action, norms (bramdom)

7/27/2019 Action, Norms (Bramdom)

1/14

Action, Norms, and Practical ReasoningAuthor(s): Robert BrandomReviewed work(s):Source: Nos, Vol. 32, Supplement: Philosophical Perspectives, 12, Language, Mind, andOntology (1998), pp. 127-139Published by: Wiley-BlackwellStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2676143 .

Accessed: 29/10/2012 18:02

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Wiley-Blackwell is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Nos.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=blackhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2676143?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2676143?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black


2/14

PhilosophicalPerspectives 12 Langzzage Mind and Ontology 1998

ACTION, NORMS, AND PR&CTICAL REASONING

Robert BrandomUniversity of Pittsburgh

In this paperI aim to do threethings,corresponding o the threepieces of mytitle:* To explain the expressive role that distinguishes specifically normativevocabulary.That is, to say what it is the job of such vocabulary to make

explicit. Doing this is saying what 'ought'means.* To introducea non-Humeanway of thinkingaboutpracticalreasoning.* To offer a broadlyKantianaccount of thewillas a rational aculty of prac-. .tlca. . reasonlng.

The idea is to do that by exploiting the structuralanalogies between discursiveexit transitions n action and discursive entry transitions n perception to showhow the rationalwill can be understoodas no more philosophically mysteriousthan our capacityto notice red things.Practicalreasoningoften leads to action, so it is clear thatthere s an intimate

connectionbetween these two elements of my title. But one might wonder: whyaction andnorms?Let me startwith some background.The beginning of wisdom in thinkingabout these matters(as for so many others) is to look to Kant: the great, greymotherof us all. For we are in the privileged positionof being downstream romthe fundamentalconceptual sea-change effected by the replacementof concernwith Cartesiancertaintyby concern with Kantiannecessity-that is, of concernwith our grip on concepts (is it clear? is it distinct?)by concern with their grip onus (is this rulebinding on us? is it applicableto this case?). Kant' big idea is thatwhat distinguishesjudgment and action from the responses of merely naturalcreatures s neithertheir relationto some special stuffnor theirpeculiar transpar-ency, but rather hat they are what we are in a distinctive way responsibleor.They express commitmentsf ours: commitmentsthat we are answerablefor in


3/14

128 / RobertBrandomthe sense thatourentitlemento them is always potentially at issue, commitmentsthat arerationaln the sense that vindicating the correspondingentitlements s amatterof offering reasons or them.

Another big idea of Kant's-seeing the judgment s the smallest unit ofexperience is a consequence of the first one. The logic he inheritedstartedwitha doctrine of terms,divided into the singular and the general, proceeded to adoctrineofjudgment understoodn terms of the predicationof a general term ofa singular one), and thence to a doctrine of consequencesr inferences. Kantstarts with judgment because that is the smallest unit for which we can be re-sponsible. This thought is taken over by Frege, who begins with the units towhich pragmaticforce can attach, and Wittgenstein, who looks at the smallestexpressions whose utterancemakes a move in the language game.) It is under hisrubricthatjudgment is assimilated to action. A third Kantian dea is then to un-derstandbothjudgment and action as the applicationof concepts.He does thatbyunderstanding oncepts as therules hat determinewhat knowers and agents areresponsiblefor what they have committed themselves to.

I am going to discuss the topics of my title action, norms, and practicalreasoning in the idiom I develop in my book,Making t Explicit.1o begin with,I will work within the context of what I call there a normative ragmatics. pe-cifically, I think of discursive practice as deontic scorekeeping:the significanceof a speech act is how it changeswhatcommitmentsandentitlementsone attributesand acknowledges. I work also within the context of an inferential emantics.That is, discursive commitments(to begin with, doxastic ones) are distinguishedby their specifically inferential articulation:what counts as evidence for them,what else they commit us to, what othercommitments hey are incompatiblewithin the sense of precluding entitlement to. This is a reading of what it is for thenorms n question to be specifically conceptualorms.The overall idea is thattherationality hat qualifies us as sapients and not merely sentients) can be identi-fied with being a player in the social, implicitly normativegame of offering andassessing, producingand consuming, reasons.

