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Non‐Teleological Explanations of Actions

G. F. Schueler

in Reasons and Purposes: Human Rationality and the Teleological Explanation of Action

There are well‐known arguments in favour of the idea that explanations of actions are at bottom non‐teleological. Michael Smith's ‘direction‐of‐fit’ argument entails this, and both Davidson and ... More

There are well‐known arguments in favour of the idea that explanations of actions are at bottom non‐teleological. Michael Smith's ‘direction‐of‐fit’ argument entails this, and both Davidson and Thomas Nagel give general arguments that only causal explanations actually explain. In this chapter, it is argued that all these arguments are unsuccessful.Less

AN OBJECTIVE REQUIREMENT?

Ingmar Persson

in The Retreat of Reason: A dilemma in the philosophy of life

In this chapter the fact that desires have a direction of fit which is opposite to that of beliefs is employed to suggest that objectivism with respect to reasons for desire is implausible. Because ... More

In this chapter the fact that desires have a direction of fit which is opposite to that of beliefs is employed to suggest that objectivism with respect to reasons for desire is implausible. Because desires are not formed to fit the world, but are rather formed to make the world fit their content, the idea of value as something desires must fit is not called for. Rather, desires fill their function if their object is something that one can bring about, thus satisfying the desire. It is maintained that this opposition as regards direction of fit explains why practical reasoning consists in the derivation of a desire for something which is sufficient for the end desired, while theoretical reasoning consists in the derivation of a belief whose truth is necessary if the premises are true. Some objectivist theories, e.g., John McDowell’s, are examined and rejected.Less

The Authenticity of Memory

Sven Bernecker

in Memory: A Philosophical Study

For a present propositional attitude token to stand in a memory‐relation to a past propositional attitude token, the contents of both tokens need not be type‐identical but only sufficiently similar. ... More

For a present propositional attitude token to stand in a memory‐relation to a past propositional attitude token, the contents of both tokens need not be type‐identical but only sufficiently similar. This view flies in the face of the widespread identity theory of memory which demands type‐identity of diachronic content tokens and attitude tokens. This chapter determines to what extent two diachronic propositional attitude tokens may differ from one another and one of them still count as sufficiently similar to the other so as to be memory‐related to it. The chapter starts out by distinguishing two aspects of the veridicality constraint on memory: authenticity and truth. The truth of a memory report has to do with the memory content correctly representing objective reality. Authenticity, on the other hand, is an internal criterion concerning the accuracy of the reproduction of a past propositional attitude (true or false). The mark of authentic content representation is entailment: a present propositional attitude token is memory‐related to a past propositional attitude token only if the content of the present token is entailed by the content of the past token. One of the consequences of the entailment thesis is that it is possible that the content of a memory state is entertained for the first time at the time of recollection. This view is compared and contrasted with Plato's theory of recollection whereby all learning is nothing but remembering. Finally, the chapter addresses the question of when two diachronic attitude tokens are of the same kind and proposes a functionalist answer. The notion of attitude‐similarity is spelled out in terms of sameness of direction of fit and polarity.Less

Motivation and Desires

Maria Alvarez

in Kinds of Reasons: An Essay in the Philosophy of Action

Chapter 3 focuses on motivation in action with a view to answering the question what our reasons for action –what are called ‘motivating reasons’—are. After a discussion of motives, the focus moves ... More

Chapter 3 focuses on motivation in action with a view to answering the question what our reasons for action –what are called ‘motivating reasons’—are. After a discussion of motives, the focus moves to the relation between motivation and desires. It is argued that an adequate understanding of desires and of their relation to motivation is not possible without paying proper attention to the distinction between bodily appetites and rational desires, which stand in importantly different relations to reasons; and to the act/object ambiguity inherent in the term ‘desire’—since the term can be used to refer to my desiring something or to what I desire. These distinctions are explained and explored in preparation to answering the question at the centre of the following chapter: whether desires are motivating reasons.Less

Feminism in Epistemology: Exclusion and Objectification

Rae Langton

in Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification

Feminism's questioning of prejudice is continuous with philosophical method (Descartes, Astell, le Doeuff). Feminism contributes to epistemology by identifying sins of omission: women get left out, ... More

