The concept of ‘practical reasons’ plays a prominent role in metaethics and in the philosophy of mind and action. In both areas there are controversies about how exactly to understand the concept. Three ideas are widely agreed upon: (1) that we are reasons-responsive beings, (2) that the practice of giving and asking for reasons plays a prominent role in our everyday moral practices, and (3) that there exists some kind of trustworthy relation between our reasons and reason talk and our subsequent actions. However, developments in the Behavioral, Cognitive and Neurosciences indicate that much of what we do takes place at an automatic and unaware level, and that the reasons we provide to explain and/or justify ourselves should not be taken as reports of introspected internal states that precede our bodily movements. Also, more generally, it appears that what we do (and do not do) and for what reason is less transparent to ourselves then we might assume. This gives rise to two questions that will be discussed at this workshop: (1) how exactly do our everyday reason talk, our reasons (subjectively or objectively conceptualized) and our nature as reasons-responsive beings connect to one another?; and (2) how do all three connect to our actions?

Frank Hindriks, Tillman Vierkant, Christopher Lumer, Jan Bransen, Leon de Bruin, Derek Strijbos, Maureen Sie, Lilian O’Brien, Constantine Sandis.