Robert Audi

This paper defends a cognitive-motivational account of intending against recent criticism by J. Garcia, connects intending with a number of other concepts important in the theory of action — including decison, volition, and planning — and explores some principles of intention transfer construed as counterparts of epistemic principles governing closure for belief and justification. Several routes to intention formation are described; the role of intentions in planning is examined; and a holistic conception of intention formation and change is stressed. The proposed conception of intending as embodying at once a cognitive and a motivational commitment to action is thus shown to help in understanding both the explanation of action and the rationality of agents.

The concepts of reasons as supporting elements, of practical reason as a capacity, and of practical reasoning as a process are central in the theory of action. This paper provides a brief account of each. Several kinds of reason for action are distinguished. Practical reason is characterized both as a capacity whose exercise is largely constituted by a kind of responsiveness to reasons and as governed by certain normative principles; and practical reasoning is described as a kind of mental process in which reasons figure as premises and, from those premises, a practical conclusion is drawn. Much of the paper undertakes two related tasks: to distinguish the main kinds of practical reasoning and the associated criteria of assessment and to formulate some important substantive principles of practical reason. These principles yield criteria of several sorts: logical, inferential, epistemic, and material. On the theory presented, although any (non‐basic) intentional act can be grounded in practical reasoning, the same acts can be performed for the relevant reason(s) without being so grounded, and in either case their rationality depends on adequate support by the reason(s). One kind of reason is commonly thought to be captured by Kantian hypothetical imperatives. The final sections explore what constitutes a hypothetical imperative and what other principles are needed to account for practical rationality. A major conclusion is that in the domain of practical reason, if there are no categorical imperatives, there are no hypothetical imperatives either.

This paper replies to criticisms of the author's accounts of intending ("journal of philosophy", 1973), wanting ("philosophical studies", 1973), and common-sense explanations of intentional actions; and it extends the nomological theory of intentional action developed in those and other articles. the paper argues, negatively, that theoretical construct accounts of intentional concepts do not entail implausible views of self-knowledge, nor assimilate reasons to mechanical causes; and, positively, that both the way in which reasons render intelligible the actions they explain and the apparently non-contingent relation certain reasons bear to the actions they explain can be accommodated by a sound nomological theory of intentional action.

Weakness of will is a common phenomenon of human experience. But what is it? It has proved highly resistant to analysis, and even the accounts that seem to capture our intuitions about what weakness of will is raise problems about how it is possible. This is because these accounts seem inconsistent with some highly plausible principles about action. My aim here is to propose a new account of weakness of will and its relation to practical judgment, and to explain how weakness of will so conceived is possible.

This is an age of naturalization projects. Much epistemological work has been done toward naturalizing theoretical reason. One might view Hume as seeking to naturalize reason in both the theoretical (roughly, epistemological) and the practical realms. I suggest that whatever else underlies the vitality of Hume's instrumentalism - encapsulated in his view that 'reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions' - one incentive is the hope of naturalizing practical reason. This paper explores some broadly Humean versions of instrumentalism that are among the most plausible contenders to represent instrumentalism as a contemporary naturalistic position. It first offers a taxonomy of reasons for action and, in that light, formulates a plausible version of instrumentalism. It then raises difficulties for the view, some of them concerning the nature of desire. It also develops an epistemologically significant comparison of desires with beliefs. Given the magnitude of the difficulties, it outlines an alternative account of practical reason.

Hume maintained that “since all actions and sensations of the mind are known to us by consciousness, they must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear.” Descartes maintained a very similar doctrine, and Locke and Berkeley held at least part of the doctrine. I shall not try to set out precisely what any of these philosophers thought about self-knowledge; I cite them simply as proponents of the general view which I shall be examining in this paper: namely, that each of us has a special epistemic authority about his own mental life. This view is still widely held, particularly in the form of the thesis that one's sincere avowals of current mental states are incorrigible, i.e., such that, necessarily, no one ever has overriding reason to think them false.

I. the view that reasons cannot be causes. II. the view that the explanatory relevance of psychological states such as beliefs and intentions derives from their content, their explanatory role is not causal and we thus have no good reason to ascribe causal power to them. III. the idea that if the mental supervenes on the physical, then what really explains our actions is the physical properties determining our propositional attitudes, and not those attitudes themselves. IV. the thesis that since there are no laws linking (intentional) mental states to actions, those states cannot be genuine causes of action.

Intuitions are sometimes conceived as intellectual perceptions. They share with physical perceptions being direct and, in that way, non‐inferential. Contemporary epistemologists tend to consider all knowledge dependent in some way on perception but not as requiring countenancing abstract objects. We do, however, speak of seeing truths of logic and mathematics, even if we do not view the abstracta they apparently concern as in the causal order. How, then, is knowing them possible if, as is quite plausible, knowledge depends on a causal connection between objects known and beliefs constituting knowledge of them? Much language concerning abstracta—using “seeing”, “grasping”, “perceiving”, and the like—invites comparing the apprehension of abstract entities with the perception of concrete entities. How much like perception of the physical is apprehension of the abstract? And can an account of perception encompass both? Might intuition, taken as apprehension in the way W. D. Ross did, be a kind of intellectual perception and, if so, must there be a causal element in it after all? This paper draws on an overall account of perception to frame a theory that provides for an ontology applicable to perception of the physical, apprehension of the abstract, and knowledge of the normative.

Philosophers and others characteristically give multiple arguments for their important controversial views. Why is one good argument not enough? Most philosophers would perhaps agree to this much: at their best, arguments are paths to understanding, pillars of conviction, providers of confirmation, and nourishment for the intellect. But how should we unpack these metaphors? This paper attempts to contribute to that task. It shows why a good cumulative case should not be identified with a conjunctive one (culminating in a single argument with all the relevant premises conjoined), and it brings out how propositional and non-propositional grounds differ significantly from one another but can be integrated into a unified case for what they mutually support.

This chapter has three main aims: first, to distinguish between different kinds and degrees of moral disagreement, particularly between disagreements _in_ reasons and disagreements _on_ reasons; second, to show how, in both moral and non-moral disputes, rational disagreement is possible even on self-evident propositions; and third, to sketch a conception of disagreement between rational parties that bears on the problem of religious diversity as a challenge to philosophical theology. Disagreement in moral matters has long been considered a challenge to objectivist ethical theories, and the difficulty of resolving such disagreement appears to support skepticism about the possibility of knowledge, and even of justification, regarding religious beliefs, religious faith, and religious conduct. The chapter explores rational disagreements of many kinds and concludes with an assessment of how, given what we learn from examining them, objectivity can be plausibly claimed in normative matters.