Agency and the Attitudes: Responsibility Through Reasoning

Matthew Heeney

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee

of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2020

© 2020

Matthew Heeney

All Rights Reserved

Abstract

Agency and the Attitudes: Responsibility Through Reasoning

Matthew Heeney

Are we morally responsible for what we believe and intend? If so, what is the nature of this

responsibility, and how does it differ from our moral responsibility for our outward bodily deeds?

How is our moral responsibility for belief and intention grounded in mental action? I argue that

we do bear a species of moral responsibility for our beliefs and intentions. But our beliefs and

intentions are nonvoluntary—we neither believe nor intend ‘at will.’ This raises a pressing

question about how we can be legitimately held accountable for the attitudes. Given that we do

not choose our attitudes in the same way we choose to perform ordinary intentional actions, how

do we exercise agency in belief and intention? My answer is that responsibility for the attitudes

is grounded in a fully intentional yet nonvoluntary form of mental action. This is a thinker’s

reasoning to a conclusion in thought (or inferring). Drawing on the work of G.E.M. Anscombe, I

argue that reasoning is active because it is constituted by the very species of self-conscious

practical knowledge as intentional bodily action. This practical knowledge positions a thinker to

answer the justificatory demands that mark our responsibility for the attitudes.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements................................................................................................................. iii

Dedication ................................................................................................................................ v

Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 1

Chapter 1 Responsibility and the Attitudes ............................................................................. 6

Resentment and the attitudes ............................................................................................... 7

The form of attitudinal responsibility ................................................................................ 19

Attitudes and the voluntary ................................................................................................ 35

Attitude-formative mental agency ..................................................................................... 45

Conclusion: Three desiderata ............................................................................................. 58

Chapter 2 The Mark of Mental Action ................................................................................... 60

The criterial question .......................................................................................................... 60

Instrumentalism: bodily action .......................................................................................... 64

Instrumentalism: remembering, imagining ........................................................................ 74

Instrumentalism: deciding, judging ................................................................................... 79

Against instrumentalism .................................................................................................... 85

Two objections ................................................................................................................... 95

Judging and deciding as inference ................................................................................... 100

Conclusion: Two new desiderata ..................................................................................... 103

Chapter 3 Inference and Attitudinal Commitment............................................................... 106

Attitudinal agency as inferring ........................................................................................ 106

The Taking Condition....................................................................................................... 107

The appeal to rules ............................................................................................................114

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The appeal to dispositions .................................................................................................116

Taking as commitment ..................................................................................................... 123

Worries and refinements .................................................................................................. 141

Practical deliberating ....................................................................................................... 153

Judging and deciding as inferring .................................................................................... 160

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 164

Chapter 4 Inferring as Intentional Agency ........................................................................... 167

The Action Thesis ............................................................................................................. 167

The problem of action and the problem of inference ....................................................... 171

Intentional action and practical knowledge ..................................................................... 176

Inferring and practical self-consciousness ....................................................................... 199

Intentional action as inferring to a conclusion ................................................................. 218

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 227

Chapter 5 Responsibility Through Reasoning ..................................................................... 229

Recounting the desiderata ................................................................................................ 229

Desideratum 2: Nonvoluntariness.................................................................................... 237

Desideratum 3: Productivity ............................................................................................ 240

Desideratum 4: Non-instrumentalizing............................................................................ 245

Desideratum 5: The Unity of Action ................................................................................ 247

Desideratum 1: Responsibility-grounding ....................................................................... 259

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 269

Appendix: Intention, Constitutive Norms, and the Toxin Puzzle ........................................ 270

Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 278

iii

Acknowledgements

My first debt of gratitude is to Professor Rovane. Early on in this project, Professor Rovane

helped me to set my sights on normative questions that now anchor my philosophical outlook on

intentional agency. In addition to helping to oversee the project as it (slowly) unfolded, she urged

me to broaden my horizons and reorient the philosophical concerns that framed my original

proposal. I would have been a poorer philosopher had I worked with anyone else.

In addition to guiding the project with helpful instructions, Akeel Bilgrami and Katja Vogt

have encouraged me to take a more capacious approach to these matters than I was initially

inclined to.

Some extremely helpful feedback has improved the dissertation. Here I want to

acknowledge audiences (and organizers) at Columbia University, Florida State University

(especially commentary by Gordon Cooper), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and the

University of Helsinki. I extend a special note of thanks to the external examiners on my

dissertation committee, Pamela Hieronymi and Alfred Mele, for their commentary, questions,

and objections.

My work on this dissertation was nourished and sustained by many valuable friendships. I

learned a great deal about how to do philosophy from conversations with Thimo Heisenberg. His

gift of sharp philosophical acumen paired with deep intellectual empathy sets a standard to which

I continue to aspire. Discussions with Thimo and with Jake McNulty brought me to appreciate

philosophical work outside of the very narrow band of interests that I brought to Columbia.

Borhane Blili-Hamelin's warmth and openness encouraged me to come to Columbia and helped

me to get my bearings in the first years of the program. I had many very probing and insightful

discussions with Isabel Kaeslin in bars, cafes, the subway, our respective apartments, outings in

iv

the city, and over the course of long bicycling expeditions outside New York. In various ways,

Isabel helped me to find the deeper cares motivating me to do philosophy—and to write about

them. I continue to admire her passionate zeal for the committed philosophical life.

I was lucky to find lasting philosophical role models in Simon Brown, Nemira Gasiunas-

Kopp, and Jorge Morales. Our reading groups in the philosophy of mind and perception taught

me to set my sights on philosophical ideas that matter to me and to articulate these ideas to

others. (They also taught me how to read a room when talking nonsense.) I continue to look to

these philosophers for inspiration. More recently, Kate Pendoley’s generosity and patience has

helped to improve many of the ideas in these pages by subjecting them to job market-grade

scrutiny. I could not have made these ideas communicable without Kate's, Nemira’s and Simon's

guidance. Their friendship has helped push me over the finish line.

I think back fondly to the working groups we set up to keep from having to write alone.

Katie McIntyre, Borhane Blili-Hamelin, Devin Morse, and Alex Rigas kept me accountable. I am

grateful to these friends for their company.

I acknowledge my family and friends back home in California. My mother, father, sister,

and brother gave incalculable moral support and encouraged me to challenge myself by enrolling

at Columbia. I would be rudderless without their support when the chips are down. The chance to

reconnect with my steadfast friends Jeremy, Ben, and Alex has always made me anticipate trips

home. I thank them for their steady friendship, especially when I am not the best at reaching out.

It is hardest to find a way to thank Yvette. New York was not home until she moved here,

and much of this dissertation was written by her side in our studio apartment. My gratitude to her

extends far beyond the bounds of this dissertation; nevertheless, I dedicate it to her. And no, that

does not mean she has to read it.

Deo gratias.

v

Dedication

For Yvette

1

Introduction

Are we morally responsible for what we believe and intend? If so, what is the nature of this

responsibility, and how does it differ from our moral responsibility for our outward bodily deeds?

How is our moral responsibility for belief and intention grounded in what we do? These

questions set the agenda for this dissertation.

I argue that we do bear a species of moral responsibility for our beliefs and intentions. This

responsibility is sourced in rational norms that govern the attitudes. But our beliefs and

intentions are nonvoluntary—we neither believe nor intend ‘at will.’ This raises a pressing

question about how we can be legitimately held accountable for the attitudes. Given that we do

not choose our attitudes in the same way we choose to perform ordinary intentional actions, how

do we exercise agency in belief and intention? My answer is that responsibility for the attitudes

is grounded in a fully intentional yet nonvoluntary form of mental action. This is a thinker’s

reasoning to a conclusion in thought (or inferring). Reasoning to a conclusion, in turn, is a fully

intentional but non-voluntary mental action. These mental actions position an agent to reply to

the distinctive justificatory demands that mark our responsibility for the attitudes.

Accordingly, much of this dissertation is concerned with what it is to infer to a conclusion.

More specifically, it is concerned to issue an action-theoretic account of inferring—an account

that explains why inferring is something that a conscious thinker does, rather than something that

merely happens in a thinker’s mental life. A parallel concern is to better understand how inferring

to a conclusion compares to familiar forms of intentional bodily action. So, I have comparatively

little to say about inferring from the point of view of empirical psychology, epistemology, or

decision theory. My focus is on what makes inferring the distinctive kind of mental episode that

it is, and the grounds on which inferring to a conclusion differs intrinsically from non-inferential

2

mere transitions in thinking. Still, I hope that this action-theoretic focus complements, rather than

departs entirely, from these more traditional philosophical perspectives on inference. For

instance, we can better understand how inferring to a conclusion transmits an internalist species

of epistemic warrant from premise to conclusion by understanding why inferring is active, rather

than passive. At least, that is the hope.

