The Importance of Being Rational

Errol Lord

ISBN 10: 0198815093 / ISBN 13: 9780198815099

Published by Oxford University Press, 2018

About this Item

Anmerkungen / beschriftet / Stempel; Leichte Gebrauchsspuren; Leichte Verschmutzung / Farbtonveränderung. The Importance of Being Rational systematically defends a novel reasons-based account of rationality. The book's central thesis is that what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. Errol Lord defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons. He shows that these views not only help to support the book's main thesis, they also help to resolve several important problems that are independent of rationality. The account of possession provides novel contributions to debates about what determines what we ought to do, and the account of correctly responding to reasons provides novel contributions to debates about causal theories of reacting for reasons. After defending views about possession and correctly responding, Lord shows that the account of rationality can solve two difficult problems about rationality. The first is the New Evil Demon problem. The book argues that the account has the resources to show that internal duplicates necessarily have the same rational status. The second problem concerns the deontic significance of rationality. Recently it has been doubted whether we ought to be rational. The ultimate conclusion of the book is that the requirements of rationality are the requirements that we ultimately ought to comply with. If this is right, then rationality is of fundamental importance to our deliberative lives.

Seller Inventory # 2122a12e-b3a3-43fc-b7ba-9505518f3b62

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Importance of Being Rational
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198815093
• ISBN 13: 9780198815099
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis

Errol Lord offers a new account of the nature of rationality: what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. Lord defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons, and dispels doubts about whether we ought to be rational.

About the Author

Errol Lord is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He works in ethical theory, epistemology, the philosophy of action, and aesthetics. He has published papers in Mind, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, and British Journal of Aesthetics, among other places. He co-edited Weighing Reasons (OUP, 2016) with Barry Maguire.