I furtherendorse anexpressiveiew of logic.That is, I see the characteristicrole that distinguishes specifically logical vocabulary as being making explicit,in the form of a claim, features of the game of giving and asking for reasons invirtue of which bits of nonlogical vocabulary play the roles that they do. Theparadigm s the conditional. efore introducing his locution, one can do some-thing, namely endorse an inference. After introducing the conditional, one cannow saythat the inference is a good one. The expressive role of the conditional sto makeexplicit,n the form of a claim, what before was implicitn our practiceof distinguishing some inferences as good.

Giving and asking for reasons for actions s possible only in the context ofpracticesof giving and asking for reasons generally that s, of practicesof mak-ing and defendingclaimsorjudgments. or giving a reason is always expressinga judgment:making a claim. That is, practicalreasoning requires he availabilityof beliefs (doxastic commitments) as premises. On the side of the consequencesof acquisition of practical deontic statuses, it appears in the essential role that


4/14

Action, Norms, and Practical Reasoning / 129propositional,that is, assertible, contents play in specifying conditions of suc-cess:that is, what would count as fulfilling a commitmentto act. Forming anintention undertaking commitment) o put a ball througha hoop requiresknow-ing what it is to puta ball througha hoop-what must be true or that ntentiontosucceed. This is a point about explanatoryautonomy: claim that one can ex-plain the role of beliefs in theoreticalreasoning (leading from claims to claims)first, without needingto appeal to practicalreasoning, while I do not believe onecan do things in the opposite order.)II

The treatment f actionI am sketching s motivatedby athree ruisms,andtwomore nteresting deas. First,beliefs makea differencebothto what we say,and towhat we do.We license others to infer our beliefs (or, as I will say, our doxasticcommitments)both from our explicit claims and from our overt intentional ac-tions. Next is a (by now familiar) lesson we have been taughtby Anscombe andDavidson.2Actions are performances hat are intentionalunder some specifica-tion.3Suchperformances an genuinelybe thingsdone ven though hey have manyspecificationsunderwhich they arenot ntentional.A third,companion dea is thatat least one way a specification of a performancecan be privilegedas one underwhich it is intentional s by figuring as the conclusion of a piece of practicalrea-soning that exhibitsthe agent's reasonsfor producingthatperformance.Davidson's original idea was to eliminateintentionsn favor of primaryrea-sons,understood n terms of beliefsandpro-attitudesparadigmatically,desires).My first idea is to start nstead with normativestatuses andattitudescorrespond-ing to beliefsand intentions.'ll try to explain desires,and more generally, thepro-attitudesexpressed by normativeocabulary, n terms of those beliefs andintentions. The thoughtis that thereare two species of discursive commitment:the cognitive (or doxastic), and the practical.The latter arecommitmentsto act.Acknowledgmentsof the first sort of commitmentcorrespond obeliefs; cknowl-edgments of the second sort of commitmentcorrespondto intentions. he firstare takings-true, he second makings-true.Practical commitmentsare like dox-astic commitmentsin being essentially inferentially articulated.They stand ininferentialrelationsboth among themselves (both means-endand incompatibil-ity) and to doxastic commitments.

The secondbasic idea motivatingthe present accountis that the noninferen-tial relations between acknowledgmentsof practical commitmentsand states ofaffairs brought aboutby intentionalactioncan be understoodby analogy to thenoninferential elationsbetween acknowledgmentsof doxasticcommitmentsandthe states of affairs they are broughtabout by through conceptually contentfulperception.

a) Observation(a discursive entry ransition)depends on reliable disposi-tions to responddifferentiallyto states of affairs of various kinds by ac-


5/14

130 / RobertBrandomknowledging certain sorts of commitments,that is, by adoptingdeonticattitudesand so changing the score.b) Action (a discursive exittransition)depends on reliable dispositions toresponddifferentially to the acknowledgingof certainsorts of commit-ments, the adoptionof deontic attitudesandconsequent changeof score,by bringingaboutvarious kinds of states of affairs.

