Skip to Content

Required textbooks:

Optional textbook:

We will use some short stretches of this book in the class; they will be made available in the Philosophy Department reserve file. If you decide to write a paper on it, however, you'll need to buy the book and read a bit more than half of it -- up to about p. 149.

Additional readings will be made available through the Philosophy Department reserve file (behind the desk in the reception area of the department office), and through the Marriott Library reserve desk. (See Marriott's Course Reserve How to Guide for an intro to using the library reserves.)

Reading Assignments:

  1. Aug. 26: Introduction.

    Optional prereading: "Practical Reasoning: The Current State of Play" (VPR, ch. 1); Practical Reasoning and the Structure of Actions, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

    (Optional reading really is optional. These are overviews of the subject area, in case you want more of an idea of what the topic is.)

  2. Sept. 2: Internalism.

    Reading: Williams, "Internal and External Reasons" (VPR, ch. 1; on reserve in the Philosophy Department); Korsgaard, "Skepticism about Practical Reasons" (VPR, ch. 6; also available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026464, and on reserve in the Philosophy Department).

    Optional reading: Williams, "Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame" (Marriott reserve; Philosophy Department reserve); Hooker, "Williams' Argument against External Reasons" (VPR, ch. 5); John McDowell, "Might There Be External Reasons?" (Marriott reserve; Philosophy Department reserve); Dreier, "Humean Doubts about Categorical Imperatives" (VPR, ch. 2); Robertson, "Internalism, Practical Reason, and Motivation" (VPR, ch. 7).

    And followon reading (a model for a longer term paper): Hieronymi, "Internal Reasons and the Integrity of Blame".

  3. Sept. 9: Instrumentalism vs. Values.

    Reading: Michael Smith, "The Humean Theory of Motivation," Mind 96(381), Jan. 1987: 36-61; you can find this at http://www.jstor.org/stable/2253760. (For off-campus access, click through to the article from the Marriott catalog; you'll be required to log in using your UNID and campus password.) The paper is also in the reserve folder in the Philosophy Department reception area. You'll also need a read a short passage from Anscombe; conveniently for us, it's quoted in Vogler, "Anscombe on Practical Inference" (VPR, ch. 19), on p. 437 -- this is the very first para. of the chapter. (It's also on reserve in the Philosophy Department, as an excerpt from Intention.) Joseph Raz, "The Myth of Instrumental Rationality," Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1(1), April 2005: 2-28 (Marriott reserve; the paper is also in the reserve folder in the Philosophy Department reception area.)

    Optional reading: Fehige, "Instrumentalism" (VPR, ch. 3). Plus reserve typescript (available in the Philosophy Department), up to p. 16.

  4. Sept. 16: Anscombean Instrumentalism, plus: Aristotle meets Frege!

    Reading: Michael Thompson, Life and Action, Parts I and II.

    Optional reading: Vogler, "Anscombe on Practical Inference" (VPR, ch. 19); Chrisoula Andreou, "Getting on in a Varied World" (Marriott e-reserve); Thompson, "Apprehending Human Form" (Marriott e-reserve); Thompson, "Three Degrees of Natural Goodness" (on reserve in the Philosophy Department); Jay Odenbaugh, "Nothing Makes Sense in Ethics Except in Light of Evolution?" (Marriott e-reserve).

  5. Sept. 23: Specificationism.

    Reading: Kolnai, "Deliberation Is of Ends" (VPR, ch. 12); Buss, "Personal Ideals, Moral Requirements, and the Ideal of Rational Agency" (mss, on reserve in Marriott and the Philosophy Department): read up to p. 17, then the paragraphs bridging pp. 22-23, 25-26, and the third para. on p. 32 (starting, respectively, "Of course, different ways of being good..."; "In short, the moral ideal is..."; and "To appreciate the problem").

    Optional reading: Millgram, "Specificationism" (Marriott reserve); Wiggins, "Deliberation and Practical Reason" (VPR, ch. 13); the rest of the Buss mss.

  6. Sept. 30: New Kantians.

    Reading: O'Neill, "Consistency in Action" (VPR, ch. 14); Korsgaard, "Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and Kant" (on reserve in Marriott and the Philosophy Department).

