Deontic Modality in Rationality and Reasoning

Deontic Modality in Rationality and Reasoning Lay Summary Alessandra Marra The present dissertation investigates certain facets of the logical structure of oughts – where “ought” is used as a noun, roughly meaning obligation. I do so by following two lines of inquiry. The first part of the thesis places oughts in the context of practical rationality. The second part of the thesis concerns the inference rules governing arguments about oughts, and specifically the inference rule of Reasoning by Cases. These two lines of inquiry, together, aim to expound upon oughts in rationality and reasoning. The methodology used in this dissertation is the one of philosophical logic, in which logical, qualitative models are developed to support and foster conceptual analysis. The dissertation consists of four main chapters. The first two chapters are devoted to the role of oughts in practical rationality. I focus on the so-called Enkratic principle of rationality, which – in its most general formulation – requires that if an agent believes sincerely and with conviction that she ought to do X, then she intends to X. I develop a logical framework to investigate the (static and dynamic) relation between those oughts believed by the agent and her intentions. It is shown that, under certain minimal assumptions, the Enkratic principle of rationality is a principle of limited validity. The following two chapters of the dissertation constitute a study of the classical inference rule of Reasoning by Cases, which – in its simplest form – moves from the premises “A or B”, “if A then C” and “if B then C” to the conclusion “C”. Recent literature has called the validity of Reasoning by Cases into question, with the most influential counterexample being the so-called Miners’ Puzzle – an instance of Reasoning by Cases where “C” involves oughts. I provide a unifying explanation of why the Miners’ Puzzle emerges. It is shown that, within specific boundaries, Reasoning by Cases is a valid inference rule

Time, Tense, & Rationality

In this thesis I try to advance our understanding of the nature of time. In particular I defend the idea that there is an objective difference between the past, the present, and the future; a metaphysical tense. This is in opposition to the idea that these distinctions merely mark an aspect of our perspective on entities in time. I argue that tensed beliefs – beliefs that go hand-in-hand with tensed language – are essential to our lives as rational animals. Firstly, they are essential to our practices of providing reasons for action and acting for reasons. Secondly, they are essential for our lives as emotional animals whose emotions are appropriately responsive to the world. Perry has argued that indexical – including tensed – beliefs are essential for actions. In order to attend my meeting, it is not enough that I know that it is at 2pm, I must also know that it is now 1:55pm. Examining Perry’s argument I show that its proper conclusion is that tensed and first-personal beliefs are necessary for rational actions. I argue that reasons are facts (not belief/desire complexes or intensional entities). Further, the rationality of an action derives solely from these reasons, so that when an agent is not mistaken their action is rational purely insofar as it is done for a reason that justifies it. This means that beliefs are required for rational actions only to the extent that they provide an awareness of reasons and thereby enable an action. A proper understanding of rational action thus enables me to say that if an action must involve one belief rather than another in order to be rational, this must be because the former belief involves an awareness of a reason, hence fact, that the latter does not. Combining this with the proper conclusion of Perry’s argument we can say that tensed beliefs are required in the place of any tenseless beliefs in rational actions, and therefore must involve an awareness of facts that the latter cannot capture. Given that our actions are by and large rational, it follows there are facts captured by tensed beliefs not captured by tenseless beliefs. There is a metaphysical tense. Prior has argued that some emotions involve tensed beliefs and Cockburn has furthered this to show that the appropriateness of some emotions depends upon these beliefs. It is inappropriate to grieve a future death or fear a past danger. I show that the appropriateness of emotions stems from the reasons they are felt for and that these reasons are revealed by the beliefs involved in these emotions. This enables me to argue that if an emotion must involve one belief rather than another to be appropriate, then this can only be because the former belief captures a reason that the latter does not. In combination with Prior/Cockburn’s conclusion I am thus able to argue, analogously to the case of rational actions, that if there are emotions which must involve tensed beliefs to be appropriate and there are examples of appropriate such emotions, then metaphysical tense is real. My thesis thus derives a conclusion about the nature of time from our nature as rational animals. These arguments also have implications for a proper understanding of first-personal indexicals, which must now be recognized to pick out facts not captured by non-first-personal language. The former of these conclusions has been famously attacked by McTaggart, and the latter by Wittgenstein, and so I will also say something to rebut these criticisms. My arguments also have implications for certain issues surrounding the cognitive significance of co-referring names/natural kind terms which I will show to be unproblematic

