Author: Sonsayar, Utku

Ashley Shaw is visiting ECOM!

We are excited to announce that Ashley Shaw is going to visit ECOM in Fall 2024!


Ashley Shaw
 is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Leeds. He received his PhD from UCL in 2019. He works in the Philosophy of Mind and Action; in particular, on the nature of desire, rational agency, reasons for action, and how they are related. He is currently working on a book on the nature of desire in rational agents, as well as related projects on need, self-control, and self-knowledge of desire.

Mark Jary is visiting ECOM!

We are excited to announce that Mark Jary is going to visit ECOM in Fall 2024!

Mark Jary is currently a María Zambrano Research Fellow at the Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies in the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). He is also Emeritus Professor in Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Roehampton (London, UK), where he taught Linguistics and Philosophy of Language for over 20 years. He received his PhD in Linguistics from University College London and has written extensively on subjects relating to linguistic mood, speech acts and associated topics. As well as articles in journals such as Mind and Language and Linguistics and Philosophy, he has published three books: Assertion (Palgrave, 2010), Imperatives (CUP, 2014 – co-authored with Mikhail Kissine) and Nothing is Said (OUP, 2022).

ECOM Member Hegarty on Transformative Rationality

A paper on transformative rationality by Michael Hegarty has been accepted for publication in Erkenntnis!

Transformative Rationality and the Problem of ‘Creeping Rationalism’

According to ‘transformative’ theories of rationality, human rational mental capacities cannot be completely explained using the theories and concepts of natural science because rational mental states stand to one another in irreducibly normative relations of justification. Certain transformative theorists propose that a capacity counts as rational if a ‘Why?’ question is applicable to some exercises of that capacity. But ‘Why?’ questions are in principle applicable to any intentional action, like walking over there, or deliberately holding one’s breath. Transformative rationality therefore seems to entail that capacities for walking or breathing are rational and hence escape complete scientific explanation. Yet it would be surprising to learn that physiology, medicine, and biology could not completely explain such capacities. Given the ‘Why?’ question criterion for a rational capacity, there is a danger of ‘rationality’ creeping into capacities that (one might think) should submit to scientific explanation, and even into sub-individual processes. This is the ‘Problem of ‘Creeping Rationalism’’. After introducing the problem, I consider potential ways a transformative theorist could try to avoid the problem by limiting the scope of what capacities are ‘transformed’ by rationality. I argue that initially promising proposals to do this are either circular or are incompatible with core commitments of the theory.

Congratulations, Michael!