The best way to describe what the dissertation is about and what it argues is to summarize

the chapters to follow.

Chapter 1: Responsibility and the Attitudes argues that we are morally responsible for our

beliefs and intentions. My argument takes off from a remark of P.F. Strawson’s in “Freedom and

Resentment” concerning the ethics of interpersonal rational persuasion. Strawson indicates that

rational persuasion takes place only from within the ‘engaged stance,’ wherein reactive attitudes

of blame, resentment, and indignation are intelligibly directed towards another. I argue that this is

because belief and intention are constituted by rational norms that render a thinker wrong to

persist in an attitude that he recognizes as falling short of them. Attitudinal blame is just such a

charge. I vindicate the legitimacy of attitudinal blame against three challenges: (i) it is

inappropriate to inflict bodily punishment on another on account of his beliefs or intentions; (ii)

many of our beliefs and intentions fall outside the range of specifically moral concern; (iii) we do

not possess voluntary control over our beliefs and intentions. In meeting these challenges, it

emerges that we are answerable for belief and intention, in that we are rightly subject to the

question, “Why do you believe or intend as you do?” and open to a range of reactive attitudes

should our reply fail to satisfy this justificatory demand.

If we are responsible for the attitudes, we require an account of the agency that we exercise

over our beliefs and intentions. I close the chapter with three desiderata for an account of this

attitudinal agency. First, the account must show how the agency at issue works to ground our

responsibility. Second, the account must respect the nonvoluntariness of belief and intention.

3

Third, the account must explain how attitudinal agency is productive of beliefs and intentions. In

the face of these desiderata, I propose that reasoning to a conclusion is a fitting candidate for that

in which attitudinal agency consists. But is reasoning to a conclusion an action?

Chapter 2: The Mark of Mental Action addresses this question. We cannot do so without

discerning the criterion that distinguishes mental actions from mental episodes that merely

happen to us. I explicate and evaluate an instrumentalist answer to this criterial question about

mental action. According to the instrumentalist, mental actions are distinguished by the fact that

an agent can perform mental actions without reliance on distinct causal-instrumental means. I

argue that this instrumentalist reply does not appropriately conceive of the relationship between

reasoning and deciding to act. This is because deciding is not something that can be done

‘directly,’ and yet also not something that is brought about by dint of reliance upon causal-

instrumental means. The upshot is that the instrumentalist cannot provide a stable reply to the

criterial question. I suggest that the relationship between deliberating and deciding is best

understood on the model of the relation between premise and conclusion when a thinker draws

an inference in thought. Inferring to a conclusion seems to mark a form of mental agency that is

prior to the sort at issue for instrumentalism.

This chapter’s course of argument returns two more desiderata on an account of attitudinal

agency, in addition to the three set out at the end of Chapter 1. My fourth desideratum is that the

account must be non-instrumentalizing, in that we cannot construe the relationship between

premise and conclusion in causal-instrumental terms. Inferring is neither a ‘basic action’ nor a

non-basic mental episode an agent acts to bring about. But this fourth desideratum brings in a

fifth. The instrumentalist applies to attitudinal agency and ordinary bodily action the very same

model of intentional action. In this, the instrumentalist respects the unity of action across the

mental and bodily domains. If we wish to part with this model, we must explain how it is that

4

attitudinal agency counts as action on the very same grounds as ordinary intentional bodily

action; we must respect the unity of action. This is our fifth desideratum.

Over the course of the rest of the dissertation I argue that inferring to a conclusion,

understood on its own terms, can satisfy all five of these desiderata. I offer an account of

inferring over Chapters 3–4.

Chapter 3: Inference and Attitudinal Commitment takes up the traditional Taking Condition

on inferring, according to which every inferring involves a thinker’s appreciation that the

premises rationally support the conclusion (Boghossian 2014). The challenge is to specify what

this ‘taking’ consists in without generating a regress of premises (again, à la Lewis Carroll). I

consider rule-based and disposition-based ways of making out this Taking Condition but find

both unsatisfying. To solve these problems, I draw on Akeel Bilgrami’s (2006) and Carol

Rovane’s (1998) irreducibly normative conception of the attitudes of belief and intention. On this

view, what it is to believe that p involves a suite of rational obligations to uphold the truth of p in

further dealings (and analogously for intending to φ and obligations to uphold the goodness or

value in φ-ing). Once we understand the attitudes in irreducibly normative terms, though, we

need not appeal to any separate premise in which a thinker’s taking consists. Rather, a thinker’s

taking consists in a suite of attitudinal commitments.

Chapter 4: Inferring as Intentional Agency draws on Anscombe’s Intention (1957) to explain

why inferring is intentional rational agency. For Anscombe, practical knowledge of what I am

doing and why is constitutive of intentional bodily action, marking the difference between a

series of mere bodily movements and an intelligible order of means directed to an end. I

generalize Anscombe’s approach to the case of inferring. A thinker’s self-conscious appreciation

of what follows from what is constitutive of inferring, distinguishing an intelligible premise-

conclusion order from a mere transition in thinking. By answering the ‘problem of action’ and

the ‘problem of inference’ in the very same way, I show that inferring is intentional agency and

5

that intentional bodily action is but an extension of the agency we exercise in inferring to a

conclusion. Intentional agency consists in a distinctive kind of self-consciousness that is present

equally in inferring and intentionally acting.

Chapter 5: Responsibility Through Reasoning explains why inferring to a conclusion

satisfies all five of our desiderata. I first argue that inferring to a conclusion meets desiderata 2–5,

concerning the shape of attitudinal agency. Inferring is nonvoluntary, productive, and non-

instrumentalizing. As for the unity of action, the argument of Chapter 4 shows how the

phenomenon of inferring to a conclusion is the action-making factor of ordinary intentional

action. In Chapter 5, I approach this point from another angle, by way of Pamela Hieronymi’s

(2009) distinction between two kinds of rational agency, managerial control over the body and

evaluative control over the attitudes. As against this, I argue that both of Hieronymi’s kinds of

agency are sourced in a thinker’s inferring to a conclusion. Lastly, inferring to a conclusion

positions a thinker to satisfy the justificatory demand communicated by the ‘Why?’-question that

marks our answerability for the attitudes of belief and intention. Responsibility for belief and

intention is grounded in a form of rational agency that we exercise in reasoning to a conclusion.

I want to enter a caveat about the dissertation’s overall sweep of argument. Throughout, I

am concerned with intentional agency as it is manifested in mature, rational, and rationally

reflective human adults. This restriction also goes to what I have to say about inferring to a

conclusion—I am interested in notions of inferring that capture a notion of epistemic agency. So,

even if young children and some ‘higher’ animals can be said to intentionally act or engage in

reasoning in some attenuated sense, they are not the paradigm case I am concerned about in this

dissertation.1

1 I thank Alfred Mele for bringing me to make this point.

6

Chapter 1

Responsibility and the Attitudes

As rational moral agents, we bear moral responsibility for our overt intentional actions—those

deeds we knowingly and deliberately bring about by moving our bodies. Of course, for the

purposes of ordinary moral appraisal the class of overt intentional actions comprehends far more

than mere bodily movements. It also includes the events and states of affairs that these bodily

movements help to bring about (e.g., the events that I bring about by setting off a causal chain

that eventuates in the realization of my purposes). This more capacious field of overt intentional

action typically occupies the forefront of our moral concern. And understandably so: it is in the

performance of overt intentional action that an agent’s will is made manifest in the world.

Moreover, it is here that an agent’s will matters most to his fellows. The events and states of

affairs that occupy the forefront of our ordinary moral concern—those which are worthy of moral

praise and blame, as opposed to those which are merely welcome or unwelcome—occur or

obtain in the public arena wherein we press our claims against one another. Accordingly, our

ordinary thought and talk about moral responsibility centers on such overt will-manifesting

intentional actions.

