Deliberation as Inquiry
Aristotle's Alternative to the Presumption of Open Alternatives
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10695923 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Karen Margrethe Nielsen (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 120 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 383-421 |
| Publication date | 2011-07-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Philosophical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00318108-1263683 |
| OpenAlex | W2119660184 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 17 |
This article examines Aristotle's model of deliberation as inquiry (zêtêsis), arguing that Aristotle does not treat the presumption of open alternatives as a precondition for rational deliberation. Deliberation aims to uncover acts that are up to us and conducive to our ends; it essentially consists in causal mapping. Unlike the comparative model presupposed in the literature on deliberation, Aristotle's model can account for the virtuous agent's deliberation, as well as deliberation with a view to “satisficing” desires and deliberation that fails to uncover any expedient course of action. Aristotle's account of the constraints governing rational deliberation is furthermore not incompatibilist—for all Aristotle says, we may deliberate rationally despite being committed to the truth of determinism
Action (physics) · Deliberation · Epistemology · Law and economics · Political science · Presumption · Satisficing · Sociology · Computer Science · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy
Phronesis and the Virtues ( NE vi 12–13)
Beginning and Ending with Eudaimonia
Competing Ways of Life and Ring Composition ( NE x 6–8)
Protreptic Aspects of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle’s Analysis of Akratic Action
Was Aristotle a Humean? A Partisan Guide to the Debate
The Relationship between Aristotle’s Ethical and Political Discourses ( NE x 9)
The Eudemian Ethics and Its Controversial Relationship to the Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle on Women
Philosophical Virtue
Happiness and the External Goods
Why Is Aristotle’s Virtue of Character a Mean? Taking Aristotle at His Word ( NE ii 6)
The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
The Constitution of the Soul
Sceptical Deliberations
Deliberation in Ancient Greek Assemblies
Aristotle on Reasoning and Rational Animals
| Citations per year | 1.42 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2014 - 2023 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |