Decisions, reasons, and rationality

Ethics

Volumn 119, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 57-95

  Cullity, Garrett ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 69249160164     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/592585     Document Type: Article

References (128)

1. For the view that deciding is forming an intention after deliberation, or by reasoning, see Joseph Raz, "Reasons for Action, Decisions and Norms," Mind 84 (1975): 481-99, 488-89
2. Michael E. Bratman, "Intention and Means-End Reasoning," Philosophical Review 90 (1981): 252-65, 252
3. John Broome, "Practical Reasoning," in Reason and Nature: Essays in the Theory of Rationality, ed. Jose Bermudez and Alan Millar (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), 28-55, 86.
4. Storrs McCall, "Decision," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (1987): 261-88.
5. Michael Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
6. As I read them, according to Bratman, the answer is the first; according to John Broome, the second; according to Hugh McCann, neither. For the disagreement between Bratman and Broome, see Michael E. Bratman, "Intention, Belief, and Instrumental Rationality," in Reasons for Action, ed. David Sobel and Steven Walls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), sec. 5
7. John Broome, "The Unity of Reasoning?" in Spheres of Reason, ed. Simon Robertson, John Skorupski, and Jens Timmerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming), sec. 7.
8. Hugh McCann, "Settled Objectives and Rational Constraints," American Philosophical Quarterly 28 (1991): 25-36.
9. For example, Mark Schroeder, "The Scope of Instrumental Reason," Philosophical Perspectives 18 (2004): 337-64, 348.
10. Compare Joseph Raz, Practical Reason and Norms, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 18.
11. T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 17
12. Jonathan Dancy, Ethics without Principles (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), 15, 29.
13. John Broome, "Reasons," in Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz, ed. R. Jay Wallace, Philip Pettit, Samuel Scheffler, and Michael Smith (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), 29-42.
14. Sven Danielsson and Jonas Olson, "Brentano and the Buck-Passers," Mind 116 (2007): 511-22.
15. Allan Gibbard Thinking How to Live (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 188-91.
16. Noteworthy proposals for sharpening it up are made by Derek Parfit, "Reasons and Motivation,"Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. ser., 71 (1997): 99-130.
17. "Rationality and Reasons," in Exploring Practical Philosophy: From Action to Values, ed. Dan Egonsson, Jonas Josefsson, Bjorn Petersson, and Toni Ronnow-Rasmussen (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 17-39, 25, 29
18. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, 22-32
19. Joseph Raz, "Explaining Normativity: On Rationality and the Justification of Reason," in Engaging Reason: On the Theory of Value and Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 67-89, sec. 1
20. Niko Kolodny, "Why Be Rational?" Mind 114 (2005): 509-63, sec. 5.
21. It is of course possible to think of rationality as proper functioning withoutmaking rationality explanatorily prior to reasons: see, e.g., Bratman, "Intention, Belief, and Instrumental Rationality," sec. 1
22. Joseph Raz, "The Myth of Instrumental Rationality," Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (2005): 2-28, 15.
23. For examples of the neo-Aristotelian view, see Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), esp. chap. 4
24. Gavin Lawrence, "The Rationality of Morality," in Virtue and Reasons, ed. Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 89-147.
25. Bernard Williams, "Internal and External Reasons," in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 101-13
26. Christine M. Korsgaard, "Skepticism about Practical Reason," Journal of Philosophy 83 (1986): 5-25.
27. Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut, eds., Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997).
