varieties of practical reasoning sep 2001

[...]... Mellon Foundation VARIETIES OF PRACTICAL REASONING Chapter 1 Practical Reasoning: The Current State of Play Elijah Millgram Practical reasoning is reasoning directed towards action: figuring out what to do, as contrasted with figuring out how the facts stand The study of practical reasoning has been a rapidly changing area, in which the fortification and defense of a very small number of entrenched positions... touched upon in reviewing the various theories of practical inference: how should one go about determining what the legitimate forms of practical reasoning are, in the first place? NIHILISM Nihilism about practical reasoning is the view that there are no legitimate forms of practical inference, and that consequently there is no such thing as practical reasoning: appearances notwithstanding, there is... instrumentalism, theories of practical reasoning and mental ontologies are very tightly linked If, as I have been suggesting, the direction of explanation is from the former to the latter, the theory of practical reasoning is important not just for ethics but for philosophy of mind as well; arriving at a view as to how practical reasoning is to be done will tell you what kinds of items the mind contains... question of what patterns of practical inference are legitimate Brandom’s view is the maximally permissive position on our spectrum: for all we know, there 19 The Current State of Play could be indefinitely many quite di¤erent kinds of legitimate practical inference THE QUESTION OF METHOD In the course of reviewing the most important positions on the spectrum of substantive views about practical reasoning, ... direction as well: that, surprisingly, not all theories of practical reasoning permit genuinely intentional action, and so, freedom of the will.2 The current debate in practical reasoning focuses on the question of what inference patterns are legitimate methods of arriving at decisions or intentions to act, or other characteristically practical predecessors of actions such as evaluations, plans, policies,... legitimate forms of practical reasoning then means-end reasoning must be one of them; Vogler argues elsewhere that means-end rationality is not optional, because it is built into the structure of actions; and Korsgaard argues that instrumental rationality is part and parcel of being an agent at all.15 Since instrumental reasoning proceeds from desires you have, your stake in the results of such reasoning. .. development of comparative notions of coherence that are precise enough to give clear answers to questions of the form ‘ Of these competing plans, which is the most coherent?’’ Without notions of coherence that are usable in this way, appeals to coherence are empty, and the merits of coherence-driven accounts of practical reasoning cannot be assessed Paul Thagard’s essay describes one way of modeling... the dark Acquiring the right descriptions—the right way of seeing matters—must be done ahead of time, probably long before you can anticipate the choices and decisions in which you will need to deploy those descriptions Part of practical reasoning is building up a conceptual toolkit, or a kind of practical or moral expertise A stretch of practical reasoning may end in adding a concept to your repertoire,... theories of practical reasoning This suggests determining which tradition (if any) has gotten it right about the central moral questions (e.g., how one should treat one’s fellow human beings) by figuring out which has the right account of practical reasoning More generally, since a moral theory is (very roughly) a theory about what one should do, and a theory of practical reasoning is a theory of how... amend.’’11 In the case at hand, if most of the practical inferences we regard as legitimate fall under the heading of means-end inference, a handful of exceptions can be ruled out as irrational on the basis of the account We will see a further instance of this form of argument below There are other ways into instrumentalism as well One of these, internalism, has taken on a life of its own, and I will discuss . h0" alt="" VARIETIES OF PRACTICAL REASONING VARIETIES OF PRACTICAL REASONING edited by Elijah Millgram A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England ( 2001 Massachusetts. which has the right account of practical reasoning. More generally, since a moral theory is (very roughly) a theory about what one should do, and a theory of practical reasoning is a theory of how. subspecialty over the course of a decade or so. The aim of this anthology is to provide an overview of the state of the field as it has shaped up over the 1980s and 1990s,1 and the aim of this essay