Research

Philosophy of Action: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Press, 2020)

This book offers an accessible and inclusive overview of the major debates in the philosophy of action. It covers the distinct approaches taken by Donald Davidson, G.E.M. Anscombe, and numerous others to answering questions like "what are intentional actions?" and "how do reasons explain actions?" Further topics include intention, practical knowledge, weakness and strength of will, self-governance, and collective agency. With introductions, conclusions, and annotated suggested reading lists for each of the ten chapters, it is an ideal introduction for advanced undergraduates as well as any philosopher seeking a primer on these issues.

Striving: The Agency and Epistemology of Uncertain Pursuits (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2027)

To strive is to pursue a difficult, long-term goal in the face of uncertainty. Much of our agency is ultimately directed at complex, temporally extended ends such as career aspirations, athletic or artistic ambitions, long-term relationships, and political goals. We often set out to pursue such ends in the knowledge that they are difficult to achieve and without knowing at the outset whether it will be within our power to succeed. Along the way, we gather evidence about our abilities, our circumstances, and about the kinds of obstacles we are likely to encounter. We turn to our friends, partners, teachers, and coaches for their perspectives on our prospects. If substantial uncertainty about the outcome persists, however, we face a choice: whether to persevere or give up.

In Striving, Jennifer M. Morton and Sarah K. Paul examine this dynamic primarily through an epistemic lens, illuminating the ways in which difficult attempts are at the same time a kind of inquiry. How should the agent think about the likelihood of succeeding, and the possibility of failure, in light of the often-indeterminate evidence she has? How should she interpret her evidence in situations of adversity? When should she make backup plans, and when should she conclude that she has done enough and that it is time to give up? Through the lens of striving agency, new insights emerge for our understanding of agency, epistemology, rationality, and self-knowledge.

“Institutional Inconsistency,” forthcoming in a special issue of Law and Philosophy on Michael Bratman’s Shared and Institutional Agency 

This paper critically engages with Michael Bratman’s Shared and Institutional Agency, focusing on the theory’s justification for thinking that institutional intentions must be, or rationally ought to be, mutually consistent.

“Ambition, Devotion, and Surrender,” Philosophical Psychology 39(1), special issue on "Devotion," 2026

I argue that within the set of ends that are deeply significant to us, and that give our practical lives much of their structure, there is a spectrum of ways in which we can be committed to those ends and the activities we undertake in service of them. Beginning with the temporally disintegrated rational chooser, whose commitment to his ends is conditional on its being supported by his reasons at each moment, we can construct progressively less contingent forms of commitment by making the agent less sensitive to short-term alterations or gaps in his (perceived) reasons. We eventually reach the orientation of devotion. The paper argues that there is a form of devotion that involves a phenomenon that might be called “surrender”, and attempts to understand what that phenomenon is.

“Over-Efforting as Weakness of Will,” Synthese 206(291), special issue on "Effort," 2025

Determination, resoluteness, tenacity, perseverance, and effort are paradigmatically viewed as marks of a strong will, whereas giving up is often thought of as weakness – as giving in. The central idea explored in this paper is that these familiar dynamics can also be inverted: giving up can be hard, and require strength of will, while perseverance and continued effort can be a manifestation of weakness. It is not uncommon to respond to adversity by doubling down and investing even more effort, rather than by despairing and giving up. I make a case that there is a general form of practical irrationality common to both succumbing to temptation and to the phenomenon of “over-efforting,” such that it might be theoretically fruitful to embrace a conception of weakness of will that includes both phenomena.

“Rational Powers and Inaction,” Philosophical Inquiries 11(1), “Focus” on Sergio Tenenbaum’s Rational Powers in Action, 2023

This discussion of Sergio Tenenbaum’s excellent book, Rational Powers in Action, focuses on two noteworthy aspects of the big picture. First, questions are raised about Tenenbaum’s methodology of giving primacy to cases in which the agent has all the requisite background knowledge, including knowledge of a means that will be sufficient for achieving her end, and no significant false beliefs. Second, the implications of Tenenbaum’s views concerning the rational constraints on revising our ends are examined.

