Theory of Reasons for Action

Constitutivists seek to ground authoritative norms in the teleological structure of agency. The philosophical move at the heart of this strategy is mysterious: How can we derive normative conclusions from merely teleological premises about the function or aim of agency? Some constitutivists—Foot, Thomson, and Korsgaard (at least in her recent work)—adopt a broadly Aristotelian answer to this question. They claim that the functional nature of agency grounds normative judgments about agents in much the same way that the functional natures of artifacts and bodily organs ground normative judgments about those kinds of things. I argue, however, that the neo-Aristotelian conclusions about goodness which follow so straightforwardly from teleological premises are not genuinely normative. Conclusions about goodness do follow from premises about functions, of course, but these conclusions are teleological, not normative. Other constitutivists—notably J. David Velleman and Paul Katsafanas—eschew Aristotelian talk of functions in favor of an approach based on the idea that agency has a constitutive aim. I contend that the fact that agency has a constitutive aim is merely a fact about the motives that produce and regulate actions. And so we still left with a gap between the teleological and the normative. All is not lost for constitutivism, though. I suggest that constitutivists have failed to find a way to bridge the gap between teleology and normativity not because none exists, but rather because they have been looking in the wrong place. What constitutivists need is a reductive account of normativity—one according to which reasons for action are considerations that bear on the success of practical reasoning. It turns out that teleology does entail normativity, albeit only with some metanormative assistance.

This article (re-)introduces Risālat al-Bayān al-aẓhar, a short and by all appearances unfinished treatise by the Coptic scholar al-Rashīd Abū ’l-Khayr Ibn al-Ṭayyib (d. after 1270), to exemplify the pivotal role played by the works of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī during the ‘Renaissance’ of Copto-Arabic literature in the 13th and 14th centuries. Rāzī’s œuvre left its mark on both content and form of systematic religious thought in Eastern Christianity. Whilst the Risāla is available in a partial edition since 1938, it has never been studied so far. As we shall see, Ibn al-Ṭayyib’s critique of Rāzī’s deterministic concept of human agency as outlined in the Muḥaṣṣal came in an attempt to counteract what he perceived as a detrimental effect of the mounting popularity which Rāzī’s works enjoyed among contemporaneous Christian readers. The critique is based on a rich patchwork of sources that is characteristic of 13th century Copto-Arabic encyclopaedism.

Rivista di filosofia del diritto (ISSN 2280-482X), fascicolo 1, giugno 2022.

Davvero le norme giuridiche sono “ragioni” per agire, sono regole che assumiamo come guida della nostra condotta? Il presente lavoro tenta di rispondere negativamente a tale questione, sviluppando il concetto di norma giuridica come relazione di dover-essere (Sollen) per come presente nella filosofia kelseniana. La ripresa di alcuni temi propri del pensiero di Kelsen consentirà, infatti, di mostrare come le norme giuridiche non consistano in regole che vertono su azioni, e come il dover-essere non sia in alcun modo identificabile con il dovere di tenere un certo comportamento.

Legal rules constitute not only reasons for action, but also reasons for judicial decision. What kind of reason do legal rules provide for adjudication? Do they figure as Razian exclusionary reasons in legal reasoning? In this paper I will draw on some insights from Robert Alexy’s theory of principles to deal with these problems.

The dominant view in contemporary philosophy of action is that, to explain an action, we need to provide its reason. A reason is what rationalises an action. According to Donald Davidson, before we can describe a reason, we must first identify the need which accompanies the performance of a given action as well as the specific attitude of the agent to the action. The author of Action, Reason and Cause believes that the pair pro-attitude/belief helps to determine the reason for action which, at the same time, is the action's cause. Davidson's view has a lot of supporters today and is strictly related to the so-called post-Hume theories of action. The objective of the present analyses is to demonstrate that the primary reason for action is not provided by the pro-attitude/belief pair, but by predictions due to which agent to act in such and such a way. This expands on Elizabeth Anscombe's intuition according to which each intention is predictive in nature. I will support the thesis about the predictive nature of reasons for action by two arguments. One will be based on the analyses of the Knobe effect concerning the asymmetry between attributing intentionality and attributing responsibility for actions; the other will draw upon the cognitivist theory of predictive coding. These reflections will have the following structure: in §1, I will discuss Donald Davidson's theory. §2 will focus on Elizabeth Anscombe's conception. In §3, I will examine the argument taken from the analyses of the Knobe effect: the agent will intentionally take a given action when he can predict the effects of taking it. §4 will present the problem of providing reasons for action in the context of folk psychology explanations. §5 will examine the theory of predictive coding. §6 will demonstrate that predictions serve a specific, normative role in decision-making processes, whereas §7 will advance the argument from predictive processing whereby to explain an action is to identify specific predictive reasoning which caused the action to be taken. In Conclusions, I will show the consequences of the  thesis for the problem of the nature of actions and explanations as well as the rationale of using folk psychology categories.