Rationality and Success

Standard theories of rational decision making and rational preference embrace the idea that there is something special about the present. Standard decision theory, for example, demands that agents privilege the perspective of the present (i.e., the time of decision) in evaluating what to do. When forming preferences, most philosophers believe that a similar focus on the present is justified, at least in the sense that rationality requires or permits future experiences to be given more weight than past ones. In this dissertation, I examine such theories in light of the expected success of the agents who follow them. In Chapters 2 and 3, I show that this bias toward the present is a liability: it tends to make agents less successful than they might otherwise be. I also show how these problems can be avoided: In the case of rational decision making, we must privilege the beginning rather than the present (what I call “inceptive maximization”). In the case of rational preferences, we must be completely temporally neutral. In chapters 4 and 5 I introduce a larger framework in which to interpret these results. My core thesis is that practical rationality is a form of conditional reliability. Practically rational decisions, preferences, intentions, or other relevant factors reliably produce whatever we take to be of value, conditional on an agent’s beliefs. This focus on value-conduciveness is thus the analog of the focus on truth-conduciveness in reliability theories of epistemic norms. Like reliabilism in epistemology, I show that practical reliabilism is supported by a methodologically naturalistic approach to normativity. In this way and others, I argue that epistemic and practical reliabilism interconnect to create an overarching theory of normativity

Johanssonian Investigations

In the last decades, Ingvar Johansson has made a formidable contribution to the development of philosophy and particularly that of metaphysics. This volume consists of original papers written by 50 philosophers from all over the world to celebrate his 70th birthday. The papers cover traditional issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, applied ethics, applied metaphysics, the nature of human rights, the philosophy of economics and sports

Johanssonian Investigations

In the last decades, Ingvar Johansson has made a formidable contribution to the development of philosophy and particularly that of metaphysics. This volume consists of original papers written by 50 philosophers from all over the world to celebrate his 70th birthday. The papers cover traditional issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, applied ethics, applied metaphysics, the nature of human rights, the philosophy of economics and sports

Alexander Bryan Johnson's copernican revolution

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1967 E3Master of Scienc

Bodies of Water

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Water is the element that, more than any other, ties human beings in to the world around them – from the oceans that surround us to the water that makes up most of our bodies. Exploring the cultural and philosophical implications of this fact, Bodies of Water develops an innovative new mode of posthuman feminist phenomenology that understands our bodies as being fundamentally part of the natural world and not separate from or privileged to it. Building on the works by Luce Irigaray, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze, Astrida Neimanis’s book is a landmark study that brings a new feminist perspective to bear on ideas of embodiment and ecological ethics in the posthuman critical moment

Exploring the fantastic: new critical frameworks in an evolving genre

This thesis (creative practice/exegesis) argues that fantasy fiction can function as a progressive socio-political literature. Using the Marxist theory of the Frankfurt School it explores the relationship between fantasy and science fiction via utopian/dystopian representation. Through this dialogue a new understanding of the genre is voiced

Literature and sustainability

Sustainability has become a key socio-political issue over recent years. However, whilst the literary-critical community has advanced enthusiastically on an exciting range of environmentally-based analyses (most obviously through the work of ecocriticism), its response specifically to sustainability—as an attempt to reconceptualise the way we live, as an idea with a particular history, and as a ubiquitous term driven through over-use to near meaninglessness—has been extremely limited. The basic idea of the volume is to make a start on filling this gap. Split into four sections: Historicising sustainability, Discourses of sustainability, The sustainability of literature, Sustainability in literature – it has some very good contributors, and starts off with an introduction about the history of the term, looks at its beginnings in the C19th, and goes onto show how contemporary authors are dealing with it including Jeanette Winterson, Michel Houellebecq, Margaret Atwood and Amitav Ghosh