Reasons for Action and Reasons for Belief

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Tollefsen
Keyword(s):  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Reasons For Belief

Practical Steps and Reasons for Action

1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Clark
Keyword(s):  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
The Real ◽  
General Characterization ◽  
Practical Inference

There is an idea, going back to Aristotle, that reasons for action can be understood on a parallel with reasons for belief. Not surprisingly, the idea has almost always led to some form of inferentialism about reasons for action. In this paper I argue that reasons for action can be understood on a parallel with reasons for belief, but that this requires abandoning inferentialism about reasons for action. This result will be thought paradoxical. It is generally assumed that if there is to be a useful parallel, there must be some such thing as a practical inference. As we shall see, that assumption tends to block the fruitful exploration of the real parallel. On the view I shall defend, the practical analogue of an ordinary inference is not an inference, but something I shall call a practical step. Nevertheless, the practical step will do, for a theory of reasons for action, what ordinary inference does for an inferentialist theory of reasons for belief. The result is a general characterization of reasons, practical and theoretical, in terms of the correctness conditions of the relevant sorts of step.

Reasoning about Means

2019 ◽  
pp. 76-89
Author(s):  
Ingmar Persson
Keyword(s):  
Opposite Direction ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Double Effect ◽  
Practical Case ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Direction Of Fit ◽  
Standard Formula

An advantage of using conditionals as the standard formula for reasons for action is that the conditional form can also be used to bring out the structure of reasons for belief—thus making possible a close comparison between these kinds of reasons and reasoning. It then becomes apparent that the direction of derivation is the reverse in the practical case when we reason our way to desiring sufficient means to an end from desiring the end to the theoretical case when we derive beliefs from sufficient conditions for their truth. This reversal reflects the opposite direction of fit of beliefs and desires. The implications of this account of reasoning with desires for the moral doctrine of the double effect and for reasoning with respect to emotions are briefly considered.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 213-218
Author(s):  
Christopher Cowie
Keyword(s):  
Error Theory ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Moral Error Theory ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
Epistemic Consequentialism ◽  
Argument From Analogy ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Categorical Reasons

The views outlined in earlier chapters are systematically presented. These include: the truth of epistemic institutionalism and falsity of analogous institutionalist views in morality; the challenges facing categorical reasons for action that do not apply to categorial reasons for belief; the reducible nature of epistemic properties and relations—including the defensibility of this view in light of concerns with the normativity of probability and the falsity of both veritism and epistemic consequentialism—in contrast to the irreducible nature of moral properties and relations, and the possibility of ‘the puzzling combination’. It is concluded that the argument from analogy fails and that the moral error theory may yet be true, but that it would be illegitimate to conclude that it is true.

Against Internalism-Parity

2019 ◽  
pp. 79-95
Author(s):  
Christopher Cowie
Keyword(s):  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Action Explanation ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
Categorical Reasons

An alternative argument is provided for rejecting internalism-parity. It is claimed that, from the perspective of internalism-based moral error theorists, categorical reasons for action are more problematic than categorical reasons for belief. This is because there are considerably stronger arguments for thinking that one’s reasons for action are constitutively dependent on one’s desires than for thinking that one’s reasons for belief are constitutively dependent on one’s desires. Three such arguments are considered: from action-explanation, from reasoning, and from paradigmatic-ascriptions. It is claimed that the first of these three arguments clearly does not apply to reasons for belief as to reasons for action. The applicability of the second and third arguments is harder to ascertain.

Unbelievable Errors

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart Streumer
Keyword(s):  
Error Theory ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Sharp Distinction ◽  
Moral Judgements ◽  
Philosophical Progress

This book defends an error theory about all normative judgements: not just moral judgements, but also judgements about reasons for action, judgements about reasons for belief, and instrumental normative judgements. This theory says that normative judgements are beliefs that ascribe normative properties, but that normative properties do not exist. It therefore entails that all normative judgements are false. The book also argues, however, that we cannot believe this error theory. Instead of being a problem for the theory, the book argues, our inability to believe this error theory makes the theory more likely to be true, since it undermines objections to the theory, it makes it harder to reject the arguments for the theory, and it undermines revisionary alternatives to the theory. The book then sketches how certain other philosophical theories can be defended in a similar way, and how philosophers should modify their methodology if there can be true philosophical theories that we cannot believe. It concludes that to make philosophical progress, we should make a sharp distinction between a theory’s truth and our ability to believe it.

The Unity of Reasons

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Special Case

This chapter is concerned with the question of what unifies reasons for action and reasons for belief, sometimes called practical and epistemic reasons. According to some views, reasons for belief are a special case of reasons to do something, and so epistemic reasons are a special case, very broadly speaking, of practical reasons. According to other views, reasons for action are a special case of reasons to draw some conclusion, and so practical reasons are a special case of epistemic reasons. This chapter considers some of the evidence that bears on whether either of these claims is correct, or whether instead practical and epistemic reasons have something else in common.

Reasons to Intend

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Heuer
Keyword(s):  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Related Question ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Reasons For Belief

Donald Davidson writes that “[r]easons for intending to do something are very much like reasons for action, indeed one might hold that they are exactly the same except for time.” That the reasons for forming an intention and the reasons for acting as intended are in some way related is a widely accepted claim. This chapter is concerned with exploring the claim that reasons to act provide reasons to intend and the various versions it can take, as well as the related question whether there can be reasons to intend of a different kind. The so-called “exclusivity claim” that only reasons to act provide reasons to intend has been much discussed recently, often in parallel to exclusivity claims concerning reasons for belief. Shah argues in favor of, and Schroeder and McHugh against, exclusivity, for instance. The chapter investigates this discussion in some detail.

scholarly journals Belief as a Cognitive and Practical Commitment

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-45
Author(s):  
Sophie Djigo
Keyword(s):  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Self Knowledge

Exploring the idea of a more practical relationship between the agent and his own mental life leaves room for reconsidering the relevance of the familiar analogy between reasons for belief and reasons for action. Even if their difference is usually admitted, they are also treated as equivalent, in the sense that the connection between reasons to believe and the arising belief would be analogous to the connection between reasons for action and the arising action. If such an analogy might be relevant to a certain extent in the frame of a theoretical stance towards oneself, I'll argue that it cannot be maintained once we have put the agent at the heart of self-knowledge.

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