Elaborating he first idea (modeling intentionon belief as corresponding oinferentially articulatedcommitments) involves examining the sense in whichpracticalreasons are reasons; laboratingthe second idea (modeling action onperception,discursiveexits on discursiveentries) involves examining the sensein which practicalreasons arecauses. t is this latter dea thatmakes sense of thedistinction,so crucialto Davidson, between actingfor a reason, andmerely act-ing witha reason.Put in terms of the deontic scorekeepingmodel of discursive practice, theidea is that intentions re to reasonsas commitmentsre to entitlements.t fol-lows thaton thismodel,Davidson wouldbe wrong tosay that"someonewho actswith a certainintention acts for a reason."Forjust as one canundertakedoxasticor theoreticalcommitments to which one is not entitled by reasons, so one canundertakepracticalcommitments to which one is not entitledby reasons. Whatmakes a performancean action s that it is, or is produced by the exercise of areliabledifferentialdispositionto respondto, the acknowledgmentof a practicalcommitment.Thatacknowledgmentneed not itself have been producedas a re-sponse to theacknowledgmentof othercommitments nferentiallyrelatedto it asentitlement-conferring easons.(Thoughthat t couldbe so elicited isessential toits being the acknowledgmentof a practicalcommitment.)III

The strategyof trying to understanddesires, andthepro-attitudes xpressedby normativevocabularymoregenerally, n termsof theirrelation to beliefs andintentions insteadof the more orthodoxHumeanandDavidsonian strategy ofstartingwith beliefs and desires requires thinking about practical reasoningsomewhatdifferently.Considerthe following threebits of practicalreasoning:

cr) Only opening my umbrellawill keep me dry, soI shall open my umbrella.,8) I am a bankemployee going to work, soI shall wear a necktie.y) Repeating the gossip would harmsomeone, to no purpose, soI shall not repeat the gossip.

'Shall' is used here to express the significance of the conclusion as the acknowl-edging of a practicalcommitment. ('Will' would be used correspondingly o ex-press a doxastic commitmentto a prediction.)


6/14


7/14

132 / Robert Brandominference",postulatingimplicit premises as needed, mightbe called aformalistapproach o inference.It tradesprimitivegoodnesses of inferencefor the truthofconditionals.I amnot claimingthatone cannotdecide to talk this way. The pointis just that one neednot.If one rejectsthe formalistorderof explanation,what shouldone say aboutthe role of conditionalclaims, such as "IfPittsburgh s to the Westof Philadel-phia, thenPhiladelphia s to the East of Pittsburgh"?The claim is that althoughsuch conditionalsneed not be addedas explicit premises in orderto license theinferencefrom theirantecedentsto their consequents,they nonetheless serve tomake explicit-in the form of a claim the otherwisemerely implicit endorse-mentof a materialproprietyof inference.Before we have conditionalson board,we can do something,namely treatcertain material nferences as correct. Oncewe have the expressive power of those logical locutions, we come to be able tosay thatthey are good. The expressivist line about logic sees conditionals asmaking mplicitmaterial nferential ommitmentsexplicit, in the formof claims-but as notrequiredto make the inferences they explicitategoodinferences. In-deed,on this view, playingsuch an explicitatingexpressiverole is preciselywhatdistinguishessome vocabularyas distinctively logical.IV

I want to treatIt is raining

A) .e. I shall open my umbrella.like

It is rainingB) .e. The streets will be wet.

and say thatneither ne is an enthymeme.The Davidsonianwill respond thatwe can see that the reasonoffered in thefirst case is incomplete,because the inferencewould not go through f I did notwant to stay dry.But I thinkthat whatwe reallyknow is rather hatthe inferencewouldnot go through f I had a contrary esire:say, theGene Kelly desire to singand dance in the rain, and so to get wet. But the fact thatconjoining a premiseincompatiblewith the desireto staydry would infirm the inference(turn t into abad one) does not show that the desire was all along alreadyfunctioning as animplicitpremise.There wouldbe a case for thatconclusion only if the reasoninginvolved were monotonic that is, if the fact that the inference fromp to q is agood one meantthatthe inferencefromp&r o q must be a good one. (So thatthefact thatthe latter s nota good argumentsettled it that the formerisn't either.)But material nferenceis not in general monotonic even on the theoreticalside. It can be in special cases, say in mathematicsand fundamentalphysics. But


