Practical Reasons and Rationality

Critical thinking by definition can be explained as the determination of whether we should accept, reject, or suspend judgment about a claim and the degree of confidence with which we should accept or reject it. Critical thinking helps us to formulate a judgment as to whether a position, theory, or idea is incomplete or unclear, insufficiently supported by the contentions made in its behalf, or whether the argument is unconvincing, or simply wrong. One of the principle tenants of critical thinking is that the ideas, arguments, and conclusions being offered are critiqued and not the person making them. As you can tell from the dogma and discourse going on in the media these days, this isn’t a widely embraced approach amongst politicians, pundits, reporters, and the general public. It is perfectly acceptable to come to a conclusion about the person making the argument, but that comes much later and is based upon the position they took on the issue and the rationale they used to argue their point. It is also a measure of how often they are perceived as inaccurate, uninformed, or simply incorrect about an issue that they postulate, and what strategies they use routinely to manipulate the people they are endeavoring to persuade to their point of view.

Autant une forte demande sociale est adressée à la philosophie, en particulier dans sa dimension pratique, autant il faut interroger les conditions sous lesquelles elle peut y répondre. Revient-il au philosophe d'énoncer des normes et des valeurs comme on le lui demande ? Cette conférence a été prononcée aux Lundis de la philosophie, organisés par Francis Wolff à l'École Normale Supérieure, le 03 décembre 2012, http://www.ens.fr/actualites/agenda/article/les-lundis-de-la-philosophie-2015

Romano Guardini was highly valued by Joseph Ratzinger as a lecturer and author of inspiring books. They shared the zealous pursuit for truth, the courage to ask fundamental questions, the boldness to confront the Christian faith with the challenges of contemporary culture, the conviction that the human mind has high cognitive capacities, and the emphasis on the primate of truth in theology. Both authors highlight the reasonable aspect of the Christian faith. After all, faith relies on the fact that God is Truth. Faith and reason are not contradictory. They can complement one another in the process of in-depth cognition. Naturally, as the human mind tries to understand God, it struggles with its own limitations in the face of the mystery which exceeds the capacities of the creation.

Eintrag "Emotionen" für das Metzler Handbuch Handlungstheorie; erläutert philosophische Emotionstheorien mit Blick auf den Zusammenhang von Emotion und Handlung. Zentrale Referenzen sind Heidegger, Bennett Helm, Sabine Döring, Peter Goldie, Amelie Oksenberg-Rorty und Charles Taylor.

The book introduces Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s philosophy of action into the mainstream of contemporary action-theoretical debates. Piotr Makowski shows that Kotarbiński–Alfred Tarski’s teacher and one of the most important philosophers of the renowned Lvov-Warsaw school—proposed a groundbreaking, original, and (in at least a few respects) still fresh perspective in action theorizing. The book examines and develops Kotarbiński’s ideas in the context of the most recent discussions in the philosophy of action. The main idea behind Kotarbiński’s action theory—and thus, behind this book—is the significance of the philosophical investigations of the general conditions of effectiveness, efficiency, and economy of intentional actions. Makowski presents and reinterprets Kotarbiński’s views on these dimensions of our activities and sheds new light on the most important areas of action theory.

What is it to have a reason to do something? is one sort of question; what is it we have reason to do? is another.  These questions are often explored separately.  But our answers to them may not be independent:  what reasons are may have implications for what reasons there are.  So the door is opened to a troubling tension—the account of what reasons are that is most plausible in its own right could entail a view of what we have reason to do that is independently implausible.  In fact, it looks like this is the case.

The first half of this book develops and defends a version of a desire-based, internalist, account of what normative reasons are.  But does that account entail that there are no moral reasons that apply to all of us, regardless of what we happen to desire?  It may look obvious that it does—that a bullet must be bitten somewhere.  If what we have reason to do depends on what we antecedently desire, corrected only for misinformation and procedural irrationalities, and if desires differ from person to person, there seems to be no basis for assuming that everyone has reason to be moral.  But the bullet may yet be avoided.  The second half of this book shows how:  it builds on Kant’s argument for his formula of humanity to provide an internalist defense of universal moral reasons.  In doing so, it provides a more satisfying answer to the age-old question:  why be moral?

