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The Metaphysics of Practical Rationality: Intentional and Deontic Cognition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2021

PRESTON STOVALL
PRESTON STOVALL*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF HRADEC KRÁLOVÉpreston.stovall@uhk.cz
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Abstract

Despite growing appreciation in recent decades of the importance of shared intentional mental states as a foundation for everything from divergences in primate evolution, to the institution of communal norms, to trends in the development of modernity as a sociopolitical phenomenon, we lack an adequate understanding of the relationship between individual and shared intentionality. At the same time, it is widely appreciated that deontic reasoning concerning what ought, may, and ought not be done is, like reasoning about our intentions, an exercise of practical rationality. Taking advantage of this fact, I use a plan-theoretic semantics for the deontic modalities as a basis for understanding individual and shared intentions. This results in a view that accords well with what we currently have reason to believe about the phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of norm psychology and shared intentionality in human beings, and where original intentionality can be understood in terms of the shared intentionality of a community.

Keywords

collective intentionalitydeontic modalitypractical rationality
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , Winter 2021 , pp. 549 - 568
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association

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Footnotes

Work on this essay was supported by the joint Lead-Agency research grant between the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) and the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR), Inferentialism and Collective Intentionality, GF17-33808L.

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