Feminism's questioning of prejudice is continuous with philosophical method (Descartes, Astell, le Doeuff). Feminism contributes to epistemology by identifying sins of omission: women get left out, as objects and subjects of knowledge. Women fail to be known, to be knowers, to count as knowers (Frye, Code, Gilligan, Alcoff, Fricker). Feminism identifies sins of commission: women get hurt, ‘objectivity objectifies’ (MacKinnon). Epistemological assumptions of objectivity suppose an objective direction of fit (Anscombe): belief about women has come to fit the world. This helps objectify women, masking a constructive direction of fit (Haslanger): the world has come to fit belief. The real culprit is the lazy assumption, not the hope, of objectivity.Less

Intentional Action

Roger Teichmann

in The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe

The account, in Intention, of intentional action and of expressions of intention makes use of three important notions: non-observational knowledge, the question ‘Why?’ in its reason-demanding sense, ... More

The account, in Intention, of intentional action and of expressions of intention makes use of three important notions: non-observational knowledge, the question ‘Why?’ in its reason-demanding sense, and the ‘Theophrastus' Principle’ (compare with ‘direction of fit’). Anscombe employs these notions in the course of explaining such phenomena as one's knowledge of what one is or will be doing (practical knowledge), the difference between intentions and motives (e.g., the motive of revenge), the difference between motives and what she calls ‘mental causes’, and the nature of (in)voluntary action. There are some difficulties with Anscombe's description of non-observational knowledge, couched in terms of ‘separately describable sensations’; these are examined, but shown not to be fatal to the overall account. What Anscombe says about intentional action poses problems both for dualist theories and for those theories that regard intentions as causes.Less

Speaker's Freedom and Maker's Knowledge

Rae Langton

in Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification

Mill thinks knowledge is good, and free speech promotes knowledge. Pornography apparently promotes false belief, not knowledge, so seems, in Mill's terms, indefensible. A closer look reveals the ... More

Mill thinks knowledge is good, and free speech promotes knowledge. Pornography apparently promotes false belief, not knowledge, so seems, in Mill's terms, indefensible. A closer look reveals the opposite. Pornography shapes the world: pornography-inspired beliefs are knowledge, being non-accidentally true and justified. The direction of fit is anomalous, comparable to ‘maker's knowledge’ ascribed to agents (of actions), to God (of creatures). Women's conformity to the pornographic vision is objectification (MacKinnon), which yields knowledge that is also harm. Maker's knowledge is had by a maker of its creature: thus pornographic ‘maker's knowledge’ of women turns out to be the epistemological face of the metaphysics of social construction.Less

A Puzzle about Internal Reasons

Michael Smith

in Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes From the Ethics of Bernard Williams

According to Bernard Williams, all reasons for action are what he calls ‘internal reasons’, where an agent has an internal reason to act in some way just in case she would be motivated to act in that ... More

According to Bernard Williams, all reasons for action are what he calls ‘internal reasons’, where an agent has an internal reason to act in some way just in case she would be motivated to act in that way if she were to deliberate correctly. Though Williams is supposed to have an anti-rationalist conception of what it is to deliberate correctly, his official account includes separate roles for knowledge and the imagination. An agent would desire something if he were to deliberate correctly, according to Williams, only if he would desire that thing if he knew all the relevant facts and only if he were to fully and accurately imagine what it would be like for that thing to obtain. This provides us with a puzzle, as rationalist accounts of deliberation can be understood as assigning separate roles to knowledge and the imagination. Williams's official account of deliberation thus looks just like the rationalist's. Solving this puzzle requires us to get clearer about what it means to deliberate correctly and about the differences between rationalist and anti-rationalist accounts of desire.Less

Tracking over the Rivals

Sherrilyn Roush

in Tracking Truth: Knowledge, Evidence, and Science

This chapter argues that the new tracking view is superior to externalist rivals: process reliabilism, the safety view, and the relevant alternatives view. This is because of the generality problem, ... More

This chapter argues that the new tracking view is superior to externalist rivals: process reliabilism, the safety view, and the relevant alternatives view. This is because of the generality problem, and treatments of reflective knowledge, lottery propositions, direction of fit with the world, the power property, and knowledge of logical and other necessary truths. A new view of logical truth is introduced, which is in keeping with the tracking view that knowledge is a matter of responsiveness to the way the world is.Less

The Rational Roles of Intuition

Elijah Chudnoff

in Intuition

Intuitions are inputs to theoretical reasoning. According to the view developed in this book they play this role because they are justifiers. Intuitions are sometimes thought of as evidence. It is ... More

