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306‘Kinds of Practical Reasons: Attitude-Related Reasons and Exclusionary Reasons’In C. E. Mauro J. A. Pinto S. Miguens (ed.), Analyses, . pp. 98-105. 2006.I start by explaining what attitude-related reasons are and why it is plausible to assume that, at least in the domain of practical reason, there are such reasons. Then I turn to Raz’s idea that the practice of practical reasoning commits us to what he calls exclusionary reasons. Being excluded would be a third way, additional to being outweighed and being undermined, in which a reason can be defeated. I try to show that attitude-related reasons can explain the phenomena Raz appeals to equally w…Read more
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1142The Bootstrapping ObjectionOrganon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 20 (4): 612-631. 2013.If our mental attitudes were reasons, we could bootstrap anything into rationality simply by acquiring these mental attitudes. This, it has been argued, shows that mental attitudes cannot be reasons. In this paper, I focus on John Broome’s development of the bootstrapping objection. I distinguish various versions of this objection and I argue that the bootstrapping objection to mind-based accounts of reasons fails in all its versions.
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97Particularism and the structure of reasonsActa Analytica 21 (2): 87-102. 2006.I argue that particularism (or holism) about reasons, i.e., the view that a feature that is a reason in one case need not be a reason in another case, is true, but uninterestingly so. Its truth is best explained by principles that govern a weaker notion than that of being a reason: one thing can be ‘normatively connected’ to something else without its being a reason for what it is normatively connected to. Thus, even though true, particularism about reasons does not support the particularist’s g…Read more
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136Normative Practical ReasoningAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 75 (1). 2001.Practical reasoning is a process of reasoning that concludes in an intention. One example is reasoning from intending an end to intending what you believe is a necessary means: 'I will leave the next buoy to port; in order to do that I must tack; so I'll tack', where the first and third sentences express intentions and the second sentence a belief. This sort of practical reasoning is supported by a valid logical derivation, and therefore seems uncontrovertible. A more contentious example is norm…Read more
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230The New Realism in EthicsIn Thomas Baldwin (ed.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945, . pp. 377-388. 2003.
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105Practical philosophy and the Gettier Problem: is virtue epistemology on the right track?Philosophical Studies 172 (1): 73-91. 2015.One of the guiding ideas of virtue epistemology is to look at epistemological issue through the lens of practical philosophy. The Gettier Problem is a case in point. Virtue epistemologists, like Sosa and Greco, see the shortcoming in a Gettier scenario as a shortcoming from which performances in general can suffer. In this paper I raise some doubts about the success of this project. Looking more closely at practical philosophy, will, I argue, show that virtue epistemology misconceives the signif…Read more
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582Ewing's ProblemEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 3 (1): 0-0. 2007.Two plausible claims seem to be inconsistent with each other. One is the idea that if one reasonably believes that one ought to fi, then indeed, on pain of acting irrationally, one ought to fi. The other is the view that we are fallible with respect to our beliefs about what we ought to do. Ewing’s Problem is how to react to this apparent inconsistency. I reject two easy ways out. One is Ewing’s own solution to his problem, which is to introduce two different notions of ought. The other is the v…Read more
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3Critical NoticeAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (2): 347-367. 1996.Critical notice of Smith, Michael, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) pp. xiii, 226, A$49.95 (cloth), A$21.95 (paper).