Practical Reason (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy

Practical ReasonFirst published Mon Oct 13, 2003; substantive revision Wed Mar 26, 2014

Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, through reflection, the question ofwhat one is to do. Deliberation of this kind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical inits subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it is also practical in its consequencesor its issue, insofar as reflection about action itself directly moves people to act. Our capacity fordeliberative self-determination raises two sets of philosophical problems. First, there are questionsabout how deliberation can succeed in being practical in its issue. What do we need toassumeboth about agents and about the processes of reasoning they engage into make senseof the fact that deliberative reflection can directly give rise to action? Can we do justice to thisdimension of practical reason while preserving the idea that practical deliberation is genuinely aform of reasoning? Second, there are large issues concerning the content of the standards that arebrought to bear in practical reasoning. Which norms for the assessment of action are binding on usas agents? Do these norms provide resources for critical reflection about our ends, or are theyexclusively instrumental? Under what conditions do moral norms yield valid standards forreasoning about action? The first set of issues is addressed in sections 13 of the present article,while sections 45 cover the second set of issues.

1. Practical and Theoretical Reason2. Naturalism and Normativity3. Reasons and Motivation4. Instrumental and Structural Rationality5. Maximizing Rationality6. Consequentialism, Value, and Moral ReasonBibliographyAcademic ToolsOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries

1. Practical and Theoretical ReasonPractical reason defines a distinctive standpoint of reflection. When agents deliberate about action,they think about themselves and their situation in characteristic ways. What are some of the salientfeatures of the practical point of view?

A natural way to interpret this point of view is to contrast it with the standpoint of theoreticalreason. The latter standpoint is occupied when we engage in reasoning that is directed at theresolution of questions that are in some sense theoretical rather than practical; but how are we tounderstand this opposition between the theoretical and the practical? One possibility is to

Practical Reason (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/practical-reason/

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understand theoretical reflection as reasoning about questions of explanation and prediction.Looking backward to events that have already taken place, it asks why they have occurred;looking forward, it attempts to determine what is going to happen in the future. In these ways,theoretical reflection is concerned with matters of fact and their explanation. Furthermore it treatsthese issues in impersonal terms that are accessible (in principle) to anyone. Theoretical reasoning,understood along these lines, finds paradigmatic expression in the natural and social sciences.

Practical reason, by contrast, takes a distinctively normative question as its starting point. Ittypically asks, of a set of alternatives for action none of which has yet been performed, what oneought to do, or what it would be best to do. It is thus concerned not with matters of fact and theirexplanation, but with matters of value, of what it would be desirable to do. In practical reasoningagents attempt to assess and weigh their reasons for action, the considerations that speak for andagainst alternative courses of action that are open to them. Moreover they do this from adistinctively first-personal point of view, one that is defined in terms of a practical predicament inwhich they find ourselves (either individually or collectivelypeople sometimes reason jointlyabout what they should do together).

There is, however, a different way of understanding the contrast between practical and theoreticalreason, stressing the parallels rather than the differences between the two forms of reflection.According to this interpretation, theoretical reflection too is concerned with a normative ratherthan a factual question, namely with the question of what one ought to believe. It attempts toanswer this normative question by assessing and weighing reasons for belief, the considerationsthat speak for and against the particular conclusions one might draw about the way the world is.Furthermore, it does this from a standpoint of first-personal reflection: the stance of theoreticalreasoning in this sense is the committed stance of the believer, not the stance of detachedcontemplation of one's beliefs themselves (Moran 2001). Seen in this way, the contrast betweenpractical and theoretical reason is essentially a contrast between two different systems of norms:those for the regulation of action on the one hand, and those for the regulation of belief on theother.

Theoretical reason, interpreted along these lines, addresses the considerations that recommendaccepting particular claims as to what is or is not the case. That is, it involves reflection with aneye to the truth of propositions, and the reasons for belief in which it deals are considerations thatspeak in favor of such propositions' being true, or worthy of acceptance. Practical reason, bycontrast, is concerned not with the truth of propositions but with the desirability or value ofactions. The reasons in which it deals are considerations that speak in favor of particular actionsbeing good, or worthy of performance in some way. This difference in subject matter correspondsto a further difference between the two forms of reason, in respect of their consequences.Theoretical reflection about what one ought to believe produces changes in one's overall set ofbeliefs, whereas practical reason gives rise to action; as noted above, it is practical not only in itssubject matter, but also in its issue.