Intuitions are inputs to theoretical reasoning. According to the view developed in this book they play this role because they are justifiers. Intuitions are sometimes thought of as evidence. It is not always clear how to calibrate talk about justification and talk about evidence. Section 5.1 explores how the view of intuition developed in this book might relate to the view of intuitions as evidence. The main aim of the chapter, however, is to argue that in addition to these roles intuitions also play action-guiding roles. The argument proceeds by reflection on the transmission of justification through inference. According to the view of inference developed in this chapter, intuitions work like mental imperatives and inferences are mental actions performed by obeying them. This view is motivated as a way of maintaining inferential internalism in the face of worries about Carrollian regressLess

Antirealist Expressivism and Quasi-Realism

Simon Blackburn

David Copp (ed.)

in The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory

Expressivism is the view that the function of normative sentences is not to represent a kind of fact, but to avow attitudes, prescribe behavior, or the like. The idea can be found in David Hume. In ... More

Expressivism is the view that the function of normative sentences is not to represent a kind of fact, but to avow attitudes, prescribe behavior, or the like. The idea can be found in David Hume. In the 20th century, G.E. Moore’s Open Question Argument provided important support for the view. Elizabeth Anscombe introduced the notion of “direction of fit,” which helped distinguish expressivism from a kind of naive subjectivism. The central advantage of expressivism is that it easily explains the motivational force of moral conviction. Its chief problem is it has difficulty explaining the “realist surface” of moralizing. Quasi-realism is a strategy for explaining the realist surface without abandoning the underlying ideas of expressivism. It aims to explain moral error as well as deal with the so-called Frege-Geach problem. This chapter explains quasi-realism, and evaluates it by comparison with its chief rivals: Aristotelian approaches, Kantian approaches, realist moral naturalism, and fictionalism.Less

The “Guise of the Ought-to-Be”: A Deontic View of the Intentionality of Desire

Federico Lauria

in The Nature of Desire

How are we to understand the intentionality of desire? According to the two classical views, desire is either a positive evaluation or a disposition to act. This essay examines these conceptions of ... More

How are we to understand the intentionality of desire? According to the two classical views, desire is either a positive evaluation or a disposition to act. This essay examines these conceptions of desire and argues for a deontic alternative, namely the view that desiring is representing a state of affairs as what ought to be. Three lines of criticism of the classical pictures of desire are provided. The first concerns desire’s direction of fit, i.e. the intuition that the world should conform to our desires. The second concerns the “death of desire” principle, i.e. the intuition that one cannot desire what one represents as actual. The last pertains to desire’s role in psychological explanations, i.e. the intuition that desires can explain motivations and be explained by evaluations. Following these criticisms, three positive arguments in favor of the deontic conception are sketched.Less

Introduction: Reconsidering Some Dogmas about Desires

Federico Lauria and Julien A. Deonna

in The Nature of Desire

Desire has not been at the center of recent preoccupations in the philosophy of mind. Consequently, the literature settled into several dogmas. The first part of this introduction presents these ... More

Desire has not been at the center of recent preoccupations in the philosophy of mind. Consequently, the literature settled into several dogmas. The first part of this introduction presents these dogmas and invites readers to scrutinize them. The main dogma is that desires are motivational states. This approach contrasts with the other dominant conception: desires are positive evaluations. But there are at least four other dogmas: the world should conform to our desires (world-to-mind direction of fit), desires involve a positive evaluation (the “guise of the good”), we cannot desire what we think is actual (the “death of desire” principle), and, in neuroscience, the idea that the reward system is the key to understanding desire. The second part of the introduction summarizes the contributions to this volume. The hope is to contribute to the emergence of a fruitful debate on this neglected, albeit crucial, aspect of the mind.Less

Belief: Some Complications

Elizabeth S. Radcliffe

in Hume, Passion, and Action

Hume’s characterization of belief is crucial in the debate over whether beliefs could be motives. Hume seemed to doubt his account of belief in the Treatise, made corrections to it in the Appendix, ... More