Chapter 1 has three basic goals. First (in sections 1.1. and 1.2.), it shows why the Kotarbińskian praxiology – despite its terminological connotations, which locate it close to its Misesian analogue – should be understood as an example of the analytic action theory, and not as a “science” (as it is sometimes read). The chapter initially gives reasons for this interpretation and outlines the virtues of the theory drawn in Kotarbiński’s Treatise on A Good Job. Praxiology occurs to be an action theory that is consistently developed under the sign of agential effectiveness. Second, it focuses (in 1.3.) on the problem of why praxiology (called also by Kotarbiński “the grammar of action”) has not been, so far, recognized as a serious party in the mainstream action theory. It gives two main answers which are responsible for this fact: that there were socio-cultural factors that blocked a wider reception of this book, and that the ontological background of praxiology (the so-called reism or concretism) obfuscated it to the extent that such a reception was extremely difficult. In the fourth step (1.4.), it proposes a therapy that is able to revitalize praxiology and show its true potential. It occurs that praxiology needs an explicitly intentionalistic conceptual framework to show its true value. The chapter also sketches the most important domains of contemporary action-theoretical investigations in which the reinterpreted Kotarbińskian philosophy of agency can have something interesting to say. These domains are explored in the next five chapters.

The philosophical questons about action concern its nature, its description and its explanation. The leading question are "Waht a theory of action is possible?", "Are reasons causes?", "What are practical thoughts?" and "What is the formal logic of practical inference?". Gerhard Preyer offers new answers of some old question about the description and the explanation of action and the logical structure of deliberation or practical reasoning which results from the theory of action since the 1950s years. It is argued that a theory of agent can provide an alternative to any theory postulating actions as irreducible entities metaphysically. The author's account presents intentions as states irreducible to beliefs and desires. The analysis places also a requirement on a fruitful description of the mind-body problem.
Audience:
Teachers and students (graduate and advanced undergraduate) in philosophy, particulary in the filed of philosophy of action, mind and moral philosophy. Also of interest to sociologists and psychologists. Can be used as a textbook for graduate and undergraduate courses in philosophy of action.

https://humanities.verlags-shop.de/philosophie/intention-and-practical-thought---296.html

According to much recent work in metaethics, we have a perceptual access to normative properties and relations. On a common approach, this access has a presentational character. Here, 'presentational' specifies a characteristic feature of the way aspects of the environment are apprehended in sensory experience. While many authors have argued that we enjoy presentations of value properties, thus far comparatively less effort has been invested into developing a presentational view of the apprehension of normative reasons. Since it appears that this view would offer much the same theoretical benefits as presentational views of the apprehension of value, it seems worthwhile redressing this imbalance. My paper aims at doing so, focusing on concern-dependent practical reasons. After clarifying the central commitment of this view, I assess a recent proposal by Jonathan Dancy (Ethics 124: 4, 787-812) which provides a detailed characterization of the relevant type of cognition. I argue that Dancy ignores one of the central features of a presentational access to normative reasons and therefore misidentifies which actual psychological phenomena are apt to play this role. In this context, I also assess and reject further candidates that might seem fitting for this purpose. In the remainder of the paper, I then offer a more adequate account which specifies an actual form of presentational access to concern-dependent practical reasons and provide the contours of a more substantive account of its nature.

