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276PseudorationalityIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Amelie O. Rorty (eds.), Perspectives on Self-Deception, University of California Press. pp. 173--197. 1988.I want to argue that self-deception is a species of a more general phenomenon, which I shall call pseudorationality, which in turn is necessitated by what I shall describe as our highest-order disposition to literal self-preservation. By "literal self-preservation," I mean preservation of the rational intelligibility of the self, in the face of recalcitrant facts that invariably threaten it.
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1727Rationality and the Structure of the Self Volume II: A Kantian ConceptionAPRA Foundation. 2013.Adrian Piper argues that the Humean conception can be made to work only if it is placed in the context of a wider and genuinely universal conception of the self, whose origins are to be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. This conception comprises the basic canons of classical logic, which provide both a model of motivation and a model of rationality. These supply necessary conditions both for the coherence and integrity of the self and also for unified agency. The Kantian conception solves…Read more
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532Higher-Order DiscriminationIn Amelie O. Rorty & Owen Flanagan (eds.), Identity, Character and Morality, Mit Press. pp. 285-309. 1990.This discussion treats a set of familiar social derelictions as consequences of the perversion of a universalistic moral theory in the service of an ill-considered or insufficiently examined personal agenda.The set includes racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and class elitism, among other similar pathologies, under the general heading of discrimination. The perversion of moral theory from which these derelictions arise, I argue, involves restricting its scope of application to some pre…Read more
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3310Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean ConceptionAPRA Foundation Berlin. 2013.The Humean conception of the self consists in the belief-desire model of motivation and the utility-maximizing model of rationality. This conception has dominated Western thought in philosophy and the social sciences ever since Hobbes’ initial formulation in Leviathan and Hume’s elaboration in the Treatise of Human Nature. Bentham, Freud, Ramsey, Skinner, Allais, von Neumann and Morgenstern and others have added further refinements that have brought it to a high degree of formal sophistication. …Read more
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297Two Conceptions of the SelfPhilosophical Studies 48 (2): 173-197. 1985.The Humean conception of the self prevalent in the contemporary literature in moral and political philosophy, philosophy of mind, and action theory has yielded a persuasive model of human action that has contributed considerably to our understanding of moral motivation, rational action, and many other issues. But it has also generated certain problems. I should like to take issue with this conception, first by describing it in some detail and charting its connection with two such interrelated pr…Read more
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1431Intellektuelle Intuition in Kants erster Kritik und Samkhya-PhilosophieIn Elke Falat & Thomas Thiel (eds.), into it, Kunstverein Hildesheim/kehrerverlag Heidelberg. pp. 94-104. 2007.
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108Ten commandments of philosophical writingAdrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin. 1992.Ten commandments of philosophical writing
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323Making Sense of ValueEthics 106 (3): 525-537. 1996.A book review of Elizabeth Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). I will pass over her compelling critiques of cost-benefit analysis, rational desire theory, and "consequentialist" moral theories, among many topics she dispatches successfully, with fierce intelligence and wit. Instead I want to focus on the central justificatory strategy that underpins her defense of her pluralist, nonconsequentialist, rational attitude theory of value. Anders…Read more
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34Marcia Lind, 1951-2000Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 75 (2). 2001.Obituary - Marcia Lind, 1951-2000
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533Kant's Self-Legislation Procedure ReconsideredKant Studies Online 2012 (1): 203-277. 2012.Most published discussions in contemporary metaethics include some textual exegesis of the relevant contemporary authors, but little or none of the historical authors who provide the underpinnings of their general approach. The latter is usually relegated to the historical, or dismissed as expository. Sometimes this can be a useful division of labor. But it can also lead to grave confusion about the views under discussion, and even about whose views are, in fact, under discussion. Elijah Millgra…Read more
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358The Money Pump Is Necessarily DiachronicAdrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin/Philosophy. 2014.In “The Irrelevance of the Diachronic Money-Pump Argument for Acyclicity,” The Journal of Philosophy CX, 8 (August 2013), 460-464, Johan E. Gustafsson contends that if Davidson, McKinsey and Suppes’ diachronic money-pump argument in their "Outlines of a Formal Theory of Value, I," Philosophy of Science 22 (1955), 140-160 is valid, so is the synchronic argument Gustafsson himself offers. He concludes that the latter renders irrelevant diachronic choice considerations in general, and the two best-…Read more
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279Government Support for Unconventional Works of ArtIn Andrew Buchwalter (ed.), Culture and Democracy: Social and Ethical Issues in Public Support for the Arts and Humanities, Westview Press. pp. 217-222. 1992.My aim in this discussion is to argue, not only that government should provide funding for the arts, but a fortiori that it should provide funding for unconventional, disruptive works of art.
Adrian M. S. Piper
APRA Foundation, Berlin
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APRA Foundation, BerlinOther
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |