Reasons

What kind of thing is a reason for action? What is it to act for a reason? And what is the connection between acting for a reason and rationality? There is controversy about the many issues raised by these questions. In this paper I shall answer the first question with a conception of practical reasons that I call ‘Factualism’, which says that all reasons are facts. I defend this conception against its main rival, Psychologism, which says that practical reasons are (...) mental states or mental facts, and also against a variant of Factualism that says that some practical reasons are facts and others are false beliefs. I argue that the conception of practical reasons defended here provides plausible answers to the second and third questions above; and gives a more unified and satisfactory picture of practical reasons than those offered by its rivals. (shrink)

Scholarship on Aristotle’s theory of action has recently veered toward an intellectualist position, according to which reason is in charge of setting the goals of action. This position has recently been criticized by an anti-intellectualism revival, according to which character, and not reason, sets the goals of action. I argue that neither view can sufficiently account for the complexities of Aristotle’s theory, and suggest a middle way that combines the strengths of both while avoiding their pitfalls. The key problem for (...) intellectualism is that Aristotle explicitly states reason cannot set the goals of action. The key problem for anti-intellectualism is that he also holds that the soul’s rational part must guide and prescribe over the non-rational part. I propose indirect intellectualism, a promising middle path. (shrink)

In the appropriate contexts reasoning is a powerful tool for producing intersubjective agreement about what counts as the best answer to a question that generates inquiry; sometimes employing arguments can lead to agreement about what is the right answer. In this paper we hope to show, however, that unabashed optimism about the power of argument is misplaced. Such optimism rests on an implausible picture of the power of articulation. Sentences cashed out as reasons to believe another sentence is true cannot (...) bridge large gaps in substantive understanding. A failure to realize this fact, moreover, leads to an uncautious and unreflective optimism about the power of argument that ultimately threatens the very reasons-giving process. What is needed, then, is a much more modest sense of the role of argument. (shrink)

Thesis: Even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience. (Hume) Antithesis: A man who knows of at least one case of an X being a Y, and who does not know of any positive reason for thinking that an X might not be a Y, has some reason for thinking that all X's are Y's (p. 81). When (...) I speak of ‘some reason’ I mean the contradictory of no reason at all (p. 85). (‘A Possible Extension of Logical Theory?’ Geoffrey Hunter, Philosophical Studies 1965, pp. 81–8.). (shrink)

What sorts of consideration can be normative reasons for action? If we systematize the wide variety of considerations that can be cited as normative reasons, do we find that there is a single kind of consideration that can always be a reason? Desire-based theorists think that the fact that you want something or would want it under certain evaluatively neutral conditions can always be your normative reason for action. Value-based theorists, by contrast, think that what plays that role are evaluative (...) facts (or the facts that subvene them) about what you want, such as the fact that having it would be good in some way. This paper argues that value-based theorists are wrong; if we try to find a single kind of consideration that can always be normative reason, we find that sometimes our reason is the fact that we want something and not any corresponding evaluative fact. (shrink)

On a ‘comparative’ conception of practical reasons, reasons are like ‘weights’ that can make an action more or less rational. Bernard Gert adopts instead a ‘toggle’ conception of practical reasons: something counts as a reason just in case it alone can make some or other otherwise irrational action rational. I suggest that Gert’s conception suffers from various defects, and that his motivation for adopting this conception – his central claim that actions can be rational without there being reasons for them (...) – does not require adoption of the toggle conception. The more intuitive comparative conception of reasons for action can accommodate the insight. (shrink)

Austin lamented philosophers' obsession with justifications and disregard for other forms of reasoned defense. He urged attention to another way in which reasons function, which he described in terms of "excuses" and "the opposite number of excuses". I articulate a conception of reasons founded on Austin's distinction. The conception is heterogeneous, in that it construes reasons as defined by an inherent duality of function: their roles in both justifying and making excuses. The conception applies uniformly in both speculative and practical (...) philosophy, and while my argument focuses primarily on its value for epistemology, it also emerges as central to the philosophy of agency. Basically, the distinction is between reasons' role in the subject's rationale for doing or thinking something, and their role in sorting out subject-independent grounds for so doing or thinking. Whenever someone believes or does something, appropriate rational challenges to and defenses of it may occur on either side of this distinction. ;I describe Gettier-type scenarios as involving one's having a good excuse or rationale without thereby being justified in the sense required by justified true belief accounts of knowing. My analysis of such scenarios explains why they look like, and why they cannot be, counter examples to tripartite accounts of knowing. The crux is that the justification condition demands rationales that harmonize with the grounds of truth of the belief they support. A kind of calibration between reasons in both roles is presupposed by the mere attainability of such harmony. ;This analysis raises the questions what it is for a rationale to harmonize with the subject-independent grounds of whatever it supports, and how it happens that people's excuses sometimes capture pertinent justifications. I offer a reading of Kant's practical philosophy that addresses these questions. It reveals an underlying insight that unifies Kantian thought across the practical-speculative divide: that rational subjects' placement as both doers and thinkers in the natural world is founded on the interplay between subjective and objective modes of thought. The heterogeneous conception of reasons yields a most natural way of rendering that Kantian insight. (shrink)

Can one fact deprive another of the status of a reason for action—a status the second fact would have had, but for the presence of the first? Claims of this kind are often made, but they face substantial obstacles. This article sets out those obstacles but then argues that there are at least three different ways in which this does happen.