1. Die kausale Theorie des Handelns Menschen sind handelnde Wesen. Als solche greifen wir mit unseren Handlungen in die Welt ein und führen gezielt Veränderungen herbei. Dies tun wir normalerweise aus Gründen. Wir können Gründe nennen, weswegen wir eine gewisse Handlung ausgeführt bzw. eine mögliche Alternative dazu unterlassen haben. 1 Meist haben wir für den Vollzug einer Handlung aber nicht nur einen Grund, sondern mehrere zur Auswahl, wie folgendes Beispiel zeigt : ( i ) » Hans bleibt an der roten Fußgängerampel stehen, weil er unbeschadet die Straße überqueren will. « ( ii ) » Hans bleibt an der roten Fußgängerampel stehen, weil er den wartenden Schulkindern ein Vorbild sein will. « ( iii ) » Hans bleibt an der roten Fußgängerampel stehen, weil er Verkehrsregeln grundsätzlich einhält. « Wegen welcher der drei genannten Gründe bleibt Hans stehen ? Alle drei Gründe machen das Verhalten von Hans sinnvoll und nachvollziehbar. Alle drei Gründe führen uns dazu, » etwas zu sehen, das der Handelnde in seiner Handlung sah oder zu sehen glaubte -einen Zug, eine Konsequenz oder einen Aspekt der Handlung, die der Handelnde wollte, wünschte, hochschätzte, mochte, für pflichtgemäß, nützlich, obligatorisch oder angenehm hielt. « 2 Anders ausgedrückt : Jeder der angeführten Gründe ist ein guter Grund für Hans, an der Ampel stehen zu bleiben. Alle genannten Gründe können die Handlung rationalisieren, d. h. nachvollziehbar und verständlich machen. Dadurch ist aber noch nicht aufgezeigt, dass der rationalisierende Grund das Auftreten der Handlung auch festlegte. Aus der Qualität der Gründe lässt sich eben nicht ablesen, weswegen die Handlung vollzogen worden ist. Es kann durchaus der Fall sein, dass zwar ein guter Grund 1 Es sei angemerkt, dass der Begriff der Handlung in diesem Beitrag auf bewusste, d. h. rationale Handlungen beschränkt ist. Andere mögliche Handlungen, die nicht bewusst vollzogen werden, wie automatisierte Handlungen oder spontane reflexartige Handlungen werden nicht berücksichtigt. für die Erklärung einer Handlung vorliegt, aber die Handlung trotzdem nicht wegen dieses Grundes vollzogen wird. 3 Die Antwort auf die Frage, welcher Grund den Vollzug der Handlung bestimmt hat, ist von entscheidender Bedeutung für Handlungserklärungen, da nur die Angabe des tatsächlichen Grundes eine richtige Erklärung für die vollzogene Handlung bereitstellt. Wie können wir also herausfinden, welcher der genannten Gründe Hans dazu bewogen hat, an der Ampel stehen zu bleiben ? Der amerikanische Philosoph Donald Davidson schlägt vor, den Zusammenhang zwischen Handlungsgrund und Handlung kausal zu deuten : Nur eine kausale Deutung ist in der Lage, den Unterschied zwischen einem möglichen Grund, die Handlung zu vollziehen, und dem tatsächlichen Grund, weswegen die Handlung vollzogen worden ist, zu explizieren. Der Handlungsgrund muss Teil der kausalen Vorgeschichte der Handlung sein. Handlungsgründe können nur als Handlungsursachen den Vollzug einer Handlung rationalisieren und zugleich auch das Eintreten der Handlung im Sinne eines Ereignisses mit einer spezifischen kausalen Vorgeschichte erklären. Ansonsten wäre es möglich, dass Handlungsgründe zwar vorgelegen sind, aber die vollzogene Körperbewegung nicht als Handlung gedeutet werden kann, da die Ursachen der Körperbewegung nicht die vorliegenden Handlungsgründe, sondern der betreffenden Person verborgene physiologische Reize waren. Bezogen auf obiges Beispiel : Hans bleibt an der roten Fußgängerampel stehen, wie er es ursprünglich beabsichtigte, um den wartenden Schulkindern ein gutes Vorbild zu sein, aber die wahre Erklärung für sein Stehenbleiben ist nicht dieser rationalisierende Grund, sondern ein Krampf im Fuß, der ihm ein Weitergehen in jedem Fall unmöglich macht.

The main aim of the conference is to present the new approaches to the problem of consciousness and rationality and to provide an effective dialog between disciplines and the different fields of philosophy, which can be fruitful for the solving of general problems of cognition. There are many reasons why the question of the conjunction between self-consciousness and rationality is important. The main and general is the problem of the compatibility between thoughts and acts. Still the following questions need to be answered: Is there a relationship between pre-reflectivity and rational thinking? Is phenomenal subjectivity non-representational? How is pre-reflectivity to implement in cognitive-architecture? Does phenomenal consciousness have a priority over other mental states and actions? The notions of consciousness and rationality have their own long philosophical history of use. That is why the conference will start with the block of presentations devoted to the question of the problem of consciousness and rationality in the light of the classic philosophical theories especially with reference to modern philosophy. In the following blocks the core of presentations will be shifted to contemporary conceptions combining philosophy and cognitive science.

