Although science supplies medicine's “gold standard,” knowledge exercised in the care of patients is, like moral knowing, a matter of narrative, practical reason. Physicians draw on case narrative to store experience and to apply and qualify the general rules of medical science. Literature aids in this activity by stimulating moral imagination and by requiring its readers to engage in the retrospective construction of a situated, subjective account of events. Narrative truths are provisional, uncertain, derived from narrators whose standpoints (...) are always situated, particular, and uncertain, but open to comparison and reinterpretation. Reading is thus a model for knowing in both morality and clinical medicine. While principles remain essential to bioethics and science must always inform good clinical practice, the tendency to collapse morality into principles and medicine into science impoverishes both practices. Moral knowing is not separable from clinical judgment. While ethics must be open to discussion and interpretation by patients, families, and society, it is nevertheless substantively and epistemologically an inextricable part of a physician's clinical practice. (shrink)

This book offers a new account of Aristotle's practical philosophy. Pavlos Kontos argues that Aristotle does not restrict practical reason to its action-guiding and motivational role; rather, practical reason remains practical in the full sense of the term even when its exercise does not immediately concern the guidance of our present actions. To elucidate why this wider scope of practical reason is important, Kontos brings into the foreground five protagonists that have (...) long been overlooked: spectators or judges who make non-motivational judgments about practical matters that do not interact with their present deliberations and actions; legislators who exercise practical reason to establish constitutions and laws; hopes as an active engagement with moral luck and its impact on our individual lives; prayers as legislators' way to deal with the moral luck hovering around the birth of constitutions and the prospect of a utopia; and people who are outsiders or marginal cases of the responsibility community because they are totally deprived of practical reason. Building on a wide range of interpretations of Aristotle's practical philosophy, Kontos offers new insights about Aristotle's philosophical contribution to the current debates about radical evil, moral luck, hope, utopia, internalism and externalism, and the philosophy of law. Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Aristotle's ethics, ancient philosophy, and the history of practical philosophy. (shrink)

This article investigates the forms of respect and responsiveness that must be present in the process of practical reason. Drawing upon Jürgen Habermas’ discourse theory and his incidental remarks about aesthetics, I identify two modes of respect. The first is the mutual respect and equality that emerges in the process of coming to agreement on proposed norms; the second is the call to infinite responsibility that emerges in opening to the transcendent character of others. However, Habermas makes an (...) error in treating these two types of response as appropriate for different classes of beings when he suggests that mutual respect is appropriate for humans, but asymmetry is appropriate when humans deal with animals or others who are incapable of communicative action. Rather, drawing upon the work of Emmanuel Levinas, I argue that both responses are always present in all encounters with the world. There is therefore an aporia at the heart of the process of practical reason: the responsiveness required in the exercise of practical reason demands that participants be open not just to another's opinions and claims, but also to precisely that which is not understood, which entails the idea of infinite responsibility. It is the movement between these orientations that enacts the main features of ethical life. (shrink)

Constructivists hold that truths about practical reasons are to be explained in terms of truths about the correct exercise of practical reason (rather than vice versa). But what is the normative status of the correctness-defining standards of practical reason? The problem is that constructivism appears to presuppose the truth of two theses that seem hard to reconcile. First, for constructivism to be remotely plausible, the relevant standards must be genuinely (and not merely formally or (...) minimally) normative. Second, to avoid circularity, the relevant standards must be non-reason-involving, i.e. prior to and independent of practical reasons. From the standpoint of the contemporary philosophy of normatively, this is a surprising combination to say the least. What could these genuinely normative but non-reason-involving standards possibly be? The standard constructivist response is to insist that the relevant standards possess a special kind of necessity inasmuch as we only count as occupying the “deliberative standpoint” or as a “deliberative agent” insofar as we comply with or accept the relevant standards. I offer a different response. My response holds that the special normative status of the relevant standards consists in their exhibiting a distinctive kind of practical necessity that derives from the fact that they determine what I have called elsewhere truths about “the thing to do” – namely, truths about correct answers to the question of what to do. Understanding the norms of practical reason in these terms vindicates the idea that standards of practical reason are genuinely normative since truths about the thing to do plausibly possess the hallmarks of genuine normativity. And it vindicates the idea that the standards are not reason-involving since truths about the thing to do are plausibly prior to and independent of truths about practical reasons. (shrink)

This article investigates the forms of respect and responsiveness that must be present in the process of practical reason. Drawing upon Jürgen Habermas’ discourse theory and his incidental remarks about aesthetics, I identify two modes of respect. The first is the mutual respect and equality that emerges in the process of coming to agreement on proposed norms; the second is the call to infinite responsibility that emerges in opening to the transcendent character of others. However, Habermas makes an (...) error in treating these two types of response as appropriate for different classes of beings when he suggests that mutual respect is appropriate for humans, but asymmetry is appropriate when humans deal with animals or others who are incapable of communicative action. Rather, drawing upon the work of Emmanuel Levinas, I argue that both responses are always present in all encounters with the world. There is therefore an aporia at the heart of the process of practical reason: the responsiveness required in the exercise of practical reason demands that participants be open not just to another's opinions and claims, but also to precisely that which is not understood, which entails the idea of infinite responsibility. It is the movement between these orientations that enacts the main features of ethical life. (shrink)

