Acting and Believing Under the Guise of Normative Reasons

Singh, Keshav K.

doi:10.1111/phpr.12497

Cited by 14 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…3; Alvarez, 2018); and abstract entities, such as (possibly false) propositions (Hyman, 2015, ch. 6; Singh, 2019). I won't take a stand on these issues 7 .…”

Section: The Relata Of the Basing Relationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acting and believing on the basis of reasons

Blake‐Turner

2021

Philosophy Compass

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This paper provides an opinionated guide to discussions of acting and believing on the basis of reasons. I aim to bring closer together largely separate literatures in practical reason and in epistemology. I focus on three questions. First, is basing causing? Causal theories of basing remain popular despite the notorious Problem of Deviant Causal Chains. Causal theorists in both the epistemic and practical domains have begun to appeal to dispositions to try and solve the problem. Second, how unified are acting and believing on the basis of reasons? I consider an important challenge to their unity due to Setiya. I sketch a response, which posits unity of causal structure across acting and believing on the basis of reasons. Third, how does acting or believing on the basis of a good reason relate to acting or believing on the basis of a reason simpliciter? I generalize a recent argument of Lord and Sylvan's to include acting as well as believing. The conclusion is that, for both believing and acting, φing on the basis of a good reason does not amount to φing on the basis of a reason that just so happens to be good.

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“…3; Alvarez, 2018); and abstract entities, such as (possibly false) propositions (Hyman, 2015, ch. 6; Singh, 2019). I won't take a stand on these issues 7 .…”

Section: The Relata Of the Basing Relationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acting and believing on the basis of reasons

Blake‐Turner

2021

Philosophy Compass

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“…cit. ;Mantel, 2014Mantel, ,2017Singh, 2019). On these latter views, motivating reasons are the contents of beliefs.…”

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Group Action Without Group Minds

Silver

2021

Philos Phenomenol Research

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Groups behave in a variety of ways. To show that this behavior amounts to action, it would be best to fit it into a general account of action. However, nearly every account from the philosophy of action requires the agent to have mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. Unfortunately, theorists are divided over whether groups can instantiate these states-typically depending on whether or not they are willing to accept functionalism about the mind. But we can avoid this debate. I show how a more general view of action captures what is central to action without mentioning mental states, and I argue that a group's members can fulfill the role in group action that mental states play in our actions. Group behavior is explicable in terms of reasons, regardless of whether the group itself cognizes those reasons. After discussing the kind of reasons at issue and arguing that groups can act in light of them without minds, I assess how this account bears on the question of group responsibility.We frequently speak as if there are groups and as if those groups can do things. A basketball team can win the championship; the Supreme Court can strike down the decision of a lower court; Amazon can acquire Whole Foods. One set of questions concerns whether there really are such groups and how best to understand their existence (as well as the differences between groups, collectives, corporations, etc.). Another kind of question, however, concerns whether the behavior of groups can appropriately be construed as actions. Here, I focus on the latter question.Let's take it for granted that groups exist. 1 Given this, there is a strong intuition that certain groups act. The acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon is something done by Amazon that seems intelligible. It may follow from an overall market strategy, and management will point to this as the reason for the acquisition in answer to shareholder scrutiny. Even in cases of small groups, we readily ascribe actions. We would say, for example, that the tenure committee recommended tenure and had reasons for doing so.To make good on this intuition, we need to see how the behavior of groups can be captured by a theory of action. There are many views of action that have been developed, so we would ideally need only to pick a good one and show how groups can satisfy its conditions. 2 When trying to do this, though, what becomes apparent is that most of the prominent views of action in the literature involve 1 We need only accept that some groups exist. This is not uncontroversial, but I take it for granted here and focus instead on whether what groups do can be construed as actions. See Ritchie (2013) for a discussion of a number of proposals of how groups exist, including her own. I remain agnostic here as to the nature of group existence. Though I am partial to an account on which groups are sui generis entities constituted by members in virtue of the group structure and certain social facts (bearing the most similarities to Uzquiano [2004]), the account of group action g...

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“…Those who allow for false propositions as motivating reasons while accepting the factivity of explanation must reject the view that motivating reasons are explanatory reasons. See Singh (2019) for a helpful recent discussion of these questions.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…6363See e.g. Scanlon (1998, 19); Thomson (2008, 161); Raz (2009a, 26–35); Alvarez (2010, 35); Enoch (2011, 225–26); Leary (2017, 535); Singh (2019). …”

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Are epistemic reasons normative?

Kiesewetter

2021

Nous

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According to a widely held view, epistemic reasons are normative reasons for belief -much like prudential or moral reasons are normative reasons for action. In recent years, however, an increasing number of authors have questioned the normativity of epistemic reasons.In this article, I discuss an important challenge for anti-normativism about epistemic reasons and present a series of arguments in support of normativism. The challenge for anti-normativism is to say what kind of reasons epistemic reasons are if they are not normative reasons. I discuss various answers to this challenge and find them all wanting. The arguments for normativism each stress a certain analogy between epistemic reasons and normative reasons for action. Just like normative reasons for action, epistemic reasons provide partial justification; they provide premises for correct reasoning; they constitute good bases for the responses they are reasons for; and they are reasons for which agents can show these responses without committing a mistake. In each case, I argue that the relevant condition is plausibly sufficient for the normativity of a reason, and that normativism is in any case in a much better position to explain the analogy than anti-normativism.

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Acting and Believing Under the Guise of Normative Reasons

Cited by 14 publications

References 27 publications

Acting and believing on the basis of reasons

Acting and believing on the basis of reasons

Group Action Without Group Minds

Are epistemic reasons normative?

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