Thinking About Reasons: Themes from the Philosophy of Jonathan Dancy

360 Pages·2013·1.55 MB·English

by  David Bakhurst

Thinking about Reasons
JonathanDancy.PhotographbySarahDancy.
Thinking about
Reasons
Themes from the Philosophy
of Jonathan Dancy
edited by
David Bakhurst, Brad Hooker, and
Margaret Olivia Little
1
3
GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,ox26dp,
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Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Introduction 1
Brad Hooker
1 Acting in the Light of a Fact 13
John McDowell
2 Can Action Explanations Ever Be Non-Factive? 29
Constantine Sandis
3 The Ideal of Orthonomous Action, or the How and
Why of Buck-Passing 50
Michael Smith
4 Dancy on Buck-Passing 76
Philip Stratton-Lake
5 Are Egoism and Consequentialism Self-Refuting? 97
Roger Crisp
6 In Defence of Non-Deontic Reasons 112
Margaret Olivia Little
7 The Deontic Structure of Morality 137
R. Jay Wallace
8 Morality and Principle 168
Stephen Darwall
9 Moral Particularism: Ethical Not Metaphysical? 192
David Bakhurst
10 A Quietist Particularism 218
A. W. Price
11 Contours of the Practical Landscape 240
David McNaughton and Piers Rawling
vi CONTENTS
12 Why Holists Should Love Organic Unities 265
Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge
13 Practical Reasoning and Inference 286
John Broome
14 Why There Really Are No Irreducibly Normative Properties 310
Bart Streumer
Afterword 337
Jonathan Dancy
Index 341
Notes on Contributors
David Bakhurst is Charlton Professor of Philosophy at Queen’s University at
Kingston.Hisresearchaddressesquestionsinmetaethics,metaphysics,philosophy
of education, and Russian philosophy and psychology. His publications
include The Formation of Reason (2011), Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet
Philosophy(1991),andmanyarticlesinbooksandjournals.
John Broome is White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of
Oxford, and a fellow of Corpus Christi College. He writes on normativity,
rationalityandreasoning,andalsoontheethicsofclimatechange.
Roger Crisp is Uehiro Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Anne’s College,
Oxford,andProfessorofMoralPhilosophyattheUniversityofOxford.Heisthe
author of Mill on Utilitarianism (1997) and Reasons and the Good (2006). He is
currentlywritingabookonHenrySidgwick’sTheMethodsofEthics.
Stephen Darwall is Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Philosophy at Yale
University.Hehaswrittenwidelyonthefoundationsandhistoryofethicsandhis
books include The Second-Person Standpoint (2006), Impartial Reason (1983),
Philosophical Ethics (1995), The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’ (1995),
andWelfareandRationalCare(2002).
Brad Hooker is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading. He is the
author of Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule-Consequentialist Theory of Morality (2000)
andco-editorwithMargaretOliviaLittleofMoralParticularism(2000).
Margaret Olivia Little is Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and
Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. She writes on
metaethics, normative ethical theory, and bioethics. She is co-editor, with Brad
Hooker,ofMoralParticularism(2000).
JohnMcDowelltaughtatOxfordbetween1966and1986;heisEmeritusFellow
and Honorary Fellow of University College. Since 1986 he has been at the
University of Pittsburgh, where he is University Professor of Philosophy. He is a
fellowoftheBritishAcademyandoftheAmericanAcademyofArtsandSciences.
HisbooksincludeMindandWorld(1994)andfourcollectionsofarticles.
Sean McKeever is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Davidson College. His
researchinterestsareincontemporarymoraltheoryandmetaethics.Heisauthor,
withMichaelRidge,ofPrincipledEthics:GeneralismasaRegulativeIdeal(2006).
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
David McNaughton is Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University, and
Professor Emeritus at Keele University. He is the author of Moral Vision (1988),
Forgiveness(withEveGarrard)(2010),andanumberofpapersonethics,philosophy
ofreligion,andtherelationsbetweenthetwo.Heiscurrentlywritingabookwith
PiersRawlingonpracticalreasons.
A. W. Price was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and has taught chiefly at
York and Birkbeck College, London. He maintains an interest in both current
ethicaltheoryandthemoralpsychologyofGreekphilosophers,especiallyPlatoand
Aristotle.AmonographContextualityinPracticalReasonappearedin2008.
PiersRawlingisProfessorandChairofPhilosophyatFloridaStateUniversity.He
has wide-ranging interests, and has published papers on decision theory, ethics
(with David McNaughton), metaphysics, quantum computing (with Stephen
Selesnick), and philosophy of action, language, mind, and science. He is co-
editor(withAlfredMele)ofTheOxfordHandbookofRationality(2004).
Michael Ridge is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of
Edinburgh. His recent work has been primarily in metaethics, defending a new
formofexpressivism(‘EcumenicalExpressivism’).Heiscompletingabookonthat
subject, entitled Impassioned Belief. In previous co-authored works with Sean
McKeever he has published extensively on the debate between particularists and
generalists.
ConstantineSandisisReaderinPhilosophyatOxfordBrookesUniversity.Heis
the author of The Things We Do and Why We Do Them (2012) and editor or co-
editorofHumanNature(2012),ACompaniontothePhilosophyofAction(2010),Hegel
onAction(2010),andNewEssaysonActionExplanation(2009).
Michael Smith is McCosh Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. His
researchinterestsincludeethics,moralpsychology,andthephilosophyofmindand
action.HeistheauthorofTheMoralProblem(1994),EthicsandtheAPriori(2004),
and co-author (with Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit) of Mind, Morality, and
Explanation(2004).
PhilipStratton-LakeisProfessorofPhilosophyattheUniversityofReading.He
is the author of Kant, Duty, and Moral Worth (2000), and editor of Ethical
Intuitionism: Re-evaluations (2002), a new edition of W. D. Ross’s The Right and
theGood(2002),andOnWhatWeOwetoeachOther(2004).
Bart Streumer is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Reading. Between
1999 and 2003 he was Jonathan Dancy’s PhD student. He is currently writing a
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix
book to be titled Unbelievable Errors, which will defend an error theory about all
normativejudgements.
R. Jay Wallace is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California,
Berkeley. He is the author of Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (1994),
Normativity and the Will (2006), and numerous papers on moral psychology,
practicalreason,responsibility,andothertopicsinphilosophicalethics.