Yet we are morally responsible for more than just overt intentional action. We also bear

moral responsibility for features of our own minds. Specifically, we are morally responsible for

our attitudes of belief and intention. It is easy to overlook this responsibility, for three main

reasons. First, we are reluctant to inflict outright bodily punishment on an agent on account of his

beliefs. Second, there are many beliefs and intentions that fall outside the range of specifically

moral concern. What is the specifically moral significance of my belief that San Francisco is a

city in California, or of my intention to walk to the store after my afternoon appointment? Third,

7

and most importantly, we do not possess the kind of control over our attitudes that we exercise

over our own bodies in the performance of overt intentional actions. My purpose in this chapter

is to show that, despite these factors, there is nevertheless a deep sense in which we are

responsible for our attitudes. This is because our beliefs and intentions are constitutively

regulated by rational norms which agents, qua believers and intenders, are obligated to respect.

To bring this out, I begin with a suggestion from P.F. Strawson. In “Freedom and

Resentment,” Strawson indicates that we cannot reason with another unless we do so from a

certain stance or point of view. Understanding why this is so will reveal our responsibility for

belief and intention. Then, I’ll go on to distinguish several forms of responsibility; clarifying the

form of responsibility appropriate to our attitudes will disarm the worries pertaining to bodily

punishment and moral significance. But the third worry concerning control will stay with us

throughout this study. Unlike overt intentional action, beliefs and intentions are nonvoluntary.

The nonvoluntariness of the attitudes raises a challenging question: how can it be legitimate to

blame another for violating the rational norms governing belief and intention? Taking Angela

Smith’s (2005; 2008) Rational Relations View as a point of departure, I suggest a way forward

that animates the rest of this dissertation.

Resentment and the attitudes

P.F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” (2003 [1962]) focused philosophical attention

on our interpersonal practices surrounding responsibility. Strawson introduced the notion of a

reactive attitude—an attitude such as gratitude, blame, resentment, indignation, or forgiveness—

that we take to others and to ourselves. These reactive attitudes register a “demand for goodwill

or regard” from others as well as from ourselves (2003: 78). Strawson’s concern is to show that

these attitudes are not suitable candidates for rational justification or for modification in the light

8

of a general metaphysical thesis like determinism. I leave these metaphysical matters to one side.

I want to focus on what Strawson noticed about the objective attitudes that contrast with reactive

attitudes such as resentment or gratitude, and the stances from which each set of attitudes is

appropriate.

According to Strawson, we take up reactive attitudes from a stance of engagement. From

this engaged stance, we interpret a person’s bodily behavior as “intelligible in terms of conscious

purposes” (2003: 88). For instance, it is from the engaged stance that I can understand your arm-

raising as an attempt to get my attention so as to pose a question, as opposed to a mere reflex

movement that does not indicate any meaningful will or purpose. Since it is from the engaged

stance that your “behavior is intelligible in terms of conscious purposes,” it can only be from the

engaged stance that I interpret your behavior as manifesting (what Strawson calls) your quality

of will: your due regard (or undue disregard) for my claims to respect and proper treatment.

Reactive attitudes, Strawson says, are reactions to the quality of will manifested in a person’s

intelligibly purposive behavior. That is why they are appropriate only from within the engaged

stance (2003: 76–77).

This means that the reactive attitudes can be modified, suspended, or abandoned in two

distinct ways. First, it may emerge that I was mistaken to interpret your behavior as a moral

trespass manifesting ill will. In this connection Strawson mentions such familiar pleas as ‘He

didn’t mean to,’ ‘He hadn’t realized,’ or ‘He couldn’t help it’ (2003: 77). In the light of such

pleas, the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation are modulated accordingly. It is

notable that in such cases it remains appropriate to relate to the other from within the engaged

stance. Only the apparent trespass gets reinterpreted, not the agent who acts from conscious

purposes. Such suspensions, Strawson tells us, “do not suggest that the agent is in any way an

inappropriate object of that kind of demand for goodwill or regard which is reflected in our

ordinary reactive attitudes”; they “suggest instead that the fact of injury was not inconsistent with

9

the agent’s attitude and intentions being just what they demand they should be” (2003: 78). In

this first kind of suspension, I abandon the reactive attitude of resentment in the recognition that

there is, in fact, no moral transgression to react to.

But a second sort of suspension is more far reaching: it renders its target an inappropriate

target for the reactive attitudes taken as a whole. When this second sort of suspension comes into

play, one no longer sees the other as an agent whose conscious purposes are manifested in overt

intentional actions that register (or fail to register) due regard for moral demands. One thus

ceases to take the engaged stance altogether to the other. One takes up, instead, what Strawson

labels the objective stance or the objective attitude. “To adopt the objective attitude to another

human being,” writes Strawson, “is to see him, perhaps, as an object of social policy; as a subject

for what, in a wide range of sense, might be called treatment…to be managed or handled or

cured or trained” (2003: 79). It is simply inappropriate to take one of the reactive attitudes to

such a being. In taking up the objective stance, one realizes that there is no thoroughgoing

“participant relation” possible with the other at all. To recognize this is to recognize that no

reactive attitude is rightly taken to the other.

Taking this objective attitude towards another does not preclude all forms of love. Nor does

it preclude attitudes of mercy or charity. So it is too strong to say that in taking up an objective

attitude we conceive of another as a mindless artifact or mere object. Still, the objective attitude

significantly constrains the range of sensible interpersonal dealings. Since it will be important for

my argument, I quote Strawson at length on this point:

The objective attitude [i.e., the attitudes appropriately taken to another from within the

objective stance] may be emotionally toned in many ways, but not in all ways: it may

include repulsion or fear, it may include pity or even love, though not all kinds of love. But

it cannot include the range of reactive feelings and attitudes which belong to involvement

or participation with others in inter-personal human relationships: it cannot include

10

resentment, gratitude, forgiveness, anger, or the sort of love which two adults can

sometimes be said to feel, reciprocally, for each other. If your attitudes towards someone is

wholly objective, then though you may fight him, you cannot quarrel with him, and though

you may talk to him, even negotiate with him, you cannot reason with him. (2003: 79)

Strawson’s last constraint is significant for our inquiry. From the objective stance we might fight,

talk to, or negotiate with another. But reasoning with another can only be done from within the

engaged stance. This is curious. Why is fighting, talking, and negotiating possible with another

from within the objective stance, but not reasoning? What is special about reasoning with another

that makes it possible only from within the engaged stance? Well, what is it to reason with

another?2

We can pursue this question by way of a simple example. Suppose you and I disagree about

what we ought to do tonight. You want to attend an off-Broadway play. I want to see a movie.

Both of us prefer spending the evening together over going to our separate ways. Since we

cannot see the play and see the movie tonight, I want to conform your will to mine and you want

to conform mine to yours. We both seek to influence the will of the other.

There are two ways you can influence my will that do not count as reasoning. The first is by

treating my will like any other instrument. Suppose you slip me a drug that induces a

predominant desire to attend an off-Broadway play. Once this desire arises in me, my will is sure

to follow suit: I will decide that we attend the play. But this way of bringing my will into accord

with yours bypasses my own rational self-governance. While I do end up with the desire to see

the play, I do not do so by way of anything like a decisive practical reason to do so. And where

2 When Strawson says that from the objective stance “you cannot reason with him,” I take it that he means to

exclude the sort of interpersonal persuasion I am about to describe—cases in which I attempt to convince you of a

conclusion to which I already hold. But there are also cases of reasoning with someone in which both parties pose a

question to which neither has the answer, where the aim is to find an answer that is equally compelling to both of u s,

from a shared set of premises. I treat with the first reading of ‘reasoning with someone.’ But the second sense, too,

must be guided by the aim of self-governance in the way I go on to describe.

11

there is no presentation of reasons, there can be no interpersonal activity of reasoning. In treating

my will like an ordinary instrument, you treat me as an object to be managed or controlled;

thereby, you have opted out the sort of participatory relationship that, Strawson indicates, marks

the engaged stance. To influence my will in the indicated fashion just is to relate to me from the

objective stance. From this stance, you cannot reason with me.

Secondly, you might attempt to influence my will by intimidating me with a threat of

violence. Unlike the desire-inducing drug, your communication of this threat does present a

reason for me to see the play—the reason being that seeing the play will spare me whatever pain

you promise to inflict should I refuse to see it. Here too, though, we do not reason with one

another. Rather, your threat is an attempt at coercion that precludes me from considering the

relative merits or demerits involved in seeing the play. In this, you once more treat my will as

something to be treated or handled, rather than engaged with in joint participatory activity.

