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    Psychologism about motivating reasons is false — Carmelics
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    Home/Moral Responsibility
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    Psychologism about motivating reasons is false

    Moral ResponsibilityPhilosophy of Language
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.When an agent acts on a false belief, the non-existent worldly fact cannot be what moves them, yet their action still has a motivating reason.
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    • 2.Only mental states like beliefs and desires can play the causal-explanatory role required to explain action across both true and false belief cases.
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    • 3.Psychologism is vindicated precisely in error cases: the motivating reason must be the psychological state, not the absent fact it misrepresents.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Davidson's causal theory of action requires that motivating reasons be entities capable of standing in causal relations to bodily movements.
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    • 2.Abstract worldly facts, lacking causal powers, cannot be the proximate causes of action; only mental states like belief-desire pairs can serve this role.
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    • 3.Therefore the psychological states, not the facts they represent, constitute the motivating reasons in any causally adequate account of action.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Agents' own deliberations about what to do typically consider facts about the world rather than their own mental states
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    • 2.The reasons agents give and accept as their reasons for acting typically refer to facts about the world rather than mental states
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    • 3.Motivating reasons are the reasons that would figure as premises in a reconstruction of the agent's practical reasoning
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityPhilosophy of Language

    Related

    Abstract worldly facts, lacking causal powers, cannot be the proximate causes of...Agents' own deliberations about what to do typically consider facts about the wo...Davidson's causal theory of action requires that motivating reasons be entities ...Motivating reasons are the reasons that would figure as premises in a reconstruc...
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    Only mental states like beliefs and desires can play the causal-explanatory role...Psychologism is vindicated precisely in error cases: the motivating reason must ...The premises of practical reasoning much more often refer to facts about the wor...The reasons agents give and accept as their reasons for acting typically refer t...Therefore the psychological states, not the facts they represent, constitute the...When an agent acts on a false belief, the non-existent worldly fact cannot be wh...

    Similar

    Explanatory reasons were not distinguished from motivating reasons.87%If motivating reasons were facts and putative facts, then some of the ...85%Psychologism about motivating reasons entails that we can never act fo...85%If motivating reasons were facts (or putative facts), then we can, and...85%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: reasons-just-vs-expl
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    This brings us to another, related argument against psychologism, which is simply that consideration of what agents take their reasons for acting to be, and of what they typically give and accept as their reasons for acting, count against psychologism. Thus, as Othello considers what to do, even while in the grip of his jealousy, his reasoning does not include considerations about whether he believes this or that but rather considerations about what Desdemona has or has not done. The things that
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit