Online research in philosophy

The view to be defended in this paper is intended to be a novel and compelling model of instrumental practical reasoning, reasoning aimed at determining how to act in order to achieve a given end in a certain set of circumstances. On standard views of instrumental reasoning, the end in question is the object of a particular desire that the agent has, a desire which, when combined with the agent’s beliefs about what means are available to him or her in order to satisfy that desire, can cause the formation of an independent desire or intention to engage in the relevant means. One of the main goals in what follows is to show that such views provide an inadequate understanding of instrumental practical reasoning when it comes to the practical lives of agents.

Many point to Peter Winch’s discussion of rationality, relativism, and religion as a paradigmatic example of cultural relativism. In this paper, I argue that Winch’s relationship to relativism is widely misinterpreted in that, despite his pluralistic understanding of rationality, Winch does allow for universal features of culture in virtue of which cross-cultural understanding and even critique is possible. Nevertheless, I also argue that given the kind of cultural universals that Winch produces, he fails to avoid relativism. This is because in order to provide the standards without which relativism ensues, one requires a certain kind of criteria of rationality, namely, what I here call substantive universals, a kind of criteria which Winch rejects.

The rationality of means-end reasoning is the bedrock of the Humean account of practical reasons. But the normativity of such reasoning can not be taken for granted. I consider and reject the idea that the normativity of instrumental reasoning can be explained – either in terms of its being constitutive of the very notion of having an end, or solely in terms of instrumental considerations. I argue that the instrumental principle is itself a brute norm, and that this is consistent with a Humean account of practical reasons.

The anthropologist Mary Douglas has debunked the prevalent misconception that traditional societies are universally religious. I suggest that Peter Winch's celebrated essay on the magical notions and practices of Africa's Azande people, 'Understanding a Primitive Society', is a product of this 'myth of primitive piety'. In his essay, Winch criticizes the interpretation of Zande mysticism offered by Sir E. E. Evans-Pritchard, whose book "Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande" served as Winch's source of ethnographic data. A broader survey of Evans-Pritchard's writings demonstrates that he considered the Azande to possess an essentially secular culture. Once the Azande are seen to be secularists, Winch's interpretation of their magic and his critique of Evans-Pritchard lose much of their appeal.

of (from British Columbia Philosophy Graduate Conference) The accounts of instrumental rationality given in the last twenty years or so are so diverse that one wonders whether they are all attempting to explain the same phenomena. Versions of the so-called �instrumental principle� - what many philosophers have taken to be the core of idea of instrumental rationality - have ranged from being about merely the having or recognition of reasons, to one amounting to a first-order practical principle. I consider a number of these formulations and argue that all of them encounter difficult problems. As a result, not only do we not have a satisfactory account of the nature of instrumental rationality; we also lack a settled set of terms in which to formulate a better theory.