Instrumental desires, instrumental rationality: I - Michael Smith

Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society, Supplementary Volumes

Volumn 78, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 93-109

  Smith, Michael ^a   Harcourt, Edward ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60949480551     PISSN: 03097013     EISSN: None     Source Type: Conference Proceeding    
DOI: 10.1111/j.0309-7013.2004.00117.x     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. Christine Korsgaard, 'The Normativity of Instrumental Reason' in Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut (eds.), Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)
2. John Broome, 'Normative requirements', Ratio 12 (1999), 398-419
3. R. Jay Wallace, 'Normativity, Commitment, and Instrumental Reason' in Philosophers' Imprint, 〈www.philosophersimprint.org/001003〉 1 (2001), 1-26
4. As will become clear to those familiar with their work, while my disagreement with Broome, and perhaps with Wallace too, turns out to be mainly a disagreement about the scope of instrumental rationality, my disagreement with Korsgaard is more complete, as she thinks that the requirements of instrumental rationality can be restated as claims about what we have reason to do. (Though note that Wallace sometimes says this sort of thing too: see, for example, his 'Practical Reason' in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = 〈http://plato.stanford. edu/archives/win2003/entries/practical-reason/〉 .) But this seems to me quite wrong, as it would require a connection between instrumental rationality and instrumental reasoning that does not exist. I will not, however, offer any explicit criticisms of these authors beyond what I have already said. My aim, to repeat, is to spell out an alternative
5. For more on this see my 'Is there a Nexus between Reasons and Rationality?' forthcoming in Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of Science and Humanities: New Trends in Moral Psychology (ed.) Sergio Tenenbaum (Amsterdam: Rodophi)
6. David Hume, Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, 1777 edition, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), Appendix I
7. Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), Chapter 5
8. Compare Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, 'The Meta-Ethical Problem: a discussion of Michael Smith's The Moral Problem' in Ethics 108 (1997), 55-83
9. and Michael Smith, 'In Defence of The Moral Problem: A Reply to Brink, Copp and Sayre-McCord' in Ethics 108 (1997), 84-119
10. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 1740 edition, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), especially Book II, Section III
11. see too Donald Davidson, 'Actions, Reasons and Causes' reprinted in his Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980)
12. Arthur C. Danto, 'What We Can Do', Journal of Philosophy 60 (1963), 434-445
13. Jennifer Hornsby, Actions (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980)
14. G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957), 52
15. Davidson, 'Actions, Reasons and Causes', 8