8/14

Action, Norms, and Practical Reasoning / 133it never is in ordinaryreasoning,and almostnever in the special sciences. (Rea-soning in clinical medicine, for instance, is resolutelynonmonotonic.) Considerthe arguments hat are codified in the following conditionals:

i) If I strike this dry,well-made match,then it will light. [poq]ii) If p and the match is in a very strongelectromagnetic ield, then it willnot ight. [p&ro q]iii) If p andrandthe match s in a Faraday age, then t will light.[p&r&soq]iv) If p andrands and theroom is evacuatedof oxygen, thenit will not ight.[p&r&s&to q]. . .

The reasoningwe actuallyengage in always permits the constructionof inferen-tial hierarchieswith oscillating conclusions like this. A certainkind of formalistabout ogic will want to insist, for reasons of high theory, thatmaterial nferencemustbe like formal inference in being monotonic. And at this point in the dia-lectic, such amonotonousormalistwill invoke ceterisparibus lauses. I do notwant to claim that invoking suchclauses ("allother things being equal") s inco-herent or silly. But we must be careful how we understand he expressive rolethey play. Forthey cannot (I want to say, in principle)be cashedout; theircontentcannot be made explicit in the form of a series of additionalpremises. They arenot shorthand or something we couldsay if we took the time or the trouble.Theproblem s notjust thatwe wouldneed aninfiniteist of theconditions being ruledout thoughthat is true. It is that the membershipof such a list would be indef-inite:we don'tknow how to specify in advancewhat belongs on the list. If we tryto solve thisproblemby ageneral haracterization,we get something equivalentto: "ceteris aribus,q follows fromp" meansthat"q ollows fromp unless thereis some infirmingr interferingondition."But this is just to say thatq followsfromp except in the cases where for some reason it doesn't.I would contend thatceterisparibus lauses should be understoodas explic-itly marking henonmonotonicityof an inference,rather hanas adeusex machinathat magically removests nonmonotonicity.The material nference (i) above isjust fine as it stands. But if one wants explicitly to acknowledgethat, even so, itcan form thebase of anoscillating hierarchyof inferences of theform of (ii), (iii),(iv), and so on, then one can do so by reformulating t as:

i' ) If I strike this dry,well-made match,thenceterisparibus,t will light.Like their theoretical brethren,materialproprieties of practicalreasoning arenonmonotonic.So the fact that f I add "I want to get wet," as a second premise toinference (A) above the resulting nference no longer goes throughdoes notshowthat the denialof that premisewas already mplicit. That would be the case onlyif materialpractical nferenceswere monotonic.In any case, as we will see, thereis anotherway to go. We could think of the expressive role of avowals of desire


9/14

134 / RobertBrandomas being analogous, on the practical side, to that of the conditional, on the theo-retical side: as functioningnot as a premise, ut as making explicit the inferentialcommitmentthat permits the transition.V

With this background, can state my fundamental hesis: normative vocab-ulary (including expressions of preference) makes explicit the endorsement(attributed or acknowledged) of materialproprieties of practicalreasoning.Normative vocabulary plays the same expressive role on thepractical ide thatconditionalso on the theoreticalide.The idea is that the broadly normative or evaluative vocabularyused in (a),(b), and (c) ('prefer', 'obliged', and 'ought') which Davidson understandsasexpressing the pro attitudes needed to turn the incomplete reasons offered aspremises in (cr), (,8), and (y) into complete reasons-is used to make explicit inassertible, propositional orm the endorsementof apattern f materialpracticalinferences. Different patternsof inference should be understoodas correspond-ing to different sorts of norms or pro attitudes.For instance, an attributorwho takes (cr) to be entitlement preserving willalso take

cg' Only standingunder the awning will keep me dry, soI shall stand under the awning.cr" Only remaining in the car will keep me dry, soI shall remain in the car.

