•  11
    Tamar Schapiro’s terrific book gives a central role to inclination in our understanding of agency. Contemporary philosophers often presuppose a monistic theory of motivation; under the heading of ‘...
  •  141
    A response to review essays by Chrisoula Andreou, John Brunero, Matthias Haase, Erasmus Mayr, and Sarah Paul on Sergio Tenenbaum's _Rational Powers in Action_
  • Value disagreement, action, and commitment
    In Justin Vlasits & Katja Maria Vogt (eds.), Epistemology after Sextus Empiricus, Oxford University Press. 2020.
  •  39
    Cullity on The Foundations of Morality
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (2): 511-518. 2022.
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 2, Page 511-518, March 2022.
  •  66
    On self-governance over time
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 64 (9): 901-912. 2021.
    ABSTRACT In Planning, Time, and Self-Governanace, Bratman argues that the notion of self-governance plays an important role in grounding the rational principles such as means-ends coherence in the synchronic case, and principles of stability and coherence through time in the case of self-governance over time. In this paper, I grant Bratman’s claim for the synchronic case, however I argue that it is not clear that one can extend the reasoning to the diachronic case. More specifically, I raise a n…Read more
  •  85
    Although Kant is clearly committed to some version of the Guise of the Good thesis, he only explicitly endorses a very weak version of it; namely, that under the direction of reason, we only p...
  •  50
    Rational Powers in Action presents a conception of instrumental rationality as governing actions that are extended in time with indeterminate ends. Tenenbaum argues that previous philosophical theories in this area, in focusing on momentary snapshots of the mind of idealized agents, miss central aspects of human rationality.
  • Direction of fit and motivational cognitivism
    Oxford Studies in Metaethics 1 235-264. 2006.
  •  130
    Formalism and constitutivism in Kantian practical philosophy
    Philosophical Explorations 22 (2): 163-176. 2019.
    Constitutivists have tried to answer Enoch’s “schmagency” objection by arguing that Enoch fails to appreciate the inescapability of agency. Although these arguments are effective against some versions of the objection, I argue that they leave constitutivism vulnerable to an important worry; namely, that constitutivism leaves us alienated from the moral norms that it claims we must follow. In the first part of the paper, I try to make this vague concern more precise: in a nutshell, it seems that …Read more
  •  63
    Reasons and Action Explanation
    with Benjamin Wald
    The problem of deviant causation has been a serious obstacle for causal theories of action. We suggest that attending to the problem of deviant causation reveals two related problems for causal theories. First, it threatens the reductive ambitions of causal theories of intentional action. Second, it suggests that such a theory fails to account for how the agent herself is guided by her reasons. Focusing on the second of these, we argue that the problem of guidance turns out to be related to a nu…Read more
  •  897
    Extended Agency and the Problem of Diachronic Autonomy
    In Time in Action: The Temporal Structure of Rational Agency and Practical Thought, Routledge. 2022.
    It seems to be a humdrum fact of human agency that we act on intentions or decisions that we have made at an earlier time. At breakfast, you look at the Taco Hut menu online and decide that later today you’ll have one of their avocado burritos for lunch. You’re at your desk and you hear the church bells ring the noon hour. You get up, walk to Taco Hut, and order the burrito as planned. As mundane as this sort of scenario might seem to be, philosophers have raised a problem in understanding it.…Read more
  •  108
    The Guise of the Guise of the Bad
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (1): 5-20. 2018.
    It is undeniable that human agents sometimes act badly, and it seems that they sometimes pursue bad things simply because they are bad. This latter phenomenon has often been taken to provide counterexamples to views according to which we always act under the guise of the good. This paper identifies several distinct arguments in favour of the possibility that one can act under the guise of the bad. GG seems to face more serious difficulties when trying to answer three different, but related, argu…Read more
  •  7
    Brute Requirements (review)
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (1): 153-171. 2007.
  •  1421
    Knowing the Good and Knowing What One is Doing
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (S1): 91-117. 2009.
    Most contemporary action theorists accept – or at least find plausible – a belief condition on intention and a knowledge condition on intentional action. The belief condition says that I can only intend to ɸ if I believe that I will ɸ or am ɸ-ing, and the knowledge condition says that I am only intentionally ɸ-ing if I know that I am ɸ-ing. The belief condition in intention and the knowledge condition in action go hand in hand. After all, if intending implies belief, and if ɸ-ing intentionally i…Read more
  •  57
    Accidie, Evaluation, and Motivatlon
    In Sarah Stroud & Christine Tappolet (eds.), Weakness of will and practical irrationality, Oxford University Press. pp. 147. 2003.
    Accidie, depression, and dejection seem to be psychological phenomena that are best characterized as cases in which an agent has no motivation to pursue what he or she judges to be good or valuable. The phenomena thus seem to present a challenge to any view that draws a close connection between motivation and evaluation. ‘Accidie, Evaluation, and Motivation’ aims to show that the phenomena are actually best explained by a theory that postulates a conceptual connection between motivation and eval…Read more
  •  1081
    The Idea of Freedom and Moral Cognition in Groundwork III
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84 (3): 555-589. 2012.
    Kant’s views on the relation between freedom and moral law seem to undergo a major, unannounced shift. In the third section of the Groundwork, Kant seems to be using the fact that we must act under the idea of freedom as a foundation for the moral law. However, in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant claims that our awareness of our freedom depends on our awareness of the moral law. I argue that the apparent conflict between the two texts depends on a reading of the opening paragraphs of Grou…Read more
  •  354
  •  57
    Review of J. David Velleman, Self to Self: Selected Essays (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (8). 2007.
  •  563
    Direction of Fit and Motivational Cognitivism
    In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 235-64. 2006.
    The idea of direction of fit has been found appealing by many philosophers. Anscombe’s famous examples have persuaded many of us that there must be some deep difference between belief and desire that is captured by the metaphor of direction of fit. Most of the aim of the paper is to try to get clear on which intuitions Anscombe’s example taps into. My view is that there is more than one intuition in play here, and I will try to show that various distinctions and points are confused in the litera…Read more