Varieties of Practical Reasoning [antikvár]

Chapter 1_Practical Reasoning: The Current State of PlayElijah MillgramPractical reasoning is reasoning directed towards action: figuring out what to do, as contrasted with figuring out how the facts stand. The study of practical reasoning has been a rapidly changing area, in which the fortification and defense of a very small number of entrenched positions inherited from the great dead philosophers has given way to a healthy profusion of competing and largely new views, and in which important ideas and arguments turn up annually or semiannuallya rate that remakes a philosophical subspecialty over the course of a decade or so. The aim of this anthology is to provide an overview of the state of the field as it has shaped up over the 1980s and 1990s,' and the aim of this essay is to serve both as a guide to the articles in this volume and as a map of the area. The essay is also meant to provide very selective suggestions for further reading, and the notes will point you to the one or two items on a particular issue or topic that you might want to look at next.Progress on practical reasoning is of great importance to ethics, and until not long ago, most work on practical reasoning took place inside one or another ethical system. The result has been to tie substantive moral theories in the great ethical traditions very tightly to different theories of practical reasoning. This suggests determining which tradition (if any) has gotten it right about the central moral questions (e.g., how one should treat one's fellow human beings) by figuring out which has the right account of practical reasoning. More generally, since a moral theory is (very roughly) a theory about what one should do, and a theory of practical reasoning is a theory of how to figure out what to do, the two kinds of theories are related as a theory of product to a theory of process. Not only should selecting the right process give you a way of choosing among the available products, but new, freestanding theories of practical