thought leads to difficulties for his analysis of intending. After supplementing my own analysis with a sufficient condition of intentional action, I defend my approach by relating it to D.F. Gustafson’s Intention and Agency.

Instrumental rationality prohibits one from being in the following state: intending to pass a test, not intending to study, and believing one must intend to study if one is to pass. One could escape from this incoherent state in three ways: by intending to study, by not intending to pass, or by giving up one’s instrumental belief. However, not all of these ways of proceeding seem equally rational: giving up one’s instrumental belief seems less rational than giving up an end, which itself seems less rational than intending the means. I consider whether, as some philosophers allege, these “asymmetries” pose a problem for the wide-scope formulation of instrumental rationality. I argue that they do not. I also present an argument in favor of the wide-scope formulation. The arguments employed here in defense of the wide-scope formulation of instrumental rationality can also be employed in defense of the wide-scope formulations of other rational requirements.

Many normative claims are substantive claims about reasons— claims, for example, about the reasons that a person in certain circumstances has to do or to believe something. But not all normative claims are substantive claims about reasons. In particular, some claims about what it would be irrational for someone to do are normative claims but not claims about the reasons that person has. Here are some examples. (I will state these in terms of “reasons for belief” and “reasons for intending,” although I will later raise doubts about whether this is the best way of describing these cases.) If a person believes that p, then it would be irrational for him to refuse to rely on p as a premise in further reasoning, and to reject arguments because they rely on it. To say this is not to say that the person has good reason to accept these arguments. Perhaps what he has most reason to do is to give up his belief that p. The claim is only that as long as he believes that p, it is irrational of him to refuse to accept such arguments. Similar claims hold in regard to practical reasoning: if a person intends to do A at t, and believes that in order to do this she must first do B, then it is irrational for her not to count this as a reason for doing B. This is not to say that she has any reason to do B. Perhaps what she has most reason to do is to abandon her intention to do A, or to change her mind about..

The ‘Wrong Kind of Reason’ problem for buck-passing theories (theories which hold that the normative is explanatorily or conceptually prior to the evaluative) is to explain why the existence of pragmatic or strategic reasons for some response to an object does not suffice to ground evaluative claims about that object. The only workable reply seems to be to deny that there are reasons of the ‘wrong kind’ for responses, and to argue that these are really reasons for wanting, trying, or intending to have that response. In support of this, it is pointed out that awareness of pragmatic or strategic considerations, unlike awareness of reasons of the ‘right kind’, are never sufficient by themselves to produce the responses for which they are reasons. I argue that this phenomenon cannot be used as a criterion for distinguishing reasons-for-a-response from reasons-for-wanting-to-have-a-response. I subsequently investigate the possibility of basing this distinction on a claim that the responses in question (e.g. admiration or desire) are themselves inherently normative; I conclude that this approach is also unsuccessful. Hence, the ‘direct response’ phenomenon cannot be used to rule out the possibility of pragmatic or strategic reasons for responses; and the rejection of such reasons therefore cannot be used to circumvent the Wrong Kind of Reason Problem.

T. L. M. Pink, in his (1991) "Purposive Intending", raises an important question about intentions, instructively criticizes a familiar response, and advances an interesting answer of his own. Pink's question is this (p. 343): "What psychological attitudes rationalize and explain intentions to act?" The burden of this note is to show that his answer is problematic.

What is metaphysics? I’m not going to offer a definition. But work on ontology, causation, persistence, time, and necessity should surely count. Ladyman (2007) distinguishes ‘naturalistic’ from ‘autonomous’ metaphysics. The former is work on these metaphysical topics guided by best current science; the latter, metaphysics done ‘from the armchair’, or at least, done primarily using arguments and techniques not drawn from the empirical sciences most closely associated with their topic (so perhaps using the tools of logic and formal semantics, not physics). It is clear that much recent analytic metaphysics is autonomous in this sense. It’s not completely autonomous: it must be consistent with truth. So a challenge from physics can arise even if metaphysics is autonomous; this is the form of the challenge to presentism from STR I’ll talk about. But metaphysics is autonomous in the sense that there are reasons to believe metaphysical theses that aren’t parasitic upon reasons to believe any particular scientific hypothesis.

My goal is to define intending. I defend the view that believing and desiring something are necessary for intending it. They are not sufficient, however, for some things we both expect and want (e.g., the sun to rise tomorrow) are unintendable. Restricting the objects of intention to our own future actions is unwarranted and unhelpful. Rather, the belief involved in intending must be based on the desire in a certain way. En route, I argue that expected but unwanted consequences are not intended, examine the two senses of "desire," distinguish intending from being willing, and relate intending to a variety of other propositional at? titudes.

An autonomous reason for intending to A would be a reason for so intending that is not, and will not be, a reason for A-ing. Some puzzle cases, such as the one that figures in the toxin puzzle, suggest that there can be such reasons for intending, but these cases have special features that cloud the issue. This paper describes cases that more clearly favour the view that we can have practical reasons of this sort. Several objections to this view are considered and rejected. Finally, it is considered whether the existence of such reasons would conflict with an attractive coherence principle linking the rationality of intending with that of acting as intended. The paper concludes with a qualified affirmation of autonomous reasons for intending.