Two observations should be made about this way of understanding practical reason. First, thecontrast just drawn might suggest that there is a categorial difference in the consequences oftheoretical and practical reason, insofar as the former produces changes in our mental states,whereas the latter gives rise to bodily movements. But it would be misleading to contrast the twokinds of rational capacity in these terms. Practical reasoning gives rise not to bodily movementsper se, but to intentional actions, and these are intelligible as such only to the extent they reflectour mental states. It would thus be more accurate to characterize the issue of both theoretical andpractical reason as attitudes; the difference is that theoretical reasoning leads to modifications of


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our beliefs, whereas practical reasoning leads to modifications of our intentions (Harman 1986,Bratman 1987).

Second, it is important to be clear that in neither case do the characteristic modifications of attitudeoccur infallibly. There is room for irrationality both in the theoretical and the practical domain,which in its strongest form involves a failure to form the attitudes that one acknowledges to becalled for by the considerations one has reflected on. Thus a person might end up reading amystery novel for another hour, while at the same time judging that it would be better on thewhole to go back to work on their paper for the upcoming conference. Practical irrationality of thislatter kind is known as akrasia, incontinence, or weakness of will, and its nature and evenpossibility are traditional subjects of philosophical speculation in their own right. If we assumethat this strong kind of practical irrationality is possible, however, then we must grant thatpractical reason is not automatically practical in its issue. A more accurate way to represent theconsequences of practical reason would be to say that deliberation about action generatesappropriate intentions insofar as an agent is rational (Korsgaard 1996a).

2. Naturalism and NormativityThe connection of practical reason with intentional action raises large questions about itscredentials as a capacity for genuine reasoning. As noted above, intentional action is not merebodily movement, but reflects a distinctive attitude of the agent's, viz., intention. To be in this kindof mental state is to have settled on a plan which one seeks to realize through one's action.Intention seems in this respect to be strikingly unlike belief. Propositional attitudes of the lattersort have a representational function; they aim to fit the way the world is, so that if one discoversthat the world is not how one previously took it to be, one will acknowledge pressure to modifyone's belief in the relevant dimension (pressure to which one will respond if one is not irrational).With intentions however things seem crucially different in this respect (Smith 1987). The intentionto go shopping on Wednesday, for instance, is not a state that would or should be abandoned uponascertaining or confirming that one has not (yet) gone shopping on Wednesday; rather a personwith such an intention will ordinarily try to bring the world into alignment with the intention, bygoing shopping when Wednesday comes around. Intentions are in this way more like an architect'sblueprints than like sketches of an already-completed structure (Anscombe 1957; compareVelleman 1989).

Reflection on this contrast between belief and intention has led some philosophers to ask whetherpractical reason might not be something of a misnomer. The difficulty, in a nutshell, is to makesense of the suggestion that a genuinely rational process could by itself generate states with thepeculiar function of intentions. Reason seems a capacity for cognitive operations, whereasintentions are distinctively noncognitive states, insofar as they do not aim to reflect independentfacts of the matter about the way things happen to be in the world.

Expressivism gives voice to this skeptical attitude about practical reason. Accounts of this kindoffer interpretations of the normative and evaluative language that distinctively figures in practicalreflection. As was seen in section 1, such reflection addresses an agent's reasons for acting in oneway or another; conclusions about such reasons are characteristically couched in evaluative terms,as claims about what it would be good to do, or as normative conclusions about the actions thatone ought to perform. According to the expressivist, however, evaluative and normative claims ofthese kinds do not represent genuine cognitive achievements, judgments that are literally capableof being true or false. Rather they give expression to desires, sentiments, plans, and other


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pro-attitudes, the sorts of goal-directed noncognitive state that move people to action. Theexpressivist contends that we can make sense of the capacity of practical reason to generate stateswith the peculiar structure and function of intentions only if evaluative and normative assertionsare understood along these lines.

Expressivism in this form suggests a naturalistic interpretation of practical reason, one that mayseem appropriate to the enlightened commitments of the modern scientific world view. It isnaturalistic metaphysically, insofar as it makes no commitment to the objective existence in theworld of such allegedly questionable entities as values, norms, or reasons for action. If normativeand evaluative claims do not represent genuine cognitive achievements, then their legitimacy doesnot depend on our postulating a realm of normative or evaluative facts to which those claims mustbe capable of corresponding. It is also naturalistic psychologically, insofar as it yields explanationsof intentional human behavior that are basically continuous with explanations of the behavior ofnon-rational animals. In both the human and the non-human case, behavior is understood as thecausal product of noncognitive attitudes, operating in conjunction with a creature's factualrepresentation of how things are in its environment. The special sophistication of human agencymay be traced to the fact that humans have much more sophisticated linguistic methods for givingvoice to their motivating noncognitive attitudes. Indeed, many contemporary expressivists wouldcontend that these expressive resources are sufficiently powerful that we can explain by means ofthem the features of practical deliberation that initially give it the appearance of a genuine form ofreasoning (Blackburn 1998, Gibbard 1990, Gibbard 2003).

