Intention, Practical Rationality, and Self-Governance
Planning agency involves characteristic norms of practical rationality—in particular, norms of consistency and of means-end coherence of intentions. This essay defends the idea that there is normally a normative reason of self-governance in favor of conformity to these norms in the particular case. I contrast this self-governance-based view of these norms of plan rationality with the myth theories of Joseph Raz and Niko Kolodny, and with the cognitivism of Kieran Setiya. I explain how this view responds to concerns (including an argument from Setiya that focuses on nonmodifiable intentions) about the inappropriate bootstrapping of normative reasons. And I explore relations between this view and related work of John Broome, and between this view and Harry Frankfurt’s work on volitional necessity.