Practical Reasoning and Ethical Decision

Robert Audi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN: 9781134219209
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Presenting the most comprehensive and lucid account of the topic currently available, Robert Audi's "Practical Reasoning and Ethical Decision" is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of reason in ethics or the nature of human action. The first part of the book is a detailed critical overview of the influential theories of practical reasoning found in Aristotle, Hume and Kant, whilst the second part examines practical reasoning in the light of important topics in moral psychology - weakness of will, self-deception, rationalization and others. In the third part, Audi describes the role of moral principles in practical reasoning and clarifies the way practical reasoning underlies ethical decisions. He formulates a comprehensive set of concrete ethical principles, explains how they apply to reasoning about what to do, and shows how practical reasoning guides moral conduct.

Part I
Historical and conceptual background

Practical reasoning in Aristotle, Hume, and Kant

One
Aristotle on practical reasoning and the structure of action

Aristotle’s principal writings on practical thinking are in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE), and this will be my main Aristotelian text, though some references will be made to others of his works. The Ethics is a densely packed, rich text, and I cannot hope to formulate the Aristotelian position on practical reasoning, if there is just one such position. Nor can I even begin to do justice to the large body of valuable literature on Aristotle’s account of practical reasoning. My aim is simply to formulate and interpret one plausible Aristotelian conception (or range of conceptions) of practical reasoning, particularly as it appears in the Ethics, and to identify, through exploring Aristotle, some major concepts and problems crucial for understanding practical reasoning in general.

Aristotle did not use any term that can be literally translated as ‘practical reasoning’,¹ and what he called practical syllogisms may represent a narrower category than what I have so far called practical reasoning. In his treatment of practical thinking in general, however, he said a great deal about deliberation, which some commentators take him to equate with practical reasoning.² Moreover, deliberation is plainly a kind of practical thinking; and, as illustrated by the reconciliation example in the Introduction, deliberation may embody what I have called practical reasoning. It may be wise, then, to begin with Aristotle’s views about deliberation and work from what we learn there toward an understanding of his views of practical reasoning.

1 DELIBERATION

Regarding the objects of deliberation, Aristotle makes both positive and negative points:

[W]e deliberate about what results through our own agency, but in different ways on different occasions, e.g. about questions of medicine and money-making…. We deliberate not about ends, but about what promotes ends; a doctor, e.g., does not deliberate about whether he will cure, or an orator about whether he will persuade, or a politician about whether he will produce good order, or any other [expert] about the end [that his science aims at]. Rather, we first lay down the end, and then examine the ways and means to achieve it. If it appears that any of several [possible] means will reach it, we consider which of them will reach it most easily and most finely; and if only one [possible] means reaches it, we consider how that means will reach it, and how the means itself is reached, until we come to the first cause, the last thing to be discovered.³

To illustrate with one of Aristotle’s examples, if I am a physician treating a patient, my governing end as physician (leaving aside the issue of euthanasia) is to cure, and I do not deliberate about whether I will (or should) cure the patient. I do, however, deliberate about means, say about whether I should give medicine or simply recommend rest.

At least two conceptions of deliberation are consistent with this passage. On one, the deliberative chain contains a series of decisions leading to the final decision which is, or is at least closely tied to, the first thing in the order of causation. In this first instance, the deliberative chain is decisional: if I decide to prescribe medicine, doing so becomes a subsidiary end, and I may then deliberate about what medicine I should give. If I decide on penicillin as a means of cure, I have another subsidiary end and may deliberate about how I should carry that out, say by tablet or injection. If I now decide on tablets, I may realize that they are in the cabinet to my left. Suppose I decide to give some of those very tablets; then, aware that I need only reach for them, I do it. On the second conception consistent with the passage, although I make the same final decision, the deliberative chain is cognitive: instrumental beliefs (or other cognitive elements, such as judgments) express the subsidiary ends; for instance, I do not decide to prescribe medicine, but do judge prescribing it to be best and thereby proceed to identify the best medicine, and then the best vehicle for giving it. I finally decide to do the thing that is warranted by the entire sequence: reaching for the tablets.

