-
83. Suicide and SustenanceIn Adrienne M. Martin (ed.), How We Hope: A Moral Psychology, Princeton University Press. pp. 72-97. 2014.
-
74. Faith and Sustenance without ContingencyIn Adrienne M. Martin (ed.), How We Hope: A Moral Psychology, Princeton University Press. pp. 98-117. 2014.
-
4The standard foil for recent theories of hope is the belief-desire analysis advocated by Hobbes, Day, Downie, and others. According to this analysis, to hope for S is no more and no less than to desire S while believing S is possible but not certain. Opponents of the belief-desire analysis argue that it fails to capture one or another distinctive feature or function of hope: that hope helps one resist the temptation to despair;2 that hope engages the sophisticated capacities of human agency, suc…Read more
-
1Why Instruments Aren't ReasonsDissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 2004."[R]easons for action must have their source in goals, desires, or intentions....[T]he possession of rationality is not sufficient to provide a source for relevant reasons,...certain desires, goals, or intentions are also necessary." ;So says Gilbert Harman. So say many other philosophers, from Aristotle to Hume to Harman and David Gauthier. To these many philosophers, this is a home truth, as obvious as the nose on your face. And yet as many philosophers---from the Stoics to Kant to Nagel and K…Read more
-
1Many people believe hope’s most important function is to bolster us in despairinducing circumstances. A related but less dramatic view is that instilling or reinforcing hope for a state of affairs is a good way to get people to act to promote that state of affairs. I propose that we conceive of hope as, most paradigmatically, the expression of desire in imagination. I then trace through the implications of this conception for, first, how hope influences motivation and, second, what forms of hope…Read more
-
Claremont McKenna CollegeDepartment of PhilosophyMurty And Sunak Professor Of Philosophy, Politics & Economics
Claremont, California, United States of America