Moral Rationality

In recent research, dual-process theories of cognition have been the primary model for explaining moral judgment and reasoning. These theories understand moral thinking in terms of two separate domains: one deliberate and analytic, the other quick and instinctive. -/- This book presents a new theory of the philosophy and cognitive science of moral judgment. Hanno Sauer develops and defends an account of "triple-process" moral psychology, arguing that moral thinking and reasoning are only insufficiently understood when described in terms of a (...) quick but intuitive and a slow but rational type of cognition. This approach severely underestimates the importance and impact of dispositions to initiate and engage in critical thinking – the cognitive resource in charge of counteracting my-side bias, closed-mindedness, dogmatism, and breakdowns of self-control. Moral cognition is based, not on emotion and reason, but on an integrated network of intuitive, algorithmic and reflective thinking. -/- Moral Thinking, Fast and Slow will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

An academic enterprise that sought to promote human welfare rationally would give intellectual priority to tackling problems of living, including global problems, and would take the basic aim to be to seek and promote wisdom. Universities today, devoted to the pursuit of knowledge - insofar as they are not devoted to money - when judged from the standpoint of promoting human welfare, betray reason, and as a result betray humanity. Why? Because a bad philosophy of inquiry is built into the (...) intellectual/institutional structure of universities all over the world. Philosophers are, unfortunately, blind to this widespread adoption of an irrational, damaging philosophy of inquiry. They fail to appreciate that the basic aim of academia ought to be wisdom, and not just knoweldge. Despite the fact that "philosophy" means "love of wisdom", academic philosophers reveal in their blindness to their proper task, that they do not love wisdom. (shrink)

Materialism, reductionism, behaviorism, functionalism, dynamic systems theory and computationalism are popular views, but they were shown by Wittgenstein and more recently by Searle to be incoherent. The study of behavior encompasses all of human life but behavior is largely automatic and unconscious and even the conscious part, mostly expressed in language (which Wittgenstein equates with the mind), is not perspicuous, so it is critical to have a framework which Searle calls the Logical Structure of Rationality (LSR) and I call the (...) Descriptive Psychology of Higher Order Thought (DPHOT). After summarizing the framework worked out by Wittgenstein and Searle, as extended by myself and by modern reasoning research, I comment on this first book in a trilogy on Human Nature by P.M.S. Hacker, the leading authority on Wittgenstein and one of the best modern philosophers. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

Though this volume is a bit dated, there are few recent popular books dealing specifically with the psychology of murder and it’s a quick overview available for a few dollars, so still well worth the effort. It makes no attempt to be comprehensive and is somewhat superficial in places, with the reader expected to fill in the blanks from his many other books and the vast literature on violence. For an update see e.g., Buss, The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology 2nd (...) ed. V1 (2016) p 265, 266, 270–282, 388–389, 545–546, 547, 566 and Buss, Evolutionary Psychology 5th ed. (2015) p 26, 96–97,223, 293-4, 300, 309–312, 410 and Shackelford and Hansen, The Evolution of Violence (2014). He has been among the top evolutionary psychologists for several decades and covers a wide range of behavior in his works, but here he concentrates almost entirely on the psychological mechanisms that cause individual people to murder and their possible evolutionary function in the EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation—i.e., the plains of Africa during the last million years or so). -/- Buss starts by noting that as with other behaviors, ‘alternative’ explanations such as psychopathology, jealousy, social environment, group pressures, drugs and alcohol etc. do not really explain, since the question still remains as to why these produce homicidal impulses, i.e., they are the proximate causes and not the ultimate evolutionary (genetic) ones. As always, it inevitably boils down to inclusive fitness (kin selection), and so to the struggle for access to mates and resources, which is the ultimate explanation for all behavior in all organisms. Sociological data (and common sense) make it clear that younger poorer males are the most likely to kill. He presents his own and others homicide data from industrialized nations, and tribal cultures, conspecific killing in animals, archeology, FBI data and his own research into normal people's homicidal fantasies. Much archeological evidence continues to accumulate of murders, including that of whole groups, or of groups minus young females, in prehistoric times. -/- After surveying Buss’s comments, I present a very brief summary of intentional psychology (the logical structure of rationality), which is covered extensively in my many other articles and books. -/- Those with a lot of time who want a detailed history of homicidal violence from an evolutionary perspective may consult Steven Pinker’s ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined’(2012), and my review of it, easily available on the net and in two of my recent books. Briefly, Pinker notes that murder has decreased steadily and dramatically by a factor of about 30 since our days as foragers. So, even though guns now make it extremely easy for anyone to kill, homicide is much less common. Pinker thinks this is due to various social mechanisms that bring out our ‘better angels’, but I think it’s due mainly to the temporary abundance of resources from the merciless rape of our planet, coupled with increased police presence, with communication and surveillance and legal systems that make it far more likely to be punished. This becomes clear every time there is even a brief and local absence of the police. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

