Consistency in choice and credence

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2012."September 2012." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-78).This thesis concerns epistemic and practical rationality. That is, it is about what to believe and what to do. In Chapter 1, 1 argue that theories of practical rationality should be understood as evaluating decisions as opposed to ordinary sorts of non-mental actions. In Chapter 2, I use the machinery developed in Chapter 1 to rebut 'Money Pump' or 'Diachronic Dutch Book' arguments, which draw conclusions about rational beliefs and preferences from premises about how rational agents will behave over time. In Chapter 3, I develop a new objection to the Synchronic Dutch Book Argument, which concludes that rational agents must have probabilistic degrees of belief in order to avoid predictable exploitation in betting scenarios.by Brian Hedden.Ph.D

Not by reasons alone

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-130).My thesis is a sustained argument that the practical reason is not a suitable master concept in ethics, let alone the only ethical notion we need. In Chapter One, I defend the idea that desires have irreducible and pervasive normative significance. More particularly, I defend reasons internalism - the claim that desires are a necessary condition on practical reasons - by developing a new version of this thesis. In this version, desires serve to veto practical reasons, which are in turn grounded in objective values. I argue that this compatibilist picture provides an account of self-interested reasons which is intuitively superior to its purely objectivist rivals. In Chapter Two, I argue that evaluative notions are distinct from prescriptive notions, which reasons talk is meant to encode. According to my account, it is partly constitutive of wickedness (an evaluative notion) that the wicked person lacks moral reasons - understood as the basis for potentially apt prescriptions - to mend his ways. For some people, I suggest, are deaf to moral instructions in something close to a literal sense. I argue on this basis that the distinction between evaluative and prescriptive 'oughts,' and the attendant possibility of iterating them, vindicates internalism about moral reasons too. A solution to Chisholm's paradox is a welcome fringe benefit. In Chapter Three, I begin to develop an alternative to prevailing reasons-based conceptions of ethics, by focusing on social relationships, such as friendship. I argue that agents can behave decently by being guided by implicitly normative concepts like friendship, which contain codes of conduct like "Friends help each other out," and "You don't snitch on your friends." Such 'do's and don'ts' and the corresponding concepts enable agents to behave well instinctively, even when they believe they have no reason to do so. I argue further that recognizing who someone is - i.e., the social relationship in which they stand to you - can be action-guiding and even mandating. I argue that this kind of social awareness is a viable alternative to positing intuitive responsiveness to reasons, and defend the idea that it underwrites a form of practical necessity worthy of the name.by Kate Manne.Ph.D

Essays on the nature and roles of knowledge

This dissertation is comprised of five independent essays on the theme of the nature and roles of knowledge. The essays are intended to be free-standing pieces of work and should be read as such. Contents: 1. An Existential Argument For Pragmatic Encroachment -- 2. Environmental Luck Gettier Cases And The Metaphysical Roles Of Knowledge -- 3. Might The Simulation Heuristic Influence Knowledge Attributions? -- 4. Excuses And Epistemic Norms -- 5. From Moore's Paradox To The Knowledge Norm Of Belief And Beyon

The Mother of Chaos and Night: Kant\u27s Metaphilosophical Attack on Indifferentism

Kant positions the Critical philosophy as a response to the crisis of metaphysics - a crisis that is still with us. But his diagnosis of that crisis in terms of a struggle between dogmatism, skepticism, and indifferentism is given short shrift in the secondary literature, despite its promise to help us understand Kant\u27s claim that transcendental philosophy represents a radical alternative to these philosophical modi vivendi. After a consideration of Kant\u27s remarks on what philosophy is in general, I argue that all four of these mutually-exclusive ways of philosophizing are best understood as metaphilosophical stances: ways of conceiving of the ends or aims of philosophy, which collectively determine the legitimate moves in philosophical argumentation, thereby setting the terms of success for such inquiry. I then make these four competing stances explicit, by drawing on Kant\u27s scattered remarks on them and their history. This involves articulating and defending Kant\u27s complex and surprisingly sophisticated relationship to dogmatism and skepticism, and hence a general assessment of Kant\u27s attempts to incorporate these stances\u27 insights, and so subvert their appeal, in the course of developing his transcendental philosophy. Readings of Kant which myopically take him to be focused on bluntly refuting the dogmatist (e.g., Allison), or the skeptic (e.g., Guyer), fall into characteristic errors as a result. Even more importantly, I show that Kant\u27s central target is in fact the much-neglected indifferentist, whose metaphilosophical stance is defined by a denial of the distinctness and autonomy of philosophy, in a way antithetical to Kant\u27s attempt to ground his philosophical activity on the fact of human agency. Indifferentism has numerous adherents, though naturally not under that name, both in Kant\u27s day (e.g., the so-called Popularphilosophen) and in our own (e.g., the Wittgenstein of On Certainty). Reading Kant against these thinkers sharply clarifies his aims and methods in the Critical philosophy, in a way that the predominant anti-dogmatic and anti-skeptical readings fail to do. Kant\u27s assault on indifferentism centrally employs a set of arguments designed to put us in a position to rationally endorse our high-order normative principles without risk of (indifferentistically) ascribing that endorsement either to passive uptake from the wider culture, or to the oracular dictates of common sense. Thus, it is only by means of Kant\u27s distinctive transcendental proofs that can we invoke the authority of reason in philosophy without making one of two fatal errors: making reason utterly transcendent, which produces skepticism; or casting reason as wholly immanent, which yields dogmatism. Taken together, Kant\u27s metaphilosophical views promise a revitalization of transcendental philosophy for our contemporary age