As Broome reports in the Preface, he began the thinking that culminated in his 2013 book in 1997-98. The first paper he mentions is:
John Broome, "Reasons and motivation," Arist Society Supplement 71 (1997), 131-46
Abstract: Derek Parfit takes an externalist and cognitivist view about normative reasons. I shall explore this view and add some arguments that support it. But I shall also raise a doubt about it at the end.
Three early wide-scoping papers were:
John Broome, "Normative requirements," Ratio 12 (1999), 398-419; reprinted in Jonathan Dancy, ed., Normativity (Blackwell, 2000), 78–99
Abstract: Normative requirements are often overlooked, but they are central features of the normative world. Rationality is often thought to consist in acting for reasons, but following normative requirements is also a major part of rationality. In particular, correct reasoning – both theoretical and practical – is governed by normative requirements rather than by reasons. This article explains the nature of normative requirements, and gives examples of their importance. It also describes mistakes that philosophers have made as a result of confusing normative requirements with reasons.
John Broome, "Normative practical reasoning," Arist Society Supplement 75 (2001), 175-93
(Part of an exchange with Christian Piller)
Abstract: Practical reasoning is a process of reasoning that concludes in an intention. One example is reasoning from intending an end to intending what you believe is a necessary means: 'I will leave the next buoy to port; in order to do that I must tack; so I'll tack', where the first and third sentences express intentions and the second sentence a belief. This sort of practical reasoning is supported by a valid logical derivation, and therefore seems uncontrovertible. A more contentious example is normative practical reasoning of the form 'I ought to φ, so I'll φ', where 'I ought to φ' expresses a normative belief and 'I'll φ' an intention. This has at least some characteristics of reasoning, but there are also grounds for doubting that it is genuine reasoning. One objection is that it seems inappropriate to derive an intention to φ from a belief that you ought to φ, rather than a belief that you ought to intend to φ. Another is that you may not be able to go through this putative process of reasoning, and this inability might disqualify it from being reasoning. A third objection is that it violates the Humean doctrine that reason alone cannot motivate any action of the will. This paper investigates these objections.
John Broome, "Are intentions reasons? and how should we cope with incommensurable values?" in Christopher Morris and Arthur Ripstein, eds., Practical Rationality and Preference: Essays for David Gauthier (Cambridge, 2001), 98-120
This became Section 10.2 of the book.
John Broome, "Practical reasoning," in José Bermùdez and Alan Millar, eds., Reason and Nature: Essays in the Theory of Rationality (Oxford, 2002), 85–111
Around this same time, Dancy published his book Practical Reality (Oxford, 2000/2002), which embraces a wide-scoping line similar to the one Broome was developing. There are also differences between their views, and neither of these are the first places where the wide-scoping line is proposed. (Some earlier examples are Dancy and Greenspan.) But at that time, this kind of account was associated with Broome and Dancy.
In 2003, Broome gave three lectures at Brown. The manuscripts used to be available online, and presented a more developed and systematic version of his view. These eventually grew into the 2013 book.
Niko Kolodny, "Why be rational?" Mind 114 (2005), 509–63
Abstract: Normativity involves two kinds of relation. On the one hand, there is the relation of being a reason for. This is a relation between a fact and an attitude. On the other hand, there are relations specified by requirements of rationality. These are relations among a person's attitudes, viewed in abstraction from the reasons for them. I ask how the normativity of rationality—the sense in which we 'ought' to comply with requirements of rationality—is related to the normativity of reasons—the sense in which we 'ought' to have the attitudes what we have conclusive reason to have. The normativity of rationality is not straightforwardly that of reasons, I argue; there are no reasons to comply with rational requirements in general. First, this would lead to 'bootstrapping', because, contrary to the claims of John Broome, not all rational requirements have 'wide scope'. Second, it is unclear what such reasons to be rational might be. Finally, we typically do not, and in many cases could not, treat rational requirements as reasons. Instead, I suggest, rationality is only apparently normative, and the normativity that it appears to have is that of reasons. According to this 'Transparency Account', rational requirements govern our responses to our beliefs about reasons. The normative 'pressure' that we feel, when rational requirements apply to us, derives from these beliefs: from the reasons that, as it seems to us, we have.