Schematically, the difference between the two kinds of chain is the kind that exists between (1) deciding to A, which one believes one can well achieve by B-ing, deciding to B, which one believes one can well achieve by C-ing, and so on until one decides on something here and now, such as reaching for the tablets, and (2) forming the beliefs that A can be well achieved by B-ing, that B-ing can be well achieved by C-ing, and so on until one reaches something one can do here and now, which one decides to do. In both kinds of chain there will be appropriate instrumental beliefs. They are in fact required to explain the subsidiary decisions. But in one kind of chain there are subsidiary decisions; in the other, not.

The decisional interpretation of the chain may be more often what Aristotle had in mind in speaking of such chains. Moreover, it is quite consistent with his overall views to allow cases in which the decisions are conditional. There, when one reaches the end, action will follow only on a further condition; for instance, if one decides to give tablets provided there are enough, then one would check before giving them, and give them only if one finds enough. I prefer the decisional interpretation for most of the relevant passages; but the more economical, cognitive reading may better fit others. In any case, no major point below turns on which interpretation is taken.

The descriptions just given seem to encompass the completion of the process of deliberation, but they do not indicate what, exactly, is the first link in the chain of causation. If that is the last step in the order of discovery, one would think it is my final means to realizing my end, say reaching for the tablets. For this is the final means I take to be necessary, and it seems to originate the causal chain leading (if I succeed) to a cure. But the text is not without vagueness on this matter:

What we deliberate about is the same as what we decide to do, except that by the time we decide to do it, it is definite; for what we decide to do is what we have judged [to be right] as a result of deliberation. For each of us stops inquiring how to act as soon as he traces the origin to himself, and within himself to the dominant part; for this is the part that decides…. We have found, then, that what we decide to do is whatever action among those up to us we deliberate about and desire to do. Hence also decision will be deliberative desire to do an action that is up to us; for when we have judged [that it is right] as a result of deliberation, our desire to do it expresses our wish.

(NE: 1113a2–12)

If decision is “deliberative desire”, how can it be identical with something that is, in an active way, made, as decisions are? A decision is, if not an action, at least an event, whereas desires are not events, in the usual sense in which the occurrence of an event entails that of change (the existence of a desire does not entail that of change). One possible answer may be that ‘deliberative desire’ should be taken to be (in English) a technical term, and the weight should be put on ‘decision’, which does appear to designate action or at least behavior (the Greek term in question, prohairesis, is also commonly translated ‘choice’, which confirms this actional reading).⁴ Decision, moreover, entails desire. The decision would be deliberative by virtue of its rootedness in a deliberative process; it would be conative by virtue of expressing “our wish.” If we add that it is an active expression of that wish, we may think of it as action-like.

Such an interpretation may be developed in at least two different directions. First, in cases like this, in which we deliberatively reach, and immediately perform, a bodily action in our power as the final means to our overall end, Aristotle may have thought of the decision to do the thing in question and the doing of it as the same action under two different descriptions. One need not decide to reach for the tablets and then do so; one’s deciding to give them to the patient coincides with reaching for them; it occurs straightaway upon one’s realizing that the tablets are in the cabinet on one’s left. If this is correct, then a patient who was aware of the chain of deliberation and thus said, observing one’s taking them from the cabinet, “I see you decided to give me the tablets,” would be saying nothing beyond what the passage licenses, and would preserve the vagueness of the reference of ‘decide’. On the other hand, we might instead suppose that decision is, or is a precursor of, volition, understood as an act of will.⁵

To be sure, we might treat volition as ordinary action under a special kind of description, and in that case this interpretation would be quite similar to the first. But volition is more commonly taken to be a kind of doing that is not action, or as a sort of active intending to do something here and now.⁶ In what follows, we need not choose either interpretation; indeed my main points about Aristotle concern what happens prior to decision and will in any event be consistent with both interpretations, and indeed with taking decision to be a volitional state as opposed to an event of any kind.

2 THE PRACTICAL SYLLOGISM

If we can locate what Aristotle called the practical syllogism in relation to his deliberative chains, this may give us a better idea of the sort of reasoning he conceived as practical in the sense sketched in the Introduction. In discussing weakness of will (which will be considered shortly) Aristotle said much about the practical syllogism. Here is an important passage about such syllogisms in general:

One belief (a) is universal; the other (b) is about particulars, and because they are particulars perception controls them. And in the cases where these two beliefs result in (c) one belief, it is necessary in purely theoretical beliefs for the soul to affirm what has been concluded, and in beliefs about production (d) to act at once on what has been concluded.

