•  5
    Practical Reason
    In Ernie Lepore & Kirk Ludwig (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Donald Davidson, Wiley. 2013.
    Practical reason is the means by which beliefs and desires come together to produce actions. Practical rationality is difficult because we have many beliefs and many desires, and they often pull us in conflicting directions. The theory of practical reason must explain the fact that desires can conflict with one another, and the fact that we can act against our all‐things‐considered judgment (weakness of will, akrasia, and incontinence). The standard explanation of these facts invokes some form o…Read more
  •  26
    Replies
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (2): 486-496. 2021.
  •  58
    Precis
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (2): 459-463. 2021.
  •  84
    Proleptic Reasons
    Oxford Studies in Metaethics 11. 2016.
    Sometimes we engage in a pursuit before we can fully access its value. When we embark upon, for example, the project of coming to appreciate classical music, we make a foray into a new domain of value. The chapter introduces a new kind of reason—a proleptic reason—to rationalize such large-scale transformative pursuits. The proleptic reasoner is aware of the defect in her appreciation of some value, and feels the need to improve. It is explained that the work done by proleptic reasons cannot be …Read more
  •  233
    Socrates says that everyone desires the good. Does he mean that people desire what appears to them to be good? Or does he mean that they desire what really is good? This article argues, with reference passages in the Meno and Gorgias, that these alternatives are less opposed than they seem: each identifies something Socrates takes to be a necessary but insufficient condition on desiring. If what we desire must both be and appear to us to be good, then people desire a subset of the things they ta…Read more
  •  51
    Aspiration by Agnes Callard locates standing assumptions in the theory of rationality, moral psychology and autonomy that preclude the possibility of working to acquire new values. The book also explains what changes need to be made if we are to make room for this form of agency, which I call aspiration.
  •  74
    Liberal education and the possibility of valuational progress
    Social Philosophy and Policy 34 (2): 1-22. 2017.
    Abstract:This essay discusses two ways in which an agent can make progress with respect to value: self-cultivation and aspiration. The self-cultivator becomes a more coherent version of the person she was before, acquiring beliefs or desires or habits or skills that serve her antecedent valuational condition. The aspirant, by contrast, acquires new values. The existence of aspiration is under pressure from those who would assimilate it either to self-cultivation, or to a change in value that is …Read more
  •  2
    Ignorance and Akrasia-Denial in the Protagoras
    Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 47 31-80. 2014.
  •  87
    The Weaker Reason
    The Harvard Review of Philosophy 22 68-83. 2015.
  •  80
    Enkratēs Phronimos
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 99 (1): 31-63. 2017.
    Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 1 Seiten: 31-63.