In our everyday lives we struggle with the notions of why we do what we do and the need to assign values to our actions. Somehow, it seems possible through experience and life to gain knowledge and understanding of such matters. Yet once we start delving deeper into the concepts that underwrite these domains of thought and actions, we face a philosophical disappointment. In contrast to the world of facts, values and morality seem insecure, uncomfortably situated, easily influenced by illusion (...) or ideology. How can we apply this same objectivity and accuracy to the spheres of value and morality? In the essays included in this collection, Peter Railton shows how a fairly sober, naturalistically informed view of the world might nonetheless incorporate objective values and moral knowledge. This book will be of interest to professionals and students working in philosophy and ethics. (shrink)

NINE Morality and Prospection -- TEN Prospection Gone Awry: Depression -- ELEVEN Creativity and Aging: What We Can Make With What We Have Left -- Afterword -- Author Index -- Subject Index.

If practical reason is concerned with thoughtful normative regulation of action, then theoretical reason might be seen as a matter of thoughtful normative regulation of belief. The conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning, we are told, is an act or intention to act; the conclusion of a piece of theoretical reasoning, by parallel, would be a belief or a belief-tendency. Because theoretical reason is understood to be responsive specifically to epistemic – not merely pragmatic – reasons for belief, the (...) norms involved in heoretical reason are norms pertinent to knowledge, including norms of evidence, justification, and truth. In both the practical and theoretical case we need not exactly agree with the conclusion another person reaches in order to attribute rationality to her – but it seems we do need to find something normatively appropriate about the means by which the other reaches her conclusion, given her capacities and circumstances. (shrink)

Preliminary draft of November 2010—please do not circulate without permission.