Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T21:22:16.806Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On Humean Explanation and Practical Normativity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2015

GRAHAM HUBBS
GRAHAM HUBBS*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

If Hume is correct that the descriptive and the normative are ‘entirely different’ matters, then it would seem to follow that endorsing a given account of action-explanation does not restrict the account of practical normativity one may simultaneously endorse. In this essay, I challenge the antecedent of this conditional by targeting its consequent. Specifically, I argue that if one endorses a Humean account of action-explanation, which many find attractive, one is thereby committed to a Humean account of practical normativity, which many find unattractive. The key to this argument is showing that the justificatory base of any anti-Humean normative view is a generic representation of ideal rationality, which precludes any such view from combining coherently with a Humean account of action-explanation. If my arguments are successful, they demonstrate a way in which one's views in action theory can both limit and be limited by the ethical views one endorses.

Keywords

actionagencyethicsmoral psychologyphilosophy of mindpractical rationality
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , Spring 2015 , pp. 78 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anscombe, G. E. M. (1958) ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’. Philosophy, 33, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anscombe, G. E. M. (1963) Intention. 2d ed.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Baxter, Donald. (2011) ‘Hume, Distinctions of Reason, and Differential Resemblance’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 82, 156–82.Google Scholar
Bratman, Michael. (1987) Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reasons. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dancy, Jonathan. (2000) Practical Reality. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Finlay, Stephen. (2009a) ‘Against All Reason? Skepticism about the Instrumental Norm’. In Pigden, Charles (ed.), Hume on Motivation and Virtue (New York: Palgrave MacMillan), 155–78.Google Scholar
Finlay, Stephen. (2009b) ‘The Obscurity of Internal Reasons’. Philosophers’ Imprint, 9 (7), 1–22.Google Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry. (1987a) ‘Freedom of Will and the Concept of a Person’. In The Importance of What We Care About (New York: Cambridge University Press), 11–25.Google Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry. (1987b) ‘Identification and Wholeheartedness’. In The Importance of What We Care About (New York: Cambridge University Press), 159–76.Google Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry. (1999) ‘Autonomy, Necessity, and Love’. In Necessity, Volition, and Love (New York: Cambridge University Press), 129–41.Google Scholar
Holton, Richard. (2009) Willing, Wanting, Waiting. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Hubbs, Graham. (2013) ‘How Reasons Bear on Intentions’. Ethics, 124, 84–100.Google Scholar
Hume, David. ([1739–40] 1978) A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by Selby-Bigge, L. A. and Nidditch, P. H.. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred. (1987) An Outline of Genericity. (Technical Report SNS-Bericht 87-25). Tübingen: Seminar fur naturalich-sprachliche Systeme.Google Scholar
Langford, C. H. (1949) ‘The Institutional Use of The’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 10, 115–20.Google Scholar
Lavin, Douglas. (2013) ‘Must There Be Basic Action?’ Noûs, 47, 273–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leslie, Sarah Jane. (2008) ‘Generics: Cognition and Acquisition’. Philosophical Review, 117, 1–47.Google Scholar
Leslie, Sarah Jane. (2013) ‘Generics Oversimplified’. Noûs, doi: 10.1111/nous.12039 (early view).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liebesman, David. (2011) ‘Simple Generics’. Noûs, 45, 409–42.Google Scholar
McDowell, John. (1998) Mind, Value, and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Christian. (2008) ‘Motivation in Agents’. Noûs, 42, 222–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millikan, Ruth Garrett. (1984) Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Schroeder, Mark. (2007) Slaves of the Passions. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schroeder, Mark. (2012a) ‘Reply to Schafer-Landau, Mcpherson, and Dancy’. Philosophical Studies, 157, 463–74.Google Scholar
Schroeder, Mark. (2012b) ‘The Ubiquity of State-Given Reasons’. Ethics, 122, 457–88.Google Scholar
Schroeder, Mark. (2013) ‘State-Given Reasons: Prevalent, if not Ubiquitous’. Ethics, 124, 128–40.Google Scholar
Sellars, Wilfrid. (1967a) ‘Abstract Entities’. In Philosophical Perspectives: Metaphysics and Epistemology (Atascadero, Ca.: Ridgeview), 49–89.Google Scholar
Sellars, Wilfrid. (1967b) Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview.Google Scholar
Setiya, Kieran. (2007) Reasons without Rationalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sinhababu, Neil. (2009) ‘The Humean Theory of Motivation Reformulated and Defended’. The Philosophical Review, 118, 465–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinhababu, Neil. (2013) ‘The Desire-Belief Account of Action Explains Everything’. Noûs, 47, 680–96.Google Scholar
Smith, Michael. (1994) The Moral Problem. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Smith, Michael. (1997) ‘In Defence of The Moral Problem: A Reply to Brink, Copp, and Sayre-McCord’. Ethics, 108, 84–119.Google Scholar
Smith, Michael. (1998) ‘The Possibility of Philosophy of Action’. In Bransen, Jan and Cuypers, Stefaan (eds.), Human Action, Deliberation, and Causation (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers), 17–41.Google Scholar
Smith, Michael. (2003) ‘Neutral and Relative Value After Moore’. Ethics, 113, 576–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Michael. (2010) ‘Humeanism about Motivation’. In Sandis, Constantine and O'Conner, Timothy (eds.), Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Action (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell), 153–58. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Michael. (2004) ‘Apprehending the Human Form’. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 54, 47–74.Google Scholar
Thompson, Michael. (2008) Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Velleman, J. David. (2002) ‘Identification and Identity’. In Buss, Sarah and Overton, Lee (eds.), Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 91–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Velleman, J. David. (2009a) ‘Introduction’. In The Possibility of Practical Reason (Ann Arbor, MI: Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library), 1–30.Google Scholar
Velleman, J. David. (2009b) ‘What Happens When Someone Acts?’ In The Possibility of Practical Reason (Ann Arbor, MI: Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library), 123–43.Google Scholar
Vogler, Candace. (2002) Reasonably Vicious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Way, Jonathan. (2010) ‘Defending the Wide-Scope Approach to Instrumental Reason’. Philosophical Studies, 147, 213–33.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. (1982) ‘Internal and External Reasons’. In Williams, Bernard (ed.), Moral Luck (New York: Cambridge University Press), 101–13.Google Scholar