Title: Commitment and the Relegation of Reasons by Lilian O\u2019Brien (Tampere University and University of Helsinki)<\/p>\n
Date: Thursday, November 27, 2025
\nTime: 1530-1700
\nRoom: H-232<\/p>\n
Abstract: Commitments \u2013 to ends, people, principles \u2013 are central to our lives. In spite of their importance, the topic of commitment has received comparatively little attention. A couple of recent approaches rely on the claim that commitments are intentions of a special sort.<\/p>\n
Such views need to distinguish \u201ccommon or garden\u201d intentions from commitment-constituting intentions: they face a \u201cdistinction challenge\u201d. One response that has been made to the challenge is to argue that commitment-constituting intentions are related in a special way to practical reasons. Another response is to characterize them as accompanied by a disposition not to re-consider. Both of these approaches get something right, but they also face problems. The alternative approach that is defended is that commitment-constituting intentions have a distinctive origin. They result from a \u201cservice\u201d relationship that an agent takes up to some end, person, or principle. As a result of taking up this relationship, the agent undergoes a change in her reflexive evaluative attitudes, and consequently, in her executive thinking: she generates intentions concerning the end, person, or principle to which she is committed.<\/p>\n
Bio: Lilian O\u2019Brien is Senior Research Fellow at Tampere University and University Researcher at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on issues in the philosophies of action and mind, and has appeared in such journals as Analysis, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, Philosophical Issues, and the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. She is Co-PI (with Arto Laitinen) of the project, Commitment and Self-Evaluation, Individual and Collective, funded by the Research Council of Finland (2024-2028), and member of the project, The Many Faces of Inquiry:<\/p>\n
Towards a Dynamic and Pluralistic Epistemology (PI Maria Lasonen), funded by the Kone Foundation, Finland (2024-2029).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Title: Commitment and the Relegation of Reasons by Lilian O\u2019Brien (Tampere University and University of Helsinki) Date: Thursday, November 27, 2025 Time: 1530-1700 Room: H-232 Abstract: Commitments \u2013 to ends, people, principles \u2013 are central to our lives. In spite of their importance, the topic of commitment has received comparatively [\u2026] <\/p>\n