Many of our actions are performed together with other people. What does it mean to act together? -what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of cooperation? This is a widely discussed problem in contemporary philosophy and related sciences. Traditional philosophical accounts in analytic tradition (Sellars, Searle) propose to explain shared collective actions by introducing a primitive called we-intention. Other authors (e.g. Bratman) try to solve the problem of acting together by using the idea of co-meshing individual intentions.

The paper is devoted to the structural relation between Beliefs and Goals. I discuss its importance in modelling cognitive agents; its origin in cognitive processing; its stucture (Belief Structure relative to a Goal); its crucial role in rationality, mediating between "epistemic" and "pragmatic" rationality; its crucial role in Goal Dynamics (in a broad sense). In particular, I will analyse the role of Beliefs in a) the Processing of Goals, from their firing to their satisfaction or abandon: how Beliefs determine step by step such a process; b) the Dynamics or Revision of Goals, i.e. the change of Goals on the basis the change of a dynamic environment;  c) the Typology of Goals, that may be partially characterized just on the basis of their typical Belief Structure. Particular attention is devoted to different Goals "destinies" (when Goals are dropped) on the basis of peculiar "reasons" to drop. The paper will not give a complete or formal account of any of this aspects. It is more an exploring paper, which essays to individuate basic ontological cathegories, basic principles and fruitful directions of analysis, and is aimed to reach an overall view of the role and importance of cognitive Reasons supporting Goals.

This paper distinguishes between various different conceptions of behaviour and action before exploring an accompanying variety of distinct things that „action explanation‟ may plausibly amount to viz. different objectives of action explanation. I argue that a large majority of philosophers are guilty of conflating many
of these, consequently offering inadequate accounts of the relation between actions and our reasons for performing them. The paper ends with the suggestion that we would do well to opt for a pluralistic understanding of action and its explanations.

This paper looks at whether it is possible to unify the requirements of rationality with the demands of normative reasons. It might seem impossible to do because one depends upon the agent’s perspective and the other upon features of the situation. Enter Reasons Perspectivism. Reasons perspectivists think they can show that rationality does consist in responding correctly to reasons by placing epistemic constraints on these reasons. They think that if normative reasons are subject to the right epistemic constraints, rational requirements will correspond to the demands generated by normative reasons. While this proposal is prima facie plausible, it cannot ultimately unify reasons and rationality. There is no epistemic constraint that can do what reasons perspectivists would need it to do. Some constraints are too strict. The rest are too slack. This points to a general problem with the reasons-first program. Once we recognize that the agent’s epistemic position helps determine what she should do, we have to reject the idea that the features of the agent’s situation can help determine what we should do. Either rationality crowds out reasons and their demands or the reasons will make unreasonable demands.

In an earlier paper, 'Peter Geach on nonsense, confusion and sin' 1 , I suggested that what one can say in explanation of one's own actions suffers from a severe limitation: one can shed little light on the question why one acted on one's reasons for an action rather than on one's reasons against that action. In this paper I want to explore this suggestion further. One of my tasks will be to distinguish my question from three standard philosophical questions that have tended to overshadow it: the question of freewill and determinism; that of the relation between fact and value; and that of the possibility of weakness of will. On these I shall, on the whole, maintain a studied agnosticism.

"I suspect that a major factor that motivates most of the literature on human freedom is a need to prove that we, as persons, are ‘free’. It is my aim in this paper to show that, were one to avoid presupposing that we are free to pursue and realize various alternatives, in Davidson’s and Chisholm’s arguments, one would be left with two noticeably weakened arguments. "

There is stock argument against libertarianism: that the indeterminism it postulates makes human choice a matter of chance and this is no better as a basis for practical rationality and moral responsibility than the most rigid determinism.  I suggest that a similar problem arises on deterministic assumptions: although human choice is no longer a matter of mere chance, it remains arbitrary since whatever explains a person’s choice to act on the reasons for an action rather than those against, it is not a matter of reasons that were reasons FOR THAT PERSON.  The explanatory gap is closed in the wrong way for the impression of sheer arbitrariness to be cancelled.  I discuss (via a digression on F. H. Bradley) whether Davidson’s ‘anomalous monism’ would, if correct, necessitate any modification to this conclusion.  I also ask how the problem addressed in this paper relates to Galen Strawson’s rejection of the possibility of complete autonomy or self-determination.

