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Michael E. Bratman
Durfee Professor in the School of Humanities & Sciences and Professor of Philosophy

Office: 102B
Mailing:
Department of Philosophy, Building 90
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
Phone: EXT.3-2980
Email: bratman@csli.stanford.edu

Personal Portrait

Education History
B.A. Haverford College, 1967
Ph.D. Rockefeller University, 1974
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of action and moral psychology -- where this includes issues about the nature of agency, intention and practical reason, free will and moral responsibility, and shared agency.
Selected Bibliography
Books:
  • Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987). Paperback edition: 1990. Re-issued 1999 by CSLI Publications.
  • Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
  • Structures of Agency: Essays (Oxford University Press, 2007) A collection of essays, most of which will have been previously published.
  • Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings. Edited by John Perry and Michael Bratman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), second edition 1992, third edition, 1998, fourth edition [edited by John Perry, Michael Bratman, and John Fischer], 2006.
Recent Articles:
  • "Reflection, Planning, and Temporally Extended Agency" The Philosophical Review (2000): 35-61.
  • "Valuing and the Will" Philosophical Perspectives: Action and Freedom, volume 14 (2000): 249-265.
  • "Hierarchy, Circularity, and Double Reduction," in S. Buss and L. Overton, eds., Contours of Agency: Essays on the Philosophy of Harry Frankfurt (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002): 65-85.
  • "Nozick on Free Will," in David Schmidtz, ed., Robert Nozick (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 155-174.
  • "Two Problems About Human Agency," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (2000-2001) 309-326.
  • "Shapiro on Legal Positivism and Jointly Intentional Activity," Legal Theory 8 (2002): 511-517
  • "Autonomy and Hierarchy," Social Philosophy & Policy 20 (2003): 156-176. Also in E. Paul, F. Miller, and J. Paul, eds., Autonomy (Cambridge University Press, 2003): 156-176.
  • "Shared Valuing and Frameworks for Practical Reasoning," in R. Jay Wallace, Philip Pettit, Samuel Scheffler, and Michael Smith eds., Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz (Oxford University Press, 2004): 1-27.
  • "A Desire of One's Own," Journal of Philosophy 100 (2003): 221-242. Also to appear in Philosopher's Annual 26.
  • "Three Forms of Agential Commitment: Reply to Cullity and Gerrans," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 104 (2004): 327-335.
  • "Planning Agency, Autonomous Agency," in James Stacey Taylor, ed., Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and Its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2004): 33-57. Also to appear in John Fischer, ed. Free Will: Critical Concepts in Philosophy (Routledge, forthcoming).
  • "Personal Rules and Rational Willpower," University of San Diego Law Review 42: 1 (2005): 61-68.
  • "A Thoughtful and Reasonable Stability," Comments on Harry Frankfurt's 2004 Tanner Lectures. In Harry G. Frankfurt, Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting it Right edited by Debra Satz (Stanford University Press, 2006): 77-90.
  • "What is the Accordion Effect?" The Journal of Ethics 10: 1-2 (2006): 5-19 (special issue on Joel Feinberg's work on ethics and the philosophy of law).
  • "Temptation Revisited," in my Structures of Agency: Essays (2006): 257-282. This essay was originally for the 2002 Amsterdam Workshop on Intention and Rationality. It is also forthcoming in a collection of essays associated with that workshop: Bruno Verbeek, ed., Reasons and Intentions (Aldershot, etc.: Ashgate.).
  • "Three Theories of Self-Governance" in John Fischer, ed., Philosophical Topics 32: 1 and 2 (2004): 21-46.
  • "Dynamics of Sociality," Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Shared Intentions and Collective Responsibility XXX (2006): 1-15.
  • "Intention, Belief, Practical, Theoretical" in Jens Timmerman, John Skorupski, and Simon Robertson, eds., Spheres of Reason (forthcoming).
  • "Anchors for Deliberation," forthcoming in Intentionality, Deliberation and Autonomy, ed. Christoph Lumer and Sandro Nannini (Aldershot, etc.: Ashgate)
  • "Intention, Belief and Instrumental Rationality," forthcoming in David Sobel and Steven Wall, eds., Reasons for Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
  • "Normative Thinking and Planning, Individual and Shared: Reflections on Allan Gibbard's Tanner Lectures" forthcoming, with Gibbard's 2006 Tanner Lectures and other commentaries on those lectures.
  • "Reflections on the Philosophy of Action," for Jesus Aguilar and Andrei A. Buckareff, eds. Philosophy of Action: 5 Questions (Automatic Press/VIP, forthcoming)
Recent Reviews and Critical Studies:
  • "Fischer and Ravizza on Moral Responsibility and History," Critical study of John Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility, for symposium on this book in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2000): 453-458.
  • Review of Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning, by Simon Blackburn, The Philosophical Review 109 (2000): 584-587.
  • "Thinking How to Live and the Restriction Problem," critical study of Allan Gibbard, Thinking How to Live for symposium on this book in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (2006): 708-714.
Papers in Progress:

Recent Courses
  • Practical Reasoning
  • Mind, Matter and Meaning
  • Philosophy of Action
  • Free Will and Responsibility
  • Moral Psychology
  • Cooperation
  • Intention
  • Mind, Action, and Rationality
  • Philosophy of Law
  • Agency and Personal Identity

Links and Online Papers


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