The question that is really motivating the course is one that has been at the center of several recent debates in ethical theory, namely,

Many theorists deny that this is possible. Following Hume, many argue that reason can only tell us how best to get what we want -- not whether it is good to want what we happen to want. Even for Kantians, reason can tell us what personal projects are morally permissible but not how to rationally select one set of projects rather than another. Kant puts this sort of reasoning in the category with selecting a diet.

But there is a lot more that can be said here. And over the last few years, several books have appeared that present significant -- and significantly divergent -- proposals as to how theorize what it means to engage in practical reasoning about what personal goals, projects, and ideals to adopt for oneself. In this course, we'll be reading several of the most important recent proposals. The books are relatively short (or the portions we will be reading are short), and written in an engaging style.

Richardson's approach draws on Aristotle to show that there reasoning is not "only of means" -- as Aristotle is sometimes misunderstood as suggesting. Richardson proposes a coherentist model of practical reasoning, according to which we can criticize some of our desires on the basis of their failure to "fit" with other desires that we have.

Anderson (no relation) argues for an expressive theory of evaluation that centers on the agent's ongoing interpretation of her responses (emotional and otherwise) to what she experiences. The book was the subject of a recent symposium in Ethics, and we will be looking at some of those articles as well.

Millgram argues that the best way to understand practical reasoning about what to do with one's life is by looking at how we can learn from experience. This also requires a certain conception of the self as an ongoing process of narrative integration, which raises a number of very interesting issues about identity.

Velleman's brilliant book argues for a notion of practical rationality on the basis of a very innovative understanding of reflective human agency. What makes practical reflection rational, on his view, is that it can restore an agent's intuitive sense that her actions are intelligible -- that what she is doing makes sense -- that this is something that is best seen in the way in which people are able to go on with their projects.

In the final couple of weeks of the course, we will look at what these approaches mean for the age-old question of whether and how practical reasoning can be motivating. Our guide here will be Michael Smith's groundbreaking book, The Moral Problem (Blackwell 1995) and the papers from the symposium on the book in the current issue of Ethics. Smith proposes a novel solution to the dispute between Humeans and Kantians as to whether reason can motivate, based on the idea that the evaluation of desires takes the form of beliefs about what one "would want to do if one were fully rational," and that these sorts of thought can perfectly well be motivating.