28. For several helpfully detailed examples of this kind, see Nomy Arpaly, "On Acting Rationally against One's Best Judgment," Ethics 110 (2000): 488-513. See also Harry Frankfurt, "Rationality and the Unthinkable," in The Importance of WhatWe Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 177-90
29. Harry Frankfurt, "Rationality and the Unthinkable," in The Importance of WhatWe Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 177-90
30. Alison McIntyre, "Is Akratic Action Always Irrational?" in Identity, Character and Morality, ed. Owen Flanagan and Amelie Rorty (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 379-400
31. Robert Nozick, The Nature of Rationality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), chap. 4. The following formulation in Parfit also seems to imply that Huck is rational: "We are rational insofar as we respond to reasons, or apparent reasons. We have some apparent reason when we have some belief whose truth would give us that reason" (Parfit, "Rationality and Reasons," 25). My own use of the phrase "apparent reasons" in the text differs from Parfit's. As I use it, F is an apparent reason for you to X when it appears to you that F is a reason to X.
32. An idea advocated, e.g., by Raz, Practical Reason and Norms, 66-73.
33. There is also the converse case. Suppose I truly believe that the drug will not cure me and that I have no reason to take it, but I then irrationally decide to take it. Now, if my decision is a reason, I have turned the second belief from true to false.
34. This is advocated by Schroeder, "Scope of Instrumental Reason," 344-45.
35. The reasoning of this paragraph would fail if, as the bad effects of the drug diminish, the strength of the alleged reason provided by the decision to take it also diminishes. But it is hard to see why that would be so.
36. "In a case like this"-but not in unusual cases like Kavka's toxin puzzle, discussed in Gregory S. Kavka, "The Toxin Puzzle," Analysis 43 (1983): 33-36, sec. 4.
37. Michael Bratman sharply identifies the problem and gives it this label in Bratman, "Intention and Means-End Reasoning," sec. 1-see also Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason, 24-27.
38. John Broome, "Are Intentions Reasons? And How Should We Cope with Incommensurable Values?" in Practical Rationality and Preference: Essays for David Gauthier, ed. Christopher W. Morris and Arthur Ripstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 98-120, 98-100
39. Richard Holton, "Rational Resolve," Philosophical Review 113 (2004): 507-35
40. Raz, "Myth of Instrumental Rationality," 10
41. John Brunero, "Are Intentions Reasons?" Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (2007): 424-44, sec. 1.
42. See, e.g., Brunero, "Are Intentions Reasons?" sec. 4
43. Raz, "Myth of Instrumental Rationality," 6-7, 23.
44. I do not think this is a convincing argument that decisions do not make this kind of difference to reasons; I am suggesting that we need a better argument for thinking that they do.
45. The same point can apply in situations where there is no mistake-e.g., when one chooses one of a range of long-term activities, none of which is worse than any other. See Raz, "Myth of Instrumental Rationality," 21-22.
46. In his discussion of these cases, T. M. Scanlon, "Reasons: A Puzzling Duality?" in Wallace et al., Reason and Value, 237, also argues that decisions are second-order reasons. However, his conclusion is not that reasons are subtracted, and I disagree with one of the premises of his argument-as I explain in Sec. VII below.
47. I offer a defense of those claims about fairness in Garrett Cullity, "Public Goods and Fairness," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (2008): 1-21.
48. See John Broome, "Normative Requirements," Ratio 12 (1999): 398-419
49. Broome, "Are Intentions Reasons?" secs. 5 and 6.
50. "Practical Reasoning," secs. 4 and 5.
51. This is my own rendering of a claim that Broome formulates slightly differently in various places. See Broome, "Normative Requirements," 410.
52. "Are Intentions Reasons?" 110
53. John Broome, "Normative Practical Reasoning," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. ser., 75 (2001): 175-93.
54. "Practical Reasoning," 96.
55. Broome, "Normative Requirements," 399.
56. Schroeder, "Scope of Instrumental Reason," 342-44.
57. Broome, "Reasons," 34-42.
58. See Broome, "Practical Reasoning," 97.
59. Kavka, "Toxin Puzzle." In Kavka's example there is a different requirement-I must, at midnight, intend to drink the toxin tomorrow afternoon-and no pharmacologist.
