The article argues, based on results from massive online survey experiments, that, just as the utterances from ordinary conversation, legal rules can convey a surplus meaning, which is more than just the amalgam of the meanings of the words which are employed in the legal rule’s formulation. More precisely, the experiments check whether a typology of the types of this surplus meaning—pragmatic typology—describes adequately the psychological processing of, not only everyday speech, but also legal rules. In two experiments—total N = 733—we find that in morally neutral cases the pragmatic typology adequately describes the psychological processes involved in the interpretation of a legal rule. However, we also find that in morally valenced cases, it is rather the moral inferences carried by participants that shape the pragmatic inferences than the other way around.

According to a prominent thought, in one’s practical reasoning one should rely only on what one knows (Fantl and McGrath 2002; Hawthorne and Stanley 2008; Williamson 2000, 2005a, 2017). Yet for many choices, the relevant information is uncertain. This has led Schiffer (2007, 189) to the following objection: oftentimes, we are fully rational in reasoning from uncertain premises which we do not know. For example, we may decide to take an umbrella based on a 0.4 credence that it will rain. There are various ways proponents of a knowledge norm for practical reasoning can respond. One option is to say that the right way of dealing with uncertain information requires knowledge of probabilities (Hawthorne and Stanley 2008, 581–85). Another option is to say that credences can be knowledge because they really are beliefs with an unusual kind of content that consists of a set of probability spaces (Moss 2018, chap. 9). Mixed accounts are possible as well (Weisberg 2013). On neither of the accounts in the literature, however, can reasoning from uncertain premises be taken as reasoning based on a graded attitude, a credence, toward an ordinary proposition. To make room for this possibility, I argue that reliance comes in degrees. The knowledge norm is only plausible when taken to be concerned with full reliance.Partial reliance, on the other hand, goes hand in hand with credence.

Presumption is often discussed in law, less often in epistemology. Is it an attitude? If so where can we locate it within the taxonomy of epistemic attitudes? Is it a kind of belief, a judgment, an assumption or a supposition? Or is it a species of inference? There are two basic models of presumption: judgmental, as a kind of judgment, and legal, taken from the use of presumptions in law. The legal model suggests that presumption is a practical inference, whereas the judgmental model suggests that presumption is an epistemic attitude. I argue that presumption is neither a practical inference nor a merely epistemic attitude: it involves both, within the category of what we may call the inquiring attitudes.

I argue that a practical deliberator may have good reasons not to consider some option even though that option is what there is most reason, all things considered, for her to do. The most interesting reasons not to consider an option arise in cases where an agent cannot be compensated in kind for the loss of goods that she values. Where this is the case, an attitude of conservatism is warranted: it is reasonable to begin deliberation by considering only ‘no-regrets’ options, and to proceed to considering other possibilities only when the cost of continuing to consider only no-regrets options has become intolerably high. The account that I develop illuminates intuitions that help motivate deontological moral thought, and it can shed light on the complaint that there is something wrong with the way in which schematic thought experiments are frequently used in philosophy to drive moral theorizing.

The prohibition on using others ‘merely as means’ is one of the best-known and most influential elements of Immanuel Kant’s moral theory. But it is widely regarded as impossible to specify with precision the conditions under which this prohibition is violated. On the basis of a re-examination of Kant’s texts, the article develops a novel account of the conditions for using someone ‘merely as a means’. It is argued that this account has not only strong textual support but also significant philosophical advantages over alternative conceptions.

Elizabeth Anscombe introduced the notion of “practical knowledge” into contemporary philosophy. Philosophers of action have criticized Anscombe’s negative characterization of such knowledge as “non-observational,” but have recently come to pay more attention to her positive characterization of practical knowledge as “the cause of what it understands.” I argue that two recent Anscombean accounts of practical knowledge, “Formalism” and “Normativism,” each fail to explain the productive character of practical knowledge in a way that secures its status as non-observational. I argue that to do this, we must appreciate the role of know-how or skill in practical knowledge.

If practical reasoning deserves its name, its form must be different from that of ordinary (theoretical) reasoning. A few have thought that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action, rather than a mental state. I argue here that if the conclusion is an action, then so too is one of the premises. You might reason your way from doing one thing to doing another: from browsing journal abstracts to reading a particular journal article. I motivate this by sympathetically re-examining Hume's claim that a conclusion about what ought to be done follows only from an argument one of whose premises is likewise about what ought to be done.