My project is to reconsider the Kantian conception of practical reason. Some Kantians think that practical reasoning must be more active than theoretical reasoning, on the putative grounds that such reasoning need not contend with what is there anyway, independently of its exercise. Behind that claim stands the thesis that practical reason is essentially efficacious. I accept the efficacy principle, but deny that it underwrites this inference about practical reason. My inquiry takes (...) place against the background of recent Kantian metaethical debate — each side of which, I argue, correctly points to issues that need to be jointly accommodated in the Kantian account of practical reason. The constructivist points to the essential efficacy of practical reason, while the realist claims that any genuinely cognitive exercise of practical reason owes allegiance to what is there anyway, independently of its exercise. I argue that a Kantian account of respect for persons (“recognition respect”) suggests how the two claims might be jointly accommodated. The result is an empirical moral realism that is itself neutral on the received Kantian metaethical debate. (shrink)

Subjectivism is the mainstream view of practical reason. According to subjectivism, what has value for an agent must ultimately be grounded in what the agent actually desires. Subjectivism is motivated by a conservative view of the scope and extent of practical reason. Against this view, my dissertation argues that any coherent conception of an end must endow practical reason with a scope that goes beyond anything that subjectivism could accommodate. ;Subjectivism correctly grasps that nothing (...) can count as an end for an agent if she is incapable of recognizing it as such; value cannot exist independently of our capacity to appreciate it. I argue that the right conclusion to draw from this is that practical reason constitutes its own object by properly judging on practical matters. The grounds for taking a certain object to bear value lie not in the attributes of a certain object but in the nature of the activity of pursuing ends. According to the concept of practical reason I defend in this dissertation, which I call "the constitutive conception of practical reason", practical reason must set its objects from its own resources rather than find them in an external reality. ;But if practical reason does not track any independently existing objects, how can we distinguish between correct and incorrect judgements? It seems that this conception faces a dilemma: Either the activity of reason is merely a source of formal constraints, or it is an arbitrary, ungrounded exercise. I argue that this dilemma gets its grip on us only from an illegitimate separation of the rational and non-rational parts of human nature. This separation leads us to to think of our cognitive and conative powers as independent. However, the proper understanding of practical reason requires us to see our desires, emotions, etc. as presenting us with appearances of the good, as providing perspectives on something which we represent as the proper object of our pursuit. In forming an overarching conception of the good by reflectively assessing the claims of these different perspectives, practical reason sets its object. (shrink)

The concepts of reasons as supporting elements, of practical reason as a capacity, and of practical reasoning as a process are central in the theory of action. This paper provides a brief account of each. Several kinds of reason for action are distinguished. Practical reason is characterized both as a capacity whose exercise is largely constituted by a kind of responsiveness to reasons and as governed by certain normative principles; and practical reasoning (...) is described as a kind of mental process in which reasons figure as premises and, from those premises, a practical conclusion is drawn. Much of the paper undertakes two related tasks: to distinguish the main kinds of practical reasoning and the associated criteria of assessment and to formulate some important substantive principles of practical reason. These principles yield criteria of several sorts: logical, inferential, epistemic, and material. On the theory presented, although any (non‐basic) intentional act can be grounded in practical reasoning, the same acts can be performed for the relevant reason(s) without being so grounded, and in either case their rationality depends on adequate support by the reason(s). One kind of reason is commonly thought to be captured by Kantian hypothetical imperatives. The final sections explore what constitutes a hypothetical imperative and what other principles are needed to account for practical rationality. A major conclusion is that in the domain of practical reason, if there are no categorical imperatives, there are no hypothetical imperatives either. (shrink)

Contemporary moral philosophers and philosophers of the emotions widely agree that Kant’s discussion of compassion is an unfortunate byproduct of his rationalistic and legalistic account of ethics. In fact, Kant departs from the solid established rationalist tradition not only in distancing himself from dogmatic and perfectionist rationalism but also in claiming that there is a practical use of reason, which commits him to acknowledge that reason directly guides rational agents by furnishing them motives for action. Kant’s argument (...) is that reason is not assisted by sensibility in this function. The practical function of reason is ensured only if reason produces motives of its own, autonomously, rather than depending on the emotions. To highlight the role of these two concepts, I will focus on two distinct models of compassion which are said to sharply depart from Kant: I. Murdoch and T.W. Adorno. My conclusion is that despite overwhelming critiques, Kant provides us with a useful distinction between two kinds of compassion. I deploy the distinction between proximal and distal compassion to capture the significance of the much criticized—and admittedly obsolete, but also little understood— distinction between pathological and practical compassion, which takes center stage in Kant’s account of the duties of benevolence. Proximal compassion is felt in the presence of suffering and mandates immediate action. By contrast, distal compassion is directed to suffering that is distant, e.g. placed in a distant time, either future or past or felt by persons unrelated by proximity and intimacy. While proximal compassion is not a virtue, and may even have a bad impact on moral agency, distal compassion is a virtue that requires abstraction and the exercise of rational capacities. Kant’s complex account of compassion coheres with empirical psychology and succeeds in vindicating different roles of compassion in practical reasoning. (shrink)

