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The Importance of Being Rational systematically defends a novel reasons-based account of rationality. The book's central thesis is that what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. Errol Lord defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons. He shows that these views not only help to support the book's main thesis, they also help to resolve several important problems that are independent of rationality. The account of possession provides novel contributions to debates about what determines what we ought to do, and the account of correctly responding to reasons provides novel contributions to debates about causal theories of reacting for reasons.
After defending views about possession and correctly responding, Lord shows that the account of rationality can solve two difficult problems about rationality. The first is the New Evil Demon problem. The book argues that the account has the resources to show that internal duplicates necessarily have the same rational status. The second problem concerns the deontic significance of rationality. Recently it has been doubted whether we ought to be rational. The ultimate conclusion of the book is that the requirements of rationality are the requirements that we ultimately ought to comply with. If this is right, then rationality is of fundamental importance to our deliberative lives.
List of contents
- Part I: Initial Motivations
- 1: Introduction
- 2: The Coherent and the Rational
- Part II: Possessing Reasons
- 3: Possession: The Epistemic Condition
- 4: Possession: The Practical Condition
- Part III: Correctly Responding to Reasons
- 5: Correctly Responding to Reasons
- 6: Achievements and Intelligibility
- Part IV: Two Problems Solved
- 7: Defeating the Externalist's Demons
- 8: What you're Rationally Required to Do and What you Ought to Do
About the author
Errol Lord is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He works in ethical theory, epistemology, the philosophy of action, and aesthetics. He has published papers in Mind, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, and British Journal of Aesthetics, among other places. He co-edited Weighing Reasons (OUP, 2016) with Barry Maguire.
Summary
Errol Lord offers a new account of the nature of rationality: what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. Lord defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons, and dispels doubts about whether we ought to be rational.
Additional text
the book offers an informed, original, rich, sophisticated and exceptionally well-illustrated case for the claim that what we are rationally required to do and what we substantially ought to do is really the same thing. To follow Errol Lord on his route to this conclusion is a frequently rewarding experience and one that is well worth undertaking.
Report
Errol Lord's The Importance of Being Rational is a tour de force treatment of the relationship between reasons, rationality, knowledge, and what Lord calls creditworthiness, the kind of achievement where you don't just do what is right, but do it for the right reasons. Mark Schroeder, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
