Practical Reasoning

In her influential and challenging paper “Skepticism about Practical Reason” Christine Korsgaard sets out to refute an important strand of Humean scepticism as it concerns a Kantian understanding of practical reason.1 Korsgaard distinguishes two components of scepticism about practical reason. The first, which she refers to as content scepticism, argues that reason cannot of itself provide any “substantive guidance to choice and action” (SPR, 311). In its classical formulation, as stated by Hume, it is argued that reason cannot determine our ends. Our ends are determined by our desires and reason is limited to the role of identifying the relevant means to these ends. The second component, which Korsgaard calls motivational scepticism, suggests doubt about the scope of reason as a motive. The claim here, as Korsgaard interprets Hume’s view on this matter, is that “all reasoning that has motivational influence must start from a passion, that being the only possible source of motivation” (SPR, 314).2 Korsgaard’s fundamental objective in “Skepticism about Practical Reason” is to show that motivational scepticism must always be based on content scepticism. In other words, according to Korsgaard, motivational scepticism has no independent force. In this paper I argue that Korsgaard’s attempt to discredit motivational scepticism is unsuccessful.


Reprinted in P. Russell, THE LIMITS OF FREE WILL: SELECTED ESSAYS (Oxford: 2017): 121-133.

There is a certain tangle of philosophical questions around which much philosophy, especially in our time, has circled, to the point where now there is something that deserves to be called a holding pattern around these issues: What are causes? How do they compare with reasons? What is Reason, with a capital R? How does it participate in the production of intentions that lead to action, particularly in arenas rife with uncertainty? Where do formal systems of symbols come into all of this? And how - if at all - can formal methods be harnessed to serve science and public policy, through guiding belief formation and decision-making? Henry Kyburg, Jr., has himself
circled around this tangle of questions, at least once or twice. And so in his honor, and in the no-nonsense spirit of empiricism that marks his work as the work of a scientist, I'd like to sketch a way to cut through some of the Gordian knots at the center of this tangle. The theme will be that natural
science has much of value to offer that has been willfully neglected by philosophers. This by itself is nowise surprising, as philosophy, particularly in the most exclusive parts of the academy, has suffered from an excess of transcendentalism - a theme to which I will return in this piece periodically. Now Kyburg has not been guilty of contributing to the causes for the decline of philosophy. He has, instead, been courageously working out the implications of his convictions regarding the virtues of vigorous formal systems, contributing to the advancement of empiricist methodologies, and generously supporting the causes of realism. In emulation of that courage, I offer this essay in the service of bold and vigorous formal systems, realism and - most emphatically - empiricism.

Two different Calanus finmarchicus (Gunnerus) cohorts originating from 60°N (Bergen) and 69°N (Tromsø) were investigated in equal environmental conditions to study their different physiological responses to the same environment. A two-plus-two-bag mesocosm study was carried out between March and July 1998, in Håkøybotn, Tromsø, in order to determine development and mortality rates of the two parallel cohorts of C. finmarchicus. For practical reasons, the cohort from Bergen was incubated 10 days earlier than the Tromsø cohort. Consequently, they were exposed to elevated food conditions as compared to the Tromsø cohort. A high initial mortality among the Bergen cohort could clearly be ascribed, by genetic discrimination, to "contamination" with C. helgolandicus. After this initial mass mortality, the mortality was constantly 0.03–0.04 day−1. In cohorts starting from naupliar stage I, there was no significant difference in development or growth, the median development time (NI–CIV) differing by only 7 days (~6%). The difference in development time can be explained to a large extent (~4 days) by temperature differences. This is substantiated with model simulations using a physiological model developed for C. finmarchicus. There was a time lag in incubation between the two cohorts, resulting in elevated temperature during incubation of the Tromsø cohort. A fraction of both cohorts differentiated sexually at stage CV, with males differentiating before females. Females from both cohorts produced eggs, but specific egg production differed significantly (P>0.001, t-test). This was supported by elevated RNA:DNA ratio in females from the Bergen cohort. Both cohorts demonstrated quite similar development and physiological growth rates and, consequently, are considered to belong to the same genetic population inhabiting the Norwegian Shelf. The study demonstrates that C. finmarchicus is capable of adaptation to changes in environment and, thereby, demonstrates a significant physiological plasticity.