60. Some will want to resist this example by granting that you have a reason to get yourself into that state but not a reason to be in that state. (This is a distinction suggested, e.g., by Parfit, "Rationality and Reasons," 24.) But Broome himself would, I think, want to reject that distinction, and it looks problematic here. The only reasons you have for getting yourself into that state are the advantages of being in that state, and those advantages might in some circumstances not be reasons for getting yourself into that state (suppose you will be fed the pill in your sleep).
61. On this point, see John Broome, "Does Rationality Give Us Reasons?" Philosophical Issues 15 (2005): 321-37.
62. "Normative Requirements," 419.
63. See John Broome, "Have We Reason to Do as Rationality Requires?-a Comment on Raz," Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (2005): 1-8 n. 5.
64. Broome, "Does Rationality Give Us Reasons?" 322.
65. For the debate over the normativity of requirements of rationality, see Kolodny, "Why Be Rational?".
66. John Broome, "Wide or Narrow Scope?" Mind 116 (2007): 359-70
67. Niko Kolodny, "State or Process Requirements?" Mind 116 (2007): 371-85
68. Broome, "Does Rationality Give Us Reasons?"
69. See Broome, "Does Rationality Give Us Reasons?" 323.
70. I adapt an example from R. Jay Wallace, "Normativity, Commitment, and Instrumental Reason," Philosophers' Imprint 1 (2001): 24.
71. The only potential counterexample I can think of depends on the claim that a person can rationally intend E while believing E will not happen. Suppose I am jailed and credibly assured that I will be released if I betray my best friend. It could be rational to refuse to betray my friend and spend my time pursuing ways of getting out of jail that I know are very unlikely to succeed (filing the bars, perhaps). Here, we might think that I to-intend to get out of jail-that is the goal toward which my action is orchestrated-but believe that I will only in fact get out of jail if I betray my friend. However, the claim on which this depends is controversial: see, e.g., Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason, 35-42. Notice that although, if the controversial claim is correct, this is a counterexample to 3, it is not a counterexample to 4. Betraying my friend is not a suitable way of getting out of jail.
72. I offer no definition of 'means'. These are usually thought of as temporally prior causes of the attainment of ends and therefore distinguished from ways of attaining an end that constitute its attainment-see, e.g., Williams, "Internal and External Reasons," 104.
73. Raz, "Myth of Instrumental Rationality," 5.
74. It might be translated as "a sufficiently good means"-but only if that is interpreted in line with the stipulation I go on to give in the text.
75. Suppose I intend to go to a concert. Actually, the music will be bad, and I don't have a sufficient reason to go. If I did have a sufficient reason to go, the music would be good. And if the music was good, a lot more tickets would have been sold by now, and the only available seats would be at the back of the auditorium. Suppose I believe all of that but akratically decide to go anyway. Surely that does not mean that in order to avoid instrumental irrationality I must buy a seat at the back.
76. This properly allows for considerable vagueness. If I think I need to pick a marriage partner by middle age, the indeterminacy surrounding whether I have reached middle age will be reflected as time passes in a changing degree of belief whether I have done so and a corresponding variation in the extent to which it is irrational for me not to have done so yet. That seems a plausible result.
77. Suppose I form a spur-of-the-moment decision to contact my confessor immediately, I believe that in order to do so I must pick up the phone, and straight away I form the intention to pick up the phone. Then I do satisfy a version of 4-I. The relevant period is the very short period between making the former decision and forming the latter intention; "immediately" is the substitution for "by t."
78. If there is more than one suitable means, the disjunction of them can be substituted for M.
79. See, e.g., Severin Schroeder, "The Concept of Trying," Philosophical Investigations 24 (2001): 213-27.
80. See Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Daniel M. Wolpert, and Christopher Frith, "Abnormalities in the Awareness of Action," Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6 (2002): 237-42.
81. Here, I follow Bratman, who gives similar examples in Bratman, "Intention, Belief, and Instrumental Rationality," sec. 2.