These scenarios bring out the fact that reasoning with another is an attempt at persuasion.

Persuasion cannot be the coercive attempt to force the will of another to conform to one’s own.

Rather, if your aim is to persuade me, you must provision reasons that I will find compelling.

These will be reasons that I am positioned to appreciate from my own point of view. If your

attempt at persuasion is successful, then I will decide for these very reasons to pursue the plan of

action for which you’ve made a case. But I must be convinced: I must settle on going to the play

out of the normative force of the reasons that you have presented.3 In this way, persuasion

3 I want to note two complications regarding this simple reflection on persuasion. First, if you present to me reasons

to go the play that I do not or cannot yet recognize as considerations that point up the rightness, goodness,

valuableness, or desirability of going to the pay, then you have further work to do: you need to show me why these

considerations really are reasons to attend the play. These are not reasons for pursuing the relevant first -order plan of

action per se, but metalevel reasons to value something I do not already value. This sort of metalevel exchange often

occurs in persuasion and is a frequent part of making two points of views mesh in the mutual adoption of a shared

plan of action. I leave this complication out of the main text only because it is incidental to the example I am

describing. Second, in the course of our joint deliberation you might present to me reasons that do not bear directly

on going to the play. These might be reasons sourced in our relationship, or in the history of our joint ventures (e.g.,

‘You chose what we did last weekend,’ ‘If you go to the play, I’ll pick up the check at dinner’). While these do not

12

exhibits a due regard for another’s capacity for rational self-governance. Or better: interpersonal

persuasion aims at the other’s rational self-governance.4 I propose that this is a constitutive aim

of interpersonal persuasion, in that it makes persuasion what it is and sets a standard for good

cases of persuasion.

I have been trying to clarify why reasoning with another is a distinctive mode of

interpersonal influence, with an eye to discerning why it can only happen within the engaged

stance. At this point it is worth reiterating that reasoning with another is an attempt to influence

the other—to induce in the other some change according to one’s own purposes (cf. Rovane

1998: 76–77). All we have said so far is that any such attempt cannot count as reasoning with

someone unless it is an attempt to persuade the other. In turn, persuasion constitutively aims at

the other’s self-governance. This does not render interpersonal reasoning any less an attempt to

change another’s will. In our scenario, you are attempting to change my will from being settled

on seeing a movie to being settled on seeing a play. All I have said is that reasoning is distinctive

because it is an attempt at interpersonal influence that works by provisioning reasons that

facilitate, rather than hinder, the other’s rational self-governance.

Sometimes persuasion is seamless. You might communicate to me reasons so compelling

that upon taking them in our wills instantly harmonize on a joint plan of action. In such cases one

merely voices a suggestion and the matter, for both, is settled. (In my relationship, “Pizza first?”

bear directly on going to the play—and are hence impure modes of rational influence (cf. Rovane 1998: 81)—they

nevertheless figure frequently in attempts to ‘sweeten the deal’ to provide incentives for another. I do not think they

are always coercive, but of course can constitute coercion in special circumstances. I take it though that we do not

need necessary and sufficient conditions for an incentive’s counting as coercive to make the present point, namely

that interpersonal reasoning aims at (non-coercive) persuasion. 4 I am tempted at this point to employ Rovane’s phrase agency-regarding relations (1998). As Rovane unpacks this

notion, agency-regarding relations are typified by “pure and open rational influence”—the honest presentation of the

merits strictly of doing what one recommends—that is mindful of the other’s rational point of view (cf. Rovane

1998: 75–85). But as I said in note 2, ordinary persuasion can be impure by offering additional incentives and can

attempt to rationally influence another’s point of view by offering metalevel reasons to value things that the other

does not, before the attempted influence, already care (sufficiently) about. This does nothing to take away from

Rovane’s main point that pure and open rational influence is criterial for personhood.

13

works like this.) I suppose such cases count as reasoning with another. But reasoning with

another frequently involves a deeper level of contention between the two parties. These will be

cases where your aim is to change my will from a plan of action that I endorse for reasons I take

to be decisive. Again, not all cases of reasoning with another involve this dynamic. But our

interpersonal endeavor cannot really be called an instance of interpersonal reasoning if it is not

the type of joint activity that at least admits of this dynamic. And in these more contentious

cases, you must transmit to me reasons that are stronger than the ones currently in my

possession. Here, reasoning with me requires that you (a) transmit to me a practical case that

conflicts with the one I already possess, therein introducing dissonance into my own rational

point of view, and (b) trust me to litigate the issue rationally in coming to the conclusion that best

accords with all of the reasons I possess after the transmission.

This last item (b) is closely related to the constitutive aim of persuasion. To persuade me

from the plan I endorse (going to the movies) to the plan that you endorse (going to the play), I

must assess both plans along with the reasons for each. Then I must settle my will in accord with

the strongest case. Suppose that your reasons for going to the play really are stronger than the

reasons for going to the movies. In trusting me to recognize this, you are trusting me to recognize

that I am rationally constrained, indeed rationally compelled, to decide to go to the play.

(Otherwise you will not persuade me, but merely incentivize me in a concessionary spirit to

accede to your demand.) This is because in the envisaged case I will be flat out irrational to

persist in the predominant desire to go to the movies—and the charge of irrationality must be one

that matters to me. Upon presenting your practical case for going to the play, I will not be

persuaded to your way of thinking unless my coming to decide to go to the play is also a

recognition that going to the movies is unwarranted in the light of the very reasons you have

presented. In these circumstances, the recognition that we ought to go to the play must also be a

recognition that I will be wrong to persist in my former preponderant desire to see the film. It is a

14

hallmark of specifically rational interpersonal influence that I shall be at fault to persist in a plan

that goes against the reasons within my possession.

Furthermore, this must also be a charge that you can level against me. You cannot be said to

be reasoning with me if there is not at least the possibility of faulting me for persisting in a plan

of action that I can be trusted to recognize as unwarranted in the light of all you have brought to

bear on our shared deliberative question. So, reasoning involves the possibility of targeting

another with distinctive patterns of interpersonal criticism. These criticisms will rest on the

charge that I am failing to abide the rational norms that govern the interpersonal practice in

which we are engaged. (I am failing to abide ‘the rules of the game.’) These will be norms of

epistemic and practical rationality, with the weighing of evidence, utility, risk, and the

preferences. Most fundamentally, we cannot reason together if it not possible to fault me for

persisting in a plan that I recognize by my own lights to be unwarranted.

Coming back to Strawson, we can see now just why interpersonal reasoning cannot be done

from the objective stance. The engaged stance, Strawson tells us, is one of participatory

interpersonal involvement. The reactive attitudes taken up from within that stance reflect a deeply

rooted “human commitment to participation in ordinary inter-personal relationships” (2003: 81).

We see now that interpersonal reasoning—the good faith communication of reasons with the

mutual aim of persuading one another—is just such a jointly participatory activity. Reasoning

with another requires both parties to acknowledge and abide rational norms that govern the

attitudes of belief and intention. These norms, together with the reasons proffered by each party,

dictate what each party ought to settle upon. In this way, interpersonal reasoning always allows

for the possibility of thoroughgoing normative criticism according to how well each party abides

the rational norms that govern reasoning. It is this sense of ‘shared rational rules,’ and the

possibility of normative criticism that these rules bring into play, which makes reasoning with

another a participatory joint activity. Engaging in such an interpersonal participatory activity is,

15

Strawson says, simply not possible from the objective stance. We can only do it from the

engaged stance.

Fittingly, a range of reactive attitudes might become appropriate in the course of reasoning

with another. In the course of our interpersonal reasoning you might charge me with bad faith,

obstinateness, equivocation, feigned ignorance, wishful thinking, evasion, lack of charity, or

refusal to face the facts. More seriously still is the charge of outright irrationality—a failure to

resolve a rational conflict that is within my ken and which puts me at odds even with myself.

These are all fully-fledged reactive attitudes in Strawson’s sense. They are reactions to one

agent’s failure to exhibit due regard for the rational norms that govern the interpersonal activity

in which both are mutually engaged. Evidently, an agent exhibits such failure by persisting in an

attitude or set of attitudes that fall short of those demanded by the rational norms that govern our

interpersonal activity.

