Joseph Raz claims that “practical reasoning is ... but reasoning about a particular subject matter ... [;] there is no distinctive form of reasoning called practical reasoning” (Raz [2011] 139). He here contrasts two views, the intellectualist view and a view that distinguishes practical reason and theoretical reason ‘formally’. We can understand the explanatory structure and burdens of intellectualism only if we understand the alternative view. To that end, I start with some issues that intellectualists take to show that practical reason and the will are distinct capacities. This separation is the crux of their account of
33. I take the name from Engstrom [2009]. In light of it, we can call intellectualists ‘theoretical cognitivists’. These labels have the virtue of not assuming that all cognition is theoretical cognition and all objects of reason are objects of theoretical reason.
practical thought. To oppose intellectualism is to deny it.
Like many intellectualists, R. Jay Wallace claims that Buridan cases and cases of akrasia show that practical reason and the will are distinct capacities even though often there “is no phenomenological gap between ... normative judgment ... and ... intention” (Wallace [2001] 97). Say I come to two grassy roads wanting wear that diverge in a yellow wood. They lead to the same place, are equally long, are equally covered in leaves that no step has trodden black, and all the rest of it. Everything against or in favor of taking one route is against or in favor of taking the other. Although I can represent a reason to take either road, then, I cannot represent a reason to take one over the other. Just try it. I therefore cannot form a judgment that I should take one over the other. If all there is to human agency is the ability to make judgments about reasons to act, I will never act. I will just sit here at the fork in the road and probably die like that donkey, at least if nothing relevant changes. Of course, I can take one of the roads, and hence there is more to our agency than the ability to make judgments about reasons to act. According to intellectualism, this something more is our will, which is separate from practical reason. Through it, I can choose between actions that I cannot distinguish on normative grounds through practical reason. I can self-consciously act even in Buridan cases because I have a will in addition to possessing practical reason.
Separating practical reason and the will also seems to explain the possibility of akrasia. Say I judge that should work on my paper but instead hit the dance floor. How is this conflict possible? Intellectualists think that the answer falls out of a fuller description of the case. Properly speaking, I judge that I should do something but decide to do something else. Because I act from decision, not judgment, I act as I decide, and akrasia is possible.
After reflecting on these kinds of cases, Wallace concludes that we “have the capacity for a sophisticated kind of rational agency, insofar as [we] can reach independent normative conclusions about what [we] have reason to do, and then choose in accordance with such normative conclusions. ... Once we have this power, however, it can be put to use in ways that are at odds with our own practical judgments” (ibid. 92). On the same basis, Derek Parfit says that when “we conclude that we ought to do something, we are not deciding to do this thing, but coming to have a normative belief. ... We always have two questions: Q1: What ought I to do?; Q2: What shall I do?” (Parfit [2011] II.386). Intellectualists thus claim that practical thought “involves making up my mind twice. Making up my mind about what is the best thing to do is a judgment … . Making up my mind about what to do is forming an intention” (Watson [2003] 128). Hence, these cases reveal a distinction between judgment and decision that is always present even though our phenomenology does not always present it.34 To judge is not to decide, to decide not to judge. Practical reason and the will are distinct capacities.
To separate practical reason and the will is to decompose practical thought. To deny intellectualism is to deny this separation and instead say that “the will is nothing other than practical reason” (Kant [1785] 4:412). This statement is too stark, though, because animals who lack practical reason have wills and act. Better said, the alternative is that practical reason is our kind of will. It is the
34. Many endorse this line of reasoning, sometimes surprisingly. For example, Allan Gibbard claims that “thinking what I ought to do is thinking what to do” (Gibbard [2003] ix-x). He also says that “conclusions on what to do have an automatic bearing on what to do. ... [D]eciding ... is not ... coming to a belief in some special kind of fact” (ibid. 5). According to him, then, practical reason is the will. However, in that work, he does not explain how I conclude what to do. He tries to fill this gap in Reconciling Our Aims when he says that I decide on the basis of ‘intuitions of the good’. From this idea, he concludes that practical thought has “two stages: In the first stage, I form my valences and preferences. In the second stage, if there’s more than one thing I equally and most prefer from among my alternatives, I pick one—not out of preference, but out of the necessity to choose if I’m not to be like Buridan’s ass. My strictly normative thinking is a matter of the first stage. ... Thinking what I ought to do, then, is not all of thinking what to do” (Gibbard [2008] 19). To form valences and preferences, though, is to ‘come to a belief’ about which action has a particular property. It never involves a decision, even if I most prefer one thing. On this view, then, Buridan cases show that practical reason and the will are distinct capacities.
self-conscious will. Practical reason and the will are thus the same capacity in us even though other animals have other kinds of wills.