82. Michael E. Bratman, "Intention, Belief, Practical, Theoretical," in Robertson, Skorupski, and Timmerman, Spheres of Reason, sec. 4.
83. This is a common theme among critics of Broome-style wide-scope requirements: it is often expressed as a worry about the "symmetry" of the different possible ways of complying with them. See Schroeder, "Scope of Instrumental Reason," 339
84. Raz, "Myth of Instrumental Rationality," sec. 2
85. T. M. Scanlon, "Structural Irrationality," in Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit, ed. Geoffrey Brennan, Robery Goodin, Frank Jackson, and Michael Smith (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2007), 84-103.
86. A further worry: suppose you have tried some means to your end but failed. It still seems irrational for you to retain your intention without making any further effort to implement it. Does 4-T fail to capture the irrationality of this kind of case? I think not. For now you have entered a new stretch of time-the one commencing with the failure of your first effort-and 4-T can be reapplied.
87. Broome is one leading proponent of this cognitivist strategy: see esp. Broome, "Practical Reasoning," secs. 1-3.
88. "Unity of Reasoning?" secs. 7-11.
89. Gilbert Harman, "Practical Reasoning," in Reasoning, Meaning, and Mind (New York:Oxford University Press, 1999), 46-74
90. Wallace, "Normativity, Commitment, and Instrumental Reason"
91. Kieran Setiya, "Cognitivism about Instrumental Reason," Ethics 117 (2007): 649-73.
92. Bratman, "Intention, Belief, Practical, Theoretical," and "Intention, Belief, and Instrumental Rationality"
93. John Brunero, "Two Approaches to Instrumental Rationality and Belief Consistency," Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (2005): 1-20.
94. Broome, "Unity of Reasoning?" sec. 7.
95. Wallace, "Normativity, Commitment, and Instrumental Reason," 20.
96. Even if we could list them all, meeting all of them would not be sufficient to make you rational. Your meeting them would need to be guided in the right way. The crucial question of how to explain this guidance condition is not one I try to answer here.
97. Compare Broome, "Unity of Reasoning?" sec. 2. Broome's own favored enkrasia requirement is formulated in terms of beliefs about ought rather than decisive reasons. The other difference is my addition of the clause, "and you have had time to form the intention to X." If getting from a belief that you have a decisive reason to X to an intention to X is a transition between different states, it will take time-although perhaps not very long. Without the addition of this clause, 5-P would carry the false implication that at the first moment you hold the two beliefs, but before the process of forming the intention is complete, the state you are in is a state of irrationality. As Broome points out, the occurrences of 'you' within the scope of the beliefs have to be read as "reflexive" pronouns- i.e., you must know who you are.
98. If there are no good reasons for a belief that are not pieces of evidence for its truth, then the second clause is redundant. I include it to sidestep the controversy over that.
99. Gilbert Harman, Change in View (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), 12.
100. See the exchange: Broome, "Wide or Narrow Scope?"
101. Kolodny, "State or Process Requirements?".
102. Schroeder, "Scope of Instrumental Reason," goes as far as defending a narrow-scope treatment of requirements of instrumental rationality.
103. Another way to avoid being classified by 4 as irrational is simply to stop intending E. Doing that when nothing in your situation has changed could be irrational. So it looks as though there is also an intention-constancy requirement of rationality on the inputs to your thinking about the means to your ends.
104. Kolodny, "Why Be Rational?" 513, 557-60.
105. Scanlon, "Reasons: A Puzzling Duality?" 238.
106. Scanlon, Brunero, "Are Intentions Reasons?" agrees with this claim at 436.
107. Raz, "Myth of Instrumental Rationality," 15.
108. It might seem better to resort to the weaker claim that "adopting a goal gives rise to a difference in what an agent must, in so far as he has that goal and is not irrational, see as reasons" (Scanlon, "Reasons: A Puzzling Duality?" 235). This claims that failing to see oneself as having reasons to take what one believes to be the means to one's intended ends is not impossible but irrational. But now this claim is too weak to explain the instrumental irrationality of the akratic incompetent. It implies that I am irrational in not seeing my means as reasons. But it does not explain the difference between two akratic agents, both of whom deny that they have reasons to take the suitable means, but one of whom is instrumentally incompetent while the other is not.