In the present scenario, Superman’s problem is not just a problem of physical effort but one of practical reasoning. A well‐adjusted and fairly moral person will respond to the world in certain kinds of ways that go beyond making calculations of reasons. First, there is the issue of what they will count as a reason at all. Second, there is the matter of when serious deliberation is required at all. Just as we act out of habit in our (...) usual daily routines, so too we can act out of habit in less routine matters. And these habits can be emotional too. Injustice causes us to feel anger on our own or on others’ behalf, exemplified by Grant Morrison’s Superman‐as‐social‐crusader in the new Action Comics. When the circumstances make things clear, a virtuous person just acts. In this sense, Superman is virtuous in his exercise of practical reason. (shrink)

The idea that there is a distinctively practical use of reason, and correspondingly a distinctively practical form of knowledge, unites many otherwise diverse voices in the history of practical philosophy: from Aristotle to Kant, from Rousseau to Marx, from Hegel to G.E.M. Anscombe, and many others. This volume gathers works by scholars who take inspiration from these and many other historical figures in order to deepen our systematic understanding of questions raised by their work that still (...) are, or ought to be, at the center of contemporary philosophical debate: the form and nature of practical reasoning, agential self-consciousness or practical knowledge, how knowledge of the good relates to our motivational capacity, and the shape of philosophical thinking about sound forms of living together. Accordingly, the volume is divided into three parts: action theory, meta-ethics, and political philosophy. This fusion of perspectives delivers novel possibilities not only for answering the systematic questions outlined above, but also for understanding both what unifies and distinguishes those historical voices that have sought to articulate the concept of practical reason. “This fascinating volume brings out the richness and profundity of an oft-neglected approach to understanding human agency, one that foregrounds action as itself an exercise of reason. Essays on ethics, mind, action, and political philosophy explore the history, substance, and implications of this idea, cutting across while also revealing the unity underlying various parts of philosophy that are typically treated separately.” – Eric Marcus, Auburn University. (shrink)

Despite growing appreciation in recent decades of the importance of shared intentional mental states as a foundation for everything from divergences in primate evolution, to the institution of communal norms, to trends in the development of modernity as a socio-political phenomenon, we lack an adequate understanding of the relationship between individual and shared intentionality. At the same time, it is widely appreciated that deontic reasoning concerning what ought, may, and ought not be done is, like reasoning about our intentions, an (...) exercise of practical rationality. Taking advantage of this fact, I use a plan-theoretic semantics for the deontic modalities as a basis for understanding individual and shared intentions. This results in a view that accords well with what we currently have reason to believe about the phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of norm psychology and shared intentionality in human beings, and where original intentionality can be understood in terms of the shared intentionality of a community. (shrink)

This study examined experimentally the effect of retaliation strength and accounting students’ level of moral reasoning, on their propensity to blow the whistle (PBW) when faced with a serious wrongdoing. Fifty-one senior accounting students enrolled in an auditing course offered by a large New Zealand university participated in the study. Participants responded to three hypothetical whistle-blowing scenarios and completed an instrument that measured moral reasoning (Welton et al., 1994, Accounting Education . International Journal (Toronto, Ont.) 3 (1), 35–50) on one (...) of two conditions – i.e., strong or weak retaliation for whistle-blowing. Consistent with the results of Arnold and Ponemon (1991, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory 10 , 1–15) this study found that the strength of retaliation and participants’ moral reasoning level positively affected their PBW. Unlike results reported in Arnold and Ponemon (1991, Auditing; A Journal of Practice and Theory 10 , 1–15) a significant interaction effect of moral reasoning level and retaliation on participants’ PBW was not found. However, results showed that a participant’s gender has a significant effect on the relationship between his or her moral reasoning level and PBW. These results support the need to improve ethical awareness through accounting education and to increase protection for whistle-blowing (Miceli 2004, Journal of Management Inquiry 13 , 364–366). Furthermore, many participants found it difficult to take a stand when serious wrongdoing is discovered. Therefore, policymakers must exercise caution when placing heavy reliance on whistle-blowing, especially when whistle-blower protection processes are complex and not easily accessible, and processes to facilitate whistle-blowing may vary substantially between public and private sector organizations (Scholtens, 2003, Review of the operation of the Protected Disclosures Act 2000: Report to the Minister of State Services ). (shrink)

Property and Practical Reason makes a moral argument for common law property institutions and norms, and challenges the prevailing dichotomy between individual rights and state interests and its assumption that individual preferences and the good of communities must be in conflict. One can understand competing intuitions about private property rights by considering how private property enables owners and their collaborators to exercise practical reason consistent with the requirements of reason, and thereby to become practically (...) reasonable agents of deliberation and choice who promote various aspects of the common good. The plural and mediated domains of property ownership, though imperfect, have moral benefits for all members of the community. They enable communities and institutions of private ordering to pursue plural and incommensurable good ends while specifying the boundaries of property rights consistent with basic moral requirements. (shrink)