“Plan B,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100(3), 2022

We sometimes strive to achieve difficult goals when our evidence suggests that success is unlikely – not just because it will require strength of will, but because we are targets of prejudice and discrimination or because success will require unusual ability. Optimism about one’s prospects can be useful for persevering in these cases. That said, excessive optimism can be dangerous; when our evidence is unfavourable, we should be at most agnostic about whether we will succeed. This paper explores the nature and rational significance of agnostic practical commitments. Most importantly, the rationality of striving against the odds can depend on investing in a plan for failure: a plan B. I aim to make headway on an account of what backup plans are, how they are related to primary plans, and whether the standard norms of plan rationality apply to our agnostic commitments.

“Grit,” with Jennifer Morton, Ethics 129(2), 2019

Many of our most important goals require months or even years of effort to achieve, and some never get achieved at all. As social psychologists have lately emphasized, success in pursuing such goals requires the capacity for perseverance, or "grit." Philosophers have had little to say about grit, however, insofar as it differs from more familiar notions of willpower or continence. This leaves us ill-equipped to assess the social and moral implications of promoting grit. We propose that grit has an important epistemic component, in that failures of perseverance are often caused by a significant loss of confidence that one will succeed if one continues to try. Correspondingly, successful exercises of grit often involve a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of failure, injury, rejection, and other setbacks that constitute genuine evidence that success is not forthcoming. Given this, we discuss whether and to what extent displays of grit can be epistemically as well as practically rational. We conclude that they can be (although many are not), and that the rationality of grit will depend partly on features of the context the agent normally finds herself in. In particular, grit-friendly norms of deliberation might be irrational to use in contexts of severe material scarcity or oppression.

“II: What Should ‘Impostor Syndrome’ Be?” The Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplemental volume 93(1), 2019 (symposium with Katherine Hawley)

In her thought-provoking symposium contribution, ‘What Is Impostor Syndrome?’, Katherine Hawley fleshes out our everyday understanding of that concept. This response builds on Hawley’s account to ask the ameliorative question of whether the everyday concept best serves the normative goals of promoting social justice and enhancing well-being. I raise some sceptical worries about the usefulness of the notion, in so far as it is centred on doxastic attitudes that include doubt about one’s own talent or skill. I propose instead that a narrower conception emphasizing the debilitating emotional and behavioural consequences of such beliefs might be preferable, and that the causes of such consequences would be better thought of as unjustified rather than false beliefs about one’s own competence.

“Believing in Others,” with Jennifer Morton, Philosophical Topics 46(1), special issue on “Can Beliefs Wrong?” 2018

Suppose someone sets out to accomplish a difficult, long-term goal such as writing a passable Ph.D. thesis. What should you believe about whether they will succeed? The default answer is that you should believe whatever the total accessible evidence concerning their abilities, circumstances, capacity for self-discipline, and so forth supports. But could it be that what you should believe depends in part on the relationship you have with them? We argue that it does, in the case where the person is yourself. The capacity for "grit" involves a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of evidence suggesting that one might fail, and this makes it rational to respond to the relevant evidence differently when you are the agent in question. We then explore whether similar arguments extend to the case of "believing in" our significant others -- our friends, lovers, family members, colleagues, patients, and students.

“Good Intentions and the Road to Hell,” Philosophical Explorations 20(2), 20th Anniversary special issue on “The Normative Significance of Intention,” 2017

My focus in this paper is on non-moral conceptions of autonomy and self-governance that emphasize the limits of deliberation -- the way in which one's cares render certain options unthinkable, one's intentions and policies filter out what is inconsistent with them, and one's resolutions function to block further reflection.  I argue that we can expect this deliberative "silencing" to lead to moral failures that occur because the morally correct option was filtered out of the agent's deliberation.  I think it follows from these conceptions of self-governance that we should be considered culpable for unwitting acts and omissions, even if they express no ill will, moral indifference, or blameworthy evaluative judgments.  The question is whether this consequence is acceptable.  Either way, the potential tradeoff between self-governance and moral attentiveness is a source of doubt about recent attempts to ground the normativity of rationality in our concern for self-governance.