109. See J. David Velleman, "On the Aim of Belief," in The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 244-81
110. Nishi Shah, "How Truth Governs Belief," Philosophical Review 112 (2003): 447-82
111. Nishi Shah and David Velleman, "Doxastic Deliberation," Philosophical Review 114 (2005): 497-534.
112. See J. David Velleman, "What Good Is a Will?" in Action in Context, ed. Anton Leist and Holger Baumann (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 193-215.
113. Bratman, "Intention, Belief, and Instrumental Rationality," sec. 3.
114. Kolodny, "Why Be Rational?" 557
115. Scanlon, "Structural Irrationality," 7.
116. I take "failing to exercise a disposition" to span failing to have it at all and having it but not exercising it.
117. Notice the way in which my view differs from the "two-tier" account of such cases recommended by Holton, "Rational Resolve." On that account, the rationality of forming and holding a resolution confers rationality on its exercise. My different suggestion is that the dispositions we have decisive reasons to support fix the standards for rationality. To illustrate the difference, suppose you are convincingly taught from a young age that the natural selectionist theories you will be taught in school are the work of the devil and that you should shut your ears to the seductive arguments that will be used in their favor. It might then be rational for you to resolve not to listen to them. As I read it, a two-tier account carries the implication that it is therefore rational to go ahead and ignore the evidence for natural selection. On my view, this is irrational since your disposition, even if it is rationally acquired, is one which violates the standards for evidence sensitivity that we have decisive reasons to uphold.
118. See Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960).
119. Perhaps I will perform better in a Schelling case if I am oblivious to my own irrationality. But perhaps not.
120. Another corollary is that our practice of evaluation in terms of rationality and irrationality only makes sense on the assumption that we are similar enough to give us reasons to have the same dispositions in thinking about reasons. But that sounds correct too.
121. Nor are they inconsistent with such claims. If beliefs and intentions have constitutive aims, then it is plausible that our reasons to have those states will give us reasons to be disposed to meet the standards that fit them to being the states they are.
122. My remarks have some close affinities with those made by other writers. For example, Bratman writes: "In assessing the rationality of an agent for some intention or intentional action our concern is to determine the extent to which the agent has come up to relevant standards of rational agency. A failure on the agent's part to come up to such standards makes that agent guilty of a form of criticizable irrationality. In reaching such assessments our concern is with the actual processes that lead to the intention and action and with the underlying habits, dispositions and patterns of thinking and reasoning which are manifested in those processes. Our concern is with the extent to which these processes-and the underlying habits, dispositions, and patterns they manifest-come up to appropriate standards of rationality" (Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason, 51).
123. Raz, "Myth of Instrumental Rationality," 15.
124. I would not want to suggest that a completely unquestioning obedience to military superiors is ever (actually) what there is a sufficient reason to have. See Jessica Wolfendale, Torture and the Military Profession (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
125. Whether a state counts as a to-intention is settled by whether it is a commitment to which this requirement properly applies. Thus, merely orchestrating your action toward the achievement of a goal is not sufficient for a to-intention since it may be rational for you to aim at A and at the same time to aim at B, even though achieving both is undesirable. See Bratman's video game example in Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason, chap. 8, for illustration and discussion.
126. I present what follows as an explanation of why these applications of 4 are requirements of rationality. Unlike Broome, I offer no cognitivist explanation of the correctness of practical reasoning.
127. Note that in doing so, this goes beyond 4-I, which does not imply (although of course it does not deny) that this combination of states is irrational.
128. Bratman makes this point in "Intention, Belief, and Instrumental Rationality," sec. 5.