Against the maximizing conception of practical rationality, Michael Slote has argued that rationality does not always require choosing what is most rational. Instead, it can sometimes be rational to do something that is less than fully rational. In this paper, I will argue that maximizers have a ready response to Slote's position. Roy Sorensen has argued that 'rational' is an absolute term, suggesting that it is not possible to be rational without being completely rational. Sorensen's view is confirmed by the fact that, by the lights of contemporary linguistics, 'rational' is an absolute gradable adjective. Because 'rational' is an absolute gradable adjective, being rational requires being at the top of the scale of rationality, making anyone who is not fully rational positively irrational. Contra Slote, the only way to be rational enough is to be maximally rational.

In dieser Arbeit werden Korsgaards Gedanken zu drei zusammenhängenden Themen zusammengeführt: eine Theorie der Normativität, eine Theorie der Selbstkonstitution und eine Theorie von Gründen als öffentliche Gründe. Korsgaards Philosophie ist ein Gesamtwerk im klassischen Sinne. Ihre Überlegungen von ihren ersten Aufsätzen zur Interpretation von Kants Formeln des kategorischen Imperatives, über ihre Gedanken zu Normativität und Selbstkonstitution in „Sources of Normativity“ und „Self-Constitution“,hin zu ihren Überlegungen zur Natur des Guten und unseren Pflichten gegenüber Tieren fügen sich in ein übergreifendes philosophisches Projekt. Die vielfältigen Abhängigkeiten führen dazu, dass Korsgaards Argumente, für sich genommen, schwer zu verstehen, oder sogar offensichtlich unplausibel sind. Ich will daher auch zeigen, wie sich diese drei Theorien gegenseitig stützen und warum sie zusammen betrachtet werden sollten. Ein besonderer Fokus soll auf einer Reihe von Argumenten für die Öffentlichkeit von Gründen liegen.

One aim of moral education is to help society progress from morally imperfect conventions towards more perfect ones. According to a popular view, reflecting judgment is the vehicle of this progress. In this paper, I argue that although reflection is important, it is not enough; moral development also requires practical synthesis. Moral development take place by securing new connections – conceptual, affective, volitional, behavioural – that bring thoughts, feelings, motivations and actions into alignment with higher reason, to instantiate respect for all who are ends in themselves. Constructing parallels from Kant’s theoretical philosophy, I identify three kinds of synthesis that are central to moral practice. If I am right, then a key task for moral education is to support the development of these capacities of practical synthesis.

The author defends the claim that there are cases in which we should promote irrationality by arguing (1) that it is sometimes better to be in an irrational state of mind, and (2) that we can often (purposefully) influence our state of mind via our actions. The first claim is supported by presenting cases of irrational belief and by countering a common line of argument associated with William K. Clifford, who defended the idea that having an irrational belief is always worse than having a rational one. In support of the second claim, the author then explains how the control we have over our beliefs could look like. In conclusion, the author suggests that the argument of this essay is not restricted to the irrationality of beliefs, but can be applied to irrational states of mind in general (like desires, intentions, emotions, or hopes). In an outlook on the " ethics of belief " debate, the author points out that the argument of this essay need not conflict with evidentialism, but does so when combined with another plausible claim about the meaning of doxastic ought-statements.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

This is a study of Plato's moral psychology in the Republic as a response to Thrasymachus. I begin (§ 1) by interpreting the contest between Socrates and Thrasymachus as a capsule of the major points of contention between Plato and the sophists, regarding not only moral language but also regarding mind and soul. Then, I explore the Republic's arguments for the inherent normative dimensions of both rule (§ 2) and speech (§ 3), with an eye to connecting these arguments to the initial challenge of Thrasymachus. Finally (§ 4), I offer a brief Platonic rejoinder to two axioms of modern moral philosophy: (a) the strict contrast between reason and desire, and (b) the incompatibility of stance-dependence and normative realism.

