During the last few decades, work on normative reasons has become central to ethics, practical rationality, the philosophy of action, and epistemology. In fact, some philosophers believe that we can understand all of normativity in terms of reasons. Others are more sceptical. Debates about the plausibility of this “reasons first” program, as well as more familiar debates about the nature and source of normative reasons and the relationship between normative reasons and motivation are generating some of the most interesting and important work in normative philosophy.

Stephen Darwall has been at the fore of this area of research for over thirty years. His 1983 book Impartial Reason helped to set the agenda for the recent explosion of work on reasons. More recently, his book The Second-Person Standpoint has generated a whole branch of work on reasons in moral philosophy, focusing on the importance of second-personal reasons. Professor Darwall’s visit to Scotland as the 2015 Scots Philosophical Association Centenary Fellow is thus a perfect opportunity to bring together philosophers from Scotland and elsewhere working on normative reasons.

Speakers include Stewart Cohen, Stephen Darwall (Yale), Ellie Mason (Edinburgh), Campbell Brown (Glasgow), Kate Manne (Cornell), Matthew McGrath (Missouri/Arche), and Mark van Roojen (Nebraska)

Schedule
Monday 1st June
09:30 -10:00 Coffee
10:00 -11:30 Elinor Mason, “Moral Community and Shared Reasons”
11:30 -13:00 Matthew McGrath “Knowledge-Reason Links without Pragmatic Encroachment?”
13:00-14:15 Lunch
14:15-15:45 Stephen Darwall, “Making the Hard Problem of Normativity Easier”
15:45-17:15 Stewart Cohen Reasons to Believe and Reasons to Act
19:00 Dinner at Forgans
Tuesday 2nd June
09:30 -10:00 Coffee
10:00 -11:30 Campbell Brown Aggregating Reasons’
11:30 -11:45 Break
11:45 -13:15 Kate Manne, “Reasons for Resentment”
13:15 -14:30 Lunch
14:30 -16:00 Mark van Roojen, “Resisting Objective Reasons Fundamentalism”
The workshop is open to all, but please contact the organiser if you are from outside St Andrews and wish to attend. The workshop benefits from the generous support of the Scots Philosophical Association.

For more information, please send an email to the workshop organisers at arche@st-andrews.ac.uk