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Internal Reasons and Contractualist Impartiality

Alan Thomas

in Value and Context: The Nature of Moral and Political Knowledge

This chapter examines a proposal concerning the nature of practical reasons: that all such reasons are internal reasons. It is the first obstacle that was placed in the way of the Wittgensteinian ... More

This chapter examines a proposal concerning the nature of practical reasons: that all such reasons are internal reasons. It is the first obstacle that was placed in the way of the Wittgensteinian cognitivists’ position by Bernard Williams. Williams’s arguments are presented in a different light from the way in which they are usually understood. The mention of Humeanism in his initial presentation of his ideas led to Williams being viewed as a representative of someone committed to the Humean theory of motivation, or to a Humean view of the self or of the psychological. Williams’s position is seen as a set of relatively neutral constraints on the very idea of a practical reason.Less

Beyond Humean and non‐Humean

John T. Roberts

in The Law-Governed Universe

Much of the recent literature on laws of nature is about the dispute between Humean and Non‐Humean accounts of laws. The MAL does not fit easily in either camp. Like Humean views, it is ontologically ... More

Much of the recent literature on laws of nature is about the dispute between Humean and Non‐Humean accounts of laws. The MAL does not fit easily in either camp. Like Humean views, it is ontologically parsimonious and consistent with Humean Supervenience; like Non‐Humean views, it denies that the laws are simply economical summaries of the universe, it provides a robust sense in which laws govern the universe, and it does not make the relation between laws and counterfactuals depend on what we choose to ‘hold constant’ in our counterfactual reasoning. The chapter concludes with an examination of the MAL's implications for various metaphysical issues, including natural theology, the relation between God and the universe, freedom and responsibility, and what the law‐governedness of the world consists in.Less

The law‐governed world‐picture

John T. Roberts

in The Law-Governed Universe

The idea that science has discovered that our universe is governed by laws of nature is arguably an important part of the modern scientific world‐view. The distinction between laws and other truths ... More

The idea that science has discovered that our universe is governed by laws of nature is arguably an important part of the modern scientific world‐view. The distinction between laws and other truths discovered by science is essential in at least some scientific reasoning, for example in statistical mechanics. The idea that laws of nature really govern the universe—and that they are not merely regularities that form an elegant system, as they are according to proponents of Humeanism (e.g. David Lewis)—turns out to play a crucial role in much scientific reasoning having to do with so‐called fine‐tuning. This chapter offers a formulation of the law‐governed world‐picture and outlines an argument for a new account of lawhood that vindicates that picture.Less

Conceptions of Self: An Analytical Taxonomy

Jonardon Ganeri

in The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance

This chapter develops an analytical framework within which conceptions of self can be identified and classified. A conception about self supplies an answer to the question “What am I?” Until very ... More

This chapter develops an analytical framework within which conceptions of self can be identified and classified. A conception about self supplies an answer to the question “What am I?” Until very recently, virtually all western discussion about the self explored three conceptions: the Cartesian, the Humean or Reductionist, and the Strawsonian or Materialist views. This chapter demonstrates that these three are far from exhaustive, and indeed identify eleven broad conceptions of self, grounding the classification in an orthogonal pair of distinctions: between adjectival and collective modes of exemplification, and between considerations about individuation and considerations about ownership. Thus, as well as the three views just mentioned, Indian theory discusses Ownership, Pure Consciousness and Phenomenal views, three types of (Buddhist) No Place view, the Tornado view and the Flame view.Less

Why Humeans Are Out of Their Minds

John Hawthorne

in Metaphysical Essays

According to Humeanism, the causal facts pertaining to any subregion of the world are extrinsic to that region, supervening on the global distribution of freely recombinable fundamental properties. ... More