Analytic philosophy has seen a surge of interest in the relationship between reasons and responsibility. Against the bulk of this literature Emmanuel Levinas raises a cutting and comprehensive critique: The orthodox explanatory order, which explains our responsibility to one another in terms of normative reasons, is backwards. For while such such reasons may explain what we are responsible for in a given case, they do not explain why we are responsible to begin with. Worse: we seem to have a standing responsibility to have reasons with which to justify our acts and attitudes. But the general responsibility to have justificatory reasons isn’t itself something reasons could justify. Levinas’s suggestion: Stop trying to explain interpersonal responsibility in terms of reasons. Start explaining reasons-giving as an expression of a responsibility-relation. We will then see we are not, first, responsible to others because of reason, or because there are we have reasons we ought to be. On the contrary: we are first responsible to others one another, and only this explains why and how we have reasons.
Levinas’s insistence on the primacy of responsibility with respect to reasons is clear. Less clear is his argument for this primacy. I will here attempt to re-construct Levinas’s argument, such that it is at once plausible in its own right and also plausibly his. The heart of the argument is a Strawson-inspired analysis of reasoning, consistent with the idea that, before and beneath the particular reasons we give, there is a prior responsibility-relation Levinas calls facing. I will conclude that it is plausible to suppose our responsiveness to reasons is what Levinas says it is: a disguised and derivative form of responsibility to persons-- and that Levinas’s unusual account of reasoning recommends an equally unusual answer to the question “What is a reason?”

In a world dominated by half-truths, illogic, and intellectual laziness, Think Better helps readers understand what reason is and how to use it well.

Reason is a powerful tool not only for finding our way in an increasingly complex world but also for growing intellectually and emotionally. This short, accessible volume unlocks the dynamics of human reason, helping readers to think critically and to use reason confidently to solve problems. It enables readers to think more clearly and precisely about the world and tackles a number of profound philosophical questions without getting bogged down with jargon. Topics include knowledge, identity, leadership, creativity, and empathy.

Written in an accessible style that integrates philosophy, illustrations, personal anecdotes, and statistical data, this book is well suited for use in undergraduate, classical school, and home school contexts. It is an invaluable guide for anyone interested in gaining better reasoning skills and a more rational approach to life.

This paper focuses on one of the major criticisms made to Aristotle's virtue ethics, namely that it lacks explicit moral action guidance. The same criticism has been addressed to later developments of virtue ethics. There have been several attempts to overcome this objection and to demonstrate that modern theories of virtue ethics do provide principles of right action. In this paper, I discuss mainly two such major attempts: the exemplarist approach and the virtue rules approach. My aim is to examine whether, if applied to Aristotle’s virtue ethics, these two approaches can provide a convincing answer to the criticism that Aristotle’s ethics does not offer explicit moral action guidance .

McDowell defends conceptualism about experiential content by arguing that contrary views of experience are forms of the Myth of the Given. The direct realist view of experience, which rejects experiential content all together, is thus according to McDowell a mythical view of experience. A series of defenders of direct realism have responded to McDowell’s accusations. However, the recent debate has revealed that there is very little agreement on the details of McDowell’s argument, let alone on how to respond to it. I will argue that the responses to McDowell given by thinkers such as Travis, Brewer, Kalderon and Johnson, all rest on various misunderstandings of his line of argument. The aim of this paper is to provide an interpretation of the Myth of the Given, which lives up to the dialectical role it plays in McDowell’s argumentation. I aim to elaborate the notions of reasons and the notion of conceptuality in play in McDowell’s writings. On this basis, I present an argument leading from the requirement that experience provides reasons for thought to the conclusion that experience must possess conceptual content.

Corrupt exchanges are often brokered by a third party, but this phenomenon has not been satisfactorily explored by researchers of corruption. Literature on brokerage in general provides interesting models but they have not previously been applied to corrupt exchanges. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with respondents who participated in actual corrupt transactions, this paper identifies several distinct brokerage types in low-level corruption in contemporary Hungary. The paper also provides explanation of variation in corruption brokerage in terms of actors' group affiliations, forms of the corrupt exchanges, brokerage mechanisms, as well as neutrality, benefit and motivation, risk distribution, and stability of the brokerage structure. Finally, we discuss some policy implications of corruption brokerage.