Hume’s characterization of belief is crucial in the debate over whether beliefs could be motives. Hume seemed to doubt his account of belief in the Treatise, made corrections to it in the Appendix, and developed the corrected view in the first Enquiry. At least three readings of Hume’s portrayal of belief are viable contenders: (1) as a vivacious idea; (2) as a sentiment (which could motivate); and (3) as a disposition to behavioral manifestations. However, Hume did not intend to identify belief with a sentiment, but with an idea having a distinctive sentimental aspect. Hume’s notion of belief as a vivacious idea is not undermined by his hesitations, and ideas are not intrinsically motivating states. This discussion also considers to what degree the recent manner of distinguishing beliefs and desires in terms of “direction of fit” is rooted in Hume’s theory and replies to criticisms that imply Hume was confused about reason’s objects.Less

Belief in Action

Michael Slote

in A Sentimentalist Theory of the Mind

Belief by its very nature involves favoring a certain proposition not only for intellectual purposes but also for practical ones. Analytic philosophers (including Hume) who see belief as inert or as ... More

Belief by its very nature involves favoring a certain proposition not only for intellectual purposes but also for practical ones. Analytic philosophers (including Hume) who see belief as inert or as having an exclusively mind-to-world direction of fit, cannot account for important features of human action, especially action done for a purpose. And Pragmatism, for all its emphasis on the practical force of belief, fails to acknowledge its emotional aspects. But it is necessary to do so in order for Davidson-style action explanation to really work, and the idea that belief involves emotion also helps explain why pace Kant we don't have to be rational in order for our strong desire for an end to ensure the taking of the sole means to that end.Less

New Consequentialism and the New Doing-Allowing Distinction

Paul Hurley

in Consequentialism: New Directions, New Problems

Intuitively, we sometimes have decisive reasons not to do certain things even though such restraint allows something worse overall to happen. Traditional consequentialists challenge the legitimacy of ... More

Intuitively, we sometimes have decisive reasons not to do certain things even though such restraint allows something worse overall to happen. Traditional consequentialists challenge the legitimacy of this distinction, but a new wave of evaluator-relative consequentialists endorses this commonsense doing-allowing distinction. This chapter demonstrates that such new wave consequentialists in fact shift their target to a new intuitive distinction, that we sometimes have decisive reasons not to do things even though such restraint allows an evaluator-relatively worse outcome to happen. The chapter argues that the appeal to a “teleological conception of reasons” (TCR) grounds the arguments against this new distinction; that the case for TCR is itself grounded in appeals to outcome-centered accounts of values, attitudes, and actions; that alternative accounts of values, attitudes, and actions do not support TCR; and that acceptance of such alternative accounts undermines the case for consequentialism at the deepest level.Less

Against Direction of Fit Accounts of Belief and Desire: Co-authored with David Copp

David Sobel

in From Valuing to Value: Towards a Defense of Subjectivism

In this chapter David Copp and I argue that the direction of fit metaphor is limited in providing an account of beliefs and desires. The metaphor is given its most rigorous analysis by Michael Smith; ... More

In this chapter David Copp and I argue that the direction of fit metaphor is limited in providing an account of beliefs and desires. The metaphor is given its most rigorous analysis by Michael Smith; we focus on his explication. On Smith’s account, what makes a background state count as a belief or desire depends on how it reacts when exposed to an introduced state, the perception that not P. A background belief would tend to be driven out of existence by such an introduced state but a background desire would not. We argue, however, that everything hinges on how the introduced state is understood. If it is understood as already a belief, we need to presuppose that which we are trying to explicate. If it is a perception that not P, then many background beliefs will not tend to go out of existence in the face of such perceptions.Less

Desiderative Inconsistency, Moore’s Paradox, and Norms of Desire

David Wall

in The Nature of Desire

What is wrong with desiderative inconsistency, having essentially conflicting desires that cannot possibly be satisfied at the same time? It was recently argued that attempts to explain this in terms ... More

What is wrong with desiderative inconsistency, having essentially conflicting desires that cannot possibly be satisfied at the same time? It was recently argued that attempts to explain this in terms of logical inconsistency, preventing action, or a failure of rationality are unsuccessful and having such desires is no worse than having desires that merely contingently conflict, if it is bad at all. But in fact having either essentially or contingently conflicting desires involves violating norms of desire, particularly, a norm of avoiding frustration. Appealing to a counterpart of Moore’s Paradox for desire shows this is a genuine norm, and violating it is a mistake of sorts. Furthermore, having essentially conflicting desires violates this norm, makes this mistake, necessarily. This helps explain why having essentially conflicting desires is especially bad, and explaining it in terms of the norms of desire helps us understand the nature of that type of mental state.Less