Other philosophers remain unimpressed with this naturalistic approach to practical reason. Oneground for dissatisfaction with it is the following. The expressivist strategy relies on an initialcontrast between practical reflection on the one hand, and the genuine forms of cognitive activitycharacteristic of theoretical reasoning on the other. There has to be some important sense in whichpractical discourse does not satisfy the standards of rationality that distinguish authentic cognitivediscourse in the literal sense; otherwise the contention that normative discourse is expressiverather than cognitive will lack any significant content. But the contrast between theoretical andpractical reflection required for this purpose seems elusive. As we saw in section 1 above,theoretical reasoning appears to be no less a normative enterprise than practical reasoning. It isplausibly understood to concern itself with reasons for belief, the evidence and otherconsiderations that speak for and against particular conclusions about the way things are in theworld. To the extent this is the case, theoretical and practical reasoning would both seem equallyproblematic from the naturalistic perspectiveassuming, that is, that it leaves no place for suchnormative considerations as reasons. But if naturalism calls into question the credentials oftheoretical reason, it thereby undermines the contrast between genuine reasoning and noncognitiveforms of normative and evaluative discourse on which expressivists themselves rely.

Many of those who reject expressivist accounts would endorse some variety of realism about thesubject matter of practical reason. The basic commitment of realism in this domain is the idea thatthere are facts of the matter about what we have reason to do that are prior to and independent ofour deliberations, to which those deliberations are ultimately answerable. Realists picture practicalreason as a capacity for reflection about an objective body of normative truths regarding action(Parfit 2011, Scanlon 2014). An alternative approachdifferent both from realism and from thekind of expressivism sketched aboveis constructivism (Korsgaard 1997, Street 2008, Street2010). This approach denies that practical reason is a capacity for reflection about an objectivedomain of independent normative facts; but it equally rejects the expressivist's naturalisticsuspicion of normativity. According to the constructivist, practical reason is governed by genuine


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normative constraints, but what makes these constraints normative is precisely their relation to thewill of the agents whose decisions they govern. The principles of practical reason are constitutiveprinciples of rational agency, binding on us insofar as we necessarily commit ourselves tocomplying with them in willing anything at all. The realm of the normative, on this approach, isnot pictured as a body of truths or facts that are prior to and independent of the will; rather, it istaken to be constructed by agents through their own volitional activity.

3. Reasons and MotivationThe capacity of practical reason to give rise to intentional action divides even those philosopherswho agree in rejecting the expressivist strategy discussed above. Such philosophers are prepared togrant that there are normative and evaluative facts and truths, and to accept the cognitivecredentials of discourse about this distinctive domain of facts and truths. But they differ in theiraccounts of the truth conditions of the normative and evaluative claims that figure in suchdiscourse. We may distinguish the following two approaches.

The first of these, often referred to as internalism, holds that reasons for action must be groundedin an agent's prior motivations (Williams 1981). According to this influential position, a givenagent s can have reason to do x only if x-ing would speak to or advance some element in s'ssubjective motivational set. There must be some rational connection between s's x-ing and thesubjective motivations to which s is actually already subject; otherwise the claim that s has reasonto x must be rejected, as false or incoherent. Behind this internalist position lies the idea thatpractical reason is practical in its issue. Internalists contend that we can make sense of thegeneration of new intentions through reasoning only if we assume that such reasoning isconditioned by motivational resources that are already to hand. Practical reason, on the internalistaccount, is the capacity to work out the implications of the commitments contained in one'sexisting subjective motivational set; the upshot is that motivation is prior to practical reason, andconstrains it.

Externalists reject this picture, contending that one can have reasons for action that areindependent of one's prior motivations. They typically agree that practical reasoning is capable ofgenerating new motivations and actions. They agree, in other words, that if agent s has reason todo x, it must be possible for s to acquire the motivation to x through reflection on the relevantreasons. But they deny that such reasoning must in any significant way be constrained by s'ssubjective motivations prior to the episode of reasoning. On this approach, practical reason is notconceived merely as a capacity for working out the implications of one's existing desires andcommitments; it equally involves the capacity to reason about what it would objectively be goodto do, and to act on the basis of this kind of evaluative reflection. Normative reflection is thustaken to be independent of one's prior motivations, and capable of opening up new motivationalpossibilities (Parfit 1997).