    Optional reading: Tamar Schapiro, "Three Conceptions of Action in Moral Theory" (= http://www.jstor.org/stable/2671947 ) Luca Ferrero, "Constitutivism and the Inescapability of Agency"; Margaret Bowman, "Can the Categorical Imperative Test Final Ends?" (Marriott e-reserve).

  7. Oct. 7: On Which Occasions Is Particularism Right?

    Reading: Murdoch, "The Idea of Perfection" (VPR, ch. 18); Dancy, Ethics without Principles, chs. 1-3.

    Optional reading: Dancy, sec. 4.5; Millgram, Review of Iris Murdoch, Existentialist and Mystics (on reserve in the Philosophy Department); Millgram, "Murdoch, Practical Reasoning, and Particularism" (Marriott e-reserve); Murdoch, "The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts" (online reserve).

  8. Have a great fall break -- take Dancy and Velleman to Bermuda with you!

  9. Oct. 21: Moderate Particularism?

    Reading: Dancy, Ethics without Principles, chs. 5-6; sec. 10.2; ch. 11; Rube Goldberg machines in Minecraft; and elsewhere.

    Optional reading: Dancy, EWP secs. 7.4, 7.7, 10.1; Dancy, "The Role of Imaginary Cases in Ethics" (online reserve); Cora Diamond, "We Are Perpetually Moralists" (online reserve); Jackson et al., "Ethical Particularism and Patterns" (online reserve).

  10. Oct. 28: "I Only Did Today's Reading Because I Kind of Expected I Would, and I Hate to Disappoint Myself About Things Like That!"

    Reading: Velleman, "The Possibility of Practical Reason"; Velleman, How We Get Along (HWGA), ch. 1.

    Optional reading: Slote, "Moderation and Satisficing" (VPR ch. 10).

  11. Nov. 4: Absorption and Theatricality.

    Reading: Velleman, HWGA, chs. 2-3; Nussbaum, "The Protagoras: A Science of Practical Reasoning" (VPR ch. 8).

    Optional reading: Velleman, HWGA, ch. 4.

  12. Nov. 11: Why You Should Be a Poser.

    Reading: Velleman, HWGA, ch. 5; Velleman, "Time for Action" (online reserve).

    Optional reading: Velleman, HWGA, ch. 6; Katsafanas, "Constitutivism and Self-Knowledge" (online reserve); Velleman, "Epistemic Freedom" (on reserve in the Philosophy Department); Donna Williams, Nobody Nowhere (on reserve).

  13. Nov. 18: Almost Getting to Narrative Closure on Velleman.

    Reading: Velleman, HWGA, ch. 7; Davidson, "Outlines of a Formal Theory of Value" (excerpt, online reserve); Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (excerpt, online reserve).

    Optional reading: Mandler, "A Difficult Choice in Preference Theory: Rationality Implies Completeness or Transitivity but Not Both" (VPR ch. 17); Melville, "Bartleby, The Scrivener" (online reserve).

    "Implicit Bias and Korsgaard's Account of Action" (model paper, on reserve in the Philosophy Department); Kyle Barrett, "Explaining Particular Actions" (model paper, on reserve in the Philosophy Department).

  14. Nov. 25: Planning vs. Supervision; Inferentialism

    Reading: Bratman, "Taking Plans Seriously" (VPR ch. 9), together with HWGA, sec. covering pp. 105-107 (top); Brandom, "Action, Norms, and Practical Reasoning" (VPR ch. 20); review "Time for Action".

    Optional reading: Kavka, "The Toxin Puzzle" (online reserve). Followon reading: For a portrait of what it's like to really live up to your self-image, Candace Vogler, "Sex and Talk". And in case you're worried that reading Velleman might turn you into a Vellemanian agent: Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul and Mad Travelers.

  15. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

  16. Dec. 2: Defeasibility and the Unity of the Good; Nihilism.

    Reading: Engstrom, The Form of Practical Knowledge, selections. (Photocopy on reserve in the Philosophy Department; read only the marked bits.)

    Optional reading: As much more of the Engstrom as you're up for. And for "error theory" in history: Millgram, "Was Hume a Humean?"; for error theory more recently: Street, "A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value".