This paper explores how the exercise of the ethics of ‘responsibility’ for health care advanced through ‘healthy ageing’ and ‘successful ageing’ narratives in Western countries animates an array of ‘authorities’, including the ‘anti-ageing medicine’ movement as a strategy to address the anxieties of growing old in Western societies and as a tool to exercise the ethos of ‘responsibility’. The choice of this type of authority as a source of guidance for self-constitution and the exercise of the ‘responsible (...) self’, this paper will argue, enables the enactment of a type of late modernity notion of citizenship for ageing individuals based on principles of agelessness, health, independence and consumption power. Through interviews with anti-ageing consumers, however, it is also possible to argue the existence of tensions and contradictions that such a rigid model of self-constitution in later life produces, and the potential forms of resistance and contestations that may emerge as a result. In this way the current ‘war on anti-ageing medicine’ (Vincent 2003) becomes also symptomatic of bigger ‘wars’ taking place not only between institutions competing for control over knowledge and management of ageing, but between those in favour and against the homogenisation of life under the language of universal science, reason and market rationality. (shrink)

This book uses different perspectives on argumentation to show how we create arguments, test them, attack and defend them, and deploy them effectively to justify beliefs and influence others. David Zarefsky uses a range of contemporary examples to show how arguments work and how they can be put together, beginning with simple individual arguments, and proceeding to the construction and analysis of complex cases incorporating different structures. Special attention is given to evaluating evidence and reasoning, the building blocks of argumentation. (...) Zarefsky provides clear guidelines and tests for different kinds of arguments, as well as exercises that show student readers how to apply theories to arguments in everyday and public life. His comprehensive and integrated approach toward argumentation theory and practice will help readers to become more adept at critically examining everyday arguments as well as constructing arguments that will convince others. (shrink)

Human beings form beliefs by way of a variety of psychological processes. Some of these processes of belief acquisition are innate; others are acquired. A good deal of interesting work has been done in assessing the reliability of these processes. Any such assessment must examine not only features intrinsic to the psychological processes themselves, but also features of the environments in which those processes are exercised; a mechanism which is reliable in one sort of environment may be quite unreliable in (...) others. This is true not only of the physical environment; it is true of the social environment as well. This has important implications for how we should think about the exercise of individual reason, as well as the interpersonal practice of giving and asking for reasons. (shrink)

After criticizing three common conceptions of therelationship between practical ethics and ethical theory, analternative modeled on Aristotle's conception of the relationshipbetween rhetoric and philosophical ethics is explored. Thisaccount is unique in that it neither denigrates the project ofsearching for an adequate comprehensive ethical theory norsubordinates practical ethics to that project. Because the purpose of practical ethics, on this view, is tosecure the cooperation of other persons in a way that respectstheir status as free and equal, it seeks (...) to influence thejudgments of others by providing them with reasons that areaccessible to their own understanding. On this account, theindependence of practical ethics is rooted in an appreciation ofthe constraints that non-ideal circumstances place on the rolethat the philosophically refined premises of moral theory canplay in such public deliberations. Practical and philosophicalethics are united, not by shared theoretical frameworks orprinciples, but by the need to exercise intelligently the sameintellectual and affective capacities. They are separated, notby the particularity or generality of their starting points, butby their responsiveness to the practical problem of facilitatingsound normative deliberations among persons as we find them,under non-ideal circumstances. (shrink)

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)

The project of “public reason” claims to offer an epistemological resolution to the civic dilemma created by the clash of incompatible options for the rational exercise of freedom adopted by citizens in a diverse community. The present Article proposes, via consideration of a contrast between two classical accounts of dialectical reasoning, that the employment of “public reason,” in substantive due process analysis, is unworkable in theory and contrary to more reflective Supreme Court precedent. Although logical commonalities might (...) be available to pick out from the multitude of particularized accounts of what constitutes “civic order,” no “public reason” so derived could adequately capture - and thus be able to secure in a practical sense - any single determinate civic order, much less one that would be consistent with all citizens' conceptions of public order. Part I of this Article raises a number of issues for consideration relating to the epistemology of law and focuses especially on the concept of public reason and its critique. Part II addresses alternative approaches to legal reasoning suggested by classical accounts of practical reasoning and virtue theory and considers the operation of such legal analysis outside the area of substantive due process; Part III analyzes post-Lawrence case law confirming the dilemma created by the Supreme Court's ambiguous approaches to substantive due process and concludes that only one interpretation - that articulated fully in Washington v. Glucksberg and given lip service in Lawrence v. Texas - provides a method for resolving novel substantive due process challenges that is philosophically sound as well as historically coherent. Rather than perpetuating a fiction that denies the propriety of lawmaking unless based on principles that all citizens can rationally agree upon, an appropriate model of substantive due process analysis recognizes that law must inevitably be based upon principles that cannot be agreed upon by all citizens in virtue of rationality alone. -/- Abstract Footnotes (291) Beta -/- Revise My Submission -/- -/- One-Click Download | Share | Email | Add to Briefcase -/- Facebook | Twitter | Digg | Del.icio.us | CiteULike | Permalink Using the URL or DOI link below will ensure access to this page indefinitely -/- Based on your IP address, your paper is being delivered by: New York, USA Processing request. [Processing request.] Illinois, USA Processing request. [Processing request.] Brussels, Belgium Processing request. [Processing request.] Seoul, Korea Processing request. [Processing request.] California, USA Processing request. [Processing request.] -/- If you have any problems downloading this paper, please click on another Download Location above, or view our FAQ File name: SSRN-id1004757. ; Size: 424K -/- Sample Cover You will receive a black and white printed and perfect bound version of this document in 8 1/2 x 11 inch format, with glossy color front and back covers. Currently shipping to the US addresses only. Your order will be shipped within three business days. Quantity: Total Price = $0.50 plus shipping (U.S. Only) -/- If you have any problems with this purchase, please email [email protected] or call 1-585-442-8170. Reason's Freedom and the Dialectic of Ordered Liberty -/- Edward C. Lyons University of Notre Dame Law School -/- Cleveland State Law Review, Vol. 55, p. 157, 2007 -/- Abstract: The project of "public reason" claims to offer an epistemological resolution to the civic dilemma created by the clash of incompatible options for the rational exercise of freedom adopted by citizens in a diverse community. The present Article proposes, via consideration of a contrast between two classical accounts of dialectical reasoning, that the employment of "public reason," in substantive due process analysis, is unworkable in theory and contrary to more reflective Supreme Court precedent. Although logical commonalities might be available to pick out from the multitude of particularized accounts of what constitutes "civic order," no "public reason" so derived could adequately capture - and thus be able to secure in a practical sense - any single determinate civic order, much less one that would be consistent with all citizens' conceptions of public order. -/- Part I of this Article raises a number of issues for consideration relating to the epistemology of law and focuses especially on the concept of public reason and its critique. Part II addresses alternative approaches to legal reasoning suggested by classical accounts of practical reasoning and virtue theory and considers the operation of such legal analysis outside the area of substantive due process; Part III analyzes post-Lawrence case law confirming the dilemma created by the Supreme Court's ambiguous approaches to substantive due process and concludes that only one interpretation - that articulated fully in Washington v. Glucksberg and given lip service in Lawrence v. Texas - provides a method for resolving novel substantive due process challenges that is philosophically sound as well as historically coherent. -/- Rather than perpetuating a fiction that denies the propriety of lawmaking unless based on principles that all citizens can rationally agree upon, an appropriate model of substantive due process analysis recognizes that law must inevitably be based upon principles that cannot be agreed upon by all citizens in virtue of rationality alone. -/- Keywords: substantive due process, practical reason, public reason, Rawls, Casey, Lawrence, Glucksberg, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, dialectic, autonomy, freedom -/- . (shrink)