If, e.g., (a) everything sweet must be tasted, and (b) this, some one particular thing, is sweet, it is necessary (d) for someone who is able and unhindered also to act on this at the same time,

(NE: 1147a25–31)

where (c), the “one belief” that is a “result” of (a) and (b), is presumably the belief that this must be tasted. If we now recall the deliberative chain leading to reaching for tablets to cure the patient, we might take, as a clue in locating a practical syllogism like this one in the chain, the closeness of the syllogism to action—a feature of such syllogisms which Aristotle emphasizes elsewhere too.⁷ Perhaps such a practical syllogism begins when I reach the conclusion (from previous reasoning) that diseases of the sort this patient has are to be treated with penicillin tablets. With this goal in view, I realize, perceptually, that they are in the cabinet to my left and judge that I must give them. I am bound to “act on this at the same time.”⁸

It is noteworthy that Aristotle speaks in this passage both of the souls being bound to affirm the conclusion—which in the example we are considering would be that this must be tasted [by me]—and of the agent s being bound to perform this act at once. If the act is tasting, we need a behavioral referent to make sense of what Aristotle is saying; if it is the soul’s affirming the conclusion, we need a mental referent. The view that the crucial action is a decision (or a choice) conceived as also capable of bearing a physical behavioral description gives us precisely what we need. But Aristotle rightly refers to each category in distinct terms, since the crucial decision need not bear a physical act description, say where—as Aristotle realizes is quite possible—the agent is prevented from tasting the food.

Affirming the conclusion of a practical syllogism seems an essentially cognitive act (even if it normally has a motivational element); it is roughly an endorsing of a proposition, whereas decision, by virtue of being a deliberative desire and apparently entailing an intention to do the thing decided on, is essentially motivational. Nevertheless, clearly Aristotle is thinking of the relevant kind of judgment—roughly, that one must (or ought, all things considered) do something—as normally implying a decision to do it.

In part, the connection between the two kinds of decision might be expressed in terms of a relation between cognitive and behavioral decisions. Cognitive decision, decision that, which is the kind one might identify with the concluding judgment, tends to produce a behavioral decision, a decision to do, particularly insofar as the latter decision is understood as a deliberative desire. This is not to say that Aristotle employed the relevant term in these two ways; but it is noteworthy that it has both functions. The cognitive function is appropriate to decision’s playing the role of emerging from (and even expressing the conclusion of) reasoning; the behavioral function makes it practical, either in the direct sense that it is itself action or in the indirect sense that it expresses at once a reason for acting and some degree of motivation to act.

If this reading is correct, then the kind of reasoning that normally instantiates a practical syllogism is practical reasoning in the broad sense of reasoning that concludes with an answer to a practical question, such as, paradigmatically, “What am I to do?” asked in the context of a felt problem. If my problem is to cure the patient and I deliberate toward that end, then upon concluding (cognitively deciding, one might say) that I should reach for the tablets to my left, I have arrived at an answer to my problem. I then solve the problem by reaching for the tablets and giving them to the patient. Since Aristotle took the action constituting a solution to occur at once given the agent’s unimpeded ability to do the crucial thing, he sometimes talked as if the action itself were the conclusion. But I do not believe we must take the text to assert precisely this.⁹ It is noteworthy that he speaks of the physician’s deliberating about “what he will” do rather than simply about what to do. This may suggest that the concluding element in the reasoning is a cognitive item (roughly, one that, like belief, has a truth-valued object and may be called true or false), say a resolution (or judgment or perhaps cognitive decision), to the effect that one will (or should) do something. The decision to do it, which may or may not be behaviorally instantiated by the immediate performance of the action, might then be seen as the appropriate action to be performed in response to the drawing of this conclusion.

3 WEAKNESS OF WILL

If Aristotle took concluding in favor of an action normally to imply deciding to perform it, then we must ask how he allowed for weakness of will, in the sense of acting (normally intentionally) against one’s better judgment, where this is precisely the sort of judgment which, like “This must be tasted,” concludes a practical syllogism.¹⁰ We might call actions of this kind incontinent for short. In discussing them, I cannot present his overall account of weakness of will, if indeed he offered a fully unified account. Since my concern is with his view of practical reasoning, I simply want to indicate how he saw practical reasoning as allowing for incontinent action.

