I. Published Papers "Practical Reason" (in the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Donald Davidson, 2013) This paper lays out Davidson's theory of practical reason, locating his distinctive contribution in the area of the explanation desire-conflict. He rejects the standard, desire-partitioning, model, and opts, instead, to partition reason itself: he distinguishes between forms of rationality that are constitutive of action, and forms of rationality that it is possible for an agent to depart from. Ignorance and Akrasia-Denial in the Protagoras (forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy vol. 47) This paper argues that Socrates does not, in fact, deny the possibility of akrasia in the Protagoras. Instead, he offers a new conception of akrasia. On the standard conception, akratics do X, while believing that it is bad to do X. On Socrates’ conception, akratics do X, believing it is good to X, but falsely taking themselves to believe that it is bad to do X. Socrates’ innovation comes in his understanding of the nature of that false self-ascription: akratics mistake a belief that X-ing is good for what is in fact a mere simulacrum (phantasma) that X-ing is good. The paper first offers a new reading of Socrates’ famous ‘ridiculous’ argument (355a-357e), on which simulacrum-belief confusion emerges as the Socratic account of akrasia. It then applies Socrates’ analysis of akrasia as simulacrum-belief confusion to Plato’s own vivid description of akrasia in Alcibiades’ speech in the Symposium, thereby defending the Socratic account as viable and psychologically realistic. Finally, it identifies Socrates’ real target in the Protagoras: he is trying to refute, not the phenomenon of akrasia, but the defective account of knowledge (“the container view”) that produces the standard conception of akrasia. II. In Progress Reasoning about Particulars in Prior Analytics B21 In book two, chapter 21 of the Prior Analytics, Aristotle famously insists that if someone knows that all triangles have 2R, he thereby has “knowledge through the universal” that a particular triangle has 2R—even if he has never encountered that triangle. The standard account of “knowledge through the universal” attributes to Aristotle an implausibly strong closure principle: someone who knows AaB has “universal knowledge” of AaC for every C which is such that BaC. I argue that this reading cannot fit the text of B21 because, among other reasons, it cannot make sense of the fact that Aristotle’s point is restricted to cases of reasoning about perceptible particulars. As an alternative to this “entailment conception” of knowledge through the universal, I propose an “identity conception”: my knowledge that “all triangles have 2R” already is (universally) knowledge that “this has 2R” for any particular triangle. When I encounter the triangle in question, I do not acquire new knowledge. Instead, I come to know what I knew before in a new way. Aristotle describes this kind of rational transition as induction. By deduction, we move from knowing one thing to knowing another, whereas by induction we move from knowing something in one way, to knowing the same thing in a different and more active way. B21 addresses the question of how knowledge, which is of universals, can touch down in our changeable, perceptual world: induction makes it possible for knowledge of some universal to be knowledge of some perceptible particular. Self-Creation Without a Regress A human being is the source of her actions. Is she, likewise, a source of herself? Do we create ourselves? There is an argument that says we cannot. Suppose I am the cause of my future self. Who is the cause of me? Is it a past self? But then who is the cause of her? And so the argument forces us backwards through a series of ever less likely candidates to count as a source of ultimate responsibility. Hence Nietzsche, in a passage cited approvingly by skeptics of self-creation, scoffed at the philosophical impulse “to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.” He describes self-creation as a “rape and perversion of logic.” I argue that the situation is not as dire as it appears. The regress depends on a prevailing, but unnecessary, assumption about self-creation: that the creator self must be authoritative over the created self. The alternative is to envision the created self as, instead, the agent’s authoritative self. The key to dissolving the regress is to invert the traditional relation of conceptual and epistemic priority between the two selves, allotting priority to the created over the creator. Self-creation can coherently be construed as the aspirational process by which a human being works her way towards responsibility for who she is. If I aspire, I do not see myself as fashioning, controlling, sanctioning or shaping the self I create. Instead, I look up to her, try to understand her, find my way to her. In aspiration, it is they created self who, through the creator’s imperfect but gradually improving understanding of her, explains the path someone’s life takes. Proleptic Reasons Abstract: It is characteristic of what I call 'large scale transformative pursuits,' such as preparing to adopt a child, or learning an ancient language, or setting out to move to a foreign country, or get engaged, that we do not know precisely what we are getting out of that which we are setting out to do. For it is the end-state (parenting, translating, feeling at home in a foreign country, being happily married) that offers up the actual engagement with the value on which any full appreciation of that value must be conditioned. Nonetheless, such activities are not irrational. It is possible to have an inkling of a value that you do not fully grasp, to feel the defect in your valuation, and to work towards improvement. The reason for doing that work is provided by the value in question, but the defect in your grasp of that value also shapes the character of the activity it motivates. I explore this distinctive kind of reason and argue that it eludes Bernard Williams' classification of reasons into 'internal' and 'external'. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Conflicts of Desire Abstract: Someone who is torn between attending a classical concert and seeing a movie playing at the same time as the concert is extrinsically conflicted. The satisfaction of one of his desires will, as a matter of contingent fact, lead to the frustration of another one of his desires. Someone torn between love for her husband and spiteful hatred towards him is intrinsically conflicted: her desire that he fare well pulls directly against her desire to see him suffer. We resolve extrinsic conflicts by deliberating as to what, all things considered, we ought to or prefer to do. We cannot resolve intrinsic conflicts in this way. Nor, pace Harry Frankfurt, can we resolve them by 'identifying' with the one desire and 'externalizing' the other. Intrinsic conflicts are resolved over long stretches of time, through the aspirational work of becoming a different kind of person. "Akratics as Hedonists" This paper argues that the hedonism of the Protagoras does not represent Socrates' own view, but is, instead, a position that Socrates pins on the anyone who holds the standard conception of akrasia. Since this conception is still standard, his argument has direct bearing on contemporary work: Socrates shows, contra Davidson, that we cannot understand akrasia in merely structural terms, but must commit to characterizing the value at stake in an akratic decision as that of pleasure. "Enkratēs Phronimos" This paper challenges the widespread assumption that the strong-willed person, the enkratēs, cannot have Aristotle’s virtue of practical wisdom (phronēsis). It argues that the attribution of phronēsis to the enkratēs is needed to make sense of: (1) Aristotle’s praise of both the rational and the irrational part of the enkratēs’ soul (2) Aristotle’s conception of the weak-willed person (the akratēs) as ignorant and as lacking the particular premise (3) Aristotle’s conception of phronēsis in Nicomachean Ethics (NE) VI.5-9. Furthermore, it shows that the claim that the enkratēs is phronimos is consistent with Aristotle’s doctrine of the unity of the virtues, as expressed in NE VI.12-13. III. Book reviews "Review of Adreinne Martin's How We Hope.