This disagreement is conventionally understood to be driven by diverging approaches to theexplanation of intentional action. Internalists are impressed by the differences between intentionsand the cognitive states that figure in paradigmatic examples of theoretical reasoning. Pointing tothese differences, they ask how practical reason can succeed in producing new intentions if it isnot based in something of the same basic psychological type: a motivation or desire that is alreadypart of the agent's subjective motivational equipment. Many externalists find this contrast betweenintentions and cognitive states overdrawn. They observe that we need to postulate basicdispositions of normative responsiveness to account for the capacity of theoretical reflection about


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reasons to affect our beliefs, and question why these same dispositions cannot explain the fact thatpractical reasoning is practical in its consequences. Cognitive or not, intentions belong to thebroad class of attitudes that are sensitive to judgments, and this may account for the capacity ofpractical reflection to generate new intentions (Scanlon 1998, chap. 1). A third possibility is thatintentions result from dispositions or capacities distinct from the psychic mechanisms that rendertheoretical rationality possible. Depending on how it is developed, this approach may offer adifferent way of accounting for the practical consequences of practical reflection, withoutassuming that reasons for action are grounded in an agent's subjective motivations (Velleman2000, chap. 8, Wallace 1999).

More recently, it has been maintained that the Humean approach has its basis not in aphilosophical account of motivation, but rather in our understanding of what explains peoples'reasons for action (Schroeder 2007). There are cases in which features of a person's psychologymake an obvious difference to what the person has reason to do. Some people like to dance, othersdetest this activity, and this difference in their "desires" appears to determine a correspondingdifference in their reasons. Even in cases of this kind, however, it is far from obvious thatdifferences in the agent's "desires" are what ultimately explain their differing reasons (Scanlon2014). Moreover, the fact that psychological factors might sometimes be relevant to theexplanation of a person's reasons does not entail that they always have explanatory relevance.

4. Instrumental and Structural RationalityAmong the substantive norms of practical reason, those of instrumental rationality have seemedleast controversial to philosophers. Instrumental rationality, in its most basic form, instructs agentsto take those means that are necessary in relation to their given ends. In the modern era, this formof rationality has widely been viewed as the single unproblematic requirement of practical reason.The instrumental principle makes no assumptions about the prospects for rational scrutiny ofpeoples' ends. Rational criticism of this kind apparently presupposes that there are objectivereasons and values, providing standards for assessment of ends that are independent frompsychological facts about what people happen to be motivated to pursue. In line with thenaturalistic attitude sketched in section 2, however, it may be doubted whether such independentstandards can be reconciled with the metaphysical commitments of contemporary scientificpractice. A world that is shorn of objective values or norms leaves no room for rational criticism ofpeoples' ends, but only for Weberian Zweckrationalitt: the rational determination of means to therealization of ends that are taken to be given, as a matter of human psychological fact.

This line of thought can be traced back to the philosophy of David Hume, who famously assertedthat Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions (Hume 1978, 415). Those attractedto the Humean approach should bear in mind, however, that instrumental rationality is itself theexpression of an objective normative commitment. The instrumental principle says that we arerationally required to take the means that are necessary to achieve our ends; if the principlerepresents a binding norm of practical reason, then we are open to rational criticism to the extentwe fail to exhibit this kind of instrumental consistency, regardless of whether we want to complywith the principle or not. If naturalism really entails that there can be no objective norms or values,it may be wondered how an exception can possibly be made for the instrumental requirement. Amore consistently naturalistic position would be to reject even Zweckrationalitt in favor of askeptical attitude towards practical reason in all its forms (Hampton 1998)an attitude that maywell correspond to the intentions of the historical Hume (compare Dreier 1997, Millgram 1995).Further questions can be raised about the plausibility of the suggestion that the instrumental norm


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exhausts the requirements of practical reason. The norm says that one should take the means thatare necessary relative to one's psychologically-given ends. But how can the fact that a givenmeans exhibits this kind of necessity give a person reason to choose the means, if the end is notitself something it would be valuable to achieve in some way? The instrumental principle seems tofunction as a binding norm of practical reason only if it is taken for granted that there areadditional, independent standards for the assessment of our ends (Korsgaard 1997; Quinn 1993).

