Slaves of the Passions

by Schroeder, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780199575725
• ISBN10: 019957572X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Long claimed to be the dominant conception of practical reason, the Humeantheory that reasons for action are instrumental, or explained by desires, is thebasis for a range of worries about the objective prescriptivity of morality. As a result, it has come under intense attack in recent decades. A wide varietyof arguments have been advanced which purport to show that it is false, orsurprisingly, even that it is incoherent. Slaves of the Passions aims to set therecord straight, by advancing a version of the Humean theory of reasons whichwithstands this sophisticated array of objections.Mark Schroeder defends a radical new view which, if correct, means that thecommitments of the Humean theory have been widely misunderstood. Along the way,he raises and addresses questions about the fundamental structure of reasons,the nature of normative explanations, the aims of and challenges facingreductive views in metaethics, the weight of reasons, the nature of desire,moral epistemology, and most importantly, the relationship betweenagent-relational and agent-neutral reasons for action.

Author Biography

Mark Schroeder is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California.

Table of Contents

Reasons and the Humean Theory	p. 1
Background Conditions	p. 23
Incoherence and Chauvinism	p. 41
Reduction of the Normative	p. 61
Too Many Reasons	p. 84
Too Few Reasons	p. 103
Weighting for Reasons	p. 123
Desire	p. 146
Motivation, Knowledge, and Virtue	p. 164
Instrumentalism	p. 179
Why be Humean?	p. 192
References	p. 213
Index	p. 221
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