Anthropocentric biocentrism says that human beings ought to promote the survival of our own species above the survival of other species. But those who attack AB sometimes take it to say something much stronger: we ought to promote our species’ various desires, interests, and goals. I call the latter view AB+. I argue that AB and anti-AB+ are not only mutually compatible but in some respects mutually complementary, such that there are good prospects for combining them into a hybrid-view. After (...) all, we know that the survival of our species is deeply connected to the well being of the environment. (shrink)

The 19th Century New England author Thoreau provides an approach to conscience and unjust laws approximating that given by St. Thomas Aquinas in _Summa Theologiae_. But the portrait of conscience given by Thoreau in the 1848 oration “Civil Disobedience” is incomplete. Thoreau’s approach is solved by accepting insights given in Part I and Part I–II of _Summa Theologiae_. Allowing St. Thomas’ insights requires reform of Thoreau’s civil disobedience and conscientious objection. But Thoreau’s arguments are given new life.

DAVID WARD, in his interesting essay, advances a number of propositions: -/- That moral (including evil) behavior must be governed by a principle. That the principles involved in evil actions are unconscious. That these unconscious evil principles may be the product of malignant narcissism. And somewhat tentatively, that evil is driven "independent of any conscious desires" and by implication the evil person may be stripped of moral responsibility for their behavior. -/- To begin with common ground: Those who act in (...) an evil manner, in my experience, do not usually acknowledge that they acted on an evil principle (nor do those who commit good acts, excepting the terminally self-righteous, usually explain their behavior in terms of adherence to principles). Among serious offenders, self-justification in terms of having no choice is more common or the hapless claim that "I don't know why I did that" or even "I can't believe I did that" (which all too often becomes "I can't remember doing that" for as Nietzche (1886) wrote "I have done that—says my memory. I could not have done that—says my pride and remains inexorable. Eventually memory gives in"). Those who do appeal to principle to justify their evil actions almost inevitably cite value systems that have considerable, if not universal, acceptance. I have encountered men who proudly declared their killings to be part of the pursuit of righteous aims, such as protecting children from pedophiles, stopping the killing of the unborn child, reducing AIDS, and cleansing their city of vice. Interestingly the combination of dreadful, and in many cases repeated, violence with self-righteous superiority often attracts from fellow prisoners and prison staff a label of evil. (shrink)

This paper concerns Warren Quinn’s famous “The Puzzle of the Self-Torturer.” I argue that even if we accept his assumption that practical rationality is purely instrumental such that what he ought to do is simply a function of how the relevant options compare to each other in terms of satisfying his actual preferences that doesn’t mean that every explanation as to why he shouldn’t advance to the next level must appeal to the idea that so advancing would be suboptimal in (...) terms of the satisfaction of his actual preferences. Rather, we can admit that his advancing would always be optimal, but argue that advancing isn’t always what he ought to do given that advancing sometimes fails to meet some necessary condition for being what he ought to do. For instance, something can be what he ought to do only if it’s an option for him. What’s more, something can be what he ought to do only if it’s something that he can do without responding inappropriately to his reasons—or, so, I argue. Thus, the solution to the puzzle is, I argue, to realize that, in certain circumstances, advancing is not what the self-torturer ought to do given that he can do so only by responding inappropriately to his reasons. (shrink)

The unconditional version of motivational internalism says that if an agent sincerely judges that to φ in circumstances C is the best option available to her, then, as a matter of conceptual necessity, she will be motivated to φ in C. This position faces a powerful counterargument according to which it is possible for various cases of practical irrationality to completely defeat an agent’s moral motivation while, at the same time, leaving her appreciation of her moral reasons intact. In this (...) paper, I will argue that weakness of will, as the paradigmatic case of practical irrationality, and all other cases of practical irrationality that feature in standard formulations of this argument do not represent genuine counterexamples to this version of motivational internalism. In this sense, the main aim of this paper is to show that proponents of this internalist position are well justified in their denial of the claim that there are people who are completely unmotivated by their judgments about what is the best option available to them. (shrink)

In any sense of "being good" consequences are of utmost importance.

