Publications -- Practical Reasoning

Instrumentalism:

• Rube Goldbergism, the Geodesic Mindset, and Instrumental Rationality. Aesthetics for Birds, October 12, 2017.
• Practical Reasoning for Serial Hyperspecializers. Philosophical Explorations, 12(3): 261-278. September 2009. Reprinted in The Great Endarkenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
• Introduction, Varieties of Practical Reasoning. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001. (Table of Contents)
• Mill's Proof of the Principle of Utility. Ethics, 110(2): 282-310. January 2000. (JSTOR; reprinted in Ethics Done Right.)
• What's the Use of Utility? Philosophy and Public Affairs, 29(2): 113-136. Spring 2000. (Reprinted in Ethics Done Right; JSTOR.)
• Millian Metaethics. In The Great Endarkenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015 -- an expanded English version of Mètaètica mìlliana, Quaderni di Scienza Politica, 17(2): 245-265. August 2010).
• D'où venons-nous... Que sommes nous... Où allons-nous? In D. Callcut, Reading Bernard Williams (New York: Routledge, 2009): 141-165. Reprinted in The Great Endarkenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
• Deciding to Desire. In C. Fehige and U. Wessels, Preferences (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998): 3-25. (Reprinted in Practical Induction.)
• Praktische Rationalität und Arbeitsteilung: Svantje Guinebert im Gespräch mit Elijah Millgram. Information Philosophie, 42(1): 20-29. April 2014. (English transcript)
• Practical Reason and the Structure of Actions. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. Fall 2005.
• Review of Candace Vogler, Reasonably Vicious. European Journal of Philosophy, 14(3): 430-434. December 2006. (Wiley link.)
• Serial Hyperspecializers and How They Think. Daily Nous. June 3 2015.
• Review of Michael Bratman, Planning, Time, and Self-Governance: Essays in Practical Rationality. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, May 2019.

Practical Induction:

• Practical Reasoning for Serial Hyperspecializers. Philosophical Explorations, 12(3): 261-278. September 2009. Reprinted in The Great Endarkenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
• Practical Induction. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997. German translation: Praktische Induktion. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag, 2010.
• Review of Bas van Fraassen, The Empirical Stance. Philosophical Review, 115(3): 404-408. July 2006. (JSTOR)

Kantian Practical Reason:

• Does the Categorical Imperative Give Rise to a Contradiction in the Will? Philosophical Review 112(4): 525-560. October 2003. (JSTOR; reprinted, with postscript, in Ethics Done Right.)
• Reasonably Virtuous. In Ethics Done Right.
• Practical Reason and the Structure of Actions. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. Fall 2005.
• Review of Christine M. Korsgaard, Self-Constitution and The Constitution of Agency. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 89(3): 549-556. September 2011.

Specificationism:

• Specificationism. In J. Adler and L. Rips, Reasoning: Studies of Human Inference and Its Foundations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 731-747.
• Review of Henry Richardson, Practical Reasoning about Final Ends. Mind 105: 504-506. July 1996.

Coherentism:

• Coherence: The Price of the Ticket. Journal of Philosophy, 97(2): 82-93. February 2000. (JSTOR.)
• Deliberative Coherence. (By Elijah Millgram and Paul Thagard.) Synthese 108(1): 63-88. July 1996 (JSTOR).
• Inference to the Best Plan: A Coherence Theory of Decision. (By Paul Thagard and Elijah Millgram.) In D. Leake and A. Ram, Goal-Driven Learning (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995): 439-454.
• Harman's Hardness Arguments. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 72(3): 181-202. September 1991. (University of Utah Institutional Repository link; reprinted in The Philosopher's Annual 14: 233-254. 1991.)

Nihilism:

• Was Hume a Humean? Hume Studies, 21(1): 75-93. April 1995. (Reprinted in R. Cohon, Hume: Moral and Political Philosophy [Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate/Dartmouth, 2001]: 39-57; and in Ethics Done Right.)
• Hume on Practical Reasoning. Iyyun, 46: 235-265. July 1997. (JSTOR; reprinted, as "Hume on 'Is' and 'Ought,'" in Ethics Done Right.)
• Hume, Political Noncognitivism, and the History of England. In Ethics Done Right.
• Practical Nihilism. Philosophies, 8(2). 2023.

Action-theoretic approaches:

• Practical Reason and the Structure of Actions. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. Fall 2005.
• Pluralism about Action. In T. O'Connor and C. Sandis, A Companion to the Philosophy of Action (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010): 90-96.

Particularism:

• Murdoch, Practical Reasoning, and Particularism. Notizie di Politeia 18(66): 64-87. 2002. (Reprinted in Ethics Done Right.)
• Review of Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics, Boston Review 23(1): 45-46. February/March 1998.

Metaethics:

• Mètaètica mìlliana. Quaderni di Scienza Politica, 17(2): 245-265. August 2010. Reprinted (as "Millian Metaethics") in The Great Endarkenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
• Why Do We Think There are Things We Ought to Do? In The Great Endarkenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
• The Invention of Value and the Value of Humanity. In S. Buss and L. N. Theunissen, Rethinking the Value of Humanity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023): 366-393.
• Some Uses of Reflective Equilibrium
• Inhaltsreiche ethische Begriffe und die Unterscheidung zwischen Tatsachen und Werten. In C. Fehige and G. Meggle, Zum moralischen Denken (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1995): 354-388. ("Thick Ethical Concepts and the Fact-Value Distinction" -- English mss)
• Moral Values and Secondary Qualities. American Philosophical Quarterly 36(3):253-255. July 1999 (JSTOR).
• Moral Values, Secondary Qualities, and Paint