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

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