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Show Anonymous Praise for Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 507 adhere to and ultimately fail by adopting the Humean model. Her criticisms, however, are informed and well argued, and disagreements can be aired where they should be, in the arena of scholarly debate. … The manuscript is of a prodigious length, even more so given that this is only the first volume. On the whole, however, I found very few places where the author did not use the space efficiently and economically. The majority of the chapters represent a deep engagement with the works under discussion, and the critical appraisal of each does require that the author present and assess them in a detailed and extended fashion. This is an extraordinary typescript, and well worth CUP's support. What Piper has done is to offer a critique of a significant portion of 20th century work in meta-ethics. It is crosscutting in the sense that the vantage point from which she conducts her study-rationality and the structure of the self-offers the reader an original and distinctive way to compare and critique major 20th Century work in this area. The territory covered is amazing. It includes the work of Brandt, Kim, Goldman, David Lewis, Anscombe, Nagel, Frankfurt, Watson, Williams, Slote, Gewirth, Anderson, Rawls, Gibbard, and Hume, as well as a very extensive discussion of major versions of Utility Maximization theory. Moreover, while she discusses each of these in terms of the respect in which they each are indebted to what she characterizes as the "Humean" conception of rationality and the structure of the self, there is, in the case of many of the persons mentioned above, original and often insightful discussion of other aspects of their work. … I would suggest that not only should you publish Vol. 1, but make a commitment to also publish Vol. 2. Indeed, given the nature of the project, it makes no sense to just publish volume 1. I realize that this would be a major commitment for CUP, but I really do think it is merited. I found the analysis she offers of the various major figures that she discusses to be very clear and insightful. In many cases I came away with a very much deeper sense of what was really at issue in a given theorist's work. This was especially true of the Chapters on Nagel and Rawls. The analysis is not only clear and insightful, but proceeds at a level of detail that is extraordinary-with many, many cross-references to other parts of the typescript (as well as the second volume). This is obviously one of the reasons why it is so long: she has a huge amount of ground to cover. There is one Chapter in which I thought she did an especially fine analysis. This is Chapter IX on Rawls's instrumentalism. It is obvious enough that the behind the veil of ignorance argument presupposes an instrumental view of rationality, while the reflective equilibrium argument does not. Piper © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