“The Courage of Conviction,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, special issue on “Belief, Action, and Rationality Over Time,” 2015

Is there a sense in which we exercise direct volitional control over our beliefs? Most agree that there is not, but discussions tend to focus on control in forming a belief. The focus here is on sustaining a belief over time in the face of ‘epistemic temptation’ to abandon it. It is argued that we do have a capacity for ‘doxastic self-control’ over time that is partly volitional in nature, and that its exercise is rationally permissible.

“The Transparency of Intention,” Philosophical Studies 172(6), 2015

The attitude of intention is not usually the primary focus in philosophical work on self-knowledge. A recent exception is the so-called “Transparency” theory of self-knowledge, which attempts to explain how we know our own minds by appeal to reflection on non-mental facts. Transparency theories are attractive in light of their relative psychological economy compared to views that must posit a dedicated mechanism of ‘inner sense’. However, it is argued here, focusing on proposals by Richard Moran and Alex Byrne, that the Transparency approach to explaining knowledge of our intentions fails. Considerations of economy therefore recommend an alternative approach: the Rylean Theory Theory. The particular view defended here is that one way of coming to know what we intend is to self-ascribe an intention on the basis of making a conscious decision about what to do. This view requires that there are such things as conscious decisions, and so the existence of conscious decisions is defended against skeptical worries raised by Peter Carruthers. The conclusion is that we know of our intentions by theorizing about ourselves, but that this knowledge can still be first-personally privileged, authoritative, and non-alienated.

“Doxastic Self-Control,” American Philosophical Quarterly, “Best of SLACRR” issue, 52(2), 2015

This paper discusses the possibility of autonomy in our epistemic lives, and the importance of the concept of the first person in weathering fluctuations in our epistemic perspective over time.

“Diachronic Incontinence is a Problem in Moral Philosophy,” Inquiry 57(3), special issue on “Choice Over Time,” 2014

Is there a rational requirement enjoining continence over time in the intentions one has formed, such that anyone going in for a certain form of agency has standing reason to conform to such a requirement? This paper suggests that there is not. I argue that Michael Bratman’s defense of such a requirement succeeds in showing that many agents have a reason favoring default intention continence much of the time, but does not establish that all planning agents have such a reason in every case of intending. I then defend an account on which such a reason is grounded in the need to maintain the capacity to commit oneself to a practical option. But although I think this applies more widely than Bratman’s account, it is also not a reason that any planning agent has in every case. I tentatively conclude that although we have many good reasons to stick with our intentions once we have formed them, it is not required by rationality.

“Embarking on a Crime,” Law and the Philosophy of Action, Enrique Villanueva V, ed. Rodopi Press, 2014

When we define something as a crime, we generally thereby criminalize the attempt to commit that crime. However, it is a vexing puzzle to specify what must be the case in order for a criminal attempt to have occurred, given that the results element of the crime fails to come about. I argue that the philosophy of action can assist the criminal law in clarifying what kinds of events are properly categorized as criminal attempts. A natural thought is that this project should take the form of specifying what it is in general to attempt or try to perform an action, and then to define criminal attempts as attempts to commit crimes. Focusing on Gideon Yaffe's resourceful work in Attempts (Oxford University Press, 2010) as an example of this strategy, I argue that it results in a view that is overly inclusive: one will count as trying to commit a crime even in the far remote preparatory stages that we in fact have good reason not to criminalize. I offer an alternative proposal to distinguish between mere preparations and genuine attempts that has its basis not in trying, but doing: a criminal attempt is underway once what the agent is doing is a crime. Working out the details of this schema turns out to have important implications for action theory. 

