Practical Reasons, Practical Rationality, Practical Wisdom
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (1):85-111 (2008)
Abstract
There are a number of proposals as to exactly how reasons, ends and rationality are related. It is often thought that practical reasons can be analyzed in terms of practical rationality, which, in turn, has something to do with the pursuit of ends. I want to argue against the conceptual priority of rationality and the pursuit of ends, and in favor of the conceptual priority of reasons. This case comes in two parts. I first argue for a new conception of ends by which all ends are had under the guise of reasons. I then articulate a sense of rationality, procedural rationality, that is connected with the pursuit of ends so conceived, where one is rational to the extent that one is motivated to act in accordance with reasons as they appear to be. Unfortunately, these conceptions of ends and procedural rationality are inadequate for building an account of practical reasons, though I try to explain why it is that the rational pursuit of ends generates intuitive but misleading accounts of genuine normative reasons. The crux of the problem is an insensitivity to an is-seems distinction, where procedural rationality concerns reasons as they appear, and what we are after is a substantive sense of rationality that concerns reasons as they are. Based on these distinct senses of rationality, and some disambiguation of what it is to have a reason, I offer a critique of internalist analyses of one’s reasons in terms of the motivational states of one’s ideal, procedurally rational self, and I offer an alternative analysis of one’s practical reasons in terms of practical wisdom that overcomes objections to related reasons externalist views. The resulting theory is roughly Humean about procedural rationality and roughly Aristotelian about reasons, capturing the core truths of both camps.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1007/s10677-007-9064-8
My notes
Similar books and articles
The Four Approaches in the Contemporary Western Studies of Practical Wisdom.Yu Lui - 2010 - Modern Philosophy 4:10-18.
Reasons for action, acting for reasons, and rationality.Maria Alvarez - 2018 - Synthese 195 (8):3293-3310.
Does the Explanatory Constraint on Practical Reasons favour Naturalism about Practical Reasons?Deborah Roberts - 2005 - South African Journal of Philosophy 24 (2):97-108.
Teaching Nature: Natural Virtue and Practical Wisdom in the Nicomachean Ethics.Yancy Hughes Dominick - 2006 - Southwest Philosophy Review 22 (1):103-111.
Review of C.D.C. Reeve, Aristotle on Practical Wisdom: Nicomachean Ethics VI. [REVIEW]Samuel H. Baker - 2015 - Philosophy in Review 35 (2):106-108.
Dialectics and practical wisdom.Nanshi Wang - 2006 - Frontiers of Philosophy in China 1 (2):245-253.
Practical reasons and mistakes of practical rationality.David Sobel - 2007 - Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 94 (1):299-321.
Putting particularism in its place.Joshua Gert - 2008 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 89 (3):312-324.
Asymmetrical Practical Reasons.Patricia Greenspan - 2005 - In J. C. Marek & M. E. Reicher (eds.), Experience and Analysis: Proceedings of the 27th International Wittgenstein Symposium. Vienna: ÖBV and HPT. pp. 387-94.
Analytics
Added to PP
2009-01-28
Downloads
217 (#58,400)
6 months
2 (#297,430)
2009-01-28
Downloads
217 (#58,400)
6 months
2 (#297,430)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Might All Normativity Be Queer?Matthew S. Bedke - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (1):41-58.
Desires as additional reasons? The case of tie-breaking.Attila Tanyi - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 152 (2):209-227.
Moral blame and rational criticism.Caj Strandberg - 2022 - European Journal of Philosophy 30 (1):345-360.
Reason and Desire: The Case of Affective Desires.Attila Tanyi - 2010 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6 (2):67-89.
References found in this work
Freedom of the will and the concept of a person.Harry Frankfurt - 1971 - Journal of Philosophy 68 (1):5-20.
Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment.Allan Gibbard - 1990 - Harvard University Press.