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I am Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Macalester College, in St. Paul, Minnesota. I received my PhD from Stanford and my BA from Swarthmore. I am originally from Portland, Oregon. I specialize in ethics, metaethics, and the philosophy of action. I have just completed a book on the idea of acting for a reason. I am writing a series of essays on intention and intentional action. I am about to start a book defending the causal theory of action. Starting in Fall 2025 I am an area editor for Ergo. Outside of philosophy, you can find me cooking, baking, running, cycling, paddling, skiing, and playing and listening to música Brasileira. I live in Minneapolis with my partner, our child, and our dog, Maiana. C.V.? Here. E-mail? sasarnow [at] macalester [dot] edu Asarnow? uh-SAR-no (/ʌˈsɑr noʊ/) Pronouns? he/him or they/them |
Fig. 1: Talking about intention
Photo: Bendix Kemmann |
BookReasons Last: Agency, Morality, and the Reasoning View
Oxford University Press (2025) [book] This book argues that the "reasons first" crew has things backward. Reasons come last--or, at any rate, pretty far along. The book also develops and defends the Reasoning View, a comprehensive theory of normative reasons for action and motivating reasons for action, which is more plausible than anyone else's theory of either of those things.
9. Intention [draft]
Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (2024) This is my guide to how you should think about philosophical debates about intention. Don't listen to anyone else. 8. Judgment Internalism (w/David E. Taylor) [draft] The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology (2022) Manuel Vargas and John Doris, eds. This is an opinionated survey article about the moral psychological thesis of judgment internalism (also known as "motivational internalism"), according to which there is some kind of necessary link between normative judgment and motivation. 7. Action and Rationalization Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70(218), 665-668 (2021) [final; draft] According to Davidson, intentional actions are "caused and rationalized" by the agent's mental states. All proponents of the causal theory of action accept Davidson's causal condition (duh). But should they also accept the rationalization condition? I argue that they should: without a rationalization condition, the theory faces two serious but overlooked problems. I develop a theory of rationalization that allows the causal theory to avoid those problems, and I use that theory to develop a Reasoning View about motivating reasons. 6. Noncognitivism in Metaethics and the Philosophy of Action Erkenntnis 80: 95–115 (2020) [final; draft] I argue that broadly Anscombean versions of the planning theory of intention face an analogue of the Frege-Geach problem, which famously afflicts metaethical noncognitivism. However, I argue that a broadly Gricean version pf the planning theory can avoid the problem. The Gricean version has numerous other virtues, including that it allows the theory to respond to an influential criticism due to Marušić and Schwenkler. 5. Shared Agency without Shared Intention The Philosophical Quarterly 70, 281: 665-68 (2020) [final; draft] I argue that creatures who lack plan-laden intentions, and whose agency is thus not temporally extended, may enjoy forms of social interaction that can creditably be called "shared agency." My framework for modeling these agents leads naturally to a formula for producing novel hypotheses about the social capacities of great apes and other sophisticated non-human agents. 4. Internal Reasons and the Boy Who Cried Wolf Ethics 130, 1: 32-58 (2019) [final] This is my attempt to explain why you shouldn't be a reasons internalist (or a subjectivist about normative reasons, for that matter). In brief: seemingly powerful sources of appeal for that view evaporate once you get clear about the distinction between objective and subjective reasons. You can find a critical precis and discussion of this paper on the Pea Soup blog. 3. On Not Getting Out of Bed Philosophical Studies 176, 6: 1639-1666 (2019) [final; draft] [Published online in March 2018] How does intention lead to action? I have no idea. This paper tries to capture my confusion about that question by describing a new puzzle about intentions. Please let me know if you think of a solution! 2. The Reasoning View and Defeasible Practical Reasoning Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95, 3: 614-636 (2017) [final; draft] This paper presents my favorite version of the Reasoning View about normative reasons, responds to an objection, and argues that the norms of practical reasoning are defeasible or non-monotonic (just like the norms of theoretical reasoning). 1. Rational Internalism Ethics 127, 1: 147-178 (2016) [final] This is my attempt to explain why you shouldn't accept an objectivist ("value based") theory of normative reasons. In brief: you should accept the Reasoning View instead, as the Reasoning View is compatible with the standard motivations for objectivism while being far more plausible from an action-theoretic perspective. Book Reviews2. Review of Tim Henning, From a Rational Point of View
Ethics 130, 1: 113-118 (2019) [final] 1. Review of David Sobel, From Valuing to Value The Philosophical Review 128, 2 (246-249) (2019) [final; draft] Work in ProgressIf you're looking for a visiting speaker or referee, this should give you a sense of what I'm working on. In some cases drafts are available upon request.
What's at bat Another paper on not getting out of bed. A paper about why intentions don't come in degrees. A revision of the SEP article on internal and external reasons. What's on deck A book-length defence of the causal theory of action. An essay on Jeremy Bentham's philosophy of action. A catalogue of my minor vices. |
Fig. 2: The book is here!
Fig. 3: With Maiana
Fig. 4: A "universally quantified" bagel
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keywords: samuel asarnow, sam asarnow, asarnow