and a host of similar inferences to have that status. Doing so is implicitly attrib-uting a preference or staying dry.(Notice thatbecause desires can compete, theyprovide onlyprima acie reasons for acting. Acknowledging the nonmonotonic-ity of practicalreasoning,however, alreadyprovides for the featuresof reasoningthat are normally dealt with by introducingsuch a notion.)The norm, rule, or requirement hat bank employees wear neckties is whatmakes going to work into a reason for wearing a necktie, for bank employees.Taking t that there is such a norm or requirementalso just is endorsing a patternof practicalreasoning: aking (X3) o be a good inference for anyone who is a bankemployee. This inferentialpattern s different from that exhibited by (cr) in twoways. First, there need not be for each interlocutor or whom (,8) is taken to be agood inference a set of other inferences corresponding o (cr),(cg',( cr"). nstead,there will be related inferences such as:

,/3' I am a bank employee going to work, soI shall not wear a clown costume.,/3" I am a bank employee going to work, soI shall comb my hair.


10/14

Action, Norms,and Practical Reasoning / 135But these arenot licensed by the norm made explicit in (b), but only by othersassociated with the same social institutionalstatus(being a bankemployee).

Second, the scorekeeperwill take (,8) to be a good inference for any inter-locutorA suchthatthe scorekeeperundertakesoxasticcommitment o the claimthatA s a bankemployee asopposed to attributingdesire or acknowledgmentof a commitment.Here the normimplicitly underwriting he inferenceis associ-ated with havinga certain status,as employee of a bank, rather hanwith exhib-iting a certain desire or preference.Whether one has a good reason to wear anecktie just depends on whetheror not one has occupies the statusin question.This pattern,where what matters s the scorekeeper'sundertakingof a commit-ment to A's occupying the status,rather han A's acknowledgmentof that com-mitment,corresponds o anobjectiveense of 'goodreason for action'(accordingto the scorekeeper).In this sense, thatA is preparing o go to workcan be a goodreason for A to wear a necktie, even though A is not in a position to appreciate tas such. [Compare he sense in which one' s reliabilityas a reporter an entitle oneto a claim (in the eyes of a scorekeeper),even if one is not aware that one isreliable, andso not aware of one's entitlement.]

Endorsementof practicalreasoningof the sortof which (y) is representative,codified in theform of a normativeprinciple by (c), corresponds o an inferentialcommitmentexhibiting a patterndifferent from those involved in either (cr) or(,8). For a scorekeeperwho takes (y) to be entitlement-preservingor A takes itto be entitlement-preservingoranyone, egardlessof desires or preferences,andregardless of social status.These prudentialor instrumental), nstitutional,nd unconditionalorms(made explicit by corresponding ought's) aremeant only as threerepresentativevarieties, not as an exhaustive list. But they show how differentsorts of normscorrespond o differentpatternsof practicalreasoning.The idea is thatnormativevocabulary s a kind of logicalvocabulary, n my expressive sense: its expressivefunction is to make explicit commitmentsto inferences.To endorsea practical nferenceas entitlementpreserving s to take the dox-astic premises as providing reasons for the practical conclusion. To exhibit apiece of good practical reasoningwhose conclusion is a certain intention is toexhibit that intention,and the action (if any) thatit elicits, as rational, s reason-able in the light of the commitmentsexhibited in the premises. Thus all of the'ought's thatmake explicit species of practicalreasoningtaken as examples here,the prudential'ought', the institutional 'ought', and the unconditional 'ought',are differentkinds of rationalought' There s noa priorireason to assimilate allsuch 'ought's to any one form-for instance the prudential Humeantotalitari-anism), as rationality-as-maximizingheorists (such as Gauthier)do. Recall alsothat the entitlementprovidedby prudentialor institutionalreasons need notbeendorsedby the attributor; s Davidson points out, we need not takethe agent'sreasons to be goodreasons.From thepoint of view of this botanizationof patternsof practicalreasoning(which I do not pretend is complete) the humeanand the kantianeach have too


11/14

136 / RobertBrandomrestricted a notion of reasons for action. Each pursues a Procrusteanorder ofexplanation:

* The humeanassimilates all reasons for action to the irstpattern. Thus thehumean will see the inferences like (,8) and (y) as incomplete, even withthe addition of premises (b) and (c).)

