PHIL 765.001 – Advanced Studies in Value Theory

Instructor: Alex Worsnip. This course meets R 4:00 – 6:30 p.m. in CW 213.

A survey class on practical reasons and rationality, designed to bring students up to speed with the main contemporary debates in this thriving subfield. Topics will include: internalism vs. externalism (and Humeanism vs. anti-Humeanism) about reasons; analyses of reasons (e.g., reasons as explanations vs reasons as evidence); the “wrong kind of reasons” problem; the relationship between reasons and rational requirements; narrow-scoping vs wide-scoping about rational requirements; and the normativity of rationality. Authors we will likely read include (among others) Broome, Chang, Darwall, Hieronymi, Kolodny, Korsgaard, Manne, Markovits, McDowell, Scanlon, Schroeder, Street, Parfit, and Williams.