A rough outline:

We commonly assume that (i) we have certain moral responsibilities toward other people, including strangers, and we'd be doing something wrong if we acted in a way that showed special preference toward some at the expense of others; and (ii) we have special responsibilities to the people we love, and we'd be doing something wrong if we failed to show preference toward them.

Plainly there are situations in which (i) and (ii) seem to make conflicting demands of us. Some moral philosophers think that this is because (i) is making a moral demand and (ii) is making some other kind of demand—an emotional demand, let's say—and the two are basically irreconcilable. There are two responsibilities in play at the same time, one based on a distinctively moral standard and the other based on emotion, and we cannot always satisfy both.

For example: let's say that you encounter three people in a life-or-death situation, such as a shipwreck, with sharks circling. Two of these survivors are close together; the third is some distance from them. You have time to save either the two survivors or the one, but not all three. Assuming that these people are strangers to you, and alike in other relevant respects (age, health, responsibility for their unhappy circumstances, etc) people tend to assume that the right thing to do is save the two rather than the one. To save the one would be eccentric, if not morally wrong. (If there were a thousand balanced against the one, we might dispute that.)

By contrast, if we alter this scenario so there are two strangers balanced against a loved one, people tend to say that it's alright to save the one. Interesting here is that people also tend to think that saving the two strangers at the expense of the loved one is wrong: it's not alright to say, 'I care about the one I love, of course, but I acknowledge that these other people have people who love them, too, so I decided that saving them was more important.'

I claim that, if the two-different-kinds-of-responsibility philosophers are right, there is a danger that we can never convincingly answer the question of what we ought to do. We would end up being able to cite several different versions of the answer—one based on morality, another based on emotion, perhaps a third on the law, a fourth on what would make me the most money, and so on—without being able to show that any one of these decisively trumps the others. I will ask whether and how these demands might be reconciled in a single standard of 'doing the right thing.'

In this paper I deal with the concept of "practical identity " and its role in our moral lives. Starting from the notion of integrity, as introduced by Bernard Williams, I add discussion of materials from Gary Watson and Harry Frankfurt to elucidate some features of the concept. Finally, I apply it to a case of practical ethics to show its usefulness.

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 paper addresses O'Neill's view that her version of Kant's Categorical Imperative, namely, the requirement of followability (RF), marks the supreme principle of reason; it takes issue with her claim that RF commits us to Kantian constructivism in practical philosophy. The paper distinguishes between two readings of RF: on a weak reading, RF ranges over all (practical) reasoning but does not commit to constructivism, and on a strong version RF commits to constructivism but fails to meet its own test, and so is self-defeating. The paper argues that RF, if understood strongly, depends for its reasonableness on reasons that cannot coherently be required to meet RF, so that RF cannot be the supreme principle of reason. The paper considers several responses to this problem in order to suggest that RF depends for its reasonableness on perfectionist considerations.

From 'The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence', eds George Duke and Robert George (Cambridge University Press 2017)

David Hume denied that there was more than a verbal difference between virtue, or moral goodness, and talent, or goodness in relation to arts and skills. Hume used this view to construct a new theory of moral normativity – one that detached moral normativity from reason, and that explained it instead in terms of the appraisal of people as good and bad.

The paper argues that Hume was to a degree right in his view of virtue and talent - and only because of this is natural law theory as traditionally conceived possible. Hume, the supposed foe of practical reason in ethics, uncovered similarities between virtue and talent that, correctly understood, allow practical reason to take the distinctive form of a moral law.

This paper presents a particular interpretation of Urmson's account of supererogatory actions, defends that interpretation and discusses the lacunae in the account so interpreted, and then introduces and defends a novel theoretical foundation for the account, yielding a complete theory of the principal class of supererogatory acts.

Constitutivism is the view that we can justify fundamental normative claims by showing that agents become committed to these claims merely in virtue of acting.  Constitutivists aspire to show that action has structural features—constitutive aims, principles, or standards—that are present in each instance of action and that generate substantive normative conclusions.  In showing that the authority of fundamental normative claims is sourced in our own actions, constitutivists hope to avoid familiar objections to justificatory projects in ethics. 

