Reason: New Essays on the Philosophy of Normativity, ed. Simon Robertson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bratman, M.E. Forthcoming b. Intention, Practical Rationality, and Self-Governance. Ethics. Broome, J. 2005. Have we reason to do as rationality requires? — a comment on Raz. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Symposium 1. Harman, G. 1999. ‘Practical Reasoning’. Reprinted in Reasonin...

Unlike any other monograph on legal liability, Michael S. Moore’s book Causation and Responsibility contains a well-informed and in-depth discussion of the metaphysics of causation. Moore does not share the widespread view that legal scholars should not enter into metaphysical debates about causation.1 He shows respect for the subtleties of philosophical debates on causal relata, identity condi...

Like the ring of fire around the Pacific, conceptual fracture between everyday acceptance of mentality and allegiance to the physical arouses uneasy attention. Theorists have dedicated impressive ingenuity to domestication of belief/desire psychology within a physical worldview; they have enthusiastically welcomed (or stoically contemplated) its demise in the wake of inevitable (or possible) fa...

1.Puzzle According to a standard view in contemporary metaphysics, there are no necessary connections between distinct properties. But according to a standard view in philosophy of mind there are necessary connections between distinct properties. In short, we have a puzzle: standard metaphysics inconsistent with standard philosophy of mind. By ‘a standard view in contemporary metaphysics’ I mea...

In his graduate-seminar lectures on Kant—published as Kant and Pre-Kantian Themes (Sellars 2002)—Wilfrid Sellars argues that because Hume cannot distinguish between a vivacious idea and an idea of something vivacious he cannot account for the human ability to represent temporally complex states of affairs. The first section of this paper aims to show that this argument is not properly aimed at ...

In a quantum universe with a strong arrow of time, we postulate a lowentropy boundary condition (the Past Hypothesis) to account for the temporal asymmetry. In this paper, I show that the Past Hypothesis also contains enough information to significantly simplify the quantum ontology and clearly define a unique initial condition in such a world. First, I introduce Density Matrix Realism, the the...

In their classic analyses, Hobbes and Hume argue that offensively violating a covenant is irrational because the offense ruins one’s reputation. This paper explores conditions under which reputation alone can enforce covenants. The members of a community are modeled as interacting in a Covenant Game repeated over time. Folk theorems are presented that give conditions under which theHumean strat...

Causalism is the doctrine that rational choice must take account of causal information. Specifically it must attend to whether and how an agent’s available acts are causally relevant to the outcomes that he desires or dreads. Nothing short of causal information will do the trick, and agents who ignore it will make the wrong decision in a variety of identifiable and realistic cases. This book ar...

I discuss the relationship between the two forms of expressivism defended by Robert Brandom, on one hand, and philosophers in the Humean tradition, such as Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard, on the other. I identify three apparent points of difference between the two programs, but argue that all three are superficial. Both projects benefit from the insights of the other, and the combination is ...

In this essay I want to place the arguments of “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” into a slightly less local context, by tracing further, into neighboring works, some strands of argumentation that intersect and are woven together in his critique of empiricism in its two principal then-extant forms: traditional, and 20 century logical empiricism. Sellars always accepted that observation rep...