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.

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.

Knowing, Reasoning, and Doing

2020 ◽  
pp. 180-193
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Rational Action ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Intentional Actions

This chapter draws on earlier ones in developing a critique of intellectualism, especially as applied to the philosophy of action. For intellectualism, theoretical knowledge is more basic than practical knowledge, and action, at least if performed for a good reason, must be knowledge-guided and not just guided by otherwise appropriate beliefs. Intellectualism is shown too strong on at least three counts. Knowing how is not reducible to knowing that; knowledge is not required for premises of practical reasoning; and (normative) reasons for action need not be factive, much less constituted by known propositions. These conclusions by no means imply that knowledge is not important for understanding action and practical reasoning, especially rational action and good practical reasoning. It is also true that intentional actions correspond to (possibly hypothetical) practical reasoning; but this point is shown to be very different from the intellectualist view that they are based on actual practical reasoning.

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.

Tort’s Indifference: Conformity, Compliance, and Civil Recourse

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Ahson Azmat
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Internal Point ◽  
Loss Allocation ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Normative Force ◽  
Extensional Structure ◽  
Do So

AbstractLeading accounts of tort law split cleanly into two seams. Some trace its foundations to a deontic form of morality; others to an instrumental, policy-oriented system of efficient loss allocation. An increasingly prominent alternative to both seams, Civil Recourse Theory (CRT) resists this binary by arguing that tort comprises a basic legal category, and that its directives constitute reasons for action with robust normative force. Using the familiar question whether tort’s directives are guidance rules or liability rules as a lens, or prism, this essay shows how considerations of practical reasoning undermine one of CRT’s core commitments. If tort directives exert robust normative force, we must account for its grounds—for where it comes from, and why it obtains. CRT tries to do so by co-opting H.L.A. Hart’s notion of the internal point of view, but this leveraging strategy cannot succeed: while the internal point of view sees legal directives as guides to action, tort law merely demands conformity. To be guided by a directive is to comply with it, not conform to it, so tort’s structure blocks the shortcut to normativity CRT attempts to navigate. Given the fine-grained distinctions the theory makes, and with the connection between its claims and tort’s requirements thus severed, CRT faces a dilemma: it’s either unresponsive to tort’s normative grounds, or it’s inattentive to tort’s extensional structure.

scholarly journals MORALITY, LAW AND CONFLICTING REASONS FOR ACTION

2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Cane
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Human Conduct ◽  
Morality Plays ◽  
Moral Assessment ◽  
The Concept Of Law ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn The Concept of Law, H.L.A. Hart suggested that four formal features of morality distinguish it from law: importance, immunity from deliberate change, the nature of moral offences and the form of moral pressure. On closer examination, none of these supposed features clearly distinguishes morality from law, at least in the broad sense of ‘morality’ that Hart adopted. However, a fifth feature of morality mentioned by Hart – namely the role that morality plays in practical reasoning as a source of ultimate standards for assessing human conduct – does illuminate the relationship between law as conceptualised by Hart and morality variously understood. Because morality has this feature, law is always subject to moral assessment, and moral reasons trump legal reasons. It does not follow, however, that law is irrelevant to moral reasoning.

The Functional Argument

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-132
Author(s):  
Noam Gur
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Intended Function ◽  
Guiding Function ◽  
Functional Argument ◽  
Relevant Consideration

This chapter discusses law’s capacity to fulfil its conduct-guiding function within different frameworks of practical reasoning. A functional argument of Raz is initially presented: according to this argument, authorities—including legal authorities—would not be able to fulfil their intended function if their directives operated as reasons for action that compete with opposing reasons in terms of their weight, rather than as pre-emptive reasons (Section 6.1). Several grounds for this argument are considered and found to be inadequate (Section 6.2). The spotlight is then directed onto another relevant consideration: law’s structural suitability to counteract several situational biases operative in contexts of individual and collective action (Sections 6.3.1–6.3.5). It is argued that law’s pivotal role in addressing practical problems linked with those biases strongly militate against the weighing model (Sections 6.3.6). Finally, the implications of those biases for the pre-emption thesis are discussed (Sections 6.3.7).