Abstract: It is sometimes assumed that justification is factive. A negative implication of this claim is that reasons are not psychological entities such as believings or desirings. Another, positive, implication of this claim is that there is an important connection between justification and truth. If it is not raining, Paul is not justified in taking the umbrella not only because his believing it is raining is not the sort of thing which can play a justificatory role, but also because no action can be justified by something that is not the case. Elaborating on the work of Collingwood and Dray, this paper argues that there is a notion of justification at work in a hermeneutic context that is weaker than the one used in an epistemic context in so far as it severs the connection between justification and truth, but that it is nonetheless sufficiently robust to support the view that explanatory reasons are normative and that the explanation of action is a species of justification rather than causal explanation.
Collingwood, Dray, action explanation, externalism, internalism, psychologism, causalism, anti-causalism, explanatory reasons.

Most theories of intentional action agree that if acting for a reason is a necessary condition for the action in question to be an intentional action, the reason need not genuinely justify it. The same should hold for shared intentional action, toward which philosophers of action have recently turned their attention. I argue that some of the necessary conditions proposed for shared intention turn out to require that we deny this claim. They entail that shared intention is possible only if the participating agents form their intentions on the grounds of genuinely rational considerations. Thus, they "over-rationalize," as I call it, shared intention.

This paper examines the relation between the various forces which underlie human action and verbal reports about our reasons for acting as we did. I argue that much of the psychological literature on confabulations rests on a dangerous conflation of the reasons for which people act with a variety of distinct motivational factors. Pari passu, experimental psychologists are wrong to maintain that they have shown our everyday reason talk to be systematically confused. This is significant because our everyday reason-ascriptions affect characterizations of action (in terms of intention, knowledge, foresight, etc.) that are morally and legally relevant. I conclude, more positively, that far from rendering empirical research on confabulations invalid, my account helps to reveal its true insights into human nature.

In this paper I examine the structure of hope and trust from a phenomenological perspective in order to analyze the kinds of beliefs, valuings, and practical dispositions involved in them. I claim that there are some basic aspects of the social world that would be inconceivable without the feeling components of these attitudes. However, since these attitudes are only rational in as far as they involve rational beliefs, valuings, and practical assumptions, a complex theory of reason that deals with these three domains is necessary to understand what is at stake in them. Accordingly, I attempt to sketch central aspects of the Husserlian pluralistic conception of reason and highlight the way in which, when they are rational, the valuings involved both in hope and trust open new possibilities to act in rational or meaningful ways. This leads me to stress the role of the feelings involved in these attitudes, for I claim that such valuings or axiological assessments are based on them. I argue that hope allows us to act rationally in the face of uncertainty and what lies beyond our control. In the final part I elaborate on the idea that trust is founded on hope. I examine what happens when hope is expressed and how being found trustworthy by others implies being capable of establishing all kinds of social relationships, including relationships in which the trusted one is dominated. This opens the possibility of raising ethical questions concerning trusting and responding to the trust of others.

In this paper I examine the structure of hope and trust from a phenomenological perspective in order to analyze the kinds of beliefs, valuings, and practical dispositions involved in them. I claim that there are some basic aspects of the social world that would be inconceivable without the feeling components of these attitudes. However, since these attitudes are only rational in as far as they involve rational beliefs, valuings, and practical assumptions, a complex theory of reason that deals with these three domains is necessary to understand what is at stake in them. Accordingly, I attempt to sketch central aspects of the Husserlian pluralistic conception of reason and highlight the way in which, when they are rational, the valuings involved both in hope and trust open new possibilities to act in rational or meaningful ways. This
leads me to stress the role of the feelings involved in these attitudes, for I claim that such valuings or axiological assessments are based on them. I argue that hope allows us to act rationally in the face of uncertainty and what lies beyond our control. In the final part I elaborate on the idea that trust is founded on hope. I examine what happens when hope is expressed and how being found trustworthy by others implies
being capable of establishing all kinds of social relationships, including relationships in which the trusted one is dominated. This opens the possibility of raising ethical questions concerning trusting and responding to the trust of others.