John Broome, "Wide or narrow scope?" Mind 116 (2007), 359-370
Abstract: This paper is a response to 'Why Be Rational?' by Niko Kolodny. Kolodny argues that we have no reason to satisfy the requirements of rationality. His argument assumes that these requirements have a logically narrow scope. To see what the question of scope turns on, this comment provides a semantics for 'requirement'. It shows that requirements of rationality have a wide scope, at least under one sense of 'requirement'. Consequently Kolodny's conclusion cannot be derived.
Niko Kolodny, "State or process requirements?" Mind 116 (2007), 371-85
Abstract: In his "Wide or Narrow Scope?", John Broome questions my contention in "Why Be Rational?" that certain rational requirements are narrow scope. The source of our disagreement, I suspect, is that Broome believes that the relevant rational requirements govern states, whereas I believe that they govern processes. If they govern states, then the debate over scope is sterile. The difference between narrow- and wide-scope state requirements is only as important as the difference between not violating a requirement and satisfying one. Broome's observations about conflicting narrow-scope state requirements only corroborate this. Why, then, have we thought that there was an important difference? Perhaps, I conjecture, because there is an important difference between narrow- and wide-scope process requirements, and we have implicitly taken process requirements as our topic. I clarify and try to defend my argument that some process requirements are narrow scope, so that if there were reasons to conform to rational requirements, there would be implausible bootstrapping. I then reformulate Broome's observations about conflicting narrow-scope state requirements as an argument against narrow-scope process requirements, and suggest a reply.
Niko Kolodny, "How does coherence matter?" PAS 107 (2007), 229-63
Abstract: Recently, much attention has been paid to 'rational requirements' and, especially, to what I call 'rational requirements of formal coherence as such'. These requirements are satisfied just when our attitudes are formally coherent: for example, when our beliefs do not contradict each other. Nevertheless, these requirements are puzzling. In particular, it is unclear why we should satisfy them. In light of this, I explore the conjecture that there are no requirements of formal coherence. I do so by trying to construct a theory of error for the idea that there are such requirements.
Niko Kolodny, "Why be disposed to be coherent?" Ethics 118 (2008), 437–63
Abstract: It has been suggested that requirements to make our attitudes formally coherent are somehow justified by the value of dispositions to make our attitudes formally coherent. These dispositions are valuable, it is said, because they are means to having the attitudes that reason requires, or because they are necessary for having those attitudes. This claim, I argue, is untenable. These dispositions are not means, or they are only inferior means, to having the attitudes that reason requires. And they are not necessary for having attitudes.
Niko Kolodny, "The myth of practical consistency," European J of Philosophy 16 (2008), 366–402
Abstract: It is often said that there is a special class of norms, 'rational requirements', that demand that our attitudes be related one another in certain ways, whatever else may be the case.1 In recent work, a special class of these rational requirements has attracted particular attention: what I will call 'requirements of formal coherence as such', which require just that our attitudes be formally coherent. For example, we are rationally required, if we believe something, to believe what it entails. And we are rationally required, if we intend an end, to intend what we take to be necessary means to it. The intuitive idea is that formally incoherent attitudes give rise to a certain normative tension, or exert a kind of rational pressure on each another, and this tension, or pressure, is relieved just when one of the attitudes is revised. As John Broome observes, these requirements are, by their nature, 'wide scope', which is to say that there is no particular attitude that one must have or lack in order to satisfy them. This is because they require just formal coherence, and there is no particular attitude that one must have or lack in order to be formally coherent.
