‘HOW AM I TO ACT?’ As far as we know, only we can ask this question and act from our answers to it. My cat can act in ways that are good or bad for others and for himself. I can act in some way, though, because
it is good for others and for myself. In this way, only human beings have a self-conscious capacity to act.30 Take these statements of this idea by theorists whose account of it I shall criticize:
[A]ctions of rational agents are guided by and responsive to their deliberative reflection about what they have reason to do. (Wallace [1999] 44) [A]gent’s rational capacities enable them (fallibly) to identify some values in some options and to respond to them, i.e. to recognize that those aspects of the option that make it valuable are reasons for taking it, and they enable them also to do so, to take that
option for that reason. (Raz [2011] 4)
Our practical reasoning should not end with … normative beliefs. To be fully practically rational, we must also respond to practical reasons or apparent reasons with our … acts. (Parfit [2011] II.424) A rational agent ... is capable of thinking about reasons for certain actions ..., and ... reaching conclusions about which of these are good reasons ... [that] make a difference to the actions ... that it proceeds to [perform]. … [I]f a rational agent believes that p is a conclusive reason to do a, she generally will do a, and do it for this reason.
(Scanlon [2014] 54)
These theorists identify two aspects of our practical thought. First, such thought is subject to a standard of correctness. For instance, I am incorrect if I think that I am to belt ‘I Put A Spell on You’ in the middle of a colloquium. I am correct if I think that I am to save the Nina for departmental karaoke. Second, I can
30. Nothing turns on the terminology of capacities. Powers, faculties, dispositions, abilities, capabilities, kinds of activities, and any other term or phrase that similarly distinguishes between a kind and instances or exercises of it are fine.
act from such thought or self-consciously do what I represent as what I am to do. If I think that I am to ask my lover for menu suggestions for our soiree, I can thereby put the question to him.
Putting these aspects together, we can act from thought that is subject to a standard of correctness, which distinguishes us from the other animals. This basic idea allows for many interpretations. In this paper, I will argue that many philosophers explain the standard of correctness of practical thought in a way that is incompatible with acting from that thought. I call this explanation of the standard of correctness intellectualism.31 As I like to put it, intellectualism is the view that practical reason is a species of theoretical reason, distinguished from others by its objects: reasons to act.32 The basic idea behind intellectualism is that to exercise reason is to represent an object that exists independently of my thought about it, and I represent it well only if I non-accidentally represent it accurately. Just as a tree and the number 7 exist independently of my thought about them, so a reason for me to act exists independently of my thought about it. To exercise reason well with respect to any of them is to non-accidentally represent them accurately. The object and the content of the representation of it make a judgment a practical judgment—an exercise of that species of theoretical reason, not another.
Intellectualism is compatible with many accounts of the constitution of reasons to act. They might be fundamental or might depend on other normative or non-normative stuff. They might be ‘objective’ or ‘subjective’. They might be internal or external in the senses familiar from the
31. I take the name from Lavin [2012].
32. Intellectualists might claim that there is just reason, with theoretical reason and practical reason as species distinguished by their contents. However, as I will explain, intellectualists think of reason as such as philosophers who distinguish theoretical reason and practical reason on formal grounds think of theoretical reason. My formulation is preferable since it does not define the alternative out of existence.
internal/external reasons debate. They might be ‘ontic’ or ‘non-ontic’ facts, ‘substantial’ or ‘insubstantial’ properties, ‘world-involving’ or ‘non-world-involving’ truths. Some of them might exist or error theorists might be right. And so on for many metaethical debates. Intellectualism is compatible with these views about the constitution of reasons to act because it is about how I relate to reasons to act in thought, not about those objects of thought. It is about the form of the representation that constitutes an exercise of practical reason and its relationship to its object.
An argument against intellectualism thus has much broader application than many familiar criticisms in practical philosophy. For example, familiar metaphysical and epistemological objections to a certain kind of objectivisim about reasons to act only target intellectualist views with specific accounts of the constitution of reasons to act. Likewise, certain arguments against a certain kind of subjectivism about reasons to act only target intellectualists views with specific accounts of the constitution of reasons to act. Even if these arguments work, they leave the basic picture of practical reason intact and only challenge one way of working within that framework. My criticism instead addresses what unifies intellectualists of various stripes and does not depend on the details that differentiate them.
I will show that this intellectualism entails a ‘compositional’ account of practical thought, by which I mean it decomposes practical thought into two the exercises of two capacities, practical reason and the will. I shall argue that if practical reason and the will are distinct capacities, I cannot act from my practical judgment. I will also argue that if I cannot act from practical judgment, intellectualism is incompatible with a certain condition on the possibility of reasons to act. Without reasons, though, a species of theoretical reason about them cannot exist. Intellectualism is thus self-undermining.
aim in this paper. I wish to clear ground for a view that says that practical reason differs from theoretical reason in form rather than merely in the content of its representations. It says that practical cognition or thought is a different kind of cognition or thought than theoretical cognition or thought. I find this kind of practical cognitivism, as we might call it, in Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Christine Korsgaard, among others, though interpretations vary.33 Regardless of who holds the view, though, these ideas are not much on the scene these days and are difficult to state, let alone defend, within the theoretical confines of contemporary practical philosophy. Just think about how ‘theoretical cognition’ or ‘theoretical thought’ sound like pleonasms. Think about what that implies about how we hear ‘practical cognition’ and ‘practical thought’. Intellectualism is the default position, not because we consider and reject the alternative but because we think about things in a way that keeps us from considering it. My goal is to focus on it and expose it in order to let us start thinking about and developing an alternative.