在法学理论研究日趋多样化与精致化的今天，“海峡两岸法理学讨论会”的召开乃是一种宣称，她表明: 汉语世界的法理学研究者们热切期待着直面同台交流; 同时，就法理学基本问题、研究范式与可能结论上存在的分歧，他们已有心理和智识上的准备，如无根本抵牾，当秉持开放心态相互切磋。因而“海峡两岸法理学讨论会”又是一种独特的论说方式: 在相互独立的论说主体之间有可能凸显出若干条主线，从而相互交织、勾连为某种独具特色的“中国法理学”或者“汉语法理学”。正是怀着上述期许，此次讨论会的主题被设定为“当代法理学的基本问题”———它既可以容纳不同的提问立场，又期待着基本问题( 或问题域) 的呈现。
当然，上述超出理论工作本身的憧憬能否最终实现，则要落实到理论研究者本己的智识努力之中。换言之，宣称，应当符合标准证立; 论说，应当做到充分、融贯。每一位与会者都将承担标准证立与充分论说的任务，宣称的正当性最终系于论说的质量。这也对本文的写作提出了同样严苛的要求。慧心的读者将会发现: 笔者给予了各份文本不尽相同的篇幅，并有意调整了文本的先后顺序; 此外，在概述完某个文本( 或某个会议单元) 之后，笔者都基于自己的理解进行了简要评论，甚至提出了商榷意见。作为学界后进，笔者无意对各位前辈大家的精思巧构横加指摘，只是在笔者看来，“理论综述”本身也具有理论的属性，势必也要聆听来自文本的宣称，参与到文本的论说之中，发掘其中卓越的创见，并从互相关联的文本中抽取出连贯的问题脉络。因而对于一篇理论综述而言，适当的论辩甚至商榷就在所难免，与此相反，貌似客观、忠实的文本摘要只会贻误读者，使他们对原著留下生涩呆板的印象，从而最终危害了原作者的名誉。在延伸意义上，法律人的日常工作同样是在各种论说的开放结构中探求事物的本质。

Authority is one of the most central and disputed concepts in political theory.  The purpose of this article is to address the two main problems, conceptual and normative, posed by the notion of authority. First, conceptual issues concern the de ni- tion of authority and how it should be distinguished from other phenomena, such as power, coercion or persuasion, with which it is often confused. Second, authors like Arendt talk about the crisis of authority and point out that it has fallen into disrepute.  The exercise of authority raises a moral problem: how can an agent have the obligation to submit to the will and judgment of another person about what to do? Is such authority incompatible with the rationality and autonomy of the person who is guided by it?  This is is the objection of the philosophical anarchist and any attempt to justify authority has to respond to this challenge. In order to answer the  first problem, I  first examine H. L. Hart’s analysis of authority’s commands in terms of reasons for action. I then examine the service conception of authority elaborated by Joseph Raz. His explanation is surely the most sophisticated contemporary conception of authority, since it addresses the two problems posed and responds to the anarchist’s objection.

In recent decades, self-control has received increasing attention as it can safeguard child-development and human wellbeing. Researchers from various disciplines – philosophy, neuroscience and social psychology – have investigated what self-control is, how it is generated and how it can be stimulated. This chapter critically reflects on recent discussions of the concept and the science of self-control while investigating their bearings on the question of whether parents have a responsibility to raise self-controlled children and what that would entail. The argument put forth is that current social psychology and neuroscience largely investigates controlled behaviour but ignores the prefix self. Consequently, a more comprehensive understanding of the term that does justice to both aspects is required. This gives rise to two different sets of educational goals. Firstly, raising self-controlled children entails teaching them strategies to overcome temptation. Secondly, it requires that parents support children to develop a self that sets its own goals, reflects on these goals and considers them as reasons for action.

Many philosophers working in metaethics accept what I call the Relational View (RV). According to RV, the predicates "is a reason for" and "counts in favor of" express a relation—the favoring-relation—that holds of considerations and responses. But it has gone unacknowledged that RV gives rise to a number of puzzles. The puzzles arise from the following question: What, exactly, is favored in a favoring-relation? The answer may seem obvious: a response. But a moment's reflection shows that this answer is unsatisfying. For when agents respond to their reasons, they perform actions, concrete particulars, whereas before they act, no such particulars exist. This might prompt us to say that acting in a way is favored, yet this suggestion does little to clarify the relationship between what agents have reason to do (act in a way) and what they in fact do (perform actions). I develop the puzzles in detail and propose a common solution.