According to Humeanism, the causal facts pertaining to any subregion of the world are extrinsic to that region, supervening on the global distribution of freely recombinable fundamental properties. For example, according to the Humean, a spatiotemporal region in which a certain intrusion of a bullet into a body is followed by death is only extrinsically a region in which the intrusion causes the death. The latter causal fact will, if it obtains, be underwritten by certain global regularities (most obviously, those connecting death to certain bodily disturbances) that are extrinsic to the region in question. Embed an intrinsic duplicate of that region in a global setting where very different regularities are in play and it may be false of that duplicate region that its intrusion and its death are causally connected. Similarly a spatiotemporal region that contains a substance that has a certain causal power — say of poisoning human beings — is only extrinsically a region where that causal power is present. Embed an intrinsic duplicate of a region in very different global settings and the relevant power may be absent. Humeanism thus delivers the thesis that the causal facts pertaining to a region are extrinsic to it. But that thesis, no matter how it is embellished, is incompatible with a pair of very obvious facts about a person7#x0027;s own nature. Accordingly, Humeanism is untenable. This chapter argues that (1) an intrinsic duplicate of any region wholly containing a person will contain a being with that person's conscious life; and (2) there are causal requirements on that person's conscious life. Therefore, Humeanism is false.Less

Classical Theories of Reasons and Motivation

Jeanette Kennett

in Agency and Responsibility: A Common-Sense Moral Psychology

This chapter presents an outline of Socrates' view of moral psychology as presented in Plato's Protagoras. The chapter concerns with the critical examination of some classical and modern views of ... More

This chapter presents an outline of Socrates' view of moral psychology as presented in Plato's Protagoras. The chapter concerns with the critical examination of some classical and modern views of reasons for action and motivation for action which tend, sometimes themselves to assimilate weakness to recklessness or compulsion. It focuses on Socratic account of knowledge and pleasure in the production of action, and his explanation of weakness of will. It then examines John McDowell's analysis of moral knowledge and moral motivation. A close evaluation of the shortcomings of the Socratic accounts, which equate virtue with knowledge, tends to push towards Humean account of the explanation of action. The chapter concludes that a search for a looser connection at a lower cost to common sense.Less

Humean Accounts of Reasons and Motivation: Davidson and Decision Theory 1

Jeanette Kennett

in Agency and Responsibility: A Common-Sense Moral Psychology

This chapter focuses on Humean accounts. It first examines Donald Davidson's distinctly Humean account of reasons for action in his paper ‘How is the Weakness of the Will Possible?’, and looks into ... More

This chapter focuses on Humean accounts. It first examines Donald Davidson's distinctly Humean account of reasons for action in his paper ‘How is the Weakness of the Will Possible?’, and looks into his characterization of practical reasoning and weakness of will. It then investigates the possibility argued for by Jackson, Biglow, Dods, and Pargeter, that the akratic conflict is not what the folk theorists thought it was, and that the problem does not arise. However, the chapter argues that these alternative constructions of akrasia, with their explicitly reductive view of evaluation, do not succeed in capturing the phenomenon they set out to explain. The chapter concludes that the conceptual resources available to Humeans are too thin to enable them to sufficiently address the issue of justification to explain and distinguish the various failures of agency that are of main concern.Less

Reasons for Action

Jonathan Dancy

in Practical Reality

Introduces various distinctions: between the reasons why we should act (normative reasons), those for which we act (motivating reasons), and (more generally) the reasons why we act. It also ... More

Introduces various distinctions: between the reasons why we should act (normative reasons), those for which we act (motivating reasons), and (more generally) the reasons why we act. It also distinguishes between Humeanism and anti‐Humeanism in the theory of motivation, psychologism, and anti‐psychologism in the theory of motivation, internalism, and externalism (Williams‐style) and desire‐based and value‐based theories of normative reasons.Less

Reasons and Desires

Jonathan Dancy

in Practical Reality

Argues that normative reasons are value‐based rather than desire‐based, following and hopefully improving on the work of Raz, Quinn, and Scanlon.