A theory of normative reasons for action faces the fundamental challenge of accounting for the dual nature of reasons. On the one hand, some reasons appear to depend on, and vary with, desires. On the other hand, some reasons appear categorical in the sense of being desire‐independent. However, it has turned out to be difficult to provide a theory that accommodates both these aspects. Internalism is able to account for the former aspect, but has difficulties to account for the latter, (...) whereas externalism is vulnerable to the reverse problem. In this paper, I outline an ecumenical view that consists of two parts: First, I defend a distinction between requiring reasons and justifying reasons in terms of their different connections to rationality. Second, I put forward a subjectivist, procedural, view of rationality. The ecumenical alternative, I argue, is able to accommodate the mentioned duality within a unified theory. In outlining this view, I also suggest that it has a number of other significant advantages. (shrink)

The study’s main thesis is that respect for some moral values is a condition for methodologically rational decisions, namely, decisions which do not satisfy the condition are either not methodologically rational at all, or not fully rational. The paper shows supporting arguments for the thesis in terms of the philosophical theories by Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Max Weber, Jean-Paul Sartre and some other thinkers. Their presentation undergoes phenomenological analysis of the phenomenon of decision making.

This text analyzes the concept of philosophical superstition according to Joseph Maria Bocheński. It specifies sufficient conditions for beliefs and statements to be a philosophical superstition. Philosophical superstitions consist in specific contradictions in beliefs or statements: (a) Superstitions assume or contain contradictory beliefs or statements or/and (b) they are inconsistent with direct experiences or (c) beliefs of their followers, or/and (d) without sufficient reasons superstitions contradict what has already been sufficiently justified or/and (e) they contradict semantic rules of reference of (...) a language in which they are formulated. (shrink)

Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind argues that a careful examination of the scientific literature reveals a foundational role for reasoning in moral thought and action. Grounding moral psychology in reason then paves the way for a defense of moral knowledge and virtue against a variety of empirical challenges, such as debunking arguments and situationist critiques. The book attempts to provide a corrective to current trends in moral psychology, which celebrate emotion over reason and generate pessimism about the psychological (...) mechanisms underlying commonsense morality. Ultimately, there is rationality in ethics not just despite but in virtue of the neurobiological and evolutionary materials that shape moral cognition and motivation. (shrink)

فلسفة التكنولوجيا - فال دوسيك (المقدمة والفصلين الثالث والرابع) - ترجمة وتعليق، في إطار مشروع لترجمة الكتاب بالكامل بالاشتراك مع آخرين.

This paper has three aims. First, I defend, in its most radical form, Hume's scepticism about practical reason, as it applies to purely self-regarding matters. It's not always irrational to discount the future, to be inconstant in one's preferences, to have incompatible desires, to not pursue the means to one's ends, or to fail to maximize one's own good. Second, I explain how our response to the “irrational” agent should be understood as an expression of frustrated sympathy, in Adam Smith's (...) sense of sympathy, rather than a genuine judgement about Reason. We judge these people because we cannot imaginatively identify with their desires and attitudes, and this is frustrating. Third, compared to the standard cognitive view, my account better explains the nature of our criticism of the “irrational,” and, by portraying “irrationality” as a cause of upset to other people, provides a better normative basis for being “rational.”. (shrink)

This article argues that existing approaches to programming ethical AI fail to resolve a serious moral-semantic trilemma, generating interpretations of ethical requirements that are either too semantically strict, too semantically flexible, or overly unpredictable. This paper then illustrates the trilemma utilizing a recently proposed ‘general ethical dilemma analyzer,’ _GenEth_. Finally, it uses empirical evidence to argue that human beings resolve the semantic trilemma using general cognitive and motivational processes involving ‘mental time-travel,’ whereby we simulate different possible pasts and futures. I (...) demonstrate how mental time-travel psychology leads us to resolve the semantic trilemma through a six-step process of interpersonal negotiation and renegotiation, and then conclude by showing how comparative advantages in processing power would plausibly cause AI to use similar processes to solve the semantic trilemma more reliably than we do, leading AI to make better moral-semantic choices than humans do by our very own lights. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum argues that “garden-variety anger” is normatively irrational, politically unnecessary, and inevitably destructive (Nussbaum 2015). Anger, on this account, is portrayed as a primitive vestige of bygone days, an impediment to the genuine pursuit of justice and the honoring of obligations. Yet, on Nussbaum’s account, there is one exception: “transitional anger” – anger that quickly transitions into compassionate hope, focusing on future welfare. Martin Luther King, Jr. is evoked as an exemplar here. In response, this paper revisits Aristotle’s Nicomachean (...) Ethics to point out that (even-tempered) anger was listed among the virtues, and to discuss the practical wisdom required to approximate the mean in these cases. A case is made for the approbation of anger (in relation to the right person(s), in the right amount, at the right time, with the right aim in view, and in the right way). The argument hinges on the persistence of institutionalized oppressions, situated ignorance, and the role anger plays in galvanizing social agency among those who suffer social injustice. (shrink)

