Subjective Reasons

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-122
Author(s):  
Daniel Whiting
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Normative Beliefs ◽  
Subjective Reason

Objective reasons depend on how things are. Subjective reasons depend on how things seem. Subjective reasons determine what it is rational to do. This chapter develops and defends a new account of subjective reasons, and thereby of practical rationality, in part via critical reflection on the leading alternative. The positive proposal is a modal one, which builds on the theories of objective and possessed reasons. Roughly, what appears to a person to be the case is a subjective reason for them to act when, in some nearby epistemically possible world in which it obtains, it is right in some way for them to act. The chapter concludes by showing how the framework might be further extended to capture the idea that rationality depends on credences, desires, and normative beliefs.

scholarly journals Ability, relevant possibilities, and the fixity of the past

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penelope Mackie
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Rationality ◽  
John Martin Fischer ◽  
Possible World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Intuitive Idea ◽  
Principal Contribution

AbstractIn several writings, John Martin Fischer has argued that those who deny a principle about abilities that he calls ‘the Fixity of the Past’ are committed to absurd conclusions concerning practical reasoning. I argue that Fischer’s ‘practical rationality’ argument does not succeed. First, Fischer’s argument may be vulnerable to the charge that it relies on an equivocation concerning the notion of an ‘accessible’ possible world. Secondly, even if Fischer’s argument can be absolved of that charge, I maintain that it can be defeated by appeal to an independently plausible principle about practical reasoning that I call ‘the Knowledge Principle’. In addition, I point out that Fischer’s own presentation of his argument is flawed by the fact that the principle that he labels ‘the Fixity of the Past’ does not, in fact, succeed in representing the intuitive idea that it is intended to capture. Instead, the debate (including Fischer’s practical rationality argument) should be recast in terms of a different (and stronger) principle, which I call ‘the Principle of Past-Limited Abilities’. The principal contribution of my paper is thus twofold: to clarify the terms of the debate about the fixity of the past, and to undermine Fischer’s ‘practical rationality’ argument for the fixity of the past.

Normative Beliefs about Aggression toward the Out-Group among Israeli and Palestinian Youth

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric F. Dubow ◽  
L. Rowell Huesmann ◽  
Erika Y. Niwa ◽  
Paul Boxer ◽  
Simha F. Landau ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Normative Beliefs

Normative Beliefs about Cyberbullying in U.S. and Israeli Youth

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mandy B. Medvin ◽  
Yehuda Peled ◽  
Linda Domanski ◽  
Alissa R. Johnston ◽  
Efrat Pieterse
Keyword(s):  
Normative Beliefs

Engineering knowledge: philosophy and ponstructive meanig

2018 ◽  
pp. 10-16
Author(s):  
V. I. Onoprienko
Keyword(s):  
Information Technologies ◽  
Knowledge Engineering ◽  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Engineering Knowledge ◽  
World Today ◽  
The World ◽  
Technological Area

An expansion of information technologies in the world today is caused by progress of instrumental knowledge. It has been arisen a special technological area of knowledge engineering, which is related to practical rationality and experts’ knowledge for solving urgent problems of science and practice.

Beauty, Critical Reflection, and Justice

2011 ◽  
Vol 34 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 130-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Rixon
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection
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