The Theory of Motivating States

Jonathan Dancy

in Practical Reality

Argues that cognitivism is the best form of psychologism; that is, that Humean accounts of motivation in terms of belief–desire combinations should be rejected in favour of cognitive ones that take ... More

Argues that cognitivism is the best form of psychologism; that is, that Humean accounts of motivation in terms of belief–desire combinations should be rejected in favour of cognitive ones that take motivating states to consist entirely of beliefs. Desire is understood as a state of being motivated, and is therefore not a state that motivates, even though motivation without desire is impossible.Less

Dispositional and Categorical Properties

John Heil

in From an Ontological Point of View

One popular view of dispositions turns them into ‘higher‐level’ properties with categorical ‘realizers’. The position is motivated in part by the belief that the same disposition can have different ... More

One popular view of dispositions turns them into ‘higher‐level’ properties with categorical ‘realizers’. The position is motivated in part by the belief that the same disposition can have different bases, and in part by a conviction that powers are contingent features of the world. I argue that the belief and conviction are misguided.Less

Motivational Humeanism

Russ Shafer-Landau

in Moral Realism: A Defence

Discusses the role of motivational Humeanism is a classic anti‐realist argument. Provides some reasons to reject this theory of action, and then offers criticisms of the most powerful arguments ... More

Discusses the role of motivational Humeanism is a classic anti‐realist argument. Provides some reasons to reject this theory of action, and then offers criticisms of the most powerful arguments favouring motivational Humeanism.Less

Getting past Hume in the philosophy of social science

Ruth Groff

in Causality in the Sciences

A realist, powers‐based metaphysics is very much on the table in contemporary metaphysics, and is beginning to take hold in philosophy of mind and philosophy of science. On this picture, causality is ... More

A realist, powers‐based metaphysics is very much on the table in contemporary metaphysics, and is beginning to take hold in philosophy of mind and philosophy of science. On this picture, causality is (roughly) a matter of the powers that things have to effect change(s) in other things. The realist view is at odds with every version of Humeanism, according to all of which causation is not, in the end, about the exercise of powers, but rather, in one way or another, about regular sequences. The chapter has two parts. In the first part the chapter considers how it is that analytic philosophers of social science have been able thus far to side‐step the critique of Humeanism. In the second part, the chapter considers how analytic philosophy of social science might look different, were Humeanism no longer to be its tacit metaphysics. Such is the influence of custom, that, where it is strongest, it not only covers our natural ignorance, but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place, merely because it is found in the highest degree.–HumeLess

Three Roads to Objective Probability 1

Tim Maudlin

in Probabilities in Physics

This chapter considers three ways in which probabilities may be derived from a physical theory without adverting to subjective considerations. The first derives from a fundamentally stochastic ... More

This chapter considers three ways in which probabilities may be derived from a physical theory without adverting to subjective considerations. The first derives from a fundamentally stochastic dynamics that implies transition chances at the level of natural law. The second is a Humean approach, in which probabilities are deployed as part of a compact system for conveying information about the structure of the Humean mosaic, i.e. the distribution of local physical quantities in space-time. The last employs either deterministic or stochastic dynamics together with a measure of typicality, i.e. a measure of sets of initial conditions that count as extremely large. Probabilities emerge in this setting as typical frequencies, that is, frequencies exhibited by most initial conditions.Less

Physics and the Humean approach to Probability

Carl Hoefer

in Probabilities in Physics

This chapter defends a Humean approach to objective probabilities in physics. Two motivations for a Humean account of probabilities are distinguished: One derives from a general commitment to a ... More

This chapter defends a Humean approach to objective probabilities in physics. Two motivations for a Humean account of probabilities are distinguished: One derives from a general commitment to a Humean account of natural laws. The other, which is articulated in more detail in the chapter, starts from worries that irreducibly probabilistic physical laws are problematic. Such worries are avoided if probabilities are tied to a best system of the world, as D. Lewis has suggested. Lewis’ own account of objective chance is contrasted with a more pragmatic Humean account, in which objective probabilities are divorced from the best system and tied to systems of less simple probability rules instead. The chapter compares the abilities of both Humean accounts to capture the probabilities appearing in our best physical theories.Less