Davidson and Kolnai in different ways emphasise that practical syllogistic reasoning can only tell one that one has a reason to do or not to do something.  It cannot adjudicate between conflicting reasons.  It can tell one the means to certain ends but not which ends to pursue.  This paper considers possible responses to this predicament.  What if anything can be done to put deliberation - the 'weighing' of competing reasons - on  a rational basis?

В статье рассматриваются различные подходы к объяснению действия. Показано влияние теории действия Аристотеля на формирование современной философии действия, представленной, прежде всего, редукционистской и каузалисткой концепциями, объясняющие действие преимущественно в дескриптивных терминах. Доказано, что отрицание физического и психологического компонентов действия позволяет прийти к следующим выводам, во-первых, действие является социальным понятием и логически зависит от принятых правил поведения, во-вторых, по характеру оно существенно не дескриптивно, но аскриптивно, и, в-третьих, оно представляет собой понятие, определяемое посредством исключений, а не посредством множества необходимых и достаточных условий, физических или же психологических.

One of the main goals of this paper is to introduce the idea that a metaethical theory of the nature of normative judgment must be compatible with a plausible account of the reasons for which we act when we act on the basis of our normative judgments. Another main goal of the paper is to argue that when we try to satisfy this desideratum for a metaethical theory, we notice that cognitivism faces a challenge that non-cognitivism elegantly sidesteps. If cognitivism is true, then it is hard to explain how someone could perform an action, φ, on the basis of her judgment that she ought to φ, and thereby for the reasons that one might sensibly take to explain why she ought to φ. If we accept non-cognitivism, no similar problem arises. This, I claim, gives us a reason to prefer non-cognitivism over cognitivism. But even if someone does not find this argument against cognitivism and in favor of non-cognitivism entirely convincing, she might agree that the more general point is deserving of more attention than it has attracted in the past. I close with an attempt to deal with some possible criticisms.

In her recent book Self-Constitution, Christine Korsgaard develops a constitutivist approach according to which constitutive norms are somewhat like Aristotelian forms. Following Aristotle' s account of the form and matter of artifacts, Korsgaard contends that membership in a kind is determined by the candidate member' s teleological organization. Belonging to a particular kind consists simply in having the appropriate function. The sort of teleology Korsgaard intends to invoke here is fairly mild. Objects are not endowed with purposes or functions from the outside-by, say, a creator or designer. Instead, an object' s function-and thus the kind to which it belongs-is determined entirely by what Korsgaard calls its "internal teleological organization."2 In other words, an object' s kind is determined by what that object does-by its "characteristic activity" or work.3 So, for instance, something counts as a house if and only if it is internally organized so that it can serve as a habitable shelter. Aristotle called this both the form and the essence of a house. The idea is that being a house just consists in being a habitable shelter. Korsgaard then claims, again following Aristotle, that an object' s teleological organization also determines or underwrites its normative status. Embracing what she calls "the ancient metaphysical thesis of the identification of the real with the good," Korsgaard argues that a thing' s constitutive teleological organization "gives rise" to "constitutive standards" or normsthat is, normative standards that govern a thing "simply in virtue of its being the kind of thing that it is."4 More specifically, a thing' s constitutive function or form just is its constitutive norm. This transition from talk of functions and forms to talk of norms is licensed, according to Korsgaard, by the way in which a thing' s constitutive teleological organization can definitively answer normative questions. Why should I add a roof to the house I'm building? Because then it will be able to serve as a habitable shelter. Why should my planned house be able to serve as a habitable shelter? Because that' s simply what houses are. To ask why a house should be a 2 Korsgaard (2009: 38).

Recent advancements in neurosciences prove that we "tell more than we can know" and that we act before being aware of acting. On the contrary, common sense never ceases to assess a reliable link between our conscious will and the outcome of action. I maintain that this incompatibility is fruitfully analysable by means of the concept of habitus, a pivotal notion of Bourdieu's social model. From this perspective, the explanandum is the harmony, displayed by social practices and common sense, between subjective expectations and objective possibilities. The explanans is the habitus, a system of cognitive and bodily schemata in which the prior set of social conditions is stored and converted into individual unconscious dispositions to action. According to this theory and with a view to a neuroethical approach, the action is neither rational, but rather reasonable, nor it has a personal fundament, but rather a sub-personal one, since the conscious access to the reasons of the action is structurally incomplete. Bourdieu extrapolates two formats of justification of biographical paths: the "amor fati", namely the perfect adhesion of subjective expectations to the objective possibilities, the illusory free choice of something towards which the agent was pushed anyway; the "it's not for us", namely the subjective refusal of something from which the agent was excluded anyway. Then I suggest that, inasmuch as the habitus owns a bodily and cognitive sub-personal memory that exceeds conscious and personal memory, the autobiographical reports are confabulatoryin a nonpathological sense -under three regards. They compensate for the unavailability of the subpersonal memory of habitus (mnemonic confabulation); they correspond to explanations of subjective preference or refusal that has an objective but subjectively unavailable fundament (linguistic confabulation); they systematically lack the knowledge of the objective conditions of the action for which they are accounting for (epistemic confabulation).