Addressing vaccination hesitancy is a major challenge in the fight against infectious disease. Vaccine hesitancy has given rise to recent outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases (e.g., measles) in developed countries. In developed regions, particularly Europe and North America non-structural barriers to vaccination such as risk perceptions and philosophical beliefs seem to play a crucial role in vaccination uptake (Larson et al. 2014), and also contribute to current vaccine hesitancy with regard to COVID-19. To combat these developments, understanding psychological factors in (...) vaccination hesitancy is increasingly important. A better understanding of these psychological factors in turn points to communication strategies that can reduce vaccine hesitancy. These strategies depend upon individuals’ possession of capacities that are required for morally responsible agency (“responsibility-level capacities”), and in particular the capacities to recognize and respond to reasons. Strategic communication concerning vaccines can improve the exercise of individuals’ responsibility-level capacities as they pertain to risk perception and outcome expectancies. We begin by introducing cutting-edge work from the philosophical literature on agency and responsibility, with a special focus on the responsibility-level capacities at work in the practical context of deciding whether to vaccinate. We then summarize lessons drawn from a variety of studies in psychology and behavioural economics on how individuals reason, decide, and behave in these practical contexts. These lessons help illuminate the extent to which individuals exercise responsibility-level capacities in such contexts while also pointing to strategies that can improve the exercise of those capacities. (shrink)

Doing Practical Ethics supports the deliberate practice of philosophical skills relevant to understanding, evaluating, and developing arguments in forms commonly used in the field of practical ethics. Each chapter includes an explanation of a specific moral reasoning skill, demonstration exercises with sample solutions that offer students immediate feedback on their initial practice attempts, and extensive sets of practice exercises. It is suitable for any ethics course that centrally features argument from principle, argument from analogy, or inference to the (...) best explanation. It may be used as a standalone text in a debate-focused course. Paired with an anthology in a readings-focused course, it will help students develop the skills they need to understand and evaluate the arguments in the assigned readings. (shrink)

The author presents a reading of Hume’s theory of passionate self-moderation and explore its application to the question of whether Hume accords any practicality to reason. One of Hume’s well-known arguments concludes that reason cannot exercise control over the passions, many of which cause or motivate action. So, it looks as though actions are inevitable results of unruly passions. Hume’s theory of action, however, embodies principles by which certain passions can moderate the effects of other passions. The (...) goal in this paper is two-fold: (1) to show that many of the details of Hume’s theory of passionate self-moderation are verified in contemporary psychological studies of emotion regulation, and (2) to argue that reason, for Hume, has a kind of practicality, given its role in passionate regulation, one that is often overlooked in discussions of Humean practical reason. -/- . (shrink)

The thesis of this essay is that social conventions of the kind Lewis modeled are generated and maintained by a form of practical reasoning which is essentially common. This thesis is defended indirectly by arguing for an interpretation of the role of salience in Lewis’s account of conventions. The remarkable ability of people to identify salient options and appreciate their practical significance in contexts of social interaction, it is argued, is best explained in terms of their exercise (...) of what I call “salience reasoning,” a form of common practical reasoning. The more widely accepted understanding of salience competence, the “natural salience” understanding, fails as an interpretation of the notion at work in Lewis and Schelling (on whom Lewis relied) and is inadequate as an explanation of salience competence. (shrink)