Research in the subject area of economics (as a social science) has defined its ontologie of scientific investigation through economic methodology; a philosophical approach entailing the proviso of empirical evidence and backed by an understanding of human interaction in their natural habitat. The contention of economic methodology being refuted for its non-scientific means of investigation and particularly with the application of Ceteris Paribus (CP) law, has been critically addressed in this article, with Sierra Leone as a case example. Sierra Leone (...) is a complex economy and issues surrounding the assumption of CP has been brought to the fore, with a view of the political economy structure being made transparent so as to make it possible for economists to address critical issues surrounding corruption (exogenous factors), not accounted for in econometric modelling. This is not necessarily that which is considered as the most obvious, with the use of CP concept, for example, the influence of naturally occurring incidents like adverse weather conditions, flooding and earthquakes. (shrink)

Artikkelissaan ”The Balance of Reason” Marcelo Dascal on osoittanut, että metafora syiden punnitsemisesta järjen vaa’assa on yleinen Leibnizin kirjoituksissa ja sitä on pidettävä hänen yleisenä järkeilyn metodinaan tilanteissa, joissa ei voida suorittaa täydellistä loogista analyysiä. Keskustelen tässä esitelmässä tuosta metaforasta ja ehdotan Jaakko Hintikan ja Simo Knuuttilan aiempien esityksien pohjalle rakentaen, että käsityksissään ihmisen praktisesta rationaalisuudesta Leibniz sovelsi myös toista melko tuntemattomaksi jäänyttä heuristista päätöksentekomallia, joka liittyy hänen työhönsä luonnonfilosofiassa ja mielenfilosofiassa, ja jota hän sovelsi tapauksissa joissa päätökseen vaikuttavat arvot (...) ovat toisiaan täydentäviä. Tämä moniarvoisuuden huomioon ottava malli edustaa uudenlaista ja modernia ajattelua moraalifilosofian historiassa. (shrink)

Voluntarists in the early modern period speak of an agent’s following the law because she was ordered to do so or because it’s the law. Contemporary philosophers tend either to ignore or to dismiss the possibility of justified obedience of this sort – that is, they ignore or dismiss the possibility that something’s being the law could in itself constitute a good reason to act. In this paper, I suggest that this view isn’t taken seriously because of certain widespread beliefs (...) about practical reason – in particular, it’s due to the belief that it’s impossible for reasons to be “bootstrapped” into existence. I argue, though, that a plausible account of practical reasoning should allow that reasons can be bootstrapped into existence, and so there’s no reason to be suspicious about the possibility of a person’s being justified in following the law because it’s the law. I end by suggesting that this conclusion opens up important new avenues of inquiry for philosophers working on topics related to legal obedience. (shrink)

Until very recently, normative theorizing in ethics was frequently conducted without even mentioning uncertainty. Just a few years ago, Sven Ove Hansson described this state of affairs with the slogan: “Ethics still lives in a Newtonian world.” In the new Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Probability, David McCarthy writes that “mainstream moral philosophy has not been much concerned with probability,” understanding probability as “the best-known tool for thinking about uncertainty.” This special predilection for certainty in ethics was surprising since most (...) decisions or evaluations are made both by individuals and policy-makers through the fog of a widely understood uncertainty that includes risk, ignorance, indeterminacy. Therefore, the main task of this special issue and international essay prize competition is to encourage philosophers to rethink the standard paradigm in ethics by redirecting discussions about ethical questions to problems involving different kinds of uncertainty when an individual or a policy maker does not have access to or knowledge about. (shrink)

Many of us read Peter Singer ’ s work on our obligations to those in desperate need with our students. Famously, Singer argues that we have a moral obligation to give a significant portion of our assets to famine relief. If my own experience is not atypical, it is quite common for students, upon grasping the implications of Singer ’ s argument, to ask whether Singer gives to famine relief. In response it might be tempting to remind students of the (...) ad hominem fallacy of attacking the person advancing an argument rather than the argument itself. In this paper I argue that the “ ad hominem reply ” to students ’ request for information about Singer is misguided. First I show that biographical facts about the person advancing an argument can constitute indirect evidence for the soundness / unsoundness of the argument. Second, I argue that such facts are relevant because they may reveal that one can discard the argument without thereby incurring moral responsibility for failing to act on its conclusion even if the argument is sound. (shrink)