In this book, Charles Larmore develops an account of morality, freedom, and reason that rejects the naturalistic metaphysics shaping much of modern thought. Reason, Larmore argues, is responsiveness to reasons, and reasons themselves are essentially normative in character, consisting in the way that physical and psychological factsfacts about the world of nature-count in favor of possibilities of thought and action that we can take up. Moral judgments are true or false in virtue of the moral reasons there are. We need therefore a more comprehensive metaphysics that recognizes a normative dimension to reality as well. Though taking its point of departure in the analysis of moral judgment, this book branches widely into related topics such as freedom and the causal order of the world, textual interpretation, the nature of the self, self-knowledge, and the concept of duties to ourselves.

Foot argues that there are certain things that all human beings - perhaps all rational agents - need.  This gives a sense in which certain values and disvalues can be called 'objective'.  I suggest that, with certain relatively minor adjustments, her argument can be made cogent but that it cannot be used to show that there are objective answers to questions about what one should do when values conflict.  If Foot's own virtue ethics, utilitarianism, Kantian ethics or any other first-order moral system were to be established as objectively valid, this would require some completely different form of argumentation. 


Almost sixty years ago Philippa Foot published an article that began: To many people it seems that the most notable advance in moral philosophy during the past fifty years or so has been the refutation of naturalism; and they are a little shocked that at this late date such an issue should be reopened. It is easy to understand their attitude: given certain apparently unquestionable assumptions, it would be about as sensible to try to reintroduce naturalism as to try to square the circle. Those who see it like this have satisfied themselves that they know in advance that any naturalistic theory must have a catch in it somewhere, and are put out at having to waste more time exposing an old fallacy. This paper is an attempt to persuade them to look critically at the premises on which their arguments are based. 1 The paper in question was one of a number written by Foot around the time that were highly successful in reopening the issue of naturalism in ethics. Nowadays no one can just take it for granted that naturalism has been refuted, that there is a sharp distinction (or indeed any clear distinction) between fact and value or that it is impossible to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. This is not to say that the naturalists have been completely victorious, of course; only that naturalism is today a live option. I shall argue that Foot's paper contains an important insight and an equally important mistake; and that the insight and the mistake are linked. I believe that the thinking behind it has influenced the subsequent course of moral philosophy to a quite remarkable extent and that this has been in some ways beneficial and in some ways harmful – not surprisingly, if I am right in seeing it as containing both truth and error. I do not want to exaggerate the influence of this one paper 2 but I do not know of any other that so neatly encapsulates the coupled insight and mistake. The anti-naturalism that Foot is attacking she characterises as follows: It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations, which runs something like this: The truth or falsity of statements of fact is shewn by means of evidence; and what counts as evidence is laid down in the meaning of the expressions occurring in the statement of fact … It follows that no two people can make the same statement and count completely different things as evidence; in the end one at least of them could be convicted of linguistic ignorance. It also follows that if a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. 3 But, on the view she is criticising, [w]ith evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based. One man may say that a thing is good because of some fact about it, and another may refuse to take that fact as any evidence, for nothing is laid down in the meaning of 'good' which connects it with one piece of 'evidence' rather than another. It follows that a moral eccentric could argue to moral conclusions from quite idiosyncratic premises; he could say, for instance, that a man was a good man because he clasped and unclasped his hands and never turned NNE after

Any old standard or norm can provide reasons, oughts, and requirements: according to the ‘no-snitching’ code we have reasons to refrain from telling the police if we are assaulted; according to the norms of mid-20th century US high-society women should not wear white after the start of September; and according to the norms of masculinity, men are required to refrain from crying and are forbidden from wearing mascara. But there seems to be a distinction between the reasons and requirements of these standards and those provided by moral, prudential, and epistemic standards: moral, prudential, and epistemic reasons seem to be authoritatively, robustly, substantively, or genuinely normative in a way that the reasons of the no-snitching code and masculinity are not. If we violate moral, prudential, and epistemic requirements, we seem to have gone wrong in a certain way: we seem to be going wrong normatively and to be blameworthy or criticizable for violating the requirements of these standards. If we violate the norms of masculinity, mid-20th century high-society, and the no-snitching code, we don’t seem to go wrong in a similar way and seem to be criticizable in the same way.