Reason internalism is a theory about the normativity of reasons for action. According to Internalists, the normative force of reasons has origin in our preferences and evaluations. This paper aims to present a critical interpretation of reason internalism advocated by Externalists. The critique consist in affirming that the motivational states of agents are insufficient to cover the phenomenon of normativity

Palavras-chave: Normatividade; Razões para agir; Externalismo.

Keywords: Normativity; Reasons for action; Externalism.

Many of our actions are performed together with other people. What does it mean to act together? -what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of cooperation? This is a widely discussed problem in contemporary philosophy and related sciences. Traditional philosophical accounts in analytic tradition (Sellars, Searle) propose to explain shared collective actions by introducing a primitive called we-intention. Other authors, like Michael Bratman, try to solve the problem of acting together by using the idea of comeshing individual intentions. In this presentation, I sketch my answer to the above question, critically discussing the strategy offered by Bratman in his elegant and attractive theory. I try to detect its flaws, drawing inspirations from the account of cooperation proposed by Tadeusz Kotarbinski (Warsaw-Lvov School) in the so-called praxiology.

The paper begins with an objection to the Desire-Based Reasons Model. The argument from reason-based desires holds that since desires are based on reasons (first premise), which they transmit but to which they cannot add (second premise), they cannot themselves provide reasons for action. In the paper I investigate an attack that has recently been launched against the first premise of this argument by Ruth Chang. Chang invokes a counterexample: affective desires. The aim of the paper is to see if there is a way to accommodate the counterexample to the first premise. I investigate three strategies. I first deal with the idea that the motivation for the premise may be the thesis that an action is intentional if and only if it is done under the guise of perceived reasons. This offers us a way of defending the premise: by showing that actions prompted by affective desires are not intentional. I, however, argue that this strategy is unworkable. This brings me to the second strategy. Here I consider the idea that the premise does not require a conscious normative thought on the part of the agent; in fact, it may not require any such thought, conscious or unconscious. I claim that this strategy too is a failure. Finally, the third approach builds normative judgment in the desire. This is the approach that I think works; in particular, recent work by Jennifer Hawkins may help us accommodate affective desires. The challenge of affective desires, I conclude, can be tackled.

Hukuki pozitivizm hukuk kurallarının ve hukuki işlemlerin normatifliğini açıklayabilir mi? Pozitivist geçerlilik kriterlerine uygunluk bir irade açıklamasının norm yaratmasını garanti eder mi? “Normativite ve Pozitivizm” bu iki temel soruya yanıt aramaktadır. Kitap Joseph Raz’ın otorite temelli normativite anlayışından yola çıkarak hukuk normlarının özel (dışlayıcı) normatif gücünün izini sürer. Meşru otorite kavramı belli şartlara sahip irade açıklamalarının normatif niteliğini hukuki pozitivizmin temel ilkelerine uygun bir biçimde açıklayabilir. Bununla birlikte, hukukun meşru otorite tarafından yaratılmadığı durumlarda normatif nitelik taşımasının koşulları da incelenmelidir. Bunun için bu çalışmada geçerlilik ve bağlayıcılık kavramlarına ve bu kavramların birbiriyle ilişkisine dair bir tartışma yürütülmektedir. Geçerlilik ve bağlayıcılık ilişkisinin doğru bir biçimde kurulması durumunda hukuki normativiteyi açıklayabilen bir pozitivizmin mümkün olduğu savunulmaktadır.

Philip Pettit, Michael Smith, and Tyler Burge have suggested that the similarities between theoretical and practical reasoning can bolster the case for judgment internalism - i.e. the claim that normative judgments are necessarily connected to motivation. In this paper, I first flesh out the rationale for this new approach to internalism. I then argue that even if there are reasons for thinking that internalism holds in the theoretical domain, these reasons don't generalize to the practical domain.