The judgement that provides the content of intention and coincides with the conclusion of practical reasoning is a normative judgement about what to do, and not, as Anscombe and McDowell argue, a factual judgement about what one is doing. Treating the conclusion of practical reasoning as expressing a recommendation rather than a verdict undermines McDowell’s argument; the special nature of practical reasoning does not preclude its conclusions being normative. Anscombe’s and McDowell’s claim that practical self-knowledge is productive of action may be accommodated by identifying the content of practical knowledge not with the conclusion but with a premise of practical reasoning – a kind of practical reasoning that occurs within rather than before action.

There is a puzzle about how to understand the conclusion of a successful instance of practical reasoning. Do the considerations adduced in reasoning rationalize the particular doing of an action, as Aristotle is sometimes interpreted as claiming? Or does reasoning conclude in the formation of an attitude – an intention, say – that has an action-type as its content? This paper attempts to clarify what is at stake in that debate and defends the latter view against some of its critics.

Over several articles, John McDowell sketches an analogy between virtue and perception, whereby the virtuous person sees situations in a distinctive way, a way that explains her virtuous behavior. Central to this view is his notion of silencing, a psychological phenomenon in which certain considerations fail to operate as reasons in a virtuous person's practical reasoning. Despite its influence on many prominent virtue ethicists, McDowell's ‘silencing view’ has been criticized as psychologically unrealistic. In this article, I defend a silencing view of practical reasoning. I argue that the phenomenon of silencing has a narrower scope than is typically acknowledged. As a result, the view does not require the virtuous to be detached, unfeeling, or unpalatably stoic. Furthermore, I offer a psychologically plausible interpretation of McDowell's claim that the virtuous see situations in a distinctive sort of way. The salient fact at which the virtuous arrive in their view of a situation should be understood, I argue, in terms of subjective construal.

Many philosophers have discussed the normative significance of personal relationships. The implicit focus of most of these discussions is on the normative significance of active, ongoing relationships. But, of course, all relationships end eventually. This article focuses on relationships that end through the death of one of the participants. A relationship that has ended in this way can still be a source of reasons for the surviving participant. This represents a different dimension of the normative significance of personal relationships, and it is a dimension that tends to become increasingly salient as one ages. Indeed, aging is in part a normative phenomenon, because it involves significant changes in the kinds of reasons people have. This article explores some of those changes and the distinctive questions to which they give rise.

Kant famously insists that free will is a condition of morality. The difficulty of providing a demonstration of freedom has left him vulnerable to devastating attack: critics charge that Kant's post-Groundwork justification of morality amounts to a dogmatic assertion of morality's authority. My paper rebuts this objection, showing that Kant offers a cogent demonstration of freedom. My central claim is that the demonstration must be understood in practical rather than theoretical terms. A practical demonstration of x works by bringing x into existence, and what the demonstration of freedom brings into existence is a moral will, a will regulated by the moral law and capable of acting in accordance with it. Since to act morally is to act freely, bringing a moral will into existence actualizes our capacity for freedom and demonstrates that we possess it. To confirm the viability of such a demonstration, Kant must establish that agents can regulate their wills by practical principles, and that practical judgments are efficacious of themselves (i.e., that non-Humean motivational internalism is true). Kant, I argue, is successful on both counts.

The Catholic Church claims that its ethical teaching, especially on sex, is based upon natural law. I first show that natural law theories prior to the Middle Ages provide no authority for the Church's teaching on sex. I then examine Aquinas's teaching on natural functions and natural law in the two Summae. I suggest that he partly anticipates Enlightenment thinking about law and morals. I compare his theory of natural law with that of Germain Grisez and John Finnis. Finally, I examine the notion of a principle of practical reasoning and indicate how such principles could be formulated to correspond to elements in human nature.

The work of Herbert McCabe offers a model for thinking about the world and human life in it that has yet to be fully appreciated. In this essay, I argue that McCabe's linguistic model provides invaluable insight into human communication and the moral life, showing the natural law to be more like scaffolding than a list of stipulations.