The concept of 'practical reasons' plays a prominent role in metaethics and in the philosophy of mind and action. In both areas there are controversies about how to understand the concept exactly. Three ideas are widely agreed upon: (1) that we are reasons responsive beings, (2) that the practice of giving and asking for reasons plays a prominent role in our everyday moral practices, and (3) that there exist some kind of trustworthy relation between our reasons and reason talk and our subsequent actions.

Developments in the BCN sciences indicate that much of what we do takes place at an automatic and unaware level, and that the reasons we provide to explain and/or justify ourselves should not be taken as reports of introspected internal states that preceded our bodily movements. Also, more generally speaking, it appears that what we do (and do not do) and for what reasons is less transparent to ourselves as we might have assumed. This brings up two questions: (1) how exactly do our everyday reason talk, our reasons (the reasons we have and the reasons there are) and our nature as reason-responsive beings connect to one another?; and (2) how do all three connect to our actions? This workshop invites papers that scrutinize parts of this threefold relation.

Suitable topics include:

•the nature of practical reasons

•types of reason explanations, their nature and their conditions of adequacy

•the relation between the causes of our behavior and our reason-talk

•the relation between our reason-talk and causal explanation in the BCN sciences

•the explanation of the (seemingly) trustworthy relation between our actions and the reasons we provide for them

•the relation between reason talk, self-understanding, and action

Deadlines: T.B.A.

If you already know that you are interested to present a paper at this workshop you can send us a bio and/or an abstract before August 2010 (we will use this information to keep you updated, to obtain further funding and to explore options for publication).

Printversion of this CfP: WorkshopReasons.pdf