Covering an important theme in Humean studies, this book focuses on Hume's hugely influential attempt in book three of his _Treatise of Human Nature _to derive the conclusion that morality is a matter of feeling, not reason, from its link with action. Claiming that Hume's argument contains a fundamental contradiction that has gone unnoticed in modern debate, this fascinating volume contains a refreshing combination of historical-scholarly work and contemporary analysis that seeks to expose this contradiction and therefore provide a significant (...) contribution to current scholarship in the area. Sophie Botros begins by pointing out that a contradiction concerning whether reason can influence action, or is wholly powerless, occurs in the intermediary premiss. She then moves on to draw out the consequences for recent meta-ethics of the failure to acknowledge this contradiction. Finally, highlighting the root of the argument's power in an article of naturalistic dogma, she suggests how it may be possible to restore to our moral concepts their traditional and integral link with both truth and motivation. A significant and thought-provoking addition to this popular field of study, _Hume, Reason and Morality_ is undoubtedly an important resource for moral philosophers interested in meta-ethics and practical reason, as well as Humean scholars. (shrink)

First published in 1990. The aim of this thesis is to show that the way to understand the central claims of Kant’s ethics is to accept the idea that morality is a distinctive form of rationality; that the moral "ought" belongs to a system of imperatives based in practical reason; and that moral judgment, therefore, is a species of rational assessment of agents’ actions. It argues, in effect, that you cannot understand Kant’s views about morality if you read him with (...) Humean assumptions about rationality. This title will be of interest to students of philosophy. (shrink)

Reissue of Becker's 1973 monograph, which argues the following: Much discussion of morality presupposes that moral judgments are always, at bottom, arbitrary. Moral scepticism, or at least moral relativism, has become common currency among the liberally educated. This remains the case even while political crises become intractable, and it is increasingly apparent that the scope of public policy formulated with no reference to moral justification is extremely limited. The thesis of _On Justifying Moral Judgments_ insists, on the contrary, that rigorous (...) justifications are possible for moral judgments. Crucially, Becker argues for the coordination of the three main approaches to moral theory: axiology, deontology, and agent morality. A pluralistic account of the concept of value is expounded, and a solution to the problem of ultimate justification is suggested. Analyses of valuation, evaluation, the ‘is-ought’ issue, and the concepts of obligation, responsibility and the good person are all incorporated into the main line of argument. (shrink)

The book discusses recent developments in Discourse Ethics and argues for a new proposal of how to spell out its core ideas. It finds that its basic principles ("D" and "U") are too specific: they focus on norms, identify those affected with those participating in discourse and use the narrow vocabulary of interests and consequences. It proposes instead: (D1) Only those claims are valid that can be defended against any objection of any possible agent. Discourse Ethics should be understood as (...) a normative framework for ethical argumentation that allows for a plurality of moral principles and for reflections on their suitability for specific contexts. It demands that one acts according to one's best reasons. (shrink)

In an unsung yet excellent paper, W.Z. Harvey set out to explain how both Maimonides and Spinoza have similarly problematic views on the nature of the knowledge of good and evil. In it, he proposed an answer to solving the problem. In the many decades since, debates surrounding this topic have flourished. A recent paper by Joshua Parens, his conclusions mark a distinction between Spinoza and Maimonides that threaten to undermine Harvey’s solution to the problem. I will argue that, although (...) Parens’ distinction forces us to revise Harvey’s contention, Harvey’s argument is still generally valid. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This essay examines and criticizes a set of Kantian objections to Parfit's attempt in Reasons and Persons to connect his theory of personal identity to practical rationality and moral philosophy. Several of Parfit's critics have tried to sever the link he forges between his metaphysical and practical conclusions by invoking the Kantian thought that even if we accept his metaphysical theory of personal identity, we still have good practical grounds for rejecting that theory when deliberating about what to do. (...) The argument between Parfit and his opponents illuminates broader questions about the relationship between our metaphysical beliefs and ourpractical reasons.RÉSUMÉ: Cet article examine et critique un ensemble d'objections kantiennes à la tentative de Parfit, dans Reasons and Persons, d'ajuster sa théorie de l'identité personnelle à la rationalité pratique et à la philosophie morale. Plusieurs des critiques de Parfit ont essayé de rompre le lien qu'il tisse entre ses conclusions métaphysiques et pratiques en évoquant l'idée kantienne selon -laquelle, même si nous acceptons sa théorie métaphysique de l'identité personnelle, il existe cependant de bonnes raisons pratiques de rejeter cette théorie lorsque nous délibérons à propos de ce que nous devons faire. Le débat entre Parfit et ses adversaires nous éclaire sur un questionnement plus large à propos du rapport entre croyance métaphysique et raison pratique. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This essay examines and criticizes a set of Kantian objections to Parfit's attempt in Reasons and Persons to connect his theory of personal identity to practical rationality and moral philosophy. Several of Parfit's critics have tried to sever the link he forges between his metaphysical and practical conclusions by invoking the Kantian thought that even if we accept his metaphysical theory of personal identity, we still have good practical grounds for rejecting that theory when deliberating about what to do. (...) The argument between Parfit and his opponents illuminates broader questions about the relationship between our metaphysical beliefs and ourpractical reasons.RÉSUMÉ: Cet article examine et critique un ensemble d'objections kantiennes à la tentative de Parfit, dans Reasons and Persons, d'ajuster sa théorie de l'identité personnelle à la rationalité pratique et à la philosophie morale. Plusieurs des critiques de Parfit ont essayé de rompre le lien qu'il tisse entre ses conclusions métaphysiques et pratiques en évoquant l'idée kantienne selon -laquelle, même si nous acceptons sa théorie métaphysique de l'identité personnelle, il existe cependant de bonnes raisons pratiques de rejeter cette théorie lorsque nous délibérons à propos de ce que nous devons faire. Le débat entre Parfit et ses adversaires nous éclaire sur un questionnement plus large à propos du rapport entre croyance métaphysique et raison pratique. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between motivation, desire, pleasure and value. I argue that the motivational grounds of action are the kinds of desires that tend, in rational persons, to be produced both by experience of the good, and by beliefs that something one can do would be good.

