On the so-called Logic of Practical Inference

2004 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 119-140
Author(s):  
A. W. Price
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Inference ◽  
Universal Rule

Different questions generate different forms of practical reasoning. A contextually unrestricted ‘What shall I do?’ is too open to focus reflection. More determinately, an agent may ask, ‘Shall I do X, or Y?’ To answer that, he may need to weigh things up—as fits the derivation of ‘deliberation’ from libra (Latin for ‘scales’). Ubiquitous and indispensable though this is, I mention it only to salute it in passing. Or he may ask how to achieve a proposed end: if his end is to do X, he may ask ‘How shall I do X?’ Or he may ask how to apply a universal rule or particular maxim. Aristotle supplies examples in De Motu Animalium (7.701a7 ff.), whose wording I freely adapt to my own purposes:A1 reasons to a necessary means to achieving an end:I will make a cloak.To make a cloak I must do A.So, I will do A.

scholarly journals How Values Ground Value Creation: The practical inference framework

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 263178772110367
Author(s):  
Thomas Donaldson
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Value Creation ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Normative Values ◽  
Holy Grail ◽  
Factor Analytic ◽  
Practical Inference ◽  
Intrinsic Values ◽  
Epistemological Framework ◽  
Organization Research

After more than two decades of searching, the holy grail of integrating norms into management and organization research remains elusive. Researchers still lack a clear framework that explains value creation in relation to normative values, and, in turn, a means to incorporate values into research methods and generate value-based practical insights. To fill that need, this article presents an epistemological framework for understanding value creation. The practical inference framework centers on the activity of practical reasoning, a kind of reasoning that is legitimized by intrinsic values. It turns the ordinary epistemic equation on its head by seeking reasons rather than causes, and justifications rather than descriptions. In doing so, it shows how both factor analytic and newer, divergent methods of research can integrate with a robust architecture of value creation in ways that offer relevant knowledge for managers and society.

Seeing, Knowing, and Doing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Human Action ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Rational Action ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Discriminative Response ◽  
Rich Information ◽  
Priori Knowledge

This book provides an overall theory of perception and an account of knowledge and justification concerning the physical, the abstract, and the normative. It has the rigor appropriate for professionals but explains its main points using concrete examples. It accounts for two important aspects of perception on which philosophers have said too little: its relevance to a priori knowledge—traditionally conceived as independent of perception—and its role in human action. Overall, the book provides a full-scale account of perception, presents a theory of the a priori, and explains how perception guides action. It also clarifies the relation between action and practical reasoning; the notion of rational action; and the relation between propositional and practical knowledge. Part One develops a theory of perception as experiential, representational, and causally connected with its objects: as a discriminative response to those objects, embodying phenomenally distinctive elements; and as yielding rich information that underlies human knowledge. Part Two presents a theory of self-evidence and the a priori. The theory is perceptualist in explicating the apprehension of a priori truths by articulating its parallels to perception. The theory unifies empirical and a priori knowledge by clarifying their reliable connections with their objects—connections many have thought impossible for a priori knowledge as about the abstract. Part Three explores how perception guides action; the relation between knowing how and knowing that; the nature of reasons for action; the role of inference in determining action; and the overall conditions for rational action.

Acting on Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Direction Of Fit ◽  
General Schema ◽  
Action Intention ◽  
Knowledge Norms

This chapter develops and refines the analogy between knowledge and action in Knowledge and its Limits. The general schema is: knowledge is to belief as action is to intention. The analogy reverses direction of fit between mind and world. The knowledge/belief side corresponds to the inputs to practical reasoning, the action/intention side to its outputs. Since desires are inputs to practical reasoning, the desire-as-belief thesis is considered sympathetically. When all goes well with practical reasoning, one acts on what one knows. Belief plays the same local role as knowledge, and intention as action, in practical reasoning. This is the appropriate setting to understand knowledge norms for belief and practical reasoning. Marginalizing knowledge in epistemology is as perverse as marginalizing action in the philosophy of action. Opponents of knowledge-first epistemology are challenged to produce an equally systematic and plausible account of the relation between the cognitive and the practical.