Many proponents of the instrumental principle would agree that it does not generate reasons foraction. The fact that a given means is necessary, relative to one's given ends, is not a reason to takethe means. The instrumental principle functions, rather, as a structural requirement on one'sattitudes (Broome 1999, Broome 2004). Thus, suppose one intends end E, and believes (truly) thatE can be achieved only if one intends to do M. It appears that there are two ways in which onecould revise one's attitudes in response to these considerations, compatibly with the instrumentalprinciple: one could form the intention to M, or one could abandon one's original intention to E.The instrumental principle, considered in itself, is indifferent as between these two possibilities; itshould be understood as a wide-scope requirement, governing combinations of attitudes, ratherthan a source of detachable normative conclusions about what one has reason to do. (Modusponens represents a similar rational requirement in the domain of theoretical reason, governingcombinations of beliefs.)

Rational requirements of this kind have recently become a subject of intensive philosophicaldebate. The idea that there are structural requirements on our attitudes appears to be commonground among philosophers who differ significantly in their views about the nature and scope ofpractical reason. It is accepted by most Humeans, for instance, who believe that there is no scopefor the rational criticism of individual ends, and also by Kantians, who think that the requirementsof reason ultimately constrain us to choose in accordance with the moral law. From the perspectiveof practical and theoretical deliberation, we commonly grant the force of these structuralrequirements, acknowledging a kind of rational pressure to bring our beliefs and intentions intocompliance with the instrumental principle and other standards of consistency and coherence.

Many philosophers take such structural requirements at face value, granting that practical reason isrightly governed by and responsive to these wide-scope demands. But what is the relation betweenstructural requirements of this kind and our reasons for action and belief? One view, held incommon by Humeans and by some Kantian constructivists (see sec. 2 above), is that reasons arefundamentally derivative from rational requirements. What one has reason to do, on this view, iswhat one would desire or intend to do if one was fully rational (i.e. fully in compliance with thewide-scope structural requirements that govern one's attitudes in combination).

For those who do not share this reductionist view, however, the status of rational requirementsbecomes more puzzling. One might hold that practical reason is ultimately answerable to twodifferent kinds of constraints: to rational requirements on the one hand, and to independent factsabout what one has reason to do on the other hand. But this position is potentially unstable. Oncethe independence of structural requirements from normative reasons is made clear, it is no longerobvious why we should care about whether our attitudes do or do not comply with the structuralrequirements. On this view, there is nothing wrong with failing to take the necessary means toyour end, unless the end itself is one that you have compelling reason to pursue (Raz 2005). Moregenerally, it has been argued that there are no independent requirements of structural rationality atall, and that the appearance of such requirements within the deliberative point of view can beexplained by substantive features of the reasons to which both practical and theoretical reason areultimately and properly responsive (Kolodny 2005).


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5. Maximizing RationalityHumean proponents of structural approaches to practical reason have attempted to accommodatethe rational criticism of individual ends, without departing from the spirit of Zweckrationalitt, byexpanding their view to encompass the totality of an agent's ends. Thus, even if there are noreasons or values that are ultimately independent of an agent's given ends, the possibility remainsthat we could criticize particular intrinsic desires by reference to others in an agent's subjectivemotivational set. An agent's desire for leisure, for instance, might be subordinated insofar as itssatisfaction would frustrate the realization of other goals that are subjectively more important tothe agent, such as professional success. Practical reason, it might be suggested, is a holisticenterprise, properly concerned not merely with identifying means to the realization of individualends, but with the coordinated achievement of the totality of an agent's ends.

Many philosophers take this holistic approach to be the most promising way of thinking about thetasks of practical reason. It defines an important and difficult problem for practical reason toaddress, without departing from the metaphysically modest assumption that there is no court ofappeal for the rational criticism of an agent's ends that is independent of those ends themselves.The holistic approach finds its most sophisticated and influential expression in the maximizingconception of practical rationality. According to the maximizing conception, the fundamental taskof practical reason is to determine which course of action would optimally advance the agent'scomplete set of ends. Thus it is widely accepted that the rational action for a given agent to take isthe one whose subjective expected utilityreflecting both the utility of possible outcomes, fromthe agent's point of view, and the agent's beliefs about the probability of those outcomesis thehighest.

The maximizing conception of practical rationality has been influentially developed in decisiontheory and in the theory of rational choice (as studied, for instance, in modern economics). Thesedisciplines articulate with mathematical precision the basic idea that practical rationality is amatter of consistency in action: people act rationally to the extent they do what is likely to bringabout the best state of affairs, given both their preferences over the outcomes that may be broughtabout through their agency and their beliefs about the probability of those outcomes. Proponentsof these theories sometimes claim for them the additional advantage of empirical adequacy,arguing that they are flexible enough to accommodate the full range of behaviors that humanagents engage in, both within the marketplace and outside of it. Especially if one operates with thenotion of revealed preferencespreferences, that is, that are ascribed to agents solely on thebasis of actual behaviorthen virtually anything an agent might choose to do could be interpretedas an attempt to maximize expected utility. Decision theory, on the resulting interpretation of it,becomes an all-encompassing framework for understanding free human behavior, according towhich all agents who act freely are striving to produce outcomes that would be optimal, relative totheir current preferences and beliefs.