From this point of view, the following passage is especially important:

Suppose, then, that someone has (a) the universal belief [say, that sweets are to be avoided], and it hinders him from tasting; he has (b) the second belief, that everything sweet is pleasant and this is sweet, and this belief (b) is active; and he also has appetite. Hence the belief (c) tells him to Practical reasoning and ethical decision 14 avoid this, but appetite leads him on, since it is capable of moving each of the [bodily] parts.

The result, then, is that in a way reason and belief make him act incontinently. The belief (b) is contrary to correct reason (a), but only coincidentally, not in itself.

(NE: 1147a31–1147b2)

It looks as if one piece of reasoning presupposed here is prohibitional: from a universal premise, say that (a) sweets are to be avoided, to a negative judgment, say that (c) this is to be avoided, which “hinders” but does not prevent the tasting. Its minor premise is presumably a partly perceptual one to the effect that this, being sweet, is to be avoided.

Moreover, while we need not suppose that there is a second piece of practical reasoning, there are possible cases in which there is also competing, appetitional reasoning: from the premises that (1) everything sweet is pleasant [to taste] and (2) this is [would taste] sweet, to the conclusion that (3) this must be tasted. But positing a second piece of practical reasoning is apparently not Aristotle’s way of viewing the case. For then there would be an opinion, namely, (3), opposed to right reason, since reason dictates that things of this kind are not to be tasted.

Furthermore, Aristotle specifically tells us that it is appetite, for instance a ravenous desire for sweets, that opposes right reason. Even if we take this opinion to represent appetite, we still have a problem: how can appetite prevail if a properly drawn practical conclusion, such as that this is to be avoided, at least normally implies acting accordingly when one can? Incontinent agents are not, after all, unable to act rightly. The agent here is simply weak-willed, yet appears to have also reasoned in accordance with the first syllogism, from (say) the premises that sweets are not to be tasted and this is such a sweet, to the conclusion that this is not to be tasted. Thus, even assuming the passage should be read as implying competing syllogisms like the pair I have formulated, there remains the question why the syllogism on the side of right reason does not prevail in action. Indeed, the problem is pressing even if an incontinent action is imagined as opposed to a judgment not arising from practical reasoning. Suppose right reason is represented only by a judgment not (at least at the time) based on any practical reasoning? How can right reason not prevail even then?

Aristotle’s treatment of the problem draws—fruitfully, I believe—on a distinction between kinds of knowledge:

And since the last premise (b) is about something perceptible, and controls action, this must be what the incontinent person does not have when he is being affected. Or rather the way he has it is not knowledge of it, but, as we saw, [merely] saying the words as the drunk says the words of Empedocles…the knowledge that is present when someone is affected by incontinence, and that is dragged about because he is affected, is not the sort that seems to be knowledge to the full extent [in (c)], but only perceptual knowledge [in (b)].

(NE: 1147b9–17)

Appetite can overcome one’s (partly) perceptual knowledge that this is sweet and not to be tasted, but it cannot overcome what constitutes one’s “knowledge to the full extent” that things of this sort are not to be tasted. It is as if appetite detached the perceptual knowledge that this is sweet—which Irwin suggests (p. 352) may be what Aristotle referred to as the belief which is ‘active’—from the universal known through right reason, and instead attached it to the object of desire. If there is competing reasoning, that object may be expressed in a universal, say that sweet things must be tasted; if there is not, then appetite may affect action more directly. Still, we may ask, how in either case is it possible for the knowledge that should direct action to be relegated to this ineffectual position?

Here it is essential to consider what Aristotle says about such knowledge. One important point is that

Saying the words that come from knowledge is no sign [of fully having it]…. Further, those who have just learnt something do not yet know it, though they string the words together; for it must grow into them, and this needs time.

Hence we must suppose that incontinents say the words in the way actors do.

(NE: 1147a18–24)

In these and other passages, Aristotle is distinguishing both different kinds of knowledge and different ways of having it: one reading of his suggested distinction between kinds of knowledge—or perhaps one of the two or more distinctions of kind ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Historical and conceptual background Practical reasoning in Aristotle, Hume, and Kant
• Part II Practical reasoning, practical arguments, and intentional action
• Part III Practical reasoning, ethical decision, and rational action
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index