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 reason be our will and practical cognition be volition? Practical cognitivists can solve these puzzles because the claims that practical reason is our will and that practical cognition is volition are about the nature of a capacity, and the nature of a capacity establishes standards of correctness for its exercises. Akratic action is a type of erroneous exercise of practical reason as tripping is an erroneous exercise our capacity to walk. Permissible action is a successful exercise of practical reason as stepping first with my right foot rather than my left is a successful exercise of my capacity to walk. The puzzles of akratic and permissible action do not refute practical cognitivism. (shrink)

The exemplary value of individual moral and political acts provides a unique vantage point for inquiring into the role of the creative imagination in social life. Drawing on Kant’s concept of productive imagination, I argue that an act’s exemplification of a fitting response to a moral or political problem or crisis is comparable to the way that a work of art expresses the ‘thought’ or ‘idea’ to which it gives voice. The exercise of practical reason, or phronesis, (...) is akin to the way that a work augments the practical field of our experiences in this respect. For, like a work of art, the act produces the rule to be followed by means of the example that it sets. Accordingly, I explain how the injunction issuing from the act can be credited to the way that the singular case summons its rule. The singular character of the injunction issuing from the act thus brings to the fore the relation between reflective judgment and this injunction’s normative value. The conjunction of reason, action, and the creative power of imagination offers a critical point of access for interrogating the normative force of claims rooted in individual acts. By setting reason, action, and imagination in the same conceptual framework, I therefore highlight the creative imagination’s subversive role in countering hegemonic systems and habits of thought through promoting the causes of social and political struggles. (shrink)

Leading theories of practical reason can be grouped into one of four families: psychologism, realism, compatibilism, and Aristotelianism. Although there are many differences among the theories within each family, I ignore these in order to ask which family is most likely to deliver a satisfactory philosophical account of reasons for action. I articulate three requirements we should expect any adequate theory of practical reason to meet: it should account for how reasons explain action, how reasons justify (...) action, and how an agent can act for the reason that justifies her action. Only the Aristotelian theory, however, can meet all three requirements. It avoids the problems that plague the other theories by grounding reasons neither in psychological states nor in facts totally independent of the agent in question, but in the nature of the kind of creature the agent is. Our explanations of action need descend to the biographical only when explaining why a human being does not act in ways characteristic of her kind. The Aristotelian view of practical reason, then, appears to be the most promising program for future work. (shrink)

This text examines the principles of sound reasoning concerning deduction, induction, and observation brought to bear upon the activity of value judgements. It has practical exercises, to aid application, and avoids technical jargon.

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant argues that morality obliges us to believe in the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. I argue, however, that in two late essays – “The End of All Things” and “On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy” – Kant provides moral counterarguments to that position: these beliefs undermine moral agency by giving rise to fanaticism or fatalism. Thus, I propose, the Kantian position on the justification of (...) religious belief is ultimately antinomial. One ought, moreover, to understand Kant’s considered position concerning the immortality of the soul and the existence of God to be similar to that he proposes concerning the theoretical ideas of reason in the Appendix to the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason: they are necessary as regulative ideas guiding moral action, not endorsed or even postulated as propositions. In other words, they are subject matters not of belief, but of hope. (shrink)

What happens to our conception of mind and rational agency when we take seriously future-directed intentions and plans and their roles as inputs into further practical reasoning? The author's initial efforts in responding to this question resulted in a series of papers that he wrote during the early 1980s. In this book, Bratman develops further some of the main themes of these essays and also explores a variety of related ideas and issues. He develops a planning theory of intention. (...) Intentions are treated as elements of partial plans of action. These plans play basic roles in practical reasoning, roles that support the organization of our activities over time and socially. Bratman explores the impact of this approach on a wide range of issues, including the relation between intention and intentional action, and the distinction between intended and expected effects of what one intends. (shrink)

Examines the motivational power of practical reasoning. Two views are distinguished: “the antecedent motivation theory,” according to which, in actual human beings, all motivation nonaccidentally produced by practical reasoning issuing in a belief favoring a course of action derives, at least partly, from motivation already present in the agent; and “the cognitive engine theory,” according to which, in actual human beings, some instances of practical evaluative reasoning nonaccidentally produce motivation that does not derive at all from motivation (...) already present. The former view is defended and the latter is criticized. Bernard Williams's defense of the former view is argued to be unsuccessful; alternative arguments for it are advanced. (shrink)

Content skepticism about practical reason is doubt about the bearing of rational considerations on the activities of deliberation and choice. Motivational skepticism is doubt about the scope of reason as a motive. Some people think that motivational considerations alone provide grounds for skepticism about the project of founding ethics on practical reason. I will argue, against this view, that motivational skepticism must always be based on content skepticism. I will not address the question of whether (...) or not content skepticism is justified. I want only to establish the fact that motivational skepticism has no independent force. (shrink)

