The Unity of Normative Thought

Bibliographic Data

ID10347263
AuthorsJeremy David Fix (0000-0003-3416-6474, Keble College, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume104
Issue3
Pages639-658
Publication date2021-06-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8205 • E-ISSN: 1933-1592
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/phpr.12798
OpenAlexW3167624336
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited41

Practical cognitivism is the view that practical reason is our will, not an intellectual capacity whose exercises can influence those of our will. If practical reason is our will, thoughts about how I am to act have an essential tie to action. They are intentions. Thoughts about how others are to act, though, lack such a tie to action. They are beliefs, not intentions. How, then, can these thoughts form a unified class? I reject two answers which deny the differences between such thoughts about myself and those about others, one of which says that all such thoughts are intentions, the other that all are beliefs. I then reject a shared assumption which says that a class of those is unified only if all its elements are all of one type of thought. I instead argue that this class is unified even though some elements are intentions, others beliefs, because such beliefs depend on those intentions in various ways

Action (physics · Class (philosophy · Cognition · Cognitivism (psychology · Epistemology · Normative · Free Will and Agency · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology · Social Psychology

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