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353Knowing Right From WrongOxford University Press. 2012.Can we have objective knowledge of right and wrong, of how we should live and what there is reason to do? Can it be anything but luck when our moral beliefs are true? Kieran Setiya confronts these questions in their most compelling and articulate forms, and argues that if there is objective ethical knowledge, human nature is its source.
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779Explaining actionPhilosophical Review 112 (3): 339-393. 2003.Argues that, in acting for a reason, one takes that reason to explain one's action, not to justify it: reasons for acting need not be seen "under the guise of the good". The argument turns on the need to explain the place of "practical knowledge" - knowing what one is doing - in intentional action. A revised and expanded version of this material appears in Part One of "Reasons without Rationalism" (Princeton, 2007).
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736What is a Reason to Act?Philosophical Studies 167 (2): 221-235. 2014.Argues for a conception of reasons as premises of practical reasoning. This conception is applied to questions about ignorance, advice, enabling conditions, "ought," and evidence.
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442Practical Knowledge RevisitedEthics 120 (1): 128-137. 2009.Argues that the view propounded in "Practical Knowledge" (Ethics 118: 388-409) survives objections made by Sarah Paul ("Intention, Belief, and Wishful Thinking," Ethics 119: 546-557). The response gives more explicit treatment to the nature and epistemology of knowing how.
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64Review of Adrian Haddock and Fiona Macpherson, eds., 'Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge' (review)Mind 118 (472): 834-840. 2009.
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543Epistemic agency: Some doubtsPhilosophical Issues 23 (1): 179-198. 2013.Argues for a deflationary account of epistemic agency. We believe things for reasons and our beliefs change over time, but there is no further sense in which we are active in judgement, inference, or belief.
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100Review of Justin Broackes, ed., 'Iris Murdoch, Philosopher' (review)Philosophical Quarterly 62 (249): 878-881. 2012.
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258Selfish ReasonsErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 2. 2015.Argues against the rationality of self-concern. Non-instrumental interest in my own well-being is not justified by the fact that it is mine. This follows from the metaphysics of first-person thought, as thought about the object of immediate knowledge. The argument leaves room for rational self-interest as a form of self-love that is justified, like love for others, by the fact of our shared humanity.
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299Reasons without rationalism * by Kieran Setiya * princeton university press, 2007. IX + 131 pp. 22.50: SummaryAnalysis 69 (3): 509-510. 2009.Reasons without Rationalism has two related parts, devoted to action theory and ethics, respectively. In the second part, I argue for a close connection between reasons for action and virtues of character. This connection is mediated by the idea of good practical thought and the disposition to engage in it. The argument relies on the following principle, which is intended as common ground: " Reasons: The fact that p is a reason for A to ϕ just in case A has a collection of psychological states, …Read more
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814Love and the Value of a LifePhilosophical Review 123 (3): 251-280. 2014.Argues that there is no one it is irrational to love, that it is rational to act with partiality to those we love, and that the rationality of doing so is not conditional on love. It follows that Anscombe and Taurek are right: you are not required to save three instead of one, even when those you could save are perfect strangers
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692Practical knowledgeEthics 118 (3): 388-409. 2008.Argues that we know without observation or inference at least some of what we are doing intentionally and that this possibility must be explained in terms of knowledge-how. It is a consequence of the argument that knowing how to do something cannot be identified with knowledge of a proposition.
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253Akrasia and the Constitution of AgencyIn Practical Knowledge: Selected Essays, Oxford University Press. 2016.Argues that we do not act intentionally ‘under the guise of the good.’ This makes it hard to explain why akrasia is distinctively irrational; but this is no objection, since it is just as hard to explain on the opposing view. Ends with a problem of akrasia for ethical rationalists.
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257Hume on practical reasonPhilosophical Perspectives 18 (1). 2004.Argues that Hume was a sceptic about practical reason only on a rationalist account of what it would have to be. (This version differs substantially from the published paper.).
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134Wrong-Making ReasonsIn Martina Herrmann (ed.), Reading Parfit, Springer Netherlands. pp. 123-134. 1998.Argues that there is a problem of redundancy for Kantian Contractualism in light of plausible claims about the reason-giving force of wrong-making facts.
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284RetrospectionPhilosophers' Imprint 16. 2016.Argues from the rationality of nostalgia, affirmation, and regret to a principle of ‘specificity’: it can be rational to respond more strongly to facts that provide us with reasons than to the fact that such reasons exist.
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86Review of Sergio Tenenbaum, 'Appearances of the Good' (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (5). 2007.
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414Internal ReasonsIn Internal Reasons. 2012.Argues that "internalism about reasons" owes its appeal to a function argument from the nature of agency. Internalism is thus revealed as a species of ethical rationalism. (This paper introduces a volume of recent work on internal and external reasons.)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
| Epistemology |
| Philosophy of Action |
| Meta-Ethics |
| Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
| Philosophy of Mind |
| Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
| 17th/18th Century Philosophy |