Please join us for a lecture by J. David Velleman, the Miller Research Professor in Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University.
In “A Method for Metaethics,” Velleman considers the question “What turns a fact into a reason for acting?” but he doesn’t answer the question; rather, he proposes a method for finding the answer. He arrives at that method by considering the views of historical figures such as Aristotle and David Hume as well as the 20th-century philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe, Donald Davidson, and Bernard Williams. The method he proposes cannot be derived from the mere concept of a reason for acting, but he suggests that we cannot derive a theory of reasons for acting by simply analyzing that concept.
This lecture will also be available on zoom. Please email gernenz2@illinois.edu for a link.