Now, I have envisioned these reactive attitudes (obstinateness, equivocation, evasion, etc.)

as arising in the course of reasoning with another. But once this is pointed out, it is evident that

such attitudes emerge from the failure to abide the rational norms that govern the sets of attitudes

that constitute each individual’s own rational point of view (cf. Rovane 1998: 19–26; Bilgrami

2006: 212ff). And these norms in turn can be traced to the specific attitudes of belief and

intention. Belief, it is commonly held, is constituted by the norm of truth, so that part of what

makes an attitude a belief and not some other kind of attitude is that one recognizes that one

ought to believe that p if and only if p is true. It is less commonly appreciated that intention, too,

takes a constitutive norm, namely that an agent ought to intend to φ if and only if φ-ing ought to

be done (or that it is not the case that the agent ought not to φ—see Shah 2008). These norms

impose deliberative norms of their own: an agent ought to believe that p only out of reasons that

bear on p’s truth; an agent ought to intend to φ only for reasons that point up the rightness,

goodness, value, or desirability of φ-ing. The norms on belief and on intention agglomerate into

16

more general rational norms that govern how an agent’s beliefs and intentions should relate as a

whole. Some of these norms include the following:

Instrumental Requirement: An agent ought not [Intend to φ and believe that ψ-ing is

necessary to φ-ing and fail to intend to ψ].

Intention Consistency: An agent ought not [Intend to φ and believe that φ-ing is

impossible].5

Many further normative dimensions of the attitudes will be explored in coming chapters. For

now, I only want to point out that the rational norms that govern interpersonal reasoning also

govern intrapersonal reasoning, traceable as they are to an individual agent’s attitudes of belief

and intention. If one cannot form, modify, or abolish one’s own attitudes in the light of such

rational norms, it is hard to see how one could engage in reasoning with another.

The upshot is that I may take reactive attitudes towards myself for failing to believe and

intend in accord with the rational norms that constitutively govern my attitudes. When I change

my mind in the course of reasoning to some new conclusion, I must think myself correct to do so

and at fault for persisting in the attitude I recognize to be unwarranted. Failure to abide such

norms can occasion self-directed reactive attitudes. For instance, one might fault oneself for

backsliding on a firm resolution, for procrastinating in the face of serious work to be done, for

fooling oneself into believing a delusion. All of these reactive attitudes lodge distinctively

normative criticisms to oneself on account of one’s own erroneous beliefs and intentions. This

fact is consonant with Strawson’s own insistence on the close links between other- and self-

directed reactive attitudes—to the ties between the standards according to which we are prepared

to appraise others and those according to which we judge ourselves (2003: 84–85).

5 See Bratman (1987, 2009a). In articulating these norms, I opt for a ‘wide scope’ reading in the manner indicated by

John Broome (2013).

17

I will use the label attitudinal blame for such attitude-targeting reactive attitudes, whether

they are directed to oneself or to one another. Like the more familiar reactive attitudes targeting

overt intentional action, our attitude-targeting reactive practices are rich and varied, with many

contrasting strengths and valences. ‘Attitudinal blame’ is a term intended to gather these diverse

attitude-targeting practices together under a single label. What unites them is that they are

reactions to an agent’s failure to abide the normative oughts sourced in the attitudes of belief and

intention, and the wider norms of inquiry, reasoning, and deliberation that stem from such

attitudinal oughts.

There are further parallels with the more familiar reactive attitudes of resentment,

indignation, forgiveness, and the like. In particular, attitudinal blame can be suspended in two

ways. First, there is a ‘local’ suspension. Here, one ceases to regard an agent as attitudinally

blameworthy in respect of one attitude or a small set of attitudes in his repertoire. But the agent

is still conceived as an appropriate target for attitudinal blame. This local suspension of

attitudinal blame corresponds to the suspension of resentment in the light of such sincere excuses

as ‘He didn’t mean to,’ ‘He hadn’t realized,’ ‘or ‘He couldn’t help it’ (2003: 77). In the case of

attitudinal blame, local suspensions come in the train of such excuses as ‘He didn’t understand

that the beliefs conflict,’ ‘He didn’t realize that his plan could not come off without ψ-ing,’

‘Unknown to him, his goal was in fact impossible to achieve,’ or ‘He didn’t grasp that this

conclusion is implied by what he does believe.’ In the wake of such pleas, we may suspend

attitudinal blame with respect to the specific attitude(s) excused; but we will not cease holding

the agent to the demand to abide the rational norms that govern his attitudes as a whole. (It is

telling that all these excuses appeal to the lack of some sort of self-conscious grasp on the agent’s

part, which will figure centrally in Chapter 4.) Second, there is a ‘global’ suspension of

attitudinal blame. This is to cease to hold the agent to any demand to abide rational norms at all.

This global suspension effects an objective and detached stance towards another, from which (as

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I have been stressing, and as Strawson concurs) one simply cannot engage in reasoning with the

other.

Strawson was quite right, then, that we reason together only from within the engaged stance.

The ultimate explanation for this fact is that we bear moral responsibility for our attitudes just as

we do for our ordinary overt intentional actions. This moral responsibility is evinced by our

responsibility practices, in particular by the suite of attitude-targeting reactive practices I have

been describing. Such practices register an agent’s fidelity or infidelity to the rational norms that

govern our beliefs, intentions, and proper inquiry. Attitudinal blame charges an agent with

blameworthiness for failing to abide these norms.

I conclude that we bear moral responsibility for our attitudes of belief and intention. Or at

least, our inter- and intrapersonal practices surrounding responsibility indicate that this is so.

As I mentioned at the outset of this section, Strawson claims that these practices are not

candidates for revision in the light of a general metaphysical thesis like determinism. Strawson

says in “Freedom and Resentment” that the engaged stance is too firmly rooted to be dislodged

by such a thesis. I do not think we need to follow Strawson’s general metaphysical point to

appreciate that these firmly lodged interpersonal practices present a presumptive case for our

moral responsibility for the attitudes. But nor do I think we depart from Strawson’s point to seek

an explanation of why it is legitimate to subject another to attitudinal blame. After all, Strawson

himself emphasizes at several points that our reactive attitudes are reactions to the rational

agency of others—to the quality of another’s will as it is manifested in behavior that is

appropriately interpretable as intelligible in the light of conscious purposes. I am tempted to say

that the tie between agency and responsibility is an inextricable nexus recoverable from within

the very engaged point of view that, according to Strawson, does not admit of justification from

some stance outside of its confines.

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If that is right, then the natural next question to ask is: In virtue of what species of agency

over our attitudes is it legitimate to subject another to attitudinal blame? This is a question that I

shall take up towards the end of this chapter. First, I want to say more about the form of

responsibility that we bear for the attitudes of belief and intention.

The form of attitudinal responsibility

At the outset of this chapter I related three apparent obstacles to the claim that we are

morally responsible for belief and intention. The first is that we do not think it fair to subject

another to bodily punishment on account of his beliefs and intentions. The second is that a wide

range of our beliefs and intentions are morally insignificant, so that it seems overblown to speak

of moral responsibility for e.g. my belief that San Francisco is in California.6 And the third is that

we do not exercise the same kind of control over our attitudes that we do over our overt

intentional actions. In this section, I want to address the first two of these obstacles by clarifying

the form of our moral responsibility for the attitudes.

Let us begin by following Angela Smith (2015) in distinguishing two questions about moral

responsibility:

a. What is it for an agent to be responsible for x?

6 One quick reply to this worry is to point to those beliefs and intentions that do constitute morally significant

trespass. Intentions to do harm fall in this category. And racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudicial beliefs may constitute

morally significant epistemic prejudices. But such examples are of no help for the broader and deeper claims I wish

to forward in this thesis. My claims in this dissertation pertain to the normative standards that constitutively govern

our beliefs and intentions, and about the species of agency that we exercise with respect to such norm-constituted

attitudes. So, what I say about the responsibility we bear for the attitudes must cover such humdrum cases as

ordinary failures of practical rationality, believing something in the face of decisive contrary evidence, and the like.

Only by working with such general failures can I hope to establish something about our responsibility for our own

minds in these ordinary respects.

And in any case, focusing on morally prejudicial beliefs and intentions to do harm will not answer a related

worry: we do not speak of legitimate bodily punishment even for such morally significant attitudinal trespasses as

intentions to do harm or prejudicial beliefs. Intolerant as such prejudicial beliefs may be, intolerant also is the

attempt to bodily punish those who erroneously hold them. And, while the law rightly punishes for attempted

crimes, the mere intention to perform a crime is not yet an attempt and so , I reckon, not justly punishable. I should

like to stay on the right side of these intuitions in this thesis.