It is a commonplace in philosophy of action that there is and must be teleologically basic action: something done on an occasion without doing it by means of doing anything else. It is widely believed that basic actions are exercises of skill. As the source of the need for basic action is the structure of practical reasoning, this yields a conception of skill and practical reasoning as complementary but mutually exclusive. On this view, practical reasoning and complex (...) intentional action depend on skill and basic action, but the latter pair are not themselves rationally structured: the movements a basic action comprises are not intentional actions, and they are not structured as means to an end. However, Michael Thompson and Douglas Lavin have argued that action that bears no inner rational structure is not intentional action at all, and that therefore there can be no such thing as basic action. In this paper, I argue that their critique shows that standard conceptions of basic action are indeed untenable, but not that we can do without an alternative. I develop an alternative conception of skill and basic action on which their basicness is not to be equated with simplicity: like deliberation and non-basic action, they are teleologically complex, but their complexity takes a different form. On this view, skill contrasts with deliberation—not because it is not a manifestation of practical reason, but because the two are specifically different manifestations of practical reason. (shrink)

_Critical Reasoning in Ethics_ is an accessible introduction that will enable students, through practical exercises, to develop their own skills in reasoning about ethical issues such as: * analysing and evaluating arguments used in discussions of ethical issues * analysing and evaluating ethical concepts, such as utilitarianism * making decisions on ethical issues * learning how to approach ethical issues in a fair minded way Ethical issues discussed include the arguments about abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, animal rights, the environment (...) and war. The book will be essential reading for philosophy, health, social work and nursing courses. (shrink)

In the concrete exercise of practical reason, certain pieces of knowledge are required: they relate to the obligations to which the agent is committed (according to the deontological orientation in practical philosophy), to the actions themselves, as well as to the situations in which the agent operates. It appears that these pieces of knowledge are themselves required by what may be called here “second-order obligations”. The purpose of the article is to identify the place of these (...) obligations and to show the link that they establish between practical and theoretical reason. (shrink)

This essay is a reappraisal of Pierre Hadot's concept of spiritual exercises in response to recent criticisms of his work. The author argues that contrary to the claims of his critics, Hadot articulates a compelling argument that spiritual exercises that employ imaginative, rhetorical, and cognitive techniques are both necessary for and successful at producing a subject in which reason is integrated into human character. Such exercises are critical for overcoming the effects of habit, as a result of which everyday (...) conduct resists rational control, and Hadot provides a nuanced account of how particular practices affect different aspects of emotion, behavior, and thought. The concept of spiritual exercises remains a viable component of theoretical frameworks for the study of religious ethics, though the author concludes that Hadot's position on habit and its role in ethical practice requires further investigation. (shrink)

The article offers an account of the constructivist methodology in ethics and political philosophy as 1) deriving from an agnostic moral ontology and 2) proposing intersubjective justifiability as the criterion of justification for normative principles. It then asks whether constructivism, conceived in this way, can respond to the challenge of “content skepticism about practical reason”, namely whether it can provide sufficiently precise normative guidance whilst remaining faithful to its methodological commitment. The paper critically examines to alternative way of (...) meeting this challenge, namely John Rawls's original position and O'Neill's Kantian constructivism, analyses what is problematic about both, and endorses a third, possibly intermediate model. Within such a model, the basic features of the original position are accepted, but in a flexible and heuristic manner, thereby accommodating some of O'Neill's concerns. (shrink)

A central task of schooling is to cultivate reasonableness in students. In this chapter we show how the teaching of reasonableness can be practiced successfully in secondary schools, using materials from the Western Australian curriculum. The discussion proceeds in four stages. We first defend the claim that the teaching of reasonable is a key aim of schooling. Here we offer an account of reasonableness, which we take to be both a skill and a disposition. Students learn reasonableness through the practice (...) of specific skills such as open and curious questioning, clarifying, and categorizing, and evaluating the merits of each contribution toward the problem or question under consideration. Reasonableness comes about as a joint commitment between the individual and the group to be honest in their views, to take care of those views, and for everyone to recognize that each member is a partial bearer of truth. Secondly, we discuss the pedagogies that cultivate reasonableness. The Philosophical Community of Inquiry is a natural pedagogy for this purpose. This can be supplemented with the thinking tools approach of Cam’s Twenty Thinking Tools or Harvard Project Zero’s Thinking Routines. In addition, we introduce our own two skill-building exercises, the Reasoning Game and the Argument Game. Thirdly, we show how this approach can be applied not just in Philosophy classes, but in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We argue that our approach brings these subjects to life, it develops understanding and reasonableness, and it bumps up student engagement. Fourthly, we discuss the assessment of reasonableness. In this type of learning environment, the way students perform in the philosophical community of inquiry is the focus of assessment. The desirable qualities of being reasonable become the assessment criteria for an on-balanced judgment about the student. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Humean theories of moral motivation appear preferable to Kantian approaches only if one assumes a broadly foundationalist conception of rational justification. Like foundationalist approaches to justification generally, Humean psychology aims to counter the regress-of-justification argument by positing a set of ultimate regress-stoppers-in this case, unmotivated desires. If the need for regress-stoppers of this type in the realm of practical deliberation is accepted, desires do indeed appear to be the most likely candidate. But if (...) this foundationalist strategy is rejected, there is no longer any reason to suppose that all motivation must be traceable to some extra-rational incentive. This clears the way for a rehabilitation of the Kantian claim that reasons for action can take the form of categorical imperatives. To illustrate this thesis, I show how a conception of practical rationality that incorporates a contextualist model of justification can be developed that treats social norms as reasons for action, without assigning any mediating role to agent desires. a theory of action of this type eliminates the gap between moral obligation and action, and so articulates the fundamental Kantian intuition that acting on the basis of moral principle-and with disregard for self-interest-is just one way of acting rationally. (shrink)