In this paper I offer a partial defense of a constitutivist view according to which it is possible to defend fundamental requirements of practical reason by appeal to facts about what is constitutive of rational agency. I show how it is possible for that approach to circumvent the ‘is’/’ought’ problem as well as the requirement that it be possible to act contrary to practical reason. But I do not attempt to establish any particular fundamental requirement. The key ideas are that (...) such a requirement is not genuine if it is arbitrary, and that it is arbitrary just in case it needs explanation and that explanation could not, even in principle, be provided. (shrink)

It is questionable whether counterfeiting in many areas of life contributes to unethical behavior to a wider extent. If the notion is supported by data, then the moral damage in a society could be prevented by reducing the counterfeit self and behavior to a bare minimum. This study aimed at empirically testing the measurement model of counterfeit self of Wood et al. (2008) among Indonesians as well as theoretically reviewing counterfeit self roles in unethical behavior. The participants of this study (...) were 1,655 high school students (764 males, 891 females; Mage = 15.76 years old; SDage = 1.08 years) recruited through a purposive sampling technique in North Sumatera and West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The data analysis technique used was Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The results showed that the counterfeit self model--comprised of counterfeit self dimensions, namely Self-alienation (ALIEN), Inauthentic Living (LIVE), and Accepting External Influence (EXT)--was supported by the empirical data. However, the dimension of EXT could not be represented by its indicators. The study contributed to the psychological body of knowledge that the EXT dimension might need to be excluded from the measurement of counterfeit self on teenagers, especially in Indonesia and other Eastern countries. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to challenge widely accepted views of the relationship among rationality, morality, and prudence. It contends that we cannot understand either the rational or the moral enterprise without a correct philosophical view of the human self, and that such a view of the self is impossible without taking account of the rational and the moral enterprises themselves. The paper concludes that the moral point of view is anchored in the nature of selfhood so that one (...) can be neither rational and immoral nor prudent and immoral. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on the evolution of human social norm psychology. More precisely, I want to show how the emergence of our distinctive capacity to follow social norms and make social normative judgments is connected to the lineage explanation of our capacity to form shared intentions, and how such capacity is related to a diverse cluster of prototypical moral judgments. I argue that in explaining the evolution of this form of normative cognition we also require an understanding of the developmental (...) trajectory of this capacity. For this purpose, the thesis is organized as follow. In the first chapter, I make some methodological remarks and provide the general overview and plan for the dissertation. In the second chapter, I explain what my explanatory target is and why it matters. On the view I am defending, shared intentional psychology gives rise to a special form of psychology that enables us to engage in social normative thinking. These norms are represented as shared intentional states. Moral psychology, in contrast, is more diverse. For moral judgments define a quite heterogeneous class of mental states—although some moral judgments may involve the representation and execution of norms, certainly not all of them do. I show that although much of our distinctive social norm psychology can be explained within the framework of shared intentionality, moral judgments cannot be unified in the same way. In the third chapter, I provide the baseline of social-cognitive capacities that serve as starting point for my lineage explanation. I argue that hominin social cognition was for a very long period of our evolutionary history essentially a matter of low-level cognitive and motivational processes. On this picture, bottom-up affective processes regulated the social lives of early hominins without requiring any special top-down mechanism of normative thinking such as a capacity for understanding and representing social norms. In the fourth chapter, I argue that human-like social norm psychology evolved as a result of the selective pressures that gave rise to shared intentionality, especially the demands that came from collective hunting. Yet collective hunting was not the whole story of the evolution of shared intentionality, for our capacity to form shared intentional mental states emerged from the interplay between the selective pressures that led to cooperative breeding in humans as well as organized, goal-oriented, collective hunting. Thus, I propose an evo-devo account of shared intentionality and its normative dimension since I argue that explaining the evolution of this particular form of normative thinking crucially depends on information about the developmental trajectory of this capacity. Finally, in the fifth chapter, I focus on how social norms are acquired and how the way we learn them gives rise to some prototypical cluster of moral judgments. Thus, this chapter returns to some of themes and arguments of the first chapter by explaining how the distinction between moral judgments and nonmoral judgments can be culturally transmitted. (shrink)