Niko Kolodny, "Reply to Bridges" Mind 118 (2009), 369-376
Abstract: Bridges (2009) argues that the "Transparency Account" (TA) of my "Why Be Rational?" has a hidden flaw. The TA does not, after all, account for the fact that (1) in our ordinary, engaged thought and talk about rationality, we believe that, when it would be irrational of one of us to refuse to A, he has, because of this, conclusive reason to A. My reply is that this was the point. For reasons given in "Why Be Rational?" (1) is false. The aim of the TA is to offer an interpretation of our engaged thought and talk that is compatible with the falsity of (1) and that helps to explain why, when reflecting on our thought and talk, we are so prone to misrepresent what it involves. After making these points, I consider alternative senses in which rationality might be, or be taken by us to be, "normative" and conclude that these alternatives have little bearing on the TA.
Niko Kolodny, "Aims as reasons," in Samuel Freeman, Rahul Kumar, and R. Jay Wallace, eds., Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T.M. Scanlon (Oxford, 2011), 43–78
Abstract: Along with many other contemporary philosophers, T.M. Scanlon argues that our present attitudes (such as beliefs, desires, or intentions) do not give us reasons. At the core of this position, I suggest, is the denial that attitudes can provide reasons in some way different from the way in which things of value characteristically provide reasons. I then try to answer a challenge to this position, which Scanlon himself raises: that sometimes (especially when one's reasons underdetermine a choice among aims) having an aim seems to affect one's reasons without affecting one's value-provided reasons. If "having an aim" is understood as having an intention, I suggest, then having an aim usually will affect one's value-provided reasons. In large part, this is because of what Scanlon calls the "predictive significance" of intention: the fact that forming an intention changes what the future is likely to bring. If "having an aim" is understood instead as an aim's "mattering" or "being important" to one, then having an aim can also affect one's value-provided reasons, but in a different way: by constituting a special kind of value.
Niko Kolodny and John Brunero, "Instrumental rationality," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2013)
Niko Kolodny, "Instrumental reasons," in Daniel Star, The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity (Oxford, forthcoming)
Abstract: Often our reason for doing something is an "instrumental reason": that doing that is a means to doing something else that we have reason to do. What principles govern this "instrumental transmission" of reasons from ends to means? Negatively, I argue against principles often invoked in the literature, which focus on necessary or sufficient means. Positively, I propose a principle, "General Transmission," which answers to two intuitive desiderata: that reason transmits to means that are "probabilizing" and "nonsuperfluous" with respect to the relevant end. I then apply General Transmission to the debate over "detachment": whether "wide-scope" reason for a material conditional or disjunction implies "narrow-scope" reason for the consequent or disjuncts.
John Broome, "Reasons," in R. Jay Wallace, Michael Smith, Samuel Scheffler, and Philip Pettit, Reasons and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz (Clarendon, 2004), 28-55
This became Chapter 4 of the book.
John Broome, "Does rationality give us reasons," Phil Issues 15 (2005), 321–337
John Broome, "Have we reason to do as rationality requires? - a comment on Raz," J of Ethics and Social Philosophy Symposium 1 (2005), 1-8
John Broome, "Is rationality normative?" Disputatio 2 (2007), 161-178
John Broome, "Does rationality consist in responding correctly to reasons?" J Moral Philosophy 4 (2007), 349-74
Abstract: Some philosophers think that rationality consists in responding correctly to reasons, or alternatively in responding correctly to beliefs about reasons. This paper considers various possible interpretations of 'responding correctly to reasons' and of 'responding correctly to beliefs about reasons', and concludes that rationality consists in neither, under any interpretation. It recognizes that, under some interpretations, rationality does entail responding correctly to beliefs about reasons. That is: necessarily, if you are rational you respond correctly to your beliefs about reasons.
John Broome, "Reasoning with preferences?" in Serena Olsaretti, ed., Preferences and Well-Being, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 59 (Cambridge, 2006), 183–208
John Broome, "The unity of reasoning?" in Simon Robertson, ed., Spheres of Reason (Oxford, 2009), 62–92
The account of the relation between practical and theoretical reasoning in this paper was superceded by "Practical reasoning and inference."
