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Reasons for Action

Toward a Normative Theory and Meta-Level Criteria

  • Book
  • © 1999

Overview

Authors:
  1. B. C. Postow

    1. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

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Part of the book series: Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy (LOET, volume 4)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
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  2. Introduction: Basic Concepts, Method, and Summary of Chapters

    • B. C. Postow
    Pages 1-12

  3. Some Rival Reasons Theories

    • B. C. Postow
    Pages 13-58

  4. The Inclusive Data View

    • B. C. Postow
    Pages 59-96

  5. A Rival Approach: Darwall’s Argument

    • B. C. Postow
    Pages 97-111

  6. Are We Limited to a Particular Tradition?

    • B. C. Postow
    Pages 112-129

  7. Parfit-Inspired Candidates for Meta-Level Criteria

    • B. C. Postow
    Pages 130-157

  8. Brandt-Inspired Candidates for Meta-Level Criteria

    • B. C. Postow
    Pages 158-180

  9. Selecting and Using Meta-Level Criteria

    • B. C. Postow
    Pages 181-196

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 197-205
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Keywords

About this book

2 first-person point of view, I acknowledge these possible handicaps and try to overcome them. Other people may coherently judge that I am incapable of figuring out correctly what I rationally ought to do, or they may inform me of reasons of which I had heretofore been ignorant, or they may try to help me overcome intellectual hindrances. Like me, these people would be assuming that the goal is to identify what I really rationally ought to do. Nevertheless, we are concerned with reasons for the agent to act in a certain way, rather than with reasons, say, for someone to want it to be the case that the agent act. Thus to be a reason in our sense is to be a consideration which has an appropriate guiding role to play in the. agents deliberation. (An agent is guided by reasons if she determines what to do in light of the reasons. ) Suppose then that a nor­ mative theory says that it is supremely desirable, or that it rationally ought to be the case, that agents act in a way that maximizes the general utility, but that (since the general utility is never in fact maximized by those who pay attention to it) considerations of the general utility should play no role in the agents' deliberation. Such a theory would not be said to ascribe to agents a reason to maximize the general utility on our usage.

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

    B. C. Postow

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Reasons for Action

  • Book Subtitle: Toward a Normative Theory and Meta-Level Criteria

  • Authors: B. C. Postow

  • Series Title: Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2850-8

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 1999

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-5700-1Published: 31 May 1999

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-5219-3Published: 08 December 2010

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-017-2850-8Published: 09 March 2013

  • Series ISSN: 1387-6678

  • Series E-ISSN: 2215-0323

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: X, 205

  • Topics: Ethics, Ontology, Philosophy of Man, Logic

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