R. Jay Wallace

Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, through reflection, the question of what one is to do. Deliberation of this kind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical in its subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it is also practical in its consequences or its issue, insofar as reflection about action itself directly moves people to act. Our capacity for deliberative self-determination raises two sets of philosophical problems. For one thing, there are questions about how deliberation can succeed in being practical in its issue. What do we need to assume—both about agents and about the processes of reasoning they engage in—to make sense of the fact that deliberative reflection can directly give rise to action? Can we do justice to this dimension of practical reason while preserving the idea that practical deliberation is genuinely a form of reasoning? For another, there are large issues concerning the content of the standards that are brought to bear in practical reasoning. Which norms for the assessment of action are binding on us as deliberating agents? Do these norms provide resources for critical reflection about our ends, or are they exclusively instrumental? Under what conditions do moral norms yield valid standards for reasoning about action? The first set of issues is addressed in sections §§1–3 of the present article, while sections §§4–6 cover the second set of issues.

A defence of the idea that there are sui generis duties of love: duties, that is, that we owe to people in virtue of standing in loving relationships with them. I contrast this non‐reductionist position with the widespread reductionist view that our duties to those we love all derive from more generic moral principles. The paper mounts a cumulative argument in favour of the non‐reductionist position, adducing a variety of considerations that together speak strongly in favour of adopting it. The concluding section connects this debate with larger issues in moral theory concerning the general idea of obligation.

Consider a teenage girl who is contemplating motherhood. Prior to her becoming pregnant, it seems that she might truly judge that it would be a bad thing on balance to have a child at this stage in her life. After giving birth as a teenager, however, she might also truly judge that it is not a bad thing on balance that her child exists. These attitudes have commonly been thought to be in tension with each other. This chapter argues, however, that when correctly interpreted in deliberative terms, as judgments about the agent's reasons, the apparent conflict disappears. Giving birth changes the girl's situation, in ways that give rise to corresponding changes in her reasons for action and for various emotional responses. A consequence of this analysis, however, is that there may be mistakes or errors in deliberation that the agent is unable to regret having made. The teenage mother ought not to having conceived and given birth to a child at that stage in her life; and yet, as a mother, she can hardly regret having made the wrong decision in this particular matter. This raises large questions about the relation between justification and regret. Williams argues in ‘Moral Luck’ that our decisions can be justified or ‘unjustified’ retroactively through intervening circumstances that make regret either impossible or unavoidable. The chapter challenges Williams' assumption that justification and regret are necessarily connected in this way, and shows that the things that drive a wedge between justification and regret need not have anything to do with epistemic luck.