The paper defends Collingwood's account of rational explanation against two objections. The first is that he psychologizes the concept of practical reason. The second is that he fails to distinguish mere rationalizations from rationalizations that have causal power. I argue that Collingwood endorses a form of nonpsychologizing internalism which rests on the view that the appropriate explanans for actions are neither empirical facts (as externalists claim), nor psychological facts (as some internalists claim), but propositional facts. I then defend this form (...) of internalism against a range of Davidsonian objections which attempt to weaken the distinction between reasons and causes. (shrink)

Response to Mark Schroeder’s Slaves of the passions Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11098-010-9656-3 Authors Jonathan Dancy, The University of Reading, Reading, UK Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.

This paper considers and rejects the arguments that have been given in favour of the view that one can only act for the reason that p if one knows that p . The paper contrasts it with the view I hold, which is that one can act for the reason that p even if it is not the case that p.

In my Practical Reality I argued that the reasons for which we act are not to be conceived of as psychological states of ourselves, but as real states of the world. The main reason for saying this was that only thus can we make sense of the idea that it is possible to act for a good reason. The good reasons we have for doing this action rather than that one consist mainly of features of the situations in which we (...) find ourselves; they do not consist in our believing certain things about those situations. For instance, the reason for my helping that person is that she is in trouble and I am the only person around. It is not that I believe both that she is in trouble and that I am the only person around. Give that the reason to help is that she is in trouble etc., it must be possible for my reason for helping to be just that, if it is indeed possible for one to act for a good reason. In fact, this sort of thing must be the normal arrangement. The reasons why we act, therefore, that is, our reasons for doing what we do, are not standardly to be conceived as states of ourselves, but as features of our situations. (shrink)

Theories of practical reason must meet a psychological requirement: they must explain how normative practical reasons can be motivationally efficacious. It would be pointless to claim that we are subject to normative demands of reason, if we were in fact unable to meet those demands. Concerning this requirement to account for the possibility of rational motivation, internalist approaches are distinguished from externalist ones. I defend internalism, whilst rejecting both ways in which the belief‐desire model can be instantiated. Both the Humean (...) and the Kantian instantiation of that model fail to account for the internal connection between normative and motivating reasons required by internalism. The two classes of reasons rather come to be seen as mutually exclusive. Opposing the belief‐desire model, I argue that rational motivation can only be established by reference to emotion. Emotions are affective perceptions. They have motivational force so that they can contribute to the explanation of action. At the same time they can rationalise actions because they have an intentional content which resembles the content of sensory perception in being representational. Because of this, the emotions can noninferentially justify judgements, which in turn can justify actions. I conclude by outlining the Aristotelian account of practical reason and ethics that emerges from integrating the emotions into practical reasoning. Doing the right thing is much more a matter of seeing things right than of drawing the right inferences. Seeing things right, in its turn, is not only to justify an action: it necessarily implies to be motivated to act accordingly. (shrink)

Though one believes that P is true, one can have reasons for thinking it false. Yet, it seems that one cannot know that P is true and (still) have reasons for thinking it false. Why is this so? What feature of knowledge (or of reasons) precludes having reasons or evidence to believe (true) what you know to be false? If the connection between reasons (evidence) and what one believes is expressible as a probability relation, it would seem that the only (...) satisfactory explanation of this fact is that when one knows that P is true, the reasons or evidence one has in support of P are such as to confer upon P the probability of 1. It is shown by an application of Bayes' Theorem that any value smaller than 1 would permit having reasons to believe what one knows to be false. Hence, it would seem that knowledge requires conclusive reasons to believe (if reasons or evidence is required at all). (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

In La nova scientia , Niccolò Tartaglia analyses trajectories of cannonballs by means of different forms of reasoning, including ‘physical and geometrical reasoning’, ‘demonstrative geometrical reasoning’, ‘Archimedean reasoning’, and ‘algebraic reasoning’. I consider what he understood by each of these methods and how he used them to render the quick succession of a projectile's positions into a single entity that he could explore and explain. I argue that our understanding of his methods and style is greatly enriched by considering the (...) abacus tradition in which he worked. As a maestro d'abaco in sixteenth-century Venice he had access to a great variety of mathematical and natural-philosophical works. This paper traces how Tartaglia drew elements from a vast spectrum of sources and combined them in an innovative manner. I examine his use of algebra and geometry, consider what he knew about Archimedes and suggest a reading of his enigmatic phrase ‘Archimedean reasoning’, which has eluded satisfactory interpretation. (shrink)