One way to get into this alternative to intellectualism is to consider Anscombe’s distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge, where they are the perfect exercises of theoretical and practical reason that reveal the natures of the capacities. Theoretical reason first, practical reason after.
When I exercise theoretical reason, I represent objects that do not depend on that representation. I represent them as independent of that representation. A tree, say, is what it is regardless of my thought about it. It is an ‘independent existence’, and this fact about the way that I relate to the object also characterizes my representation of it. This aspect of my relationship to the object is, as it were, a formal part of that representation, not part of its content. It is the way that I represent the object, and I can articulate it by reflecting on the exercise. Theoretical reason is a capacity to represent independent existences as such. I thereby must represent the world as it is in order to exercise theoretical reason well. To exercise it well, then, is to non-accidentally represent an independent existence accurately. Because the object is an independent existence, I represent itaccurately when I represent it as it is independent of my representation of it. I non-accidentally represent it accurately when I stand in a proper relationship to it like, say, a perceptual or testimonial relationship. The basic question of theoretical reason is then ‘Whether P?’ or, generally, ‘What is the case?’ To answer it is to have “speculative knowledge” that “is derived from the objects known” (Anscombe [1957] §48).35
35. The role of first-person in these accounts of theoretical and practical reason is important. Although theoretical knowledge is knowledge of something as independent of this representation of it, it is not thereby knowledge of something as independent of any representation of it. If George Berkeley is right, every object depends on God’s representation of it. Still, he need not reject my account of theoretical and practical reason. He need only claim that God’s (primary) relationship to an object is not theoretical, which is what the devout should about a being who is in no way passive or receptive. More terrestrially, although Kant thinks that all possible objects of theoretical knowledge for human beings in some sense depend on the sensible and intellectual aspects of our capacity to know them, he does not think that a tree depends on my theoretical
Practical reason differs theoretical reason in those respects. When I exercise it, I represent objects that depend on my representation of them. I represent them as depending on that representation. For example, I represent cooking with my sweetie in order to spend time with him, and I spend time with him by cooking with him because of that representation. The object—the action—by nature depends on my representation of it in that way. That is why I am not acting if I sleepwalk through similar bodily movements. The object is a ‘dependent existence’, and this aspect of my relationship to the object characterizes my representation of the object. This aspect of my relation to the object is, as it were, a formal part of that representation. It is the way that I represent the object, and I can articulate it by reflecting on the exercise. Unlike the object of a theoretical representation, though, this fact is also part of the content of a practical representation. That content consists of a dependent existence, which is an object that depends on that very representation of it. I thereby must realize the object of my representation in order to exercise practical reason well. To exercise it well, then, is to non-accidentally represent a dependent existence accurately. I non-accidentally represent this object when I act in some way because doing so realizes this object. I non-accidentally represent this object accurately when the true description of my action as an intentional action is a determinate version of the content of my representation. The basic question of practical reason is then ‘Am I to φ?’ or, generally, ‘How am I to act?’ To answer it is to have “practical knowledge” that is “the cause of what it understands” or ‘of objects that derive from this knowledge’ (ibid.).36
representation of it. After all, you can know the same tree as independent of my representation of it or, for that matter, your representation of it. Finally, I can have theoretical knowledge of your action or, for that matter, my action. Although the action is independent of that theoretical representation of it, it is not thereby independent of the practical representation of the agent in question.
36. ‘What is the case?’ and ‘How am I to act?’ are the basic questions of theoretical and practical reason, not the only questions that I can address in exercises of these capacities. I can ask not only ‘What is the case?’ but ‘What would have been the case?’, can think not only about real objects but also imaginary objects. I can ask not only ‘How am I to act?’ but also ‘How would I
As we might put the basic idea, a theoretical representation describes its object while a practical representation produces its object.37 A theoretical representation answers to its object in the sense that the tree, say, is as it is and my job is to represent it as such. The object of a practical representation answers to that representation in the sense that my decision to walk to the store, say, determines whether my subsequent movements are proper realizations of that representation. As we might put it, my job in a theoretical representation is to represent an object that is actual, my job in a practical representation to make actual an object that I represent. If this difference between representations maps onto the difference between theoretical reason and practical reason, practical reason is our kind of will. It is our capacity to determine ourselves to act.
