Erratum: Time, rationality, and self-governance (Nous-Supplement: Philosophical Issues 22 (73-88) DOI: 10.1111/j.1533-6077.2012.00219.x);Time, rationality, and self-governance

Nous-Supplement: Philosophical Issues

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 73-88

  Bratman, Michael E ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84873392546     PISSN: 15336077     EISSN: 17582237     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/phis.12021     Document Type: Erratum

References (29)

1. Michael E. Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (Harvard University Press, 1987; reissued by CSLI Press, 1999) at 82. As indicated there, I owe this phrase to John Etchemendy.
2. This is pretty much where I left this matter in Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason.
3. See e.g., John Broome, "Wide or Narrow Scope?" Mind 116 (2007): 359-70.
4. John Brunero also highlights a distinction between local and overall rationality in his "Instrumental Rationality, Symmetry, and Scope," Philosophical Studies 157 (2012): 125-140, at 129-30.
5. T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 17. For different but related ideas see Pamela Hieronymi, "The Wrong Kind of Reason," Journal of Philosophy 102 (2005): 437-57, and John Broome, Rationality Through Reasoning (unpublishedMS, version of July, 2011, "complete26"), Chap. 3. [My references to this manuscript below will be to this as yet unpublished manuscript.] But these are complexities we can safely ignore here.
6. Bernard Williams, "Internal and External Reasons", in his Moral Luck (Cambridge University Press, 1981), 101-113.
7. Bernard Williams, "Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame", in his Making Sense of Humanity (Cambridge University Press, 1981), 35-45, at 36.
8. See Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Harvard University Press, 1990) at 163. And see also Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning (Oxford University Press, 1998).
9. For a recent, trenchant discussion see Niko Kolodny, "Instrumental Reasons," unpublished manuscript.
10. A more precise formulation would refer to the need, by a certain time, for an intention to M if one is to M.
11. In his "The Requirements of Rationality," (unpublished manuscript version 2.4; August 2007) Nadeem Hussain emphasizes the relevance of a method of reflective equilibrium to our assessment of such claims about rationality.
12. In putting the question this way I am following Garret Cullity, "Decisions, Reasons, and Rationality," Ethics 119 (2008): 57-95, at 82.
13. For the first idea see my Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987; reissued by CSLI Publications 1999). For the connections to sociality see the essays on shared agency in my Faces of Intention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), and my manuscript-in-progress, Shared Agency. For the connections to self-governance see the essays in my Structures of Agency: Essays (New York; Oxford University Press, 2007).
14. J.J.C. Smart, "Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism," in Philippa Foot, ed., Theories of Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1967). For some complications see my "The Interplay of Intention and Reason," unpublished manuscript.
15. See my "Intention. Practical Rationality, and Self-Governance," Ethics 119 (2009): 411-443.
16. Which is not to deny that we also sometimes want to give up control over aspects of our lives.
17. I defend this thought further in section 6.
18. For talk of where the person stands see Harry Frankfurt, "Identification and Wholeheartedness," as reprinted in his The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge University Press, 1987): 159-76, at 166.
19. One challenge concerns cases in which, while the end is attainable, the agent will in fact not performall of the other necessary means or constitutive elements. [For a version of this challenge that concerns "ought" see John Broome, Rationality Through Reasoning, at p. 207.] Now, I grant that even if you ought to E (where E is attainable by you) and M is a necessary means to or constitutive element of E, if in fact you are not going to perform other necessary means to E then it does not follow that you ought to M. But it seems to me that reasons work differently than "ought" in such cases.
20. I limit my attention here to cases in which grounds support an intention to X by supporting X; and I also put to one side cases in which the agent's relevant thinking about her grounds is itself distorted in some way.
21. See Andrew Reisner,"Unifying the Requirements of Rationality," Philosophical Explorations 12 (2009): 243-60, at 250. And John Broome notes that the fixity of the past supports what he calls "necessary detachment". (John Broome, Rationality Through Reasoning, at pp. 130, 145.)
22. I borrow the terminology of "incomparable" from Allan Gibbard, "Reply to Critics," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (2006): 729-744, at 735-7.
23. Here I am in disagreement with Luca Ferrero. See his "Decisions, Diachronic Autonomy, and the Division of Deliberative Labor," Philosophers' Imprint 10:2 (2010), 1-23, section 6. This rational default status also goes beyond John Broome's proposed principle of "persistence of intention". According to Broome's proposal (in its "special form"), "rationality requires of N that, if N intends at t1 to F, and no canceling event occurs between t1 and t2, then either N intends at t2 to F, or N considers at t2 whether to F." (See John Broome, Rationality Through Reasoning, at p. 185. For a related discussion of the case of Abraham and Isaac, see John Broome, "Are Intentions Reasons? And How Should We Cope with Incommensurable Values?" in Christopher W. Morris and Arthur Ripstein, eds., Practical Rationality and Preference: Essays for David Gauthier (Cambridge University Press, 2001): 98-120, esp. 114-119.) Without going into the details, it suffices here to note that, having so intended at t1, one satisfies Broome's requirement simply by reconsidering that intention at t2, at which point the cited principle describes no further rational pressure to retain that intention. (In this respect, Broome's approach here is similar in spirit to the approach I took in Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason.) According to (D), in contrast, even when one reconsiders one's prior intention it remains, in the absence of a relevant change in assessment, a rational default.
24. See Jed Rubenfeld, Freedom and Time (Yale University Press, 2001) part II; and see J. David Velleman's appeal to "diachronic autonomy" in his "Deciding How to Decide," as reprinted in his The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford University Press, 2000): 221-243, at 238-40.
25. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
26. This is a development of a view I discuss in my Structures of Agency, and in my "Agency, Time, and Sociality," Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 84:2 (2010): 7-26.
27. Sydney Shoemaker, "Personal Identity," in Sydney Shoemaker and Richard Swinburne, Personal Identity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984) at 95.
28. John Brunero, "Instrumental Rationality, Symmetry, and Scope," at 136.
29. Recall Broome's principle of persistence of intention (in its special form): "rationality requires of N that, if N intends at t1 to F, and no canceling event occurs between t1 and t2, then either N intends at t2 to F, or N considers at t2 whether to F" (emphasis added). Note that Broome's principle also highlights a second disjunct, though a different second disjunct from the one to which I am here appealing. (The second disjunct implicit in (D) involves relevant change in assessment of grounds for X, not just reconsidering whether to X.) Both Broome and I aim to avoid in this way an implication from the fixity of one's past formation of the intention at t1, directly and simply to a reason later to retain and act on that intention at t2. But, as indicated in note 24, the combination of (D) and (R) does this in a way that provides for a stronger diachronic constraint than does Broome's principle of intention persistence. (See John Broome, Rationality Through Reasoning, pp. 184-190.)