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Paul Katsafanas Email: katsafan
at fas.harvard.edu |
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I
am currently a graduate student in the Philosophy Department at My
research involves a cluster of issues lying at the intersection of ethics,
action theory, and philosophy of mind.
The two questions on which I am currently focusing are: - Is it possible to derive normative conclusions
from an analysis of the structure of reflective agency? - How should we understand the notion of reflective
agency? In particular, do
non-conscious aspects of our mental lives complicate traditional accounts of
reflective agency? In
my dissertation, I explore these issues by developing and defending a new
version of constitutivism. Constitutivism is the view that a certain aim is present
in every instance of action, precisely because the presence of this aim is
part of what constitutes an event as an action. Call this a constitutive aim.
Constitutive aims generate a standard of success for action: an action is
successful to the extent that it fulfills the aim. The standard of success, in turn,
generates practical reasons: an agent has reason to perform those actions
that fulfill the aim. Thus, constitutivists hold that by determining what action is,
we can derive normative conclusions about which actions we should perform. Some
of my work, both in my dissertation and in several independent papers,
focuses on the versions of the above questions that occupied certain
nineteenth-century philosophers, including Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. I believe that their work can help to
forward the contemporary discussions of agency and value. I have published several papers on
Nietzsche's theory of agency and mind.
My current research on Nietzsche centers on his answers to the two
questions listed above. |
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