Related Papers
On The Guise of the Good
Joseph Raz
I will provisionally take the Guise of the Good thesis to consist of three propositions: (1) Intentional actions are actions performed for reasons, as those are seen by the agents. (2) Specifying the intention which makes an action intentional identifies central features of the reason(s) for which the action is performed. (3) Reasons for action are such reasons by being facts which establish that the action has some value. From these it is said to follow that (4) Intentional actions are actions taken in, and because of, a belief that there is some good in them. I will examine reasons for, and objections to these theses, and offer a defence of a modified version of the thesis.
A New Defense of the Motive of Duty Thesis
Benjamin Wald
According to the Motive of Duty Thesis, a necessary condition for an action to have moral worth is that it be motivated at least in part by a normative assessment of the action. However, this thesis has been subject to two powerful objections. It has been accused of over-intellectualizing moral agency, and of giving the wrong verdict when it comes to people who hold false moral theories that convince them that their own actions are in fact morally wrong. However, I argue that both of these objections can be convincingly answered using resources from the Guise of the Good view, which holds that for an agent to intend to requires that they take ing to be good. Furthermore, I argue that combining the motive of duty thesis with the Guise of the Good view allows us to recognize an important further condition on moral worth—namely, that the agent recognize that their reason for action requires, rather than merely permits, their action. Thus, while no action lacks moral worth in virtue of being motivated by no normative evaluation at all, an action can still lack moral worth in virtue of failing to be motived by the correct normative evaluation, namely that the action is required.
Judging the Guise of the Good by Its Fruit
2017 •
Benjamin Wald
The Guise of the Good (Forthcoming in Routledge Handbook of Practical Reasons)
Sergio Tenenbaum
The guise of good reason
2021 •
Ulf Hlobil
The paper argues for a version of the Guise of the Good thesis, namely the claim that if someone acts as the result of practical reasoning, then she takes her premises to jointly provide a sufficient and undefeated reason for her action. I argue for this by showing, first, that it is an application of Boghossian's Taking Condition on inference to practical reasoning and, second, that the motivations for the Taking Condition for theoretical reasoning carry over to practical reasoning. I end by arguing that this version of the Guise of the Good withstands standard objections.
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy
XIII-Intentions and the Reasons for Which We Act
2014 •
Ulrike Heuer
Action and the Problem of Evil - In International Journal of Philosophy and Theology Action and the problem of evil
Heine A Holmen
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice
Good, Evil, and the Necessity of an Act
2017 •
Sebastian Rödl
It's Not the Thought that Counts: An Essay on the Irrelevance of Intentions to the Moral Permissibility of Actions (Central European University, 2016)
Anton Markoč
The dissertation is a defense of the view that intentions with which we act are non-derivatively irrelevant to the moral permissibility of our actions. What we intend might indicate what kind of people we are, or whether and why we should be open to praise or blame, but it is never a reason why we are morally permitted or forbidden to act. The Doctrines of Double and Triple Effect and similar moral principles are rejected. The most prominent arguments in favor of the irrelevance of intentions—those pointing to a category mistake, the impossibility of choosing intentions, or to the oddness of considering them in decision making or of intervening in actions of others due to them—are also shown to be flawed. The conclusion reached is that the strongest evidence for the irrelevance of intentions is negative, based on the failure of case-based, principle-driven, and theoretical justifications to the contrary.
Michael Schmitz
This introduction jointly written with Gottfried Seebaß and Peter Gollwitzer to our co-edited volume situates the topic of intentions and their limits in the history of philosophy and psychology. Individual intentional action and intentions have been a focus of investigation in philosophy and psychology since their beginning. Recently, collective action and collective intentions are also increasingly coming to the fore. Throughout this history, the limits of intentions have been a central topic in two distinct, but still related respects. First, the boundaries of the concept of intention have shifted at various points in that history. Second, there has always been an interest in the limits of intentions in the sense of the limits of their efficacy in controlling behavior, and of course these limits will vary depending on how intentions are delineated. This interest in turn is at heart an interest in the limits of rationality in controlling behavior, since intentions are or at least can be the products of processes of practical rationality, of practical reasoning. In what follows, we trace part of the ancient as well as the more recent history of that debate, not for its own sake, but as a means of introducing various aspects of intentions and their control over behavior and of locating the contributions of this volume in the geography of this territory.
