My topic is the debate in moral psychology between the rationalist and the anti-rationalist over the proper relation between reason and desire. My aim is not to adjudicate this debate, but rather to clarify what is at stake, for, it seems to me, both parties are prone to misconceive the issues that divide them. Rationalists and anti-rationalists alike believe that there are norms of rationality...

Rationality is a conspicuous yet neglected phenomenon. It has received much attention from philosophers and some social scientists, who have treated rationality as the hallmark of science, of economic action, or of modernity in general. Yet with all this attention, rationality has been conspicuously taken for granted, and its taken-for-grantedness has licensed a neglect of the practical activit...

to Conference: Towards Science of Consciousness, Budapest 2007 its own rationality, involving the rationality of practical dialogical syntheses of both universal and local symmetries, i.e., `thick' descriptions involving multiple `thin' descriptions. IV. The `orthodox account' of the quantum theory (so-called by Wigner, Dirac, and von Neumann), is a `thick description,' a rational practical syn...

This essay examines and criticizes a set of Kantian objections to Parfit’s attempt in Reasons and Persons to connect his theory of personal identity to practical rationality and moral philosophy. Several of Parfit’s critics have tried to sever the link he forges between his metaphysical and practical conclusions by invoking the Kantian thought that even if we accept his metaphysical theory of p...

The economic theory of rationality promises to equal mathematical logic in its importance for the mechaniz* tion of reasoning. We survey the growing literature on how the basic notions of probability, utility, and rational choice, coupled with practical limitations on information and resources, influence the design and analysis of reasoning and representation systems.

Cognitivism about practical reason is the view that intentions involve beliefs, and that the rational requirements on intentions can be explained in terms of the rational requirements on the beliefs that figure in intentions. In particular, cognitivists about practical reason have sought to provide cognitive explanations of two basic requirements of practical rationality: a consistency requirem...