This book on infinite regress arguments provides (i) an up-to-date overview of the literature on the topic, (ii) ready-to-use insights for all domains of philosophy, and (iii) two case studies to illustrate these insights in some detail. Infinite regress arguments play an important role in all domains of philosophy. There are infinite regresses of reasons, obligations, rules, and disputes, and all are supposed to have their own moral. Yet most of them are involved in controversy. Hence the question is: what (...) exactly is an infinite regress argument, and when is such an argument a good one? (shrink)

I argue that while practical reasoning is essentially first personal it does not require having essentially first personal thoughts. I start with an example of good practical reasoning. Because there is debate about what practical reasoning is, I discuss how different sides in those debates can accommodate my example. I then consider whether my example involves essentially first personal thoughts. It is not always clear what philosophers who would claim that it must have in mind. I identify two features of (...) essentially personal thoughts that they share with their impersonal counterparts: they have the same truth conditions and can have the same evidential bases. I next argue that my example of good practical reasoning does not involve any thoughts other than the impersonal ones of the kind I identified. I defend this conclusion against several objections. One pair of objections starts from claims to the effect that there can be no difference in two people’s actions, or in the reasons they have, without a difference in their beliefs or desires. I argue that these claims are false. I then consider an alleged skeptical possibility that often motivates the idea that practical reasoning requires special first personal beliefs. I conclude the paper by suggesting that what Anscombe called an ‘overly contemplative’ conception of knowledge and belief encourages this skeptical possibility. If we think of having a belief as like having a map of the world, then we will easily think that we need self-locating beliefs the way we need ‘I am here’ stickers on maps. The best response, I suggest, is to reject the image that beliefs are like maps. (shrink)

I argue that intending and acting belong to the same genus: intending is a kind of doing continuous in structure with intentional acting. Future-directed intending is not a truly separate phenomenon from either the intending in action or the acting itself. Ultimately, all intentions are in action, or better still, in extended courses of action. I show how the intuitive distinction between intending and acting is based on modeling the two phenomena on the extreme and limiting cases of an otherwise (...) continuous spectrum of the ways in which agents exercise rational active intelligent guidance in the pursuit of goals. I argue that diachronic intentional agency is better understood in terms of continuity and unity of courses of active and intelligent guidance, and that the distinction between intending to do something and doing it is only a derivative and context-dependent segmentation of these continuous courses of rational active intelligent guidance. (shrink)

از زمان ارسطو عقل عملی یا فرونسیس ، یعنی فضیلت مندانه عمل کردن. چنین معنایی برای این واژه تازمان هیوم باقی بود، اما هیوم باتاکید بر نقشی که امیال، انگیزه ها وانفعالات ما، هنگام اتخاذ تصمیمات اخلاقی ایفامی کنند، بر نقش امیال ونگیزه ها وعوامل روان شناسانه در عقل عملی، تاکیدکرد.کانت بعدازهیوم، بواسطه ویژگی هایی که برای عقل عملی ذکر کرد، همچون خودبنیادیِ آن واهمیت بیشتر قائل شدن برای اراده، تعریف جدیدی از عقل عملی ارائه داد که آراء هیوم را (...) دراین مساله با چالش های جدی مواجه ساخت؛ وی تلاش زیادی کردتا نقش امیال وانگیزه های روانشناسانه را ازحوزه تصمیم اخلاقی حذف کند؛ اماتلاشهای کانت وپیروانش برای بنا نهادن وجدان اخلاقی صرفاً بر مبنای عقل واراده، راه به جایی نبرد وهمچنان انتقادات مهمی به تفسیرصرفاً عقلانیِ کانت از عقل عملی وارد است. درعصرحاضر، عده ای از فیلسوفان اخلاق از جمله خانم فیلیپا فوت وفیلسوفان نوارسطویی دیگر، ضمن نقد وردّ تفسیر کانتی از عقل عملی با ارائه تعریفی جدید از عقلانیت عملی، تلاش دارند تا بین عقل وسایرمنابع انگیزشی ازجمله امیال وانگیزه ها، دراتخاذتصمیم صحیح اخلاقی سازش ایجاد کنند. دراین مقاله به بررسی انتقادات برخی فلاسفه برکانت درباب عقل عملی، پرداخته می شود. (shrink)

This thesis justifies the need for and develops a new integrated model of practical reasoning and argumentation. After framing the work in terms of what is reasonable rather than what is rational (chapter 1), I apply the model for practical argumentation analysis and evaluation provided by Fairclough and Fairclough (2012) to a paradigm case of unreasonable individual practical argumentation provided by mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik (chapter 2). The application shows that by following the model, Breivik is relatively easily able (...) to conclude that his reasoning to mass murder is reasonable – which is understood to be an unacceptable result. Causes for the model to allow such a conclusion are identified as conceptual confusions ingrained in the model, a tension in how values function within the model, and a lack of creativity from Breivik. Distinguishing between dialectical and dialogical, reasoning and argumentation, for individual and multiple participants, chapter 3 addresses these conceptual confusions and helps lay the foundation for the design of a new integrated model for practical reasoning and argumentation (chapter 4). After laying out the theoretical aspects of the new model, it is then used to re-test Breivik’s reasoning in light of a developed discussion regarding the motivation for the new place and role of moral considerations (chapter 5). The application of the new model shows ways that Breivik could have been able to conclude that his practical argumentation was unreasonable and is thus argued to have improved upon the Fairclough and Fairclough model. It is acknowledged, however, that since the model cannot guarantee a reasonable conclusion, improving the critical creative capacity of the individual using it is also of paramount importance (chapter 6). The thesis concludes by discussing the contemporary importance of improving practical reasoning and by pointing to areas for further research (chapter 7). (shrink)

The goal of this dissertation is to offer a practice-based account of intentionality. My aim is to examine what sort of practices agents have to engage in so as to count as talking and thinking about the way the world is – that is, what sort of practices count as representational. Representational practices answer to the way the world is: what is correct within such practices depends on the way things are, rather than on the attitudes of agents. An account (...) of representation must explain how such objective standards of correctness are introduced in human practices: one must explain how the world gets to have a say in what is correct in human discursive practices. Roughly, my proposal is that human discursive practices become responsive to the way things are by virtue of involving practical interactions with the world. The outcomes of these interactions depend on the way the world is and the evaluation of such outcomes contributes to determining which moves within the practice count as correct. Due to our practical engagement with the environment, thus, the world gets to constrain discursive practices. In order to flesh out my proposal, I develop a practice-based characterization of intentional or representational content. On this sort of approach, expressing intentional contents is seen as a matter of playing a certain role in relevant practices, rather than as a matter of engaging in some word-world relation. The expression of content, thus, is explained in terms of use. In particular, I adopt an inferentialist perspective, according to which discursive moves express contents because of their role in practices of giving and asking for reasons. I investigate how practical engagement with the environment introduces friction with the world in these practices of giving and asking for reasons. One of the main conclusions reached in the dissertation is that defeasibility is an essential feature of objective representational practices – so that attributions of representational correctness are revisable in an open-ended way. The discussion of defeasible reasoning – and of the way in which defeasibility shapes human representational practices – is a central point of this dissertation. (shrink)