Chrisoula Andreou, "Choosing Well: The Good, the Bad, and the Trivial" (Oxford UP, 2023)
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What is the central problem that Choosing Well addresses about rational agency?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello, and thanks for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talis. I am professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the program with Carrie Figder, Malcolm Keating, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Chrisula Andreyu. Chrisula is professor of philosophy at the University of Utah. Her research focuses in moral philosophy, with emphasis on issues in practical reasoning, rationality, and the theory of action. She's written a fantastic new book, which has just been published with Oxford University Press. It's titled Choosing Well: The Good, the Bad, and the Trivial. Now, it's common to think that rational agency involves acting in ways that, given one's options, maximize the satisfaction of one's preferences.
Or further one's aims. This intuitive understanding has generated a wide ranging literature about the ways in which individuals routinely fail to be rational. in the proposed sense. They make choices that not only don't maximize their preferences, but maximize the satisfaction of their preferences, but also tend to undermine or defeat their aims. So maybe we're not rational animals after all. In choosing well, Crusula argues and explores certain cases of purported irrationality that involve disorderly preferences. But need not involve irrationality on the part of agents. She argues that there are cases where, although our preferences might be disorderly, we nonetheless can preserve our rationality by taking care to attend to the patterns of choice we instantiate.
Along the way, Crisula proposes an intriguing idea about how we assess our choices. She also gives us a theory about how we understand temptation and when it's rational to regret choices that we've made. Now as usual, there's a lot to talk about, but as usual, again, we'll also begin with our guest. Hello Crisula, how are you?
Hi, Bob. Good. So it's really nice.
It's really nice to talk to you and thank you for writing such a wonderful book.
Thank you for the invitation.
So um we usually start, as I mentioned, with a little bit about the the author. Um and this episode will be no different. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Um sure. Uh I was born in Montreal, Canada. I'm now a professor at the University of Utah, where I've been based ever since I got my PhD uh from the University of Pittsburgh. And um I'm also an executive editor of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy and an associated researcher of CRE, which is an ethics center based at the uh University de Montreal. Um In terms of how I got into philosophy. Um I've been drawn to philosop to philosophical for inquiry for really as long as I can remember, um, even before knowing uh philosophy was a thing, which I didn't uh realize until after high school. Um My first official encounter with philosophy was uh an ancient philosophy course that I took as part of a liberal arts program in uh Dawson College in Quebec.
And um I was immediately hooked, uh, but it did take a few years for me to really entertain the possibility of pursuing a PhD in philosophy. Uh my parents uh grew up in farming villages in Greece and given very little in the way of educational opportunities, they were absolutely uh pro education for their children. uh but pursuing a d uh a degree to become that kind of doctor, uh a doctor of philosophy didn't um seem like a real uh possibility to me. Despite their Greek background, they didn't really love the idea of you becoming a philosophy. It seems like totally Yeah. They they uh they certainly weren't against it. They were just it was it was that the uh uh you know, the the the job aspect didn't line up as neatly with uh you know, but they were they were absolutely supportive.
Again, they it wasn't it it wasn't exactly uh what any of us had in mind, but they were absolutely supportive. They were like I said, very gung ho. А форма оpportunities in Canada. Uh and and lucky for me, uh, my some there were some mentors that helped me to see that I you know, that that this was a well uh you know, at least possibly a viable uh uh option.
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