* The kantianassimilates all reasons for action to the thirdpattern.The humean denies that a mere obligation or commitment could provide a rea-son for action, unless accompaniedby some desire to fulfill it. And the kantiandenies that a mere desire (sinnlich Neigung) could provide a reason for action,unless accompaniedby the acknowledgmentof some correspondingobligationor commitment.VI

A picture of the rationalwill emerges if we combine these three ideas:* the belief model of intending the idea of modeling practical commit-ments on doxastic ones,* the picture of practicalreasoning as relating beliefs as premises to inten-tions as conclusions, and* the modeling of actions as discursive exit transitions on perceptions asdiscursive entry transitions.

It is important o rememberto begin with that acknowledging a practical com-mitment is notunderstoodon the model of promising, ut of claiming.5n par-ticular, he commitment s not toanyone in particular,and one can change one' smind anytime, essentially without penalty. In both these respects, the practicalcommitments hatcorrespond o intentionsare like doxastic commitments,ratherthan like promises. But while a commitment s in force, it has consequences: forother practicalcommitments and hence entitlements o practicalcommitments),via means-endreasoningand considerationof practical ncompatibilities,and fordoxastic commitments(and hence entitlement o doxastic commitments).Score-keepers are licensed to infer ourbeliefs from our intentionalactions (in context ofcourse), as well as from our speech acts.

Acting with reasons is being entitledo one's practical commitments. Hav-ing this status is being intelligible to oneself and to others. This status can bevindicatedby offering a suitable sample piece of practicalreasoning (which neednot actually have preceded the acknowledgment or performance n question).That piece of practicalreasoning explains why one did as one did: whatreasonsone had. This means that n particular ases, one can act intentionallybut withoutreasons. But the capacity to acknowledge propositionally contentful practical


12/14

Action, Norms,and PracticalReasoning / 137commitmentswill be attributedonly to those whose performancesare largelyintelligible.The modelingof actionon perceptionregistersthe crucialfact that acknowl-edgmentsof commitmentscancause and be caused.Kantdefinesthe rationalwillas the capacityto derive performances rom conceptions of laws.6I am suggest-ing that we can replace "conceptionof a law,"in this formulationby "acknowl-edgment of a commitment."'Law' is Kant's term for a binding rule a norm.One's conceptionof a law is what one takesoneself to be obliged to do. Havinga rationalwill, then, can be understoodas havingthe capacity to respondreliablyto one's acknowledgmentof a commitment (of a norm as binding on one) bydifferentiallyproducingperformancescorresponding o the contentof the com-mitmentacknowledged.Butperception s strictlyanalogous, on the input side. Itis a capacityto respond differentiallyto the presence of, say, red things, by ac-knowledginga commitmentwith a corresponding ontent.The onecapacityshouldin principleappearas no more mysterious thanthe other.According to this pic-ture, we arerationalcreaturesexactly insofaras our acknowledgmentof discur-sive commitments both doxasticand practical)makes a differenceto what we goon to do.Prior ntentionsare acknowledgmentsof practicalcommitments hatare dis-tinct from and antecedent to the responsive performancesthey are reliably dif-ferentially disposed to elicit. In other cases (intentions-in-action) he productionof the performancemay be the acknowledgmentof the practicalcommitment.Prior intentionsinvolve practicalcommitmentsto produce performancesmeet-ing generaldescriptions. Intentions-in-actionare acknowledgmentsof practicalcommitmentsconsisting of performances hatare intentionalunderdemonstra-tive specifications (e.g. "I shall jump now."). These are Sellars' 'volitions'-"prior ntentionswhose time has come"7, a categoryrescued fromthe mistakeofconceiving 'tryings' s minitnalactions hat are safe in that they preclude thepossibility offailure, ust as, and for the samereasons, 'seemings' re conceivedas minimalknowingshat aresafe in that theypreclude the possibility of error.8)One is a reliable agent (compare:reliable perceiver) with respect to a range ofcircumstancesand a range of contents of practicalcommitmentswhen one is sodisposed thatunder those circumstancesone's prior intentionswith those con-tents conditionallymaturento corresponding ntentions-in-action.One nice feature of this story is that what is expressed by the normative'should' is relatedto what is expressed by the intentional 'shall' as third-personusage to first-personusage that is, as attributingpractical commitments (toothers) is relatedto acknowledgingpracticalcommitments(oneself ). The use ofnormatlve vocabularysuch as 'should' expresses the attribution o an agent ofcommitment o a patternof practicalreasoning,while the use of 'shall' expressesacknowledgmentby the agentof the sort of practicalcommitment hatcan appearas the conclusionof such practicalreasoning.It is those acknowledgments hat ncompetentagentsare keyed to the productionof the correspondingperformancesunder favorableconditions. This relationshipprovides a way to make sense of