If decision theory is interpreted in this way, however, then its relevance to the understanding ofpractical reason may appear correspondingly tenuous (compare Pettit and Smith 1997). Themaximization of subjective utility is supposed to represent a normative ideal, one by appeal towhich we can assess critically the deliberations of agents. In this guise, the attraction of themaximizing model lies in the idea that there can be rational requirements on action, stemmingfrom the totality of an agent's preferences and beliefs, even if we do not assume that there areindependent, substantive standards for the critical assessment of individual ends. But thisnormative interpretation of maximizing rationality is tenable only if it is at least conceivable that


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individual agents might sometimes fail to satisfy its requirementsanoughtthat it is not so muchas possible to flout is not really an ought at all (Lavin 2004). Thus the axioms of decision theoryinclude constraints on an agent's overall preferences (such as completeness and transitivity) thatmight be violated even by agents who are striving to satisfy their currently strongest desires. Suchagents will be criticizable by the lights of decision theory insofar there is no consistent utilityfunction that can be ascribed to them on the basis of their actual choices and behavior. Thenormative credentials of decision theory rest, then, on the plausibility of the axioms that are takento define an individual utility functionaxioms that may not be quite as innocent oruncontroversial as they appear (compare Mandler 2001).

Further questions arise about the plausibility of the normative requirement to maximize expectedutility. Doubts have been expressed, for instance, in regard to the assumption that it is necessarilyirrational to fail to select that action that would be optimal, relative to one's preferences andbeliefs. Perfectly rational agents often appear to be content with states of affairs that are goodenough, from the perspective of their aims and desires, even when they know that alternatives areavailable that promise a higher return; they satisfice, rather than seeking to maximize the valueof the outcomes achievable through their actions (Slote 1989). They also treat their past intentionsand plans as defeasibly fixed constraints on deliberation, rather than attempting to maximizesubjective utility anew in every situation they confront (Bratman 1987). Defenders of themaximizing model contend that it is flexible enough to accommodate alleged counterexamples ofthese kinds (Pettit 1984). If not, however, there may be grounds for doubting that it represents abasic norm or practical reason.

A different issue about maximizing rationality concerns the set of desires or aims that is taken asfixed for purposes of applying the requirement of maximization. We may distinguish two basicapproaches. The first and perhaps most common of these takes the subjective utility of alternativeactions to be determined by the agent's preferences at the time of deliberation. According to thisinterpretation of the maximization model, we are rational to the extent we do that which bestpromotes the totality of our present aims. A second and quite different interpretation results if weexpand the set of desires that determine the subjective utilities of outcomes to include the totalityof the agent's preferences over time. According to this model, rational agents aim to maximize thesatisfaction of all of their anticipated desires, accepting frustration of present preferences for thesake of greater satisfaction at later times. This interpretation of the maximizing model givesexpression to the common idea that a certain prudential regard for one's own future well-being is arequirement of practical reason (Nagel 1978, chaps 58). But if we take it to be a comprehensiveaccount of rationality in action, the prudential interpretation can also appear to be an unstablecompromise: if practical reason demands of us impartiality as between our present and futuredesires, should it not equally demand impartial consideration of the desires of other agents whomay be affected by what we do? Why should we take the distinction between persons to besignificant for the theory of practical reason, once we have denied such significance to thedistinction between different times in the life of a single agent (Parfit 1984; compare section 5below)?

However we define the class of desires that is subject to the requirement of maximization, we donot need to take those desires exactly as they are given. Many proponents of the maximizingapproach suggest that an agent's actual desires should be laundered somewhat before the demandto maximize is applied. For instance, if my desire for X is contingent on a false factual belief aboutthe nature of X, then it is not obvious that practical reason requires that the desire be taken intoaccount in determining what it is rational for me to do. A popular form of laundering would rule


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out desires of this kind, by subjecting to the requirement of maximization only those desires thatwould survive if the agent were factually well-informed about the objects of desire and thecircumstances of action, and deliberating in a calm and focused frame of mind. Indeed, once weare in the business of laundering desires we can go still further, excluding from considerationdesires that are substantively objectionable, even if they would survive the filter of correctedfactual belief. To move into this territory, however, would clearly be to abandon the Humeanframework of the original maximizing approach, assuming resources for the rational criticism ofends that are independent of the agent's actual dispositions.