Since intellectualists think that practical reason is not the will, they need a different account of it.
have to act?’, can think not only about actually acting but also about hypothetically acting. Still, an account of the nature of the capacity focuses on them in order to understand the function of the capacity in our lives, and such an account must not stick to what the factual and counterfactual, actual and hypothetical, share. Otherwise, practical reason has no intrinsic relationship to acting, nor does theoretical reason have an essential connection to knowing and understanding our world. 37. This way of talking resembles the view that differentiates theoretical and practical reason in terms of propositional attitudes with different directions of fit. In fact, many philosophers think that Anscombe’s discussion of the different ways that a list can relate to the items in a shopping cart is the source of the direction-of-fit view (Anscombe [1957] §32). Although I think that this reading reveals more about contemporary philosophical preconceptions than it does about her thought, I cannot defend her honor here. I can, though, briefly explain why I think that the direction of fit view is an inadequate account of the difference between theoretical and practical representations, at least as I have here explained them drawing on Anscombe.
According to the direction-of-fit view, a theoretical representation consists of a mental state with mind-to-world direction of fit like a belief, and a practical representation consists of a mental state with world-to-mind direction of fit like a desire. The view says that these states share a single kind of relationship to an object, though the direction of the relationship flips. Since an object is independent of a belief about it, then, it must be independent of a desire about it in the relevant sense. A desire might cause its object whereas an object causes the belief about it, or mismatch between a desire and its object might indict the object whereas mismatch between a belief and its object indicts the belief. Regardless of whether a direction-of-fit theorist prefers a causal or normative version, or any other version, still, metaphysically, the object of a desire is not essentially an object of that desire. The object of a practical representation then cannot be a dependent existence because the object of the belief is not. This is, in effect, to deny the practicality of a practical representation as characterized by the essential interdependence of a practical representation and its object. Yet if you stick with that practicality, you cannot offer an account of a single relationship that theoretical and practical representations bear to the same object in different directions. A representation of an independent existence as such does not have the same kind of relationship as a representation of a dependent existence as such except ‘the other way around’. A theoretical representation instead lacks a relationship to its object that a practical representation possesses. To lack a relationship is not to possess it ‘the other way around’.
The argument from akrasia and Buridan cases does not provide that account since to say that practical reason isnot the will is not to say what it is. Still, intellectualism in some sense flows out of them. Since the will accounts for how we act from practical thought, practical reason is not itself tied to action. It must instead explain how practical thought has a standard of correctness that distinguishes the actions that are within my ability into the good and bad actions for me to perform. Think about that question and it might seem like there must be objects to which my judgment answers. Since that is a rough statement of the nature of theoretical reason, it is a rough statement of intellectualism. Let me explain.
Think back to the claim that my job in a practical representation is to make actual an object that I represent. Because the will has this function, I must be able to do what I decide to do, which conditions possible objects of my decision.38 This restriction establishes a standard of correctness for practical thought—I can err in thought if I decide to do something that is impossible for me. It does not establish everything proper to this standard, though, since to decide to act immorally or imprudently is wrong even if the action is within my power. Vice does not become virtue if I can pull it off. It is hard, though, to get a robust standard of correctness out of the nature of the will if my job is to make actual the object that I represent. I might do that when I decide to act immorally and imprudently, and all the worse for you and me. Whence this robust standard of correctness?
There are at least three ways to go here. You might deny that practical thought has a robust standard of correctness, as old school non-cognitivists do. You might say that it has such a standard because of its form, as practical cognitivists who claim that practical reason is our kind of will do. This view must show that the idea of making actual the object of my representation precludes more than it at
38. I show in the next section that intellectualists accept this condition. I argue that it does not imply an untoward version of internalism in “Practical Possibility”.
first seems to rule out. Or you might go intellectualist and separate practical thought into components. One component, the decision, follows the model of a practical representation, and its object answers to it. The other, the judgment, follows the model of a theoretical representation and answers to its object. Practical thought has a robust standard of correctness because one component has such a standard in the way that any theoretical representation does. Yet I can act from it because of its other component.
Try it this way. Another way to contrast practical reason and theoretical reason denies the
productive role of practical reason. It instead posits an evaluative role for it in contrast to the descriptive
role of theoretical reason. An exercise of theoretical reason says that some aspect of the world is some