Taking Stock

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Dancy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
A Value ◽  
Theoretical Reasoning ◽  
Similar Explanation

This chapter considers some general issues about the nature of the account that is emerging. It asks whether moral reasoning should have been treated as it was in Chapter 5. It also askes whether an explanation of practical reasons by appeal to value could be mirrored by a similar explanation of theoretical reasoning if one thinks of truth as a value. One might also think of the probability of a belief as a respect in which it is of value. The chapter ends by introducing the idea of a focalist account, and maintains that the account offered of practical reasoning is focalist.

Moral Reasoning and the Primacy of the Practical

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Dancy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Complete Theory ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Moral Thought

This chapter considers how to locate moral reasoning in terms of the structures that have emerged so far. It does not attempt to write a complete theory of moral thought. Its main purpose is rather to reassure us that moral reasoning—which might seem to be somehow both practical and theoretical at once—can be perfectly well handled using the tools developed in previous chapters. It also considers the question how we are to explain practical reasoning—and practical reasons more generally—by contrast with the explanation of theoretical reasons and reasoning offered in Chapter 4. This leads us to the first appearance of the Primacy of the Practical. The second appearance concerns reasons to intend.

Human Fallibility and Fallibilism about Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Brown
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Knowledge Attributions ◽  
Knowledge Norm ◽  
Concessive Knowledge Attributions ◽  
To Come ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Threshold Problem

This chapter distinguishes between fallibilism and infallibilism by appeal to entailment: infallibilists hold that knowledge that p requires evidence which entails that p; fallibilists deny that. It outlines some of the recent motivations for infallibilism, including the infelicity of concessive knowledge attributions, the threshold problem, closure, and the knowledge norm of practical reasoning. Further, we see how contemporary infallibilists attempt to avoid scepticism by appeal either to a generous conception of evidence or a shifty view of knowledge, such as contextualism. The chapter explains the book’s focus on non-shifty versions of infallibilism which defend a generous conception of evidence. It ends by defending the entailment definition of infallibilism over other potential definitions, and outlining the chapters to come.

Dual Intentional Agency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Schechter
Keyword(s):  
Left Hemisphere ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Brain Surgery ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Split Brain ◽  
Intentional Agency ◽  
Intentional Agents ◽  
Experimental Findings ◽  
The Right

This chapter defends the 2-agents claim, according to which the two hemispheres of a split-brain subject are associated with distinct intentional agents. The empirical basis of this claim is that, while both hemispheres are the source or site of intentions, the capacity to integrate them in practical reasoning no longer operates interhemispherically after split-brain surgery. As a result, the right hemisphere-associated agent, R, and the left hemisphere-associated agent, L, enjoy intentional autonomy from each other. Although the positive case for the 2-agents claim is grounded mainly in experimental findings, the claim is not contradicted by what we know of split-brain subjects’ ordinary behavior, that is, the way they act outside of experimental conditions.

The Universal Rule of Law in the Thought of the Late Medieval Jurists of Roman and Canon Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Canning
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Legal Structure ◽  
Vertical Relationship ◽  
New Research ◽  
Universal Rule ◽  
Universal Application

Late medieval Roman and canon law jurisprudence provided the origins of European notions of a universal rule of law in two senses: a legal order of universal extent and a structure of higher norms of universal application. Whereas modern international law is primarily concerned with the horizontal relationship between states, medieval jurists mainly considered the vertical relationship between universal and territorial powers. They developed de iure–de facto arguments to justify a plurality of sovereign states within an overall universal legal structure. Contributions to the elaboration of theories of just war were also made. We must be cautious about claiming that late medieval jurists contributed to the development of early international law as normally understood. Nevertheless, early-modern theorists of international law referred back to the work of their medieval juristic predecessors. A new research question is emerging about the usefulness of using the term ‘international’ in interpreting medieval jurists.

Action

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Rational Action ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Knowledge Norms

This chapter defends a connection between knowledge and practical reasoning, according to which one’s reasons for action constitute all and only that which one knows. A variety of intuitive objections to such principles are considered and rejected—a central theme is that objectors to knowledge norms often make tacit but substantive ethical assumptions about which reasons, if held, would justify which actions. Absent broader ethical theorizing, the proposed counterexamples are inconclusive. The chapter sketches possible approaches to such theories, and indicates reason for optimism about knowledge norms. It also considers the degree to which knowledge norms imply externalism about rational action, suggesting that many internalist intuitions and verdicts may be accommodated and explained by knowledge norms.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document