Abstract
I argue that while practical reasoning is essentially first personal it does not require having essentially first personal thoughts. I start with an example of good practical reasoning. Because there is debate about what practical reasoning is, I discuss how different sides in those debates can accommodate my example. I then consider whether my example involves essentially first personal thoughts. It is not always clear what philosophers who would claim that it must have in mind. I identify two features of essentially personal thoughts that they share with their impersonal counterparts: they have the same truth conditions and can have the same evidential bases. I next argue that my example of good practical reasoning does not involve any thoughts other than the impersonal ones of the kind I identified. I defend this conclusion against several objections. One pair of objections starts from claims to the effect that there can be no difference in two people’s actions, or in the reasons they have, without a difference in their beliefs or desires. I argue that these claims are false. I then consider an alleged skeptical possibility that often motivates the idea that practical reasoning requires special first personal beliefs. I conclude the paper by suggesting that what Anscombe (Anscombe 1957) called an ‘overly contemplative’ conception of knowledge and belief encourages this skeptical possibility. If we think of having a belief as like having a map of the world, then we will easily think that we need self-locating beliefs the way we need ‘I am here’ stickers on maps. The best response, I suggest, is to reject the image that beliefs are like maps.
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Notes
I adopt this phrasing from Thomson (2008).
Apologies to (Anscombe 1957, p. 58).
Anscombe makes the same point (1957, 58).
Though Williams employs an italicized “I” in making the point that practical reasoning is radically first-personal, I am not sure he means anything more than that (i) practical reasoning requires thinking about oneself and (ii) people rightly care intimately and deeply about their own actions.
See, for instance, the recent special issue dedicated to this topic: Philosophical Explorations, 17(3), 2014.
I don’t think the action has to be completed for the reasoning to count as practical. Jones might change his mind mid-act, or he might be prevented from giving Smith the money, or Smith might refuse, or…. But if you think the action must be completed, then make the appropriate change to my example.
Wallace (2014) says that practical reasoning aims to answer a ‘normative’ question, which he characterizes in different ways: as about what one ought to do, about what it would be best to do, and also as about what would be desirable to do. (p. 2) Answering each of these questions would yield a different concluding belief. What I say in the main text will apply, I think, equally to all of them. Owens (2011) says that practical deliberation concerns one’s reasons for action, which suggests that it requires having beliefs to the effect that something is a reason for some action, or that rationality requires that one do what one has most reason to do. I discuss this below. On some accounts of practical reasoning, such normative beliefs are premises and not just conclusions. I deny this too, and for a critique of it, see Broome (2013). But again, none of this matters for my present purposes.
Davidson (1980) suggested that we might, at least in certain kinds of cases, identify an agent’s intentional action with their having a certain kind of judgment about the action. I have discussed Davidson’s view in (Hunter 2015). I accept that intentional action requires practical knowledge, and so requires that the agent have a certain kind of belief about what she is doing, and have offered an account of such beliefs in my (2009). But I don’t consider this practical knowledge to be part of the reasoning, any more than the action is. I discuss this in the main text below.
For a recent defense of the view that an action is the conclusion of practical reasoning, see Tenenbaum (2007).
My example also does not include Jones having or starting to have any attitudes about his beliefs, desires or intentions. This too is controversial. Von Wright (1978) claims that in practical reasoning the reasoner has (or starts to have) a belief about his own intentions. In my example, the reasoning is what Broome (2013, p. 221) calls ‘first order’. I don’t deny that practical reasoning can involve a person reasoning about their own attitudes. But I deny that it requires this. I don’t think this will matter for my purposes here.
Maybe some qualification is needed here, since people sometimes do things without wanting to do them. Maybe Jones would have done it just for fun. I will set this aside, though.
I mean that the contents of the reasoning would be the same. For discussion of the idea that another person can do the same reasoning as is done by someone who does some practical reasoning, see Stroud (2011).
To be good, the reasoning that leads Taylor to this plan would have to include additional elements, including perhaps his starting to believe that he could prevent the money transfer by creating a distraction. My example is like the one Anscombe considers, where two people reason about how one of them can fill the holding tank by pumping water through a hose. The reasoning leads one of them to start working the pump and the other to start stepping on the hose (1953, p. 55).
This is also a reason not to consider the action to be part of the reasoning itself.
This is a terminological recommendation. Stroud (2011) suggests that we call what Jones did ‘practical deliberation’ and what Taylor and Smith did ‘practical reasoning’. He and I agree that all three did the very same reasoning with the difference being that Jones was the only one thinking about what to do.
Reasoning together about joint action is a topic for another paper.
Again, Jones might have done that very same reasoning without a desire to repay Smith. That reasoning might then have led him, together with a bit more reasoning, to hide the fact that he has the money in his pocket.
What follows relies on the discussion in Thomson (1962).