These standards are all action-guiding standards. And there has been discussion about the authoritative/genuine normativity of action-guiding standards in the literature but little if any about the authoritative or genuine normativity of (fitting) attitudes’ standards. However, there is a similar intuitive difference regarding the normativity of attitudes’ standards. Attitudes have internal standards, which determine when those attitudes are fitting. Consider admiration. The standard of admiration is the admirable. When we admire someone, we see their features as admirable. And we have reasons to admire admirable people in virtue of their admirable features. So, the standard of admiration, the admirable, gives rise to reasons to admire admirable people. Our perceived evidence analogously guides our beliefs. When we believe something, we see it as true in light of our evidence. And our (perceived) evidence gives rise to reasons for us to believe things.

Some attitudes have standards that seem genuinely normative. Belief’s evidential standard seems authoritatively normative. If you don’t desire good things for yourself and your friends and family, you seem to be normatively criticisable and going wrong normatively. So, the standard of desire, the desirable, also seems to be genuinely normative. Other attitudinal standards do not seem to give rise to genuine/authoritative normativity. Perhaps the standards of boredom and depression are the boring and the depressing, but these standards are not authoritatively or genuinely normative: we are not criticisable or normatively missing something if we never get bored or depressed. Similarly, we are not normatively criticisable if we are never jealous or envious. So, the enviable and the standard of jealousy do not seem genuinely normative.

In this paper I propose a value-based account of what makes an attitude’s standard genuinely or authoritatively normative, I draw out the implications of this account for the normativity of certain attitudes’ standards, and argue that it can be generalized to provide a plausible and illuminating general account of which standards are genuinely normative.

This book is a study of the moral foundations of Plato’s political philosophy, pursued through an examination of his provocative claims about the relation of virtue to knowledge. Maintaining that the political art is “the art whose business it is to care for souls,”  Plato returns incessantly to the most fundamental of political questions, classically understood: What is the excellence or virtue of the human soul? Is it in our power to attain it? Is it teachable?

Philosophizing is part of the Process/es of Theorizing

An illustration (by means of a number of articles, books, opinions, statements, hypotheses, theories, arguments, reasoning and comments) of doing philosophy or philosophizing and its methods, as aspects of the contexts, stages, steps and features of the process/es of theorizing.

A number of implicit assumptions and tacit pre-suppositions of this socio-cultural practice and discourse, for example as they resemble that of everyday and religious perception (MNC, ‭“‬maturationally natural‭” ‬perception,‭ ‬cognition,‭ ‬and action),  are identified and revealed.

Reasons transmit. If one has a reason to attain an end, then one has a reason to effect means for that end: reasons are transmitted from end to means. I argue that the likelihood ratio is a compelling measure of reason transmission from ends to means. The likelihood ratio measure is superior to other measures, can be used to construct a condition specifying precisely when reasons transmit, and satisfies intuitions regarding end-means reason transmission in a broad array of cases.

RE: Facades, illusions & ideological concepts created & promoted by ancient royalty out of necessity; effective creation of an alternate version of reality. It is only by knowing this information that the true nature of ancient texts may be understood correctly. Not knowing, means making incorrect assumptions & conclusions. Important!

The thesis titled (The Philosophy of love: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre as a pattern) submitted to the council of the College of Arts, Department of Philosophy, University of Baghdad in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in Philosophy by Anwar Jabbar Tahir, 2002.
This thesis focuses on a basic theme, which is research into the entity of love according to the most important philosophers of existential philosophical discourse in modern and contemporary Western thought: Kierkegaard; Nietzsche and Sartre. It took these selected philosophical models as a starting point to treat the problematic structural relationships intertwined between the cultural, philosophical, ontological, and socio-cultural. For this reason, this thesis was aimed at researching and analyzing the nature of the relationship existing between the question of philosophy and the question of love, that is means the problematic of love in philosophical discourse, considering that the concept of love of wisdom in ancient Greek philosophy does not represent a specific entrance limited to research into the metaphysics of transcendent and absolute universal philosophy, as much as it represents the genealogy and anthropology of research into the identity of the question. Love or the philosophy of love as an entry point to wisdom, knowledge, and human-to-human communication in the world as well.

