Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationIt is often assumed that rational agents are unified agents. As a normative feature of agency, the idea that fully rational creatures are, in a certain sense, unified, suggests that understanding ourselves as rational creatures requires understanding our reasons for acting as reasons that can be represented with a single account of agency. In this dissertation, I argue against such a view by showing that features of our own agency preclude constructing such a representation. To be the type of creatures we are, we have to act in ways that cannot be represented with a single, unified theory of rational agency. Instead, making sense of ourselves as rational creatures requires a number of different models that cannot be nicely fitted together. The upshot is that a unified account of rational agency may not be possible