-
173Can't Kant count? Innumerate Views on Saving the Many over Saving the FewOxford Studies in Normative Ethics 13 215-234. 2023.It seems rather intuitive that if I can save either one stranger or five strangers, I must save the five. However, Kantian (and other non-consequentialist) views have a difficult time explaining why this is the case, as they seem committed to what Parfit calls “innumeracy”: roughly, the view that the values of lives (or the reasons to save them) don’t get greater (or stronger) in proportion to the number of lives saved. This chapter first shows that in various cases, it is permissible to save fe…Read more
-
11Raz on responsibility: comments on MayrJurisprudence 15 (1): 116-121. 2024.Mayr’s paper is extremely interesting and compelling and I don’t plan here to address all its insights. Rather, I’ll just try to argue that there might be more unity in understanding of Raz’s accou...
-
13Feeling Like It: A Theory of Inclination and WillSchapiro, Tamar, Feeling Like It: A Theory of Inclination and Will, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. viii + 173, £61 (hardback) (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (4): 1026-1026. 2023.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 ‘...
-
163Rational Powers in Interaction: Replies to Paul, Andreou, Brunero, Mayr, and HaasePhilosophical Inquiries 11 (1): 163-183. 2023.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_
-
190Precis of Rational Powers in ActionPhilosophical Inquiries 11 (1): 67-85. 2023.A précis of Sergio Tenenbaum's Rational Powers in Action (Oxford 2021)
-
Value disagreement, action, and commitmentIn Justin Vlasits & Katja Maria Vogt (eds.), Epistemology after Sextus Empiricus, Oxford University Press. 2020.
-
54Cullity on The Foundations of MoralityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (2): 511-518. 2022.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 2, Page 511-518, March 2022.
-
76On self-governance over timeInquiry: 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
-
101Duality of motivation and the guise of the good in Kant’s practical philosophyPhilosophical Explorations 24 (1): 75-92. 2021.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...
-
64Rational Powers in Action: Instrumental Rationality and Extended AgencyOxford University Press. 2021.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.
-
61Value Disagreement, Action, and CommitmentIn Katja Vogt & Justin Vlasits (eds.), Epistemology After Sextus Empiricus, Oxford University Press. pp. 291-311. 2020.
-
11Mark Timmons, Significance and System: Essays on Kant's Ethics Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017 Pp. 352 ISBN 9780190203368 (hbk) $78.00 (review)Kantian Review 25 (2): 321-327. 2020.
-
151Formalism and constitutivism in Kantian practical philosophyPhilosophical 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
-
72Reasons and Action ExplanationIn Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity, Oxford University Press. 2018.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
-
959It 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
-
117The Guise of the Guise of the BadEthical 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
-
117Desire, Practical Reason, and the Good (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2010.Most philosophers working in moral psychology and practical reason think that either the notion of "good" or the notion of "desire" have central roles to play in our understanding of intentional explanations and practical reasoning. However, philosophers disagree sharply over how we are supposed to understand the notions of "desire" and "good", how these notions relate, and whether both play a significant and independent role in practical reason. In particular, the "Guise of the Good" thesis - …Read more
-
12Belief, Action and Rationality Over Time (edited book)Routledge. 2016.Action theorists and formal epistemologists often pursue parallel inquiries regarding rationality, with the former focused on practical rationality, and the latter focused on theoretical rationality. In both fields, there is currently a strong interest in exploring rationality in relation to time. This exploration raises questions about the rationality of certain patterns over time. For example, it raises questions about the rational permissibility of certain patterns of intention; similarly, it…Read more
-
1466Knowing the Good and Knowing What One is DoingCanadian 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
-
4887Guise of the GoodIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.
-
63Accidie, Evaluation, and MotivatlonIn 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
-
1125The Idea of Freedom and Moral Cognition in Groundwork IIIPhilosophy 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
-
104The Perils of Earnest ConsequentializingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (1): 233-240. 2014.
APA Central Division
Areas of Specialization
1 more
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Action |
Moral Psychology |
Practical Reason |
Deontological Moral Theories |
Kantian Ethics |
PhilPapers Editorships
Practical Reason |