Normativity in Reasoning

The OSU Center for Ethics and Human Values welcomes John Broome, White's Professor of Moral Philosophy, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. He will present Normativity in Reasoning at 3:30 p.m. in 353 University Hall (Philosophy Common Room).

Sometimes at least, reasoning is 'active'; it is something we do. What makes this so is that in active reasoning we operate on our conscious attitudes, following a rule. We are guided by the rule. This suggests that we must, at least implicitly, have a belief with the normative content that we ought to follow the rule, or have a reason to follow it.

I shall argue this is not so: no belief with a normative content is necessarily involved in active reasoning.

John Broome is the White's Professor of Moral Philosophy, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. His highly influential writings range over many topics in moral philosophy, including normative ethics and metaethics, and economics. In addition to numerous articles, he is the author of: Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World; Weighing Lives; Ethics Out of Economics; Weighing Goods: Equality, Uncertainty, and Time; Counting the Cost of Global Warming; and The Microeconomics of Capitalism. Professor Broome's "The Ethics of Climate Change" appeared in Scientific American in June of 2008. Professor Broome served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is one of the lead authors of the IPCC's "Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report."

This event is free and open to the public; registration is not required.