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b. In virtue of what is an agent responsible for x?

Question (a) asks about the nature of responsibility. It asks: in what does an agent’s

responsibility for x consist? What is involved in an agent’s being responsible for something?

Question (b) asks something different. It asks: what conditions must an agent satisfy relative to x

in order to bear responsibility for x? As Smith has it, question (b) asks after the agency-

conditions that one must satisfy to be responsible for x (Smith 2015: 104). Our answers to

questions (a) and (b) are independent of one another. Two theorists may agree about what it is for

an agent to be responsible for x and yet disagree about the agency-conditions that must be

satisfied for this status to obtain. For instance, these theorists might agree about that which

responsibility consists in but disagree about whether, for this to obtain, the agent must have

enjoyed alternative possibilities at the point of action. These theorists agree over question (a) but

disagree over question (b). Similarly, two theorists might agree over question (b) and disagree

over question (a). They might agree (say) that responsibility does not require alternative

possibilities. But they might disagree about the nature of responsibility: about what

responsibility ultimately comes down to.

Since our answers to these questions can diverge in these ways, we may treat them

separately. I will focus in this section on question (a): what is it for an agent to be responsible for

his beliefs and intentions? I shall return to question (b) near the close of this chapter. Following

an important paper by Gary Watson (1996), philosophers have lately distinguished three notions

of moral responsibility: responsibility as accountability, as attributability, or as answerability.7

7 Gary Watson distinguished attributability from accountability and defended the former notion as a legitimate form

of “aretaic appraisal” in his (1996). (See discussion below.) David Shoemaker argues that attributability,

accountability, and answerability are three separable subspecies of responsibility that come apart in certain cases

(2011). Smith (2015) holds that answerability is the basic and sole notion of responsibility. I do not take a stand on

this question. My question is: which notion of these notions captures our responsibility for the attitudes?

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Strat with accountability. Accountability is a matter of holding an agent responsible. We

hold an agent responsible for x by subjecting him to a range of moral or legal responses,

sometimes including bodily punishment. But accountability need not take this form: “Holding

people responsible,” says Gary Watson, “involves a readiness to respond to them in certain

ways” (1996: 235). Such responses are typified by the Strawsonian reactive attitudes that we

have taken as our point of departure: attitudes such as blame, resentment, indignation,

forgiveness, and the like. These responses involve one party being “responsible to the other for

complying with the demands” that have been breached (1996: 235). So far, this much is familiar:

overt intentional actions are held to normative demands to exhibit due regard for another.

(Attitudes of belief and intention, in contrast, are held to their own cannons of normative

demands—demands to observe the rational norms that govern interpersonal reasoning.

Attitudinal blame is thus best understood as a form of responsibility-as-accountability. I’ll return

to this point.)

Blame (attitudinal and otherwise) is a characteristically forceful mode of appraisal. Because

of this, we feel that it is unfair—and not merely mistaken—to blame someone for something for

which he does not in fact deserve to be blamed. (Even praise can be unearned.) This is especially

so when holding another accountable involves imposing sanctions (such as bodily punishment)

that deprive someone of his autonomy or deprive him of some good. In light of this, Watson

notes that accountability is subject to its own demands, this time sourced in concerns having to

do with the fairness of blaming someone who has apparently committed a significant trespass.

What makes it fair to hold an agent accountable for x? For one thing, it seems that x must be,

in some sense, legitimately put down to that agent. This brings us to Watson’s second face of

responsibility—responsibility as attributability. According to Watson, an agent is responsible in

the attributability sense for x (roughly) when x expresses or manifests commitments that are

constitutive of the agent’s practical identity (or ‘deep self’). One of Watson’s concerns is to show

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that attributability is a robustly normative form of responsibility, and not a mere stand-in for non-

normative judgments of efficient-causal connection.8 In particular, Watson pressed that holding

an agent accountable is not the only ‘deep form’ of normative assessment: attributability, too,

permits a form of blame.

Key to this latter leg of Watson’s argument is the notion of aretaic appraisal, or appraisal

from an aretaic perspective. As I read Watson, aretaic appraisal is an assessment of the agent’s

evaluative commitments, as they find expression in overt action. To evaluate an action as flowing

from such evaluative commitments is, Watson thinks, to interpret that action as having been

authored by the agent in such a way that it (the action) gives voice to the agent’s “adoption of

some ends among others” (1996: 233). Here is Watson on the point:

if what I do flows from my values and ends, there is a stronger sense in which what I do is

my own: I am committed to them. As declarations of my adopted ends, [such actions]

express what I’m about, my identity as an agent. They can be evaluated in distinctive ways

(not just as welcome or unwelcome) because they themselves are exercises of my

evaluative capacities […] Because aretaic appraisals implicate one’s practical identity, they

have ethical depth in an obvious sense. (1996: 233)

As Watson points out, when my intentional action expresses my identity as an agent, my action is

itself “an exercise of my evaluative capacities.” The action can be attributed to me in the same

deep sense in which my commitments about what is good, right, and worthy of pursuit can be

attributed to me: such actions and such commitments constitute my practical identity—my

standpoint as a reflective being who cares about things, takes on projects, endeavors to execute

plans, and so on. This, I take it, is what Watson means when he says that I author the actions that

express my practical identity (1996: 234).

8 He was principally replying to Susan Wolf (1990).

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Though such aretaic appraisals constitute a form of blame, Watson stresses a distinction

between blame in the sense of accountability. Accountability-blame involves, we said, reactive

attitudes such as resentment and indignation. But they also involve forms of sanction and

punishment that, on any given instance, you or I might not be entitled to mete out. Though we

lack such a “reactive entitlement,” still we can assess an agent from the aretaic perspective

(1996: 230).9 So, on Watson’s picture we can attribute an action to an agent in such a way that

grounds a deep form of normative criticism, without thereby holding the agent accountable for

that action. This will occur whenever we attribute a faulty action to an agent but do not possess

the right sort of social standing to subject the agent to blame or other forms of sanction. For

instance, a student might confide to me that his partner has behaved in an untoward fashion

towards him; I might empathize with my student and render the appropriate aretaic appraisal of

his partner, but it is nevertheless ‘not my place’ to blame the student’s partner for what has

transpired in their relationship. (Cf. the discussion of ‘shoddiness’ in Watson 1996.) Such cases

do not point to a defect in the very idea of responsibility in the attributability sense; it only

speaks to the fact that attributability and accountability are different faces of responsibility. Fairly

holding an agent to account for an action involves more than merely appreciating the authorship

at work in the action that we attribute to the agent’s evaluative commitments and practical

identity. For instance, it may involve being appropriately related or situated with respect to the

agent; not being situated to the agent in the right way, one may find oneself without the standing

to hold him accountable.

Answerability can be introduced by way of G.E.M Anscombe’s opening discussion of the

mark of intentional action in Intention. (We will treat with Anscombe’s work in much more detail

in Chapter 4.) Anscombe wrote that intentional actions are those “to which a certain sense of the

9 For challenge on this point, see Angela Smith (2008), who argues that attributability can indeed license the full

range of reactions that Watson prefers to keep grouped under accountability -blame.

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question ‘Why?’ is given application; the sense of course is that the answer, if positive, gives a

reason for acting” (1957: 7). For Anscombe, this question seeks normative rather than

explanatory reasons. It does not ask for (say) a neurophysiological explanation of how it was that

an agent’s body came to move. Rather, it asks for something like a practical case for why the

action was a good, right, rational, choiceworthy, or sensible thing to do (from the agent’s point of

view). Or, the ‘Why?’-question asks for the aim toward which the agent hoped to contribute by

acting as he did.

Anscombe writes that the ‘Why?’-question can be “refused application,” and in these cases

the episode in question is not an intentional action at all (1957: §6). For instance, the ‘Why?’-

question is refused application when the respondent professes ignorance about what he was

(apparently) doing. When an agent replies that “I didn’t know that I was doing that,” it simply

makes no sense to hold that agent to an expectation to summon a practical case for the action.

(This is the reason why Anscombe took a certain sort of self-knowledge of what one is doing as

constitutive of intentional action. Again, I will spend a great deal of Chapter 4 on this issue.)

