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In the beginning was the doing: the premises of the practical syllogism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Eric Wiland
Eric Wiland*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophyk, University of Missouri, 599 Lucas Hall, One University Blvd, St. Louis MO 63121-4400,
*
*Email: wiland@gmail.com
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Abstract

If practical reasoning deserves its name, its form must be different from that of ordinary (theoretical) reasoning. A few have thought that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action, rather than a mental state. I argue here that if the conclusion is an action, then so too is one of the premises. You might reason your way from doing one thing to doing another: from browsing journal abstracts to reading a particular journal article. I motivate this by sympathetically re-examining Hume's claim that a conclusion about what ought to be done follows only from an argument one of whose premises is likewise about what ought to be done.

Keywords

practical reasoningactionAristotleHumeFrege

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Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , 2013 , pp. 303 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2013

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