Some philosophers respond to the cases that invite desire-laundering by distinguishing betweensubjective and objective dimensions of practical reason. Our corrected desires, such philosophersmaintain, are relevant to determining what it would be objectively rational for us to do, or what weobjectively have reason to do. But we are often not in a position to grasp that our factual beliefsare false. When this is the case, we can hardly be faulted for failing to do what we objectivelyhave most reason to do. In situations of this kind, it may be subjectively rational for us to strive tosatisfy our actual desires, even if some of those desires would not survive correction of ourmistaken but blameless factual beliefs.

6. Consequentialism, Value, and Moral ReasonIf maximizing rationality is not the unproblematic requirement of practical reason that it initiallyseemed to be, what are the alternatives to it? Let us begin with the assumption that criticalassessment of an agent's individual ends is off-limits. This apparent truism has been questioned bysome philosophers, who point out that many of our basic aims in life are rather inchoate; peoplewant, for instance, to be successful in their careers, and loyal to their friends, without being clearabout what exactly these ends require of them. To the extent one's ends are indeterminate in thisway, they will not provide effective starting points for instrumental, maximizing, or evensatisficing reflection. We need to specify such ends more precisely before we can begin to thinkabout which means they require us to pursue, or to generate from them a rank-ordering of possibleoutcomes. Here is a possible task for practical reason that does not fit neatly into the categories ofinstrumental or maximizing reflection, however broadly construed (Kolnai 2001,Wiggins 1987,Richardson 1994).

Practical deliberation about ends is not an easy or well-defined activity. There are nostraightforward criteria for success in this kind of reflection, and it is often unclear when it hasbeen brought to a satisfactory conclusion. These considerations encourage the Humean assumptionespecially widespread in the social sciencesthat there is no reasoning about final ends. On theother hand, how is one supposed to clarify one's largest and most important ends, if not byreasoning about them in some way? Rather than exclude such reflection because it does notconform to a narrowly scientific paradigm of reason, perhaps we should expand our conception ofpractical reason to make room for clarificatory reflection about the ends of action. To do so wouldbe to acknowledge that practical reason has an essentially heuristic dimension, one that isconnected to the project of self-understanding. By working out the meaning and implications ofsuch antecedent commitments as loyalty or success, for instance, we also help to get clear thevalues that define who we really are (Taylor 1985).

Humean models of practical reason rest on a basically consequentialist account of the relation ofaction to value. According to this account, value inheres ultimately in states of affairs, insofar as itis these that are the objects of subjective preference rankings. Actions are then judged rational to


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the extent they bring about states of affairs that are valuable in this way. It is a matter ofcontroversy, however, whether this is the most plausible way of thinking about the rationality ofaction. Defenders of satisficing models, for example, think that a given action can be rational evenwhen it is acknowledged by the agent that an alternative action would bring about a more valuablestate of affairs. Alternatively, it might be maintained that we can judge an action rational withoutbeing able to arrive at any clear independent ranking of the state of affairs produced by it, as betteror worse than the alternatives. Perhaps our judgments of the value of actions are ultimatelyparasitic on our convictions about the what there is reason to do or to admire; in that case, we willnot be able to derive conclusions about reasons from antecedent premises in the theory of value(Scanlon 1998, chap. 2). Related questions have been raised about the basic consequentialistassumption that value attaches in the first instance to states of affairs. Thus it may seem to distortour understanding of friendship, for instance, to maintain that what friends value fundamentallyare states of affairs (involving, say, joint activities with the friend); what people value as friendsare rather concrete particulars or relations, such as the persons with whom they are befriended ortheir relationships with those persons. Building on this idea in the theory of value, it has beenproposed that actions are rational insofar as they succeed in expressing the attitudes that it isrational to adopt toward the true bearers of intrinsic value: people, animals, and things (Anderson1993).

A supposed advantage of this approach is its ability to explain the rationality of behaviors thatseem intuitively sensible, but that are hard to fit into the consequentialist scheme (such ascommitments deriving from one's past involvement in an activity or project, which can look likean irrational weighting of sunk costs to the consequentialist; compare Nozick 1993). Butdefenders of the consequentialist model contend that we can account in terms of it for rationalactions that appear to resist treatment in consequentialist terms. For instance, if friends havespecial, agent-relative reasons to attend to the interests of each otherand not merely reasons topromote the neutral value of friendship wherever it may be instantiatedthis can be expressed inconsequentialist terms by introducing person-indexed value functions, which rank possible statesof affairs in terms of their desirability from the agent's point of view (Sen 2000).