Though Anscombe does not explicitly mention the point, it seems that the ‘Why?’-question

must be refused application when it is asked of an (apparent) agent who is normatively

incompetent and cannot appreciate the normative significance of reasons. It simply does not

make sense to ask such an agent to provide the reasons that justify his conduct. Instead, it seems

that the ‘Why?’-question in such cases can only ask after causal or explanatory reasons that offer

an “objective” explanation of why a certain episode occurred. This points up a key point. The

‘Why?’-question presumes not only that the event in question can be justified, but additionally

that the agent is capable of appreciating this justification and acting from it. Again, this will be a

major feature of Chapters 3–4.

However, Anscombe notes that the ‘Why?’-question is not refused application by the reply

that the agent had no particular reason for acting. She writes, “The question is not refused

25

application because the answer to it says that there is no reason, any more than the question how

much money I have in my pocket is refused application by the answer ‘None’” (1957: 25-26).

Most importantly, the ‘Why?’-question is not refused application when the respondent issues

a poor response to the question. A poor response to the ‘Why?’-question is one that does not

offer a (sufficiently) good practical case for the action in question. This will be the case when the

agent’s reply to the ‘Why?’-question fails to justify the action, elucidate its point, or demonstrate

something valuable or choiceworthy in the prospect of its performance. When this is the case, the

agent is open to a distinctive brand of normative criticism. Depending upon the circumstances,

the agent who fails to satisfy the justificatory demand can be blamed, held accountable, and

subjected to the reactive attitudes. In a broader range of non-moral cases, we may simply fault

the agent for his irrationality, which, as I have stressed in connection with the attitudes, is no less

a robustly normative form of criticism.

We may now grasp how the applicability of Anscombe’s ‘Why?’-question constitutes a form

of responsibility. Here I can do no better than Angela Smith’s recent formulation: when an agent

is answerable for something, she stands as “an appropriate target, in principle, for requests for

justification regarding that thing and […] she is eligible, in principle, for a variety of moral

responses depending upon how well or poorly she meets this justificatory request” (2015: 103).

Smith helpfully brings out the dual character of answerability in this passage. To be answerable

for x is to stand in a relation that permits intelligible justificatory demands with respect to x and

to be open to moral (or otherwise normatively significant) responses depending on how well the

justificatory demand is satisfied.

At this point it is important to ward off two potential misunderstandings. The first bears

directly on issues of moral significance with which I started this section. Smith and Pamela

Hieronymi (2014) both argue that we are answerable for all of our intentional actions, and not

only those that take on a special moral significance. Whether a moral response is called for has to

26

do with the specific action at issue and the circumstances in which it was performed. It might

also have to do with the “reactive entitlements” that we enjoy relative to the agent whose action

we are appraising. To say that we are morally responsible for all of our intentional actions is not

to say that all of our actions take on a specifically moral significance. It is rather to say that we

are answerable for morally significant actions and insignificant actions alike.10

Secondly, we should not we be misled by the interpersonal slant to the foregoing

characterizations of answerability. What matters is that an agent is the intelligible and

appropriate source of reasons for the action, not that there is an interlocutor in the wings who is

prepared to pose the ‘Why?’-question. We may conceive of the interlocutor as a merely

hypothetical device to illustrate the notion of answerability.

Having distinguished three forms of responsibility, how do they relate to one another? My

claim is that answerability is a pervasive form of responsibility: if an agent is responsible in any

sense for x, then he is at least answerable for x. Now, T.M. Scanlon (1998) and Angela Smith

(2015) stake out a stronger claim: that answerability is the sole form of responsibility,

encompassing both attributability and accountability. But this stronger claim is not necessary for

our purposes. It will be sufficient to show how answerability, as the pervasive form of

responsibility, constitutes a fitting link between the sort of aretaic appraisals that mark

attributability and the reactive attitudes we take to another when, in fairly holding him

responsible, we deem him accountable for what he has done.

Take attributability first. An action cannot be attributable to an agent unless it is also one for

which the agent is answerable. To attribute an action to an agent is to interpret it as manifesting

the evaluative commitments that comprise his practical identity. These evaluative commitments

are in turn normally held for reasons: it is only insofar as these evaluative commitments manifest

10 Pace McKenna (2012: 17). I return to this point below.

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an agent’s normative competence in treating with reasons that they can function to constitute his

practical identity at all. And so, to act out of these evaluative commitments, to express them in

action, is ipso facto to be in a position to justify the action by way of the reasons that bear on the

evaluative commitments from which the action issues. To put the point another way: if we were

to attribute to an agent an action for which he is not answerable, the normative dimension of

attributability simply drops out of the picture. We could say at most that the action was produced

and controlled by psychological states and occurrences within the agent. But the special sort of

normative or “ethical depth” that Watson claims for the notion of attributability would be

downgraded (as it were) to mere efficient-causal transactions. To remain a robustly normative

notion of responsibility, then, attributability for x must entail answerability for x.

Against this line of thought, David Shoemaker argues that cases of irrationality illustrate the

possibility of attributability without answerability (2011: 606–615). According to Shoemaker, the

agent’s irrationality is indeed properly attributable to the agent, as we may render aretaic

appraisals of the agent on account of his irrationality. But, he claims, the irrational agent is not

answerable for his irrationality, since it is implausible to hold this irrationality is an expression of

his evaluative commitments. Shoemaker rightly deems this an implausible result: we do take

agents to be responsible for their irrationality, and our theory of responsibility ought to reflect

this commonsense datum.

In reply, notice that an agent who is overall irrational is not thereby an inappropriate target

of the ‘Why?’-question that marks answerability. Irrationality is not nonrationality. Posing the

‘Why?’-question to a nonrational agent—one who does not possess a minimum degree of

competence in taking in and appreciating the normative force of reasons—is a pointless exercise.

The robust justificatory demand that the ‘Why?’-question communicates simply falls to the

ground when the recipient is nonrational. This is different from the case of one who does possess

this sort of competence, but who in a given instance exercises this competence poorly. It very

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much is to the point to ask an agent to justify outright irrationality, as such cases constitute

failures by the agent’s own lights in what to do, what to intend, or what to believe. In contrast to

a nonrational agent, an irrational agent is nevertheless an apt target for such demands for

justification.11

Now consider the connection between accountability and answerability: an agent cannot

fairly be held accountable for x unless he is answerable for x. If an agent is not the appropriate

target for demands for justification, then it cannot be fair or appropriate to direct blame,

resentment, or indignation to that agent on account of what he has done. To be sure, perhaps

some form of instrumental sanction might be appropriate—say, to keep the relevant subject from

unduly harming others. But I take it for granted that this is not what we are normally up to in

taking up a reactive attitude towards another. After all, part of the motivation for centering

discussion on the reactive attitudes is precisely that they register and embody ‘deep’ forms of

normative appraisal of an agent’s conduct. Genuine accountability, then, is appropriate only

when the agent in question is answerable for the trespass in question, and furthermore when the

practical case that the agent provides (or could provide) does not justify the action in question.

If this is correct, then answerability is the pervasive form of responsibility. An agent can

neither be held accountable nor attributed an action for which he is not answerable. This will

allow us to understand answerability as a common factor in all appraisals of responsibility, as the

link between deeming an attitude properly attributable to an agent and holding him accountable

for the attitude by subjecting him to attitudinal blame. Let us now apply these lessons to the

attitudes more explicitly.

11 This line of reply differs from Angela Smith’s own reply (Smith 2012: §II). Smith construes responsibility for

irrationality as reducible to responsibility for the separate attitudes that constitute the irrationality. But our reply

better accommodates Shoemaker’s point that we think of agents as responsible for their irrationality per se.

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If we are responsible in any sense for our attitudes of belief and intention, we must at least

be answerable for them. We are answerable for our beliefs, intentions, and for the attitudinal

complexes resulting from their combination. This only means that, as Smith has it, we are

“appropriate targets, in principle, for requests for justification regarding” our beliefs and

intentions, and “eligible, in principle, for a variety of moral responses depending upon how well

or poorly [we] meet this justificatory request” (2015: 103).12 Of course, Smith’s formulation

speaks of moral responses. But we have already seen that our responsibility practices are

equipped with a range of rational responses in the guise of attitudinal blame. Answerability for

the attitudes, then, means that one is eligible for attitude-targeting reactive practices such as

attitudinal blame according to how well one discharges the justificatory demand embedded in the

‘Why?’-question when it requests grounds for one’s attitudes. In the case of the attitudes, this

demand is discharged when an agent can show that he is on the right side of the rational norms

that govern beliefs and intentions. In this way, answerability for the attitudes—just like

answerability for overt intentional action—is a robustly normative conception of responsibility,

permitting a robustly normative sort of criticism, albeit of a non-moral sort.

