January 29, 2008

Reasons: Explanations or Evidence or Neither?
By Daniel Star

John Broome thinks normative reasons are either explanations or parts of explanations of why you ought to F. Stephen Kearns and I think normative reasons are evidence that you ought to F (and we propose this as a unified analysis that applies across both reasons for action and reasons for belief). Many philosophers working on reasons would reject both of these views, often because they think the concept of a reason is not susceptible to deep analysis. In our most recent paper on this topic, Stephen and I compare our own view with Broome’s, and we do so in a way that should help with more general efforts to assess Broome’s view. This paper, “Reasons: Explanations or Evidence?” can be downloaded here.

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Posted on January 29, 2008 at 5:39 am in Metaethics, Daniel Star's Posts, Epistemology | 16 Comments

January 3, 2008

Jason Stanley’s Bank Case Poll
By S. Matthew Liao

Professor Jason Stanley (Rutgers University) has recently won the American Philosophical Association Book Prize for his book, Knowledge and Practical Interests. In this book, Stanely also tests and develops his theories and principles by means of intuitive judgments about cases. Here is a case from the book:

[Bank Case 1:] Hannah and her wife Sarah are driving home on a Friday afternoon. They plan to stop at the bank on the way home to deposit their paychecks. Since they have an impending bill coming due, and very little in their account, it is very important that they deposit their paychecks by Saturday. But neither Hannah nor Sarah is aware of the impending bill, nor of the paucity of available funds. Looking at the lines [i.e., at the long queue at the bank], Hannah says to Sarah, ‘I know the bank will be open tomorrow, since I was there just two weeks ago on Saturday morning. So we can deposit our paychecks tomorrow morning.’ (p. 5)

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Posted on January 3, 2008 at 7:01 am in S. Matthew Liao's Posts, Epistemology, Ethics Etc Poll, Philosophical Methods | 4 Comments