In claiming that his desire explains his action, I don’t mean that the desire caused him to give Smith the money, or that its presence made it inevitable that he would after doing that reasoning. On my view, nothing caused Jones to give Smith the money and it was not inevitable that he would do it. His desire explains his doing it in that it is intelligible or reasonable that he would do it after that bit of reasoning given his desires.
I am indebted to a reviewer for pressing me on this.
If you think that my example involves practical reasoning only if it includes Jones’ starting to believe that he ought to (or that he is permitted to, or that he has reason or good reason to) give Smith the money, then my question here is whether that belief must be true for the reasoning to be good.
Here too I am following Anscombe (1957), who consider a Nazi whose practical reasoning is, on her view, good even though it leads him to an abhorrent act (pp. 72–5). She picks a Nazi precisely to make this point. The Nazi made a horrible mistake; but not one in reasoning.
It is a different matter, I think, whether good theoretical reasoning always leads a person to believe something that he ought to believe. On my view, which I defend in (Hunter, 2017), even if a person comes to believe some truth after perfectly sound theoretical reasoning it does not follow that he ought to believe it. It might be something he ought to believe or is permitted to believe. But it may instead be something he is positively forbidden to believe. I won’t pursue this here.
As with practical reasoning (see note 8), for this to count as theoretical reasoning these elements must be properly related. At the very least, Jones’ believing R1* and then remembering R2* must explain his starting to believe R3*.
I have not said anything about reasons for action (or for belief). The fact that giving Smith the money in his pocket is a way to repay the loan strikes me as a reason for Jones to give Smith the money. Done for that reason, the action is intelligible. But, on my view, it may still be that Jones ought not to give Smith the money (perhaps he ought to buy the medicine, instead). One who wants a tighter fit between reasons and what a person ought to do might prefer to say (following Thomson (1962)) that the fact that giving Smith the money in his pocket is a way to repay the loan is a ground for Jones to give Smith the money, but not yet a reason for him to do it. I suspect this is largely a terminological matter, and I won’t try to sort it out here.
It is controversial whether beliefs have their truth conditions essentially. Chalmers (2003) hold that beliefs are individuated by a function from possible worlds to truth conditions. The very same belief, on this view, determines different possible worlds in different worlds. Since this won’t be relevant for my purposes, I will set it aside.
The idea of such so-called ‘practical knowledge’ goes back, in recent times, to Anscombe (1957). She also discusses it in her (1981). In that work, she tries to imagine a race of people whose language does not include a first person pronoun. Instead, they each refer to themselves using a proper name, the same for everyone, that each person uses only to refer to himself. But she explicitly says that the self-reports of these beings are to be imagined as always based on observation and so as lacking the ‘self-consciousness’ characteristic of intentional agency. I take her point to be that it is this self-consciousness that matters to understanding the significance of the first person, not the semantics of “I” or the contents of the beliefs expressed using it.
As Cappelen and Dever (2013) emphasize, it is not easy to find explicit arguments for the claim that agency requires essentially first person attitudes. So it is possible that in what follows I will miss what motivates those who claim it does. Perhaps what I say will prompt them to make their arguments clearer.
Another reason to think it is false is that a person’s attitudes may be compatible with the intelligibility of several actions. Making spaghetti carbonara was intelligible given my attitudes, but making Alfredo might have been as well. It is a mistake to think that a person’s attitudes only ever determine a single action as intelligible.
For discussion of this, see (Setiya 2010, p. 13).
Here I follow Broome (2013).
Their points of view differ in additional ways. It is impossible to believe, from Jones’ point of view, that Jones does not exist. Not so for Smith’s point of view. And Jones’ actions can be known, from Jones’ point of view, without observation. Not so for Smith’s point of view. I develop these differences in my (2009).
Eric Marcus (2012, p. 83) suggests that such ‘disengaged’ practical reasoning is possible.
I am grateful to a reviewer for pressing me to think more about this point.
I won’t consider essentially second personal beliefs. But the argument I have given could easily be modified to show that Jones could not do the reasoning he did in my example if he were uncertain whether, as he might put it while looking at Smith, I owe you money.
Why would I trust this sticker? Jokers sometimes move ‘You are here’ stickers on mall maps. Why couldn’t they move an ‘I’ sticker too? Why couldn’t I start to doubt whether, as I would then put it, I am I? Burge’s leading idea is that this sort of uncertainty would be impossible when a person has an appropriate I concept. But it is not clear to me why. Without a detailed story about the nature of the first person concept—one that does not simply stipulate that this second uncertainty is impossible—we have no reason to accept the leading idea.
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Acknowledgements
This paper has benefited from discussions with many people. I am especially thankful to Michael Brent, Phil Clark, Adrian Haddock, Matthias Haase, Boris Hennig, Jennifer Hornsby, David Horst, Sergio Tenenbaum and Rachael Wiseman for their comments on earlier drafts, as well as to the questions and comments from audiences at the University of Leipzig and the University College Dublin. Else please advise.
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Hunter, D. Practical Reasoning and the First Person. Philosophia 45, 677–700 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9793-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9793-9