Whether or not we accept a consequentialist framework, questions in the theory of value wouldseem to be an important focus for practical reflection. Many philosophers are attracted to the ideathat reasons for action are ultimately provided by the values that can be realized through action(Raz 1999). If this is right, and if we assume as well a realist or at least non-subjectivistconception of value, then a different way of thinking about the task of practical reason comes intoview. This may be thought of not primarily as a matter of maximizing the satisfaction of theagent's given ends, nor of specifying ends that are still inchoate, but rather as the task of mappingthe landscape of value. This task in turn admits of a number of different interpretations. In thespirit of G. E. Moore, we might understand the evaluative reflection relevant to deliberation inconsequentialist terms, as reflection about a non-natural property of goodness that is instantiatedby states of the world; but this is not a very popular approach today. An influential alternative to it,inspired by Aristotle, holds that the proper focus of practical reflection is the question of what itwould be to act well (Lawrence 1995, Foot 2001). According to this view, the values that arerelevant to determining what an agent ought to do are those that are specifically connected tohuman agency, specifying what it would be to be good (or at least non-defective) as a human agent(Thomson 2008). Those attracted to pluralistic conceptions of the good take a more expansiveview, suggesting that any concrete dimension of value that might be affected by action falls withinthe purview of practical deliberation (Raz 1999, Raz 2011).


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Morality has provided an especially fertile source of examples and problems for the theory ofpractical reason. A defining question of moral philosophy is the question of the rational authorityof moral norms: to what extent, and under what conditions, do people have compelling reasons tocomply with the demands of conventional morality? (Alternatively: to what extent, and under whatconditions, are people rationally required to comply with those demands?) Reflection on thisquestion has produced some of the most significant and illuminating philosophical work in thetheory of practical reason. Two divergent tendencies within this body of work can be singled out.Some accounts of moral reasoning proceed by relating it to patterns of reflection appropriate toother, non-moral domains, particularly the maximizing patterns canvassed in the section 5. Thus ithas been argued that, though morality imposes constraints on the direct pursuit of individualutility, these constraints can be justified in the terms of ordinary economic rationality; the strategyof morally-constrained maximization is recommended on grounds of enlightened self-interest, andthis in turn accounts for the authority of moral considerations to govern the practical reflection ofindividuals (Gauthier 1986). Other philosophers have tried to make sense of morality as a set ofrational norms by assimilating it more directly to the maximizing conception. Considerutilitarianism and other consequentialist approaches to the normative structure of morality, whichinterpret moral rightness in terms of the value of the consequences (of actions, policies,institutions, or other objects of moral assessment). These theories derive at least some of theirappeal from the fact that they apply to the moral domain the maximizing model of rationality thatseems both familiar and appealing outside of moral contexts. Thus one way to argue for ethicalconsequentialism is to observe that it is the theory that results when we combine the requirementof maximization with a distinctively moral constraint of impartiality, applying the requirement to aset of preferences that includes those of all the persons (or other sentient creatures) potentiallyaffected by our actions (Harsanyi 1982).

Opponents of this kind of ethical consequentialism stress the discontinuities between moral andnon-moral patterns of reasoning. They argue that morality is a source of demands (such asprohibitions on murder and deception) that cannot be represented accurately within the frameworkof maximizing rationality (for example, Scanlon 1998, chap. 5). If this is correct, then we will beable to make sense of moral requirements, as norms that appropriately govern the reflections ofindividual agents, only if we expand our conception of the forms and possibilities of practicalreason. Kantian approaches in ethics, for instance, treat morality as a source of limiting conditionson the rational pursuit of ends, and this idea suggests that there are demands of practical reasonthat do not have their source in the values that may be promoted by human action (Korsgaard1996b, Nagel 1978, O'Neill 1989). One way to make sense of such constraints would be topostulate that human agency is properly regulated by a sui generis concern to relate to otherpersons in a distinctive way, on a basis of mutual recognition or regard (Scanlon 1998). On thisapproach, reflection on the nature of morality can bring to light structures of practical reason thatwould not otherwise be salient.

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Related Entriescognitivism vs. non-cognitivism, moral | consequentialism | decision theory: causal | morality:reduction to instrumental reason | moral particularism | reasoning: moral | reasons for action:agent-neutral vs. agent-relative

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Practical Reason (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)