This essay provides a very brief overview of constitutivism. Section one outlines the basic structure of constitutivism.  Sections two and three examine how the constitutive feature would generate normative results.  Section four considers an objection to the constitutivist theory.  Section five distinguishes between constitutivist theories that attempt to provide fully general accounts of normativity and more modest versions.  Section six asks how much normative content constitutivist theories are supposed to generate.  Section seven concludes.

Dans cet essai, je traite de la notion de pratique réflexive, dans sa dimension épistémologique, et de ses enjeux pour les professions de l’ « agir envers autrui », dont le travail social, puisque divers types de savoirs y sont « en action », en usage, notamment pour identifier ce qu’est un « problème social » et de le tenter de le résoudre.
Différentes questions sont abordées, de façon exploratoire : Quelle place est reconnue aux connaissances pratiques, tacites, aux connaissances ordinaires, ou à des connaissances collectives élaborées sur base d’autres critères que ceux qui sont reconnus par la communauté scientifique ? Quels types de savoirs scientifiques sont pris en considération, et de quelle façon ? Que « produisent »-ils ? Quelles sont les conséquences de ces choix ? Lorsque d’autres formes de savoirs sont prises en considération, quel est leur statut épistémique ? Comment évaluer la validité des différents types de savoirs, lorsqu’ils sont mis en œuvre dans des situations concrètes ? Un des enjeux traités est celui de la prise en compte des savoirs propres aux usagers, premiers concernés par les « problèmes sociaux » et par l’intervention.
Comme j’y traite de la question spécifique de l’ « usage » des savoirs en contexte de pratique et de ses enjeux, c’est vers l’épistémologie pragmatiste que je me suis tournée et plus particulièrement vers Schön et Dewey.
J’ai donc cherché à dégager les apports et limites de leur conceptualisation pour une épistémologie des pratiques du travail social et pour une conceptualisation de la réflexivité qui prennent en compte les effets de l’interaction avec les usagers, mais aussi leurs propres aspirations, significations, savoirs, dans l’élaboration et la résolution des problèmes sociaux qui les concernent. En conclusion, j’identifie les types de collaborations entre recherches et pratiques ouvertes par ces perspectives.

This paper explores some key commitments of the idea that it can be rational to do what you believe you ought not to do. I suggest that there is a prima facie tension between this idea and certain plausible coherence constraints on rational agency. I propose a way to resolve this tension. While akratic agents are always irrational, they are not always practically irrational, as many authors assume. Rather, "inverse" akratics like Huck Finn fail in a distinctively theoretical way. What explains why akratic agents are always either theoretically or practically irrational? I suggest that this is true because an agent's total evidence determines both the beliefs and the intentions it's rational for her to have. Moreover, an agent's evidence does so in a way such that it's never rational for the agent to at once believe that she ought to Φ and lack the intention to Φ.

Research indicates that cultures differ in the ways they approach social conflicts, with Japanese being more motivated to maintain interpersonal harmony and avoid conflicts than Americans. Such cultural differences have developmental consequences for reasoning about social conflict. We interviewed random samples of Americans from the Midwest in the U.S. and Japanese from the larger Tokyo area about the future developments of intergroup and interpersonal conflicts. Responses showed increased wisdom (e.g. recognition of multiple perspectives, compromise, and the limits of knowledge) with increasing age among Americans, but older age was not associated with wiser responses among Japanese. Younger and middle-aged Japanese showed greater use of wise reasoning strategies than younger and middle-aged Americans. This cultural difference was weaker for older participants for interpersonal conflicts and was actually reversed for intergroup conflicts. Implications of this research for the study of aging, cultural psychology, and wisdom are discussed.

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.