  17. People are having access issues with the Engstrom photocopy, so here's the list of passages:

    • p. viii-ix, from "All these developments..." to "...must be developed."
    • p. 2, from "But the philosopher is entangled..." to "...aspires to articulate".
    • p. 8, first para.
    • p. 14, from "And in keeping with..." to "...consistent with knowledge".
    • pp. 16-17, first para of (6), "It might initially seem..."
    • para. bridging pp. 18f, "Second, if the universalization..."
    • p. 29, from "The feature that marks..." to "...in the specific form of efficacy."
    • pp. 29-30, from "As is well known..." to the end of the para., "...from its cause."
    • pp. 31 (last para., "On account of...) to 32, bottom ("...of the act of intention").
    • p. 35, from "the principles to which Kant here refers..." to "...bare animal existence".
    • pp. 35 (bottom, "As the practical self-consciousness...) to 36 ("...theoretically through experience").
    • pp. 39-40, from "Because the object of sensible desire..." to the end of the para.
    • pp. 44f, first para. of sec. 5, "We can locate..."
    • p. 48, from "It is also worth noting..." to "...after them in time."
    • pp. 49-50, from "Choice, then, implies intention..." to "...under the heading 'what ought to be.'"
    • p. 51, from "For as self-conscious..." to the end of the para.
    • p. 55, from "In the sense introduced above..." to "...these two senses are distinct".
    • p. 58, from "We could even say..." to "...not the cause through the effect".
    • p. 59, from "But agreement in judgment..." to "...can agree or disagree".
    • pp. 59-60, from "Put in terms of the relational concept..." to "...likewise essentially shareable".
    • p. 60, from "In such instances..." to "...focus of our investigation".
    • p. 63, from "Obviously the different modalities..." to end of para.
    • pp. 66-68, from "choices also always depend..." to the bottom of 67, and then again on 68, para. starting "These judgments..." up to "...good on the whole to do".
    • pp. 74-75, from "But the relation..." to the end of the para. ("...always sustains itself").
    • p. 76, from "Kant articulates this common character..." to "...determination of the faculty of desire".
    • sentence bridging pp. 77-78.
    • p. 80, sentence starting "What is simply good..."
    • pp. 84-85, para. starting "It belongs to the concept of a person..."
    • p. 86, para. starting "What is of interest..."
    • p. 88, from "to acquire and to maintain..." to "...the restoration of their unity."
    • p. 91, from "the goodness of the particular object..." to "...as anything good"; from "If it should turn out..." to "...happiness substantively conceived."
    • p. 92, para. starting "The considerations to be spelled out..."
    • p. 99, from "No bare multiplicity..." to the end of the para.
    • p. 101, 2 sentences starting "As these remarks indicate..."; also at bottom, last 3 lines, from "as such, has..." to "...self-sustaining".
    • p. 102, from "but while each..." to "...is thereby excluded".
    • p. 104, "Since a judgment's..." to "...with every other."
    • p. 106, para. starting "Because the combination..."
    • p. 107 (bot., from "Since each judgment's..." to 108, end of para.
    • pp. 110f, from "Giving up a judgment's..." to "...being properly exercised."
    • p. 114, from "It would not be..." to "...existence on another."
    • pp. 114f, from "But objects known..." to the end of the para.
    • p. 119, from "It is thus not..." to "...depends on the actuality of the knowledge."
    • pp. 123f, from "We also saw..." to the end of the section.
    • p. 125, from "So while the practical..." to "...the universal itself."
    • p. 131, from "Logical consistency, for instance..." to "...that is not logically consistent".
    • p. 132, top, "This normativity stems..." to "...or standard of validity."
    • p. 132, bot., "Since the will..." to "...agrees with its form."
    • p. 143, from "To suppose that prudence..." to "...in which they exist."
    • p. 144, from "In each case, agreement..." to the end of the page.

  18. Dec. 9: What Are We Deciding When We Decide How to Decide What to Do? Is There Even Any Such Thing as Practical Reasoning At All?

    Reading: Goldstein and Gigerenzer, "The Recognition Heuristic" (online reserve).

    Optional reading: Thompson, Life and Action, Part III ("Practical Generality").

GRADED PAPERS NOW AVAILABLE FOR PICKUP IN THE DEPARTMENT OFFICE (IN YOUR BOX, IF YOU HAVE ONE, OR FROM THE STAFF).