Alan H. Goldman

This paper compares my simple account of practical reasons and rationality with the more complex accounts of Mark Schroeder and Josh Gert. On my Humean account, all reasons derive from desires, indicating ways to satisfy them. Stronger or more central desires generate stronger reasons (proportionalism). Rational agents are required to act on the strongest reasons they are aware of. But only agents who are morally (aesthetically, legally, etc.) minded have moral reasons or reasons in particular domains they care about. Irrationality consists in likely self-defeat: defeating more central desires by satisfying more peripheral ones that oppose them or acting in ignorance of what it will be like to satisfy a desire. The aim of practical reason is the satisfaction of prioritized desires over time. Schroeder’s more complex account grants more reasons than mine, including second-level reasons to assign weights to first-level reasons. He distinguishes agent neutral from agent relative reasons, all agents sharing agent neutral moral reasons. He denies proportionalism. Gert’s more complex account distinguishes justifying from requiring normative strength of reasons and holds that altruistic reasons are always rationally justifying but never requiring. I contrast my simpler account on all these grounds.

Jane Austen’s _Pride and Prejudice_, as this chapter shows, is a novel in which Austen acutely and exactingly traces the moral development of her main characters. And in doing so, she places each in telling contrast to minor characters, all of whom remain morally defective in one way or another. In imaginatively identifying with these characters in the recognizably ordinary circumstances they encounter, we retrace our own moral growth and come to recognize the complex of factors required for full moral maturity. As the reading presented in this chapter unfolds, we see that these include the cognitive-perceptual ability to identify and weigh diverse morally relevant properties, the emotional ability to empathize with people having different values and interests, and the will to act on reflectively endorsed moral judgments. Literary depiction, we see here, is not only that: it is also an occasion for moral self-reflection.

This remarkably clear and comprehensive account of empirical knowledge will be valuable to all students of epistemology and philosophy. The author begins from an explanationist analysis of knowing—a belief counts as knowledge if, and only if, its truth enters into the best explanation for its being held. Defending common sense and scientific realism within the explanationist framework, Alan Goldman provides a new foundational approach to justification. The view that emerges is broadly empiricist, counteracting the recently dominant trend that rejects that framework entirely. Topics treated include the Gettier problem, the nature of explanation and inductive inference, the justification of foundations for knowledge in terms of inference to the best explanation, the possibility of realist interpretations of contemporary science, reference (as it bears on recent antirealist arguments), and the relations between empirical psychology and epistemology. Professor Goldman defends the need for a foundational theory of justification and presents a version that refutes standard criticisms of that doctrine. His defense of realism takes into account contemporary advances in semantics and philosophy of science. It attempts to clarify the kinds of skeptical argument the philosopher must take seriously, without succumbing to them. While recent epistemology has tended to dismiss the traditional foundational approach, it has not provided a suitable alternative. Goldman breaks new ground by adapting that approach within his explanationist, inductive theory.

This paper argues that objective list accounts of well-being cannot account for the fact that not all knowledge, an item typically on such lists, is good for people independently of their attitudes toward it. The most obvious way to distinguish that knowledge that is intrinsically valuable is precisely in terms of subjective attitudes and aims. Tennis is a source of well-being for me. It is not simply instrumentally valuable to me as a means to any usual member of objective lists. Since it is plausible to say that I play simply for the enjoyment, pleasure or enjoyment is the most likely member of objective lists under which to subsume tennis for me. But an analysis of the different types of pleasure shows that it is not what makes tennis valuable for me. It is intrinsically valuable to me in light of its intrinsic properties that attract me to it, although it is not valuable to many others. The objective list proponent cannot add new members, such as competition, play, or exercise of skill, to her list to which tennis is merely a means. Since it is not a means or instance to something that is good for all, it cannot be captured on any objective list.

As the Roman philosopher Lucretius asked, why do we fear and regret death, but do not regret not having been born earlier, when death and prenatal nonexistence are mirror images? Both deprive us of goods we might have had, and this deprivation most plausibly explains the badness of death. This paper first considers and rejects explanations other than the deprivation of goods. It then suggests an explanation in terms of a state of which death deprives us, and which is itself asymmetrical in regard to the future and the past. This sharp asymmetry in this one very important good helps to justify the difference in our attitudes, especially among those for whom death approaches. The paper departs from the usual rigid format in which a philosopher says what she is going to say, then says it, and then repeats it. In matching form to mystery content, the missing clue to the solution will not be revealed until later in the paper.