Affective Experience, Desire, and Reasons for Action

What is the role of affective experience in explaining how our desires provide us with reasons for action? When we desire that p, we are thereby disposed to feel attracted to the prospect that p, or to feel averse to the prospect that not-p. In this paper, we argue that affective experiences – including feelings of attraction and aversion – provide us with reasons for action in virtue of their phenomenal character. Moreover, we argue that desires provide us with reasons for action only insofar as they are dispositions to have affective experiences. On this account, affective experience has a central role to play in explaining how desires provide reasons for action

Lifespan extension and the doctrine of double effect

Recent developments in biogerontology—the study of the biology of ageing—suggest that it may eventually be possible to intervene in the human ageing process. This, in turn, offers the prospect of significantly postponing the onset of age-related diseases. The biogerontological project, however, has met with strong resistance, especially by deontologists. They consider the act of intervening in the ageing process impermissible on the grounds that it would (most probably) bring about an extended maximum lifespan—a state of affairs that they deem intrinsically bad. In a bid to convince their deontological opponents of the permissibility of this act, proponents of biogerontology invoke an argument which is grounded in the doctrine of double effect. Surprisingly, their argument, which we refer to as the ‘double effect argument’, has gone unnoticed. This article exposes and critically evaluates this ‘double effect argument’. To this end, we first review a series of excerpts from the ethical debate on biogerontology in order to substantiate the presence of double effect reasoning. Next, we attempt to determine the role that the ‘double effect argument’ is meant to fulfil within this debate. Finally, we assess whether the act of intervening in ageing actually can be justified using double effect reasoning

Mesopotamia: the key to the future,

Mode of access: Internet

Reasons (and Reasons in Philosophy of Law)

The chapter provides a picture, in relation to the debate on normativity, of the different analyses of reasons and the different ways in which reasons can be evaluated and classified. We start out by distinguishing three different classes of reasons on the basis of their role: normative, motivating, and explanatory. And then we focus on normative reasons, discussing the basis of their capacity to favor actions or beliefs in light of the different understandings of their ontological status as either facts or mental states. We will see, on these premises, that reasons can be distinguished into two different kinds: reasons for belief (epistemic) and reasons for action (practical). Particular attention is devoted to the \u201cweighing conception\u201d of normative reasons (and the understanding of them as pro tanto reasons), as this approach seems best suited to practical (as well as legal) reasoning. This will provide a vantage point from which to analyze the strength of reasons and their modality, most notably their modality as first- and second-order reasons. Finally, we consider how the weighing conception fits into the philosophy of law, in view of the fundamental role this discipline assigns to second-order reasons in the attempt to explain the normative nature of law and its authority