Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- 1 What would an adequate theory of rationality be like?
- 2 Practical rationality, morality, and purely justificatory reasons
- 3 The criticism from internalism about practical reasons
- 4 A functional role analysis of reasons
- 5 Accounting for our actual normative judgments
- 6 Fitting the view into the contemporary debate
- 7 Two concepts of rationality
- 8 Internalism and different kinds of reasons
- 9 Brute rationality
- References
- Index
3 - The criticism from internalism about practical reasons
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- 1 What would an adequate theory of rationality be like?
- 2 Practical rationality, morality, and purely justificatory reasons
- 3 The criticism from internalism about practical reasons
- 4 A functional role analysis of reasons
- 5 Accounting for our actual normative judgments
- 6 Fitting the view into the contemporary debate
- 7 Two concepts of rationality
- 8 Internalism and different kinds of reasons
- 9 Brute rationality
- References
- Index
Summary
The previous chapter argued for the existence of a class of practical reasons – purely justificatory practical reasons – that have no power to make actions rationally required. It also suggested that altruistic reasons form a significant part of this class. The strategy of that chapter was to point out that a wide range of moral views grant, either explicitly or implicitly, the existence of moral considerations that function in the same way. That is, they grant the existence of considerations, the presence of which can change an otherwise immoral action into a morally permissible one, and yet that do not seem to be the sort of considerations that must weigh, in a positive way, in the motivational economy of a virtuous person. On the strength of some examples, and of further points of analogy between morality and practical rationality, it was then suggested that practical rationality also includes considerations that play a similar normative role. But if practical rationality does include reasons that function in this purely justificatory way, then it seems that there could be actions, favored by such reasons, that even a rational agent might not be motivated to perform – and this could be true even when the agent knows that there are no countervailing reasons.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Brute RationalityNormativity and Human Action, pp. 40 - 61Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004