Kinds of Reasons

Understanding human beings and their distinctive rational and volitional capacities is one of the central tasks of philosophy. It requires a clear account of such things as reasons, desires, emotions and motives, and of how they combine to produce and explain human behaviour. Maria Alvarez offers a fresh and incisive treatment of these issues, focusing in particular on reasons as they feature in contexts of agency. Her account builds on some important recent work in the area; but she takes her main inspiration from the writings of G. E. M. Anscombe, a tradition that runs counter to the broadly Humean orthodoxy that has dominated the theory of action for the past forty years. Alvarez's conclusions are therefore likely to be controversial; and her bold and painstaking arguments will be found provocative. Kinds of Reasons aims to stake out a distinctive position within one of the most hotly contested areas of contemporary philosophy.