“Of Reasons and Recognition,” with Jennifer Morton, Analysis 74(2), 2014

A critical discussion of some of the essays in the collection Reasons and Recognition, published in honor of T. M. Scanlon's work.

“The Conclusion of Practical Reasoning:  The Shadow Between Idea and Act,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43(3), 2013

There is a puzzle about how to understand the conclusion of a successful instance of practical reasoning. Do the considerations adduced in reasoning rationalize the particular doing of an action, as Aristotle is sometimes interpreted as claiming? Or does reasoning conclude in the formation of an attitude – an intention, say – that has an action-type as its content? This paper attempts to clarify what is at stake in that debate and defends the latter view against some of its critics.

“How We Know What We Intend,” Philosophical Studies 161(2), 2012

How do we know what our intentions are? It is argued that work on self-knowledge has tended to neglect the attitude of intention, and that an epistemological account is needed that is attuned to the specific features of that state. Richard Moran’s Authorship view, on which we can acquire self-knowledge by making up our minds, offers a promising insight for such an account: we do not normally discover what we intend through introspection. However, his formulation of the Authorship view, developed primarily with the attitude of belief in mind, is found wanting when applied to intention. An alternative account is proposed for knowledge of one’s own intentions that gives a central role to the mental act of deciding what to do. It is argued that we can come to know what we intend by making a decision about what to do and self-ascribing the content of that decision as our intended action.

“Deviant Formal Causation,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 5(3), 2011

What is the role of practical thought in determining the intentional action that is performed? Donald Davidson’s influential answer to this question is that thought plays an efficient-causal role: intentional actions are those events that have the correct causal pedigree in the agent's beliefs and desires. But the Causal Theory of Action has always been plagued with the problem of “deviant causal chains,” in which the right action is caused by the right mental state but in the wrong way. This paper addresses an alternative approach to understanding intentional action inspired by G.E.M. Anscombe, interpreting that view as casting practical thought in the role of formal rather than efficient cause of action and thereby avoiding the problem of deviant (efficient) causal chains. 

“Intention, Belief, and Wishful Thinking:  Setiya on ‘Practical Knowledge’,” Ethics 119(3), 2009
A critical discussion of Kieran Setiya's views about intention, belief, and practical knowledge.

“How We Know What We’re Doing,” Philosophers’ Imprint 9(11), 2009

G.E.M. Anscombe famously claimed that acting intentionally entails knowing "without observation" what one is doing. Among those that have taken her claim seriously, an influential response has been to suppose that in order to explain this fact, we should conclude that intentions are a species of belief. This paper argues that there are good reasons to reject this "cognitivist" view of intention in favor of the view that intentions are distinctively practical attitudes that are not beliefs and do not constitutively involve the belief that one will do what one intends. A theory is then proposed on behalf of Distinctive Practical Attitude views of intention to explain Anscombe's non-observational knowledge phenomenon. It is argued that intentions do not embody non-observational knowledge, but they do provide the evidential basis for it: we know without observation what we are doing by inferring from our intentions.

“The Norms of Practical Deliberation,” with Jennifer Morton. The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason, ed. Ruth Chang and Kurt Sylvan, 2020.

“John Doe and Richard Roe,” in The Norton Introduction to Philosophy, 2nd edition, 2018

“The Transparency of Mind,” Philosophy Compass 9(5), 2014

“Intention,” International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013

Alex Byrne, Transparency and Self-Knowledge, The Philosophical Review 129(3), 2020

Manuel Vargas and Gideon Yaffe, Rational and Social Agency:  Themes from the Work of Michael Bratman (Oxford 2014), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2015

Alan H Goldman, Reasons from Within: Desires and Values (Oxford 2010), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2011

Richard Holton, Willing, Wanting, Waiting (Oxford 2009), Mind 120 (479), 2011