Palmquist’s Commentary provides the first definitive clarification on Kant’s Philosophy of Religion in English; it includes the full text of Pluhar’s translation, interspersed with explanations, providing both a detailed overview and an original interpretation of Kant’s work. Offers definitive, sentence-level commentary on Kant’s Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason Presents a thoroughly revised version of Pluhar’s translation of the full text of Kant’s Religion, including detailed notes comparing the translation with the others still in use today Identifies most (...) of the several hundred changes Kant made to the second (1794) edition and unearths evidence that many major changes were responses to criticisms of the first edition Provides both a detailed overview and original interpretation of Kant’s work on the philosophy of religion Demonstrates that Kant’s arguments in Religion are not only cogent, but have clear and profound practical applications to the way religion is actually practiced in the world today Includes a glossary aimed at justifying new translations of key technical terms in Religion, many of which have previously neglected religious and theological implications. (shrink)

One of the principal aims of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, especially of the Doctrine of Virtue, is to present a taxonomy of our duties as human beings. The basic division of duties is between juridical duties and ethical duties, which determines the division of the Metaphysics of Morals into the Doctrine of Right and the Doctrine of Virtue. Juridical duties are duties that may be coercively enforced from outside the agent, as by the civil or criminal laws, or other social (...) pressures. Ethical duties must not be externally enforced (to do so violates the right of the person coerced). Instead, the subject herself, through her own reason and the feelings and motives arising a priori from her rational capacities -- the feelings of respect, conscience, moral feeling and love of other human beings, must constrain herself to follow them (MS 6:399-404).1 Among ethical duties, the fundamental division is between duties to oneself and duties to others. Within each of these two main divisions of ethical duty, there is a further division between duties that are strictly owed, requiring specific actions or omissions, and whose violation incurs moral blame, and duties that are wide or meritorious, the specific actions not strictly owed, but deserving of moral credit or merit. Kant treats these latter as ‘duties’ (eschewing any category such as ‘supererogation’) because the actions in question are conceived as fit objects of self-constraint – things we can make ourselves do through the exercise of reason and the moral feelings arising from the application of practical reason to our faculty of desire. Regarding duties to oneself, this division is between ‘perfect’ and ‘imperfect’ duty; regarding duties to others, the strict or narrow... (shrink)

Normativity and the Will collects fourteen important papers on moral psychology and practical reason by R. Jay Wallace, one of the leading philosophers currently working in these areas. The papers explore the interpenetration of normative and psychological issues in a series of debates that lie at the heart of moral philosophy. Themes that are addressed include reason, desire, and the will; responsibility, identification, and emotion; and the relation between morality and other normative domains. Wallace's treatments of these (...) topics are at once sophisticated and engaging. Taken together, they constitute an advertisement for a distinctive way of pursuing issues in moral psychology and the theory of practical reason, and they articulate and defend a unified framework for thinking about those issues. The volume also features a helpful new introduction. (shrink)

Common-sense folk psychology and mainstream philosophy of action agree about decisions: these are under an agent's direct control, and are thus intentional actions for which agents can be held responsible. I begin this paper by presenting a problem for this view. In short, since the content of the motivational attitudes that drive deliberation and decision remains open-ended until the moment of decision, it is unclear how agents can be thought to exercise control over what they decide at the moment (...) of deciding. I note that this problem might motivate a non-actional view of deciding?a view that decisions are not actions, but are instead passive events of intention acquisition. For without an understanding of how an agent might exercise control over what is decided at the moment of deciding, we lack a good reason for maintaining commitment to an actional view of deciding. However, I then offer the required account of how agents exercise control over decisions at the moment of deciding. Crucial to this account is an understanding of the relation of practical deliberation to deciding, an understanding of skilled deliberative activity, and the role of attention in the mental action of deciding. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates what it identifies as ‘the institutional theory of freedom’ developed within recent neo-Hegelian philosophy. While acknowledging the gains made against the Kantian theory of autonomy as detachment it is argued that the institutional theory ultimately undermines the very meaning of practical agency. By tying agency to institutionally sustained recognition it effectively excludes the exercise of practical reason geared toward emancipation from a settled normative order. Adorno's notion of autonomy as resistance is enlisted (...) to develop an account of practical reason that is neither institutionally constrained nor without appropriate consideration of the historical location of the practical agent. (shrink)

Reasoning is the everyday process that we all use in order to draw conclusions from facts or evidence. To think critically about what you read and hear is a vital skill for everyone, whether you are a student or not. When we are faced with texts, news items or speeches, what is being said is often obscured by the words used and we may be unsure whether our reasoning, or that of others, is in fact sound. By the end of (...) this topical and exercise-based introduction to critical thinking, you will be able to: * identify flaws in arguments * analyse the reasoning in newspaper articles, books or speeches * approach any topic with the ability to reason clearly and to think critically This stimulating new introduction to reasoning will appeal to all those who would like to improve their reasoning skills, whether at work, in class or in the seminar. (shrink)