Niko Kolodny and John MacFarlane claim that a situation involving some trapped miners involves a deontic paradox the resolution of which requires rejecting the logical law of modus ponens. I show that the appearance of paradox results from confusion and that the miners case supplies no cogent reason for impugning modus ponens.

The results of empirical research show that people prefer to help identified individuals rather than unidentified ones. This preference has an important influence on many private and public decisions, for example concerning vaccination or the distribution of healthcare resources. The aim of this article is to define the terms: “identified”, “unidentified”, “statistical”, and then to analyze three philosophical arguments concerning the normative implications of this preference: 1) contractualism ex ante ; 2) fair distribution of chances and risks; 3) principles regarding (...) the concentration of good effects and the distribution of bad effects. I will demonstrate that these arguments, which are related to interesting philosophical problems, such as counterfactuals, are not convincing. (shrink)

The crisis of our times is science in a world without wisdom. The immense intellectual success of modern science and technology have given some of us unprecedented powers to act, which has led to all the great benefits of the modern world, and to the grave global crises we now face. Before modern science, we lacked the power to do too much damage to ourselves or the planet; now we have science, wisdom has become, not a private luxury but a (...) public necessity. Unless we learn to become a bit wiser, sooner or later we will destroy ourselves. But how can we learn to become wiser? We can learn from the last place many would look - namely science! We can learn from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards a wiser world. This is in fact an old idea. It goes back to the 18th century French Enlightenment. But, in developing the idea, the philosophes of the Enlightenment made three gross blunders. They failed to capture correctly the nature of the progress-achieving methods of science; they failed to generalize these methods properly; and, most disastrously of all, they applied their misconstrued scientific method, not to the social world directly, not to the task of making social progress towards an enlightened world, but instead to the task of improving knowledge of social phenomena, to the task of developing social science. This botched version of the profound Enlightenment idea was developed throughout the 19th century, and built into universities in the early 20th century with the creation of disciplines of social science. As a result, academic inquiry today is a botched version of what we need. Instead of giving priority to problems of living, and devoting itself to helping humanity acquire a bit more wisdom, academia today devotes itself to the pursuit of knowledge. That is the key disaster of our times. Our institutions of learning seek knowledge, but fail disastrously to devote themselves to helping humanity acquire a bit more wisdom. If the world is to acquire global wisdom, it needs institutions of learning rationally devoted to the task. As a matter of supreme urgency, we need to bring about a revolution in academia so that the basic task becomes, not just to acquire knowledge, but to seek and promote social wisdom. (shrink)

This paper is a review and critical discussion of John Broome’s Rationality Through Reasoning. In particular, it engages critically with Broome’s view on the independence of normative reasons and rationality, his construal of the capacity, property, and requirement senses of “rationality”, and his account of reasoning as a conscious, rule-following operation on mental contents.

The nature of practical reasoning is a matter of considerable philosophical interest, particularly the extent to which the process can be understood in terms of standard (i.e. deductive) reasoning, and what form it might take. Even were it to turn out, e.g. as per Aristotle, that essential elements cannot be accommodated deductively, it would still remain of interest to delimit any and all respects that can be so accommodated. -/- In the following I wish to demonstrate that the culmination of (...) a typical deliberative process can be represented deductively. (shrink)

What does it take for one to truly flourish? Is happiness enough? In this brief discourse, I explore the popular ideas of flourishing and bring forth alternative possibilities which, grounded in reason, seek the true meaning of flourishing.