Legal reasoning and interpretation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil MacCormick
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Deductive Reasoning ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
True State ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Special Case

Legal reasoning is the process of devising, reflecting on, or giving reasons for legal acts and decisions or justifications for speculative opinions about the meaning of law and its relevance to action. Many contemporary writers, such as Aulis Aarnio (1987), Robert Alexy (1988), Manuel Atienza (1991) and Aleksander Peczenik (1989), propound the view that legal reasoning is a particular instance of general practical reasoning. They suppose, that is to say, that reasoning can link up with action, guiding one what to do, or showing whether or not there are good reasons for a proposed course of action or for something already done. They suppose also that in law reason links up to legal decisions in this way. Both suppositions are well founded. Law regulates what to do and how to respond to what has been done, doing so within an institutional framework of legislatures, lawcourts, enforcement agencies and the like. It is a feature of legal institutions that they are expected to have, and usually do give, good reasons for what they do, and to do this in public. Legal reasoning is therefore not only a special case of practical reasoning, but a specially public one. Rationality in action has at least two requirements: first, attention to facts, to the true state of affairs in relation to which one acts; second, attention to reasons for action relevant to the facts ascertained. The former aspect concerns reasoning about evidence; the latter, reasoning about rules or norms as reasons for action. In law, such rules and other norms have an institutional character. But how are these applied – by some kind of deductive reasoning, or nondeductively? Behind the rules of the law, there presumably lie other reasons, reasons for having these rules. What kind of reasons are these, developed through what modes of discourse? A discourse of principles, perhaps – but then how do reasons of principle themselves differ from rules? Reasoning from either rules or principles must always involve some process of interpretation, so how does interpretive reasoning enter into the practical reason of law? Answering such questions is the business of a theory of legal reasoning. Legal reasoning is to be understood as a form of practical reasoning concerning these very issues.

Aristotle on Practical Truth

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiana Olfert
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Rational Action ◽  
De Anima ◽  
Common View ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Aristotle’s theories of truth, practical reasoning, and action are some of the most influential theories in the history of philosophy. It is surprising, then, that so little attention has been given to his notion of practical truth. In Aristotle on Practical Truth, C. M. M. Olfert gives the first book-length treatment of this notion and the role of truth in our practical lives overall. She offers a novel account of practical truth: it is the truth, in the technical Aristotelian sense of “truth,” about what is good simpliciter (haplôs) for a particular person in her particular situation. Olfert argues that, understood in this way, Aristotle’s notion of practical truth is an attractive idea that illuminates the core of his practical philosophy. But it is also an idea that challenges a common view that in practical reasoning, we aim at action or acting well as our primary goals, not at truth and knowledge. Contrary to this common view, Olfert shows that in dialogues such as Charmides, Protagoras, and Republic, Plato describes practical reasoning as being concerned equally with grasping the truth and with acting well. She argues that Aristotle develops this Platonic picture with the notion of practical truth and with a technical notion of rational action as fitting ourselves to the world. Using key texts from the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, as well as De Anima, Metaphysics, De Interpretatione, and Categories, Olfert demonstrates that practical truth deserves to be treated as a central and plausible Aristotelian idea.

scholarly journals REASONS FOR ACTION AND PRACTICAL REASONING

Ratio ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Reasons For Action

Going Nowhere: Nagel on Normative Objectivity

Philosophy ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 65 (254) ◽  
pp. 501-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Thomas Nagel ◽  
The World ◽  
Objective Understanding ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Objective Side

In The View from Nowhere, Thomas Nagel develops a theory of practical reasoning which attempts to give the personal, or subjective, point of view its due2 while still insisting on the objectivity of ethics.On the objective side, Nagel affirms that there are truths about values and reasons for action which are independent of the ways in which reasons and values appear to us, independent of our own particular beliefs and inclinations (p. 144). The objective foundation for these truths consists in a certain distinctive process of understanding. Objective understanding is explicated in terms of an objective standpoint, a standpoint defined as impersonal, that is, as detached from the subjective point of view. The objective standpoint is structured by a conception ‘of the world as centerless—as containing ourselves and other beings with particular points of view’ (p. 140). As with scientific reasoning, ‘we begin from our position inside the world and try to transcend it by regarding what we find here as a sample of the whole’ (p. 141).

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