تتركز هذه الرسالة على ثيمة أساسية هي البحث في كينونة الحب عند اهم فلاسفة الخطاب الفلسفي الوجودي في الفكر الغربي الحديث والمعاصر، وهم: كيركجارد؛ نيتشه وسارتر. وقد اتخذت الرسالة من هذه النماذج الفلسفية المنتقاة نقطة الانطلاق لمعالجة العلاقات البنيوية الإشكالية المتداخلة بين كلّ من الثقافي والفلسفي والانطولوجي والسوسيو-ثقافي. لهذا جاءت الاطروحة على بحث وتحليل طبيعة العلاقة القائمة بين سؤال الفلسفة وسؤال العشق، على اعتبار أن مفهوم حب الحكمة في الفلسفة الاغريقية القديمة لا يمثل مدخلاً محددا يقتصر على البحث فيما ورائيات الفلسفة المتعالية والكونية المطلقة، بقدر ما هو يمثل جينالوجيا وانتروبولوجيا البحث في هويّة سؤال العشق أو فلسفة الحب بوصفهما مدخلا للحكمة والمعرفة والتواصل بين-انساني في العالم أيضا.

in: Neues Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe. Herausgegeben von Armin G. Wildfeuer und Petra Kolmer in Verbindung mit Wolfram Hogrebe, Ludger Honnefelder, Christoph Horn, Wolfgang Kluxen und Wilhelm Vossenkuhl, 3 Bde., Freiburg i. Br. 2011, Bd. 3, 2333-2370

Suarez seems to view the state as arising from some form of contract. Does that mean, as Quentin Skinner has suggested, Suarez is a herald of modern contract theory - of Hobbes and Locke? This paper argues not. There is a deep discontinuity between Suarez and later political theory, arising from a radically different metaphysics of reason and the self. For Suarez, the state does not simply channel or restrain human desires. The state acts as a conduit for, and teacher on behalf of normative power - the power of truth and goodness to move us with the force of reason. The state channels reason rather as the Church channels grace - normative power at the supernatural level. The radical differences between Suarez and modern political theory arise from a profound naturalisation of political theory after Suarez - and a pioneer naturaliser was Hobbes.

The debate between scientific realists and anti-realist empiricists is often treated as a question about whose position is true, or rationally preferable per se. This debate is widely considered to have been argued to a stalemate. I suggest we accept this stalemate and instead investigate when and whether scientific realism or anti-realist empiricism is more useful, and thereby rationally preferable, for certain individuals. I develop a methodological framework for doing this, then put it to use by investigating the practical benefits for working scientists of adopting one view over the other. This investigation is historical rather than philosophical, and therefore empirical rather than theoretical, focused around a case study of the way philosophical commitments influenced the scientific practice of late 19th c. electrodynamics researchers in positive and negative ways.

The goal of my paper is to consider how one chooses one’s own action. First, I will try to understand how both his past and his environment can condition someone's action. According to Sartre, we can act without being determined by our past which is always separated from us. It will be important to understand how such a process is possible. Is man completely free to act? Then I will raise the question of our reasons for acting in order to show that reasons do not pre-exist in the world. Motives are always motives for an agent who gives them meaning. They never condition the action completely. By his project, the agent reveals some reasons to act and these reasons have a value only in relation to the project adopted by the agent. Therefore, we can say that everyone is condemned to be free.

How is practical reasoning related to ethical reasoning? The most common view is that they are identical: practical reasoning just is ethical reasoning. I criticize this view and then propose an alternative account of the relation between ethical thought and practical thought: ethical reasoning is reasoning *about* sound practical reasoning. I argue that this account of the relation between ethics and practical reasoning explains various phenomena that more familiar views leave unexplained. It also entails that the philosophy of action bears heavily on ethical inquiry.