13/14

138 / Robert Brandomweaknessof thewill (akrasia). or thatphenomenonariseswhenself-attributionsof practicalcommitments(which would be made explicit by statementsof theform "Ishould...") o not have the causal significance of acknowledgmentsfpracticalcommitments(which would be madeexplicit by statementsof the form"I shall..."). n this form, the possibility of incompatibleintentions is no moremysteriousthanthat of incompatibleclaims (or for thatmatter,promises).

Notice thatDavidsonstartedoff only withintentions-in-action the case, onthe presentaccount,wherethe performance s the acknowledgmentof a practicalcommitment.He later ntroduces ntendings,buthe construesthemas judgmentsthat some performance s "desirable,good, or what ought to be done".Since hedoes not tell us what these normativeterms mean, this is objectionablycircular.By startingelsewhere, we have seen how to make independentsense of the ex-pressive role of normativevocabulary.Finally,notice that this accountdistinguishes:

a) acting intentionally,which is acknowledginga practicalcommitment,ei-ther in, or by producing,a correspondingperformance.b) actingwith reasons,which is being entitledto such a commitment.c) acting for reasons, which is the case where reasons are causes, whenacknowledgmentof practicalcommitmentis elicited by properreason-

ing.

VIII said at the outset thatin this paperI aimedto do threethings:* Explain the expressive role thatdistinguishes specifically normativeo-cabulary.That is, to say what it is the job of such vocabularyto make

. .expllclt.* To introducea non-Humeanway of thinkingaboutpracticalreasoning.* To offer a broadlyKantianaccountof thewillas arational acultyof prac-

. .tlca. . reasonlng,

by exploitingthestructural nalogiesbetweendiscursiveexit transitions n actionand discursiveentrytransition n perceptionto show how the rationalwill canbeunderstoodas no more philosophicallymysteriousthan ourcapacityto notice redthings.Althoughthe accountI have offered has of necessity been telegraphic, tsgoal has been to fulfill thatdiscursivepracticalcommitment.Notes1. HarvardUniversityPress 1994. The ideas presentedhere are discussed there in more

detail in the second half of Chapter4.


14/14

Action,Norms, ndPracticalReasoning 1392. G.E.M. Anscombe, IntentionBlackwell, 1959), and Donald Davidson, originally in

"Actions,Reasons, and Causes", reprinted n Actionsand Events Oxford UniversityPress, 1984).

3. Not necessarily a description,t least if that category is conceived narrowly.For, aswill emerge below (in section V), it is important hat the specifications in questioncanincludedemonstrativend indexical elements.

4. Wilfrid Sellars, "Inferenceand Meaning",reprinted n J. Sicha (ed.) PurePragmaticsandPossibleWorlds: heEarlyEssaysof Wilfrid ellars Ridgeview Publishing,Re-seda CA, 1980).

5. In particular, he notion of the sort of commitmentundertakingby making a claim thatis elaborated n ChapterThree of Makingt Explicit.

6. Critique f Practical udgment,ection 7.7. "Thoughtand Action", p. 110 in KeithLehrer(ed.) Freedom ndDeterminismRan-

dom House, 1966).8. I discuss Sellars on 'seems' in my Study Guide, included n WilfridSellars'Empiricismand the Philosophy f Mind tIarvardUniversity Press, 1997), in the commentarytosection 16, pp. 139-144. I discuss the parallel with 'try' in Making t Explicit, p. 294-295.

action, norms (bramdom)

Documents