John Broome, "Practical reasoning and inference," in David Bakhurst, Brad Hooker and Margaret Little, eds., Thinking About Reasons: Themes from the Philosophy of Jonathan Dancy (Oxford, 2013), 286–309
The account of the relation between practical and theoretical reasoning in this paper became §15.4 of the book.
John Broome, "Requirements," in Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, Björn Petersson, Jonas Josefsson and Dan Egonsson, eds., Homage à Wlodek: Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Wlodek Rabinowicz (2007)
This became Chapter 7 of the book.
Abstract: The object of this paper is to explore the intersection of two issues – both of them of considerable interest in their own right. The first concerns the role that feasibility considerations play in constraining normative claims – claims, say, about what we (individually and collectively) ought to do and to be. This issue has particular relevance for the confrontation of moral philosophy with economics (and social science more generally). The second issue concerns whether normative claims are to be understood as applying only to actions in their own right or (also) non-derivatively to attitudes. Both these issues are ones on which different theorists have taken quite different stands, though we think there is more to be said about them. The point of juxtaposing them lies in the thought that actions and attitudes may be subject to different feasibility constraints – and hence that how we conceive of the role of feasibility in an account of normativity will depend in part on how we conceive of the role of actions and attitudes in normative theorising.
Symposium on John Broome on Reasons and Rationality in Ethics 119 (2008): with papers by Nicholas Southwood, Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star, and Garrett Cullity, and Broome's "Reply to Southwood, Kearns and Star, and Cullity," at pp. 96-108
John Broome, "Motivation," Theoria 75 (2009), 79-99
Abstract: I develop a scheme for the explanation of rational action. I start from a scheme that may be attributed to Thomas Nagel in The Possibility of Altruism , and develop it step by step to arrive at a sharper and more accurate scheme. The development includes a progressive refinement of the notion of motivation. I end by explaining the role of reasoning within the scheme.
John Broome, "Comments on Boghossian," Phil Studies 169 (2012), 19-25
John Broome, "Williams on ought," in Ulrike Heuer and Gerald Lang, eds., Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams (Oxford, 2012), 247–65
John Broome, Rationality Through Reasoning (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)
Abstract: Rationality Through Reasoning answers the question of how people are motivated to do what they believe they ought to do, built on a comprehensive account of normativity, rationality and reasoning that differs significantly from much existing philosophical thinking. Develops an original account of normativity, rationality and reasoning significantly different from the majority of existing philosophical thought Includes an account of theoretical and practical reasoning that explains how reasoning is something we ourselves do, rather than something that happens in us Gives an account of what reasons are and argues that the connection between rationality and reasons is much less close than many philosophers have thought Contains rigorous new accounts of oughts including owned oughts, agent-relative reasons, the logic of requirements, instrumental rationality, the role of normativity in reasoning, following a rule, the correctness of reasoning, the connections between intentions and beliefs, and much else. Offers a new answer to the 'motivation question' of how a normative belief motivates an action.
John Broome, "Normativity in reasoning," Pacific Phil Quarterly 95 (2014), 622-33
Abstract: Reasoning is a process through which premise-attitudes give rise to a conclusion-attitude. When you reason actively you operate on the propositions that are the contents of your premise-attitudes, following a rule, to derive a new proposition that is the content of your conclusion-attitude. It may seem that, when you follow a rule, you must, at least implicitly, have the normative belief that you ought to comply with the rule, which guides you to comply. But I argue that to follow a rule is to manifest a particular sort of disposition, which can be interpreted as an intention. An intention is itself a guiding disposition. It can guide you to comply with a rule, and no normative belief is required.
Symposium on the book in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (2015), containing Broome's "Précis of Rationality Through Reasoning,", at pp. 200-203; papers by Kieran Setiya, Nadeem J. Z. Hussain, and John Horty; and Broome's "Responses to Setiya, Hussain, and Horty,", at pp. 230–242
John Broome, "Reason versus ought," Phil Issues 25 (2015), 80-97