O objetivo principal desta pesquisa é defender a interpretação da filosofia de David Hume segundo a qual não há crença que possa ser a única causa de paixões motivacionais, volições ou ações. O problema que orienta a discussão é determinar até que ponto os aspectos cognitivos ou racionais da mentalidade controlam ou não o aparato emocional dos seres humanos. Em primeiro lugar, defende-se que a teoria das percepções resultante da metodologia empirista de Hume não inclui a noção de uma faculdade racional sobrenatural com conteúdos ou princípios inatos ou a priori. Em segundo lugar, defende-se uma leitura compatibilista da liberdade humana em Hume segundo a qual volições são as paixões motivacionais que necessariamente antecedem a produção de ações voluntárias. Depois, sustenta-se que os processos inferenciais que caracterizam a racionalidade humana segundo Hume não são suficientes para produzir paixões motivacionais, volições e ações. Por fim, defende-se que as percepções produzidas por raciocínios, as crenças, também não são suficientes para produzir tais efeitos práticos. Uma premissa importante para o argumento principal é que a presença de certas paixões motivacionais, cuja origem não pode ser atribuída
a crenças ou a inferências, é necessária para a produção de ações.

Everyday experience indicates that when we reason intelligently about how to craft a democratic process, which treats persons as "free and equal," we reason about procedures, virtues, and cultural practices in conjunction. This suggests that normative democratic theory should aid us in so reasoning. Yet, the prominent theories of Robert Dahl, Jürgen Habermas, and Joshua Cohen push us away from this recognition. The explanation for this concerns the procedural minimalism that characterizes each theory and the tenuous relationship each has to empirical inquiry. These criticisms point toward an attractive account of the status and function of normative democratic theory in democratic practice: such theory should emerge out of lived experience with the values of "free" and "equal" treatment and should guide inquiry into the procedures, virtues, and cultural practices that, in some particular context, are most apt to promote those values. The argument appropriates two ideas from John Dewey. First, our moral or ethical theories should offer interpretations of relevant aspects of "moral or ethical experience," based on observation of humans as they pursue certain values in their actions. Second, we should treat these theories as "tools" for practical reasoning, which function to extend the goods that inhere in the relevant kinds of experience.

EPDIP©, a model for enhancing natural intelligence to increase probability of success in any project: Part 1 – Structure, Process, People, Stage Gates, Implementation and Sustainability. Presented 2015-09 02 at the UNIVEN-WSU 1st International Research Conference in East London, South Africa. Paper in preparation.

This paper is about the interest of the second-person to ethics. The focus of recent discussion has been the explanatory power of the second-person, rather than its careful description or the very possibility of what is described. This paper is something of a corrective. Its aim is to get the claim that the second-person matters to ethics into a clearer focus with a view to raising further questions and puzzles.

From Sandis, C. (ed.) Philosophy of Action from Suarez to Anscombe (Routledge 2018)

This new paper charts the route from Hobbes' attack on Suarez's theory of reason and power to Hume's reason scepticism.

The action theories of Suarez and Hobbes gave very different accounts of the purposiveness that distinguishes agency. But they also provided opposing theories of power - of capacities to determine outcomes. In Suarez humans possess both a capacity for reason and a capacity for self-determination. Each capacity involves a kind of power radically different from ordinary causation as now understood. Hobbes denied the existence of any power other than ordinary causation - but in so doing he opposed common sense psychology, which is very clearly committed to such powers; and in so doing Hobbes paved the way for Hume's scepticism about practical reason.

Kant had a lifelong interest in medicine and the various physical and mental dimensions of human health. Although medicine and philosophy are not to be confused, they nonetheless stand in a close relation that is explained by the interaction between body and soul (sprit). The paper discusses Kant's ‚extended' concept of health that he elaborates in his lectures on pragmatic anthropology, the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View and the Conflict of the Faculties, on the basis of key concepts (philosophical medicine, pathological emotions, diet in thinking, healthy reason). For the health of the scholar, Kant attaches particular importance to the company at table that aims at promoting our humanity and that begins with tellings and ends with laughing.

A short introduction to the author's critical systems heuristics (CSH), a framework for reflective professional practice based in critical systems thinking and practical philosophy.

Abstract: Health care planning, city and regional planning, energy and transportation planning, environmental design, social policy planning and other areas of social systems design are becoming issues of increasing concern to policy makers. Faced with complex steering problems that may have far-reaching implications, they expect help from applied disciplines such as operations research, systems design, technology assessment, program evaluation, and many others; but these approaches rarely offer much help in critically identifying and reflecting on the normative implications of the problem definitions and solutions they inspire. Critical systems heuristics (CSH) is a framework to this end. This paper, an early short introduction to CSH that is still widely used today, introduces some key concepts of CSH and briefly discusses their significance for "rational" practice.