Rationalists about the psychology of moral judgment argue that moral cognition has a rational foundation. Recent challenges to this account, based on findings in the empirical psychology of moral judgment, contend that moral thinking has no rational basis. In this book, Hanno Sauer argues that moral reasoning does play a role in moral judgment—but not, as is commonly supposed, because conscious reasoning produces moral judgments directly. Moral reasoning figures in the acquisition, formation, maintenance, and reflective correction of moral intuitions. Sauer (...) proposes that when we make moral judgments we draw on a stable repertoire of intuitions about what is morally acceptable, which we have acquired over the course of our moral education—episodes of rational reflection that have established patterns for automatic judgment foundation. Moral judgments are educated and rationally amenable moral intuitions. -/- Sauer engages extensively with the empirical evidence on the psychology of moral judgment and argues that it can be shown empirically that reasoning plays a crucial role in moral judgment. He offers detailed counterarguments to the anti-rationalist challenge (the claim that reason and reasoning play no significant part in morality and moral judgment) and the emotionist challenge (the argument for the emotional basis of moral judgment). Finally, he uses Joshua Greene's Dual Process model of moral cognition to test the empirical viability and normative persuasiveness of his account of educated intuitions. Sauer shows that moral judgments can be automatic, emotional, intuitive, and rational at the same time. (shrink)

This paper introduces (or reiterates) a paradox: if humanist (rational and egalitarian) principles of social organization are attendant upon the evolution of an educated, leisured class (be it feudal or bourgeois), how can these norms be applied from the “bottom up”? It is the paradox of democratic liberalism, the spectre behind the ideal of “participatory parity” which both entails and presupposes equality of capability, and hence of socioeconomic status. By way of a very brief genealogy of enlightenment values, against contemporary (...) public discourse, this article sets the question into stark relief, viz.: if the principles of equality and rational exchange do not correspond to any common substratum of humanity, any inalienable aspect of persons or social organization per se, but comprise rather a ruling class etiquette, for and among the members of this class, therefore reflecting a developmental achievement, then can these principles be taken out of their context and reapplied, so to speak, where they never belonged and from which they evolved? Are the principles of rational discourse the same as the principles of material (re)production? Could they ever be? Or do they necessarily convey the most insidious of ruling class ideologies? Contemporary thought on (post)colonization and critical theory of capitalism (“bourgeois” critique, arguably) beg this question and invite this paradox. (shrink)

I argue that having a theory of mind requires having at least implicit knowledge of the norms of the community, and that an implicit understanding of the normative is what drives the development of a theory of mind. This conclusion is defended by two arguments. First I argue that a theory of mind likely did not develop in order to predict behavior, because before individuals can use propositional attitudes to predict behavior, they have to be able to use them in (...) explanations of behavior. Rather, I suggest that the need to explain behavior in terms of reasons is the primary function of a theory of mind. I further argue that in order to be motivated to offer explanations of behavior, one must have at least an implicit understanding of appropriate behavior, which implies at least an implicit understanding of norms. The second argument looks at three cases of nonhuman animal societies that appear to operate within a system of norms. While there is no evidence that any species other than humans have a theory of mind, there is evidence that other species have sensitivity to the normative. Finally, I propose an explanation for the priority of norms over a theory of mind: given an understanding of norms in a society, and the ability to recognize and sanction violations, there developed a need to understand actions that violated the norms, and such explanations could only be given in terms of a person's reasons. There is a significant benefit to being able to explain behavior that violates norms, because explanations of the right sort can also serve to justify behavior. (shrink)

This discussion treats a set of familiar social derelictions as consequences of the perversion of a universalistic moral theory in the service of an ill-considered or insufficiently examined personal agenda.The set includes racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and class elitism, among other similar pathologies, under the general heading of discrimination. The perversion of moral theory from which these derelictions arise, I argue, involves restricting its scope of application to some preferred subgroup of the moral community of human beings. -/- The following (...) analysis of higher-order discrimination suggests that we often select the individuals who constitute such subgroups for reasons that we ourselves would reject on moral grounds were we to examine them carefully, but that we choose instead to put our rational resources in the service of avoiding any such examination at all costs. The implication is that arguments that truncate the scope of moral theory in fact justify bestowing the gift of moral treatment on a select few who deserve it no more than the many from whom we withhold it. Therefore, it would be precipitous to conclude that universalistic moral theory can be legitimately restricted in its practical scope of application in any way at all. (shrink)

On one conception of practical rationality, being rational is most fundamentally a matter of avoiding incoherent combinations of attitudes. This conception construes the norms of rationality as codified by rational requirements, and one plausible rational requirement is that you not be akratic: that you not judge, all things considered, that you ought to ϕ while failing to choose or intend to ϕ. On another conception of practical rationality, being rational is most fundamentally a matter of thinking or acting in a (...) way that’s informed by your practical reasons. This second conception construes the norms of rationality in terms that appear to allow the possibility of rational akrasia, since your capacity to act on your reasons can function at a level that need not involve deliberative judgment. Though their treatments of akrasia make them seem incompatible, I’ll argue that the two conceptions of rationality are not incompatible. It is possible to accommodate the core insight motivating defenses of ‘rational’ akrasia within the conception of rationality as codified by requirements of rational coherence. (shrink)