To bring this out, let us follow Anscombe in noting the cases where the ‘Why?’-question

finds and fails to find application. First, the ‘Why?’-question finds application even in cases

where the agent’s response is poor. Poor responses are those that fail to justify the belief or

intention at issue, or which fail to obviate some other rational criticism. Suppose you ask me why

I believe that I will pass my dissertation defense, and I reply that having this belief helps me to

sleep at night. If such a response were possible, you might rightly take up the reactive attitude of

attitudinal blame, faulting me for believing (or alleging to believe) something for reasons that do

not at all bear on the truth of what is believed. Or, if you ask me why I intend to φ even in the

12 Smith herself agrees that we bear answerability for the attitudes.

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belief that φ-ing is not something I can do, you can fault me for an inconsistency in my plan. The

point to notice here is that the justificatory demand embedded within the ‘Why?’-question is not

undermined by my poor response. If this were so—if a poor response meant that the ‘Why?’-

question is not applicable after all—then attitudinal blame would be impossible, and

answerability would amount to a non-normative notion after all. The possibility of a poor reply to

the ‘Why?’-question is what gives to answerability its robust normativity.

For similar reasons, the ‘Why?’-question is given application when the agent replies, “No

reason.” Suppose I reply to the ‘Why?’-question by saying, “I do not believe p for any particular

reason—it’s just something I’ve always held to be true.” This reply will surely strike the

questioner as unsatisfying. But what is important is that this reply, unsatisfying though it is,

shows the ‘Why?’-question to enjoy application. Even though I believe p for no particular

reason, it is nevertheless true that, just because p is my belief, I am related to it in such a way that

renders me an intelligible and appropriate target for a demand for reasons that bear upon p’s

truth. The fact that I cannot summon those reasons does not make me an unintelligible and

inappropriate target; it only shows that I fail to satisfy the justificatory demand involved in

believing. Here we find another point of similarity with respect to intentional actions. We are

related to our own actions in such a way that renders us open to justificatory demands in relation

to their performance. Acting for no reason does not render that demand misplaced or wrongly

directed. At most, it can render the agent’s reply unsatisfying.

It will occur to the reader that there is a significant difference between believing that p for no

reason and acting for no reason: the former, but not the latter, violates a rational requirement.

While we are rationally required not to believe that p in the absence of convincing evidence that

p, no such demand precludes intentional actions undertaken with no reason in mind—so long as

the action itself is not one that is prohibited in the circumstances. But this does not count against

the analogy that I wish to draw. It shows only that “No reason” can, in some cases, be a

31

satisfactory reply to the ‘Why?’-question when it is asked about an agent’s intentional action, but

that “No reason” is always an unsatisfactory reply to the ‘Why?’-question when asked about an

agent’s belief. This is a difference in the rational norms that govern acting and believing, not a

difference in the relation that an agent bears to his actions as opposed to the relation he bears to

his beliefs. That relation, I suggest, is the same in both cases.

To say that we are answerable (and so responsible) for our attitudes, then, is not to say that

an agent bears responsibility only for the beliefs and intentions for which he possesses a

sufficient justification. We are responsible, rather, for all of the attitudes in our repertoire that

admit of or are susceptible to justification.

To be sure, some of our attitudes are not susceptible to justification. Compulsive desires, for

instance, might ‘have a grip’ on one even in the knowledge that the object of such desires are not

to be pursued. In such case, the ‘Why?’-question fails to find application. If I reply to “Why do

you desire that?” by citing a nonrational compulsion (such as a neurological condition), then I

have not offered grounds, but an explanation for why I happen to have the desire that I do.

Recall: Anscombe tells us that intentional actions are those “to which a certain sense of the

question ‘Why?’ is given application; the sense of course is that the answer, if positive, gives a

reason for acting.” Giving a set of merely explanatory reasons for my bodily movement is not a

way of answering the ‘Why?’-question, then, but a way of denying its application (since merely

explanatory reasons are not reasons for the performance of an action). Similarly, in the case of

the attitudes the sense that gives the ‘Why?’-question application is that in which the answer, if

positive, furnishes a normative justification for what is believed or for what is intended. If the

answer to the ‘Why?’-question does not furnish such grounds, then the ‘Why?’-question does not

find application.

When we interpret our responsibility for the attitudes as answerability for what we believe

and intend, the link between answerability and the other forms of responsibility comes into better

32

focus. I have already argued that both accountability and attributability entail answerability. But

we have also discovered grounds for the claim that answerability also entails attributability. I am

not answerable for that which cannot be attributed to me in the robust normative sense that

Watson describes. This is because if there is some item that is not attributable to me—that does

not indicate my ‘practical identity’ in a way that permits aretaic appraisal—then I am simply not

an appropriate target for requests for justification of the item in question. ‘Why?’-question

communicates a demand for justification that presumes attributability. If the ‘Why?’-question is

directed to me in respect of something that is not attributable to me, it seems I am within my

rights to deny the question force (why should I be expected to justify that?). With respect to

attributability and answerability, then, something stronger than my claim of pervasiveness holds:

an agent is answerable for x if and only if x is attributable to her.13

This certainly holds in the case of belief and intention. Answerability for the belief that p or

intention to φ means being the appropriate target for justification for p or for φ-ing, respectively.

And if this ‘Why?’-question finds application, then the attitude can be attributed to me from the

purview of aretaic appraisal: it can be seen as constituting my epistemic or practical identity as a

rationally self-governing agent outfitted with the normative competence to appreciate the

normative force of reasons. In contrast, when the ‘Why?’-question fails to find application—

when my reply is “But I don’t believe that,” or when my attitude is simply impervious or not

susceptible to justification—the attitude cannot be attributed to me in a way that permits deep

forms of normatively significant aretaic appraisal. In such cases, the attitude is just one more fact

about me, alongside my height, hair color, or place of birth.

A similar link holds between answerability for an attitude and accountability for it.

Attitudinal blame is taken up in response to—or in anticipated response to—a poor response to

13 I thank Alfred Mele for requesting more clarity on this point.

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the ‘Why?’-question. On account of its normative depth, attitudinal blame (qua blame) carries a

characteristic force or ‘sting’ that renders it unfair to direct to undeserving agents. One can also

lack the proper standing to direct attitudinal blame to another. All of this is just to say that

attitudinal blame is a kind of accountability, in Watson’s sense. Subjecting another to attitudinal

blame is a way of holding an agent accountable to the rational norms that constitutively govern

beliefs, intentions, and combinations thereof. The link between answerability for an attitude and

accountability for it is thus clear. To hold an agent accountable for an attitude by subjecting him

to attitudinal blame is to charge the agent with a poor response to the ‘Why?’-question. And a

poor response to the ‘Why?’-question, in turn, just is a failure to evince a proper regard for the

constitutive norms that govern the attitudes. So, while it is possible for an agent to be attributable

and answerable but not accountable for a belief or intention, typically these three forms of

responsibility come together. One place where they come together, as we have seen, is in the

context of reasoning together to a shared conclusion.

Let us return at last to the worries I announced at the beginning of the section. The first

worry is that a wide range of our attitudes fall short of moral significance. My belief that San

Francisco is a Californian city, or my intention to walk to the store this afternoon, hardly rise to

matters of serious moral concern. But this only means that the attitude-targeting reactive

practices by which we hold one another accountable for belief and intention are frequently not

explicitly moral responses. As we have shown with ways that the ‘Why?’-question is applicable

even when the agent has a poor response, attitudinal blame even for ‘merely’ rational failings is

nevertheless a fully normative way of faulting an agent for what he believes or intends. It is a

way of lodging criticism that carries a characteristic ‘force’ or ‘bite.’ This matters for the worry

with which we began this section. It allows us to see why we are responsible for a great many of

our attitudes—namely, all of those that admit of, require, or are susceptible to justification—and

not only those that have an explicitly moral significance.

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We can also see why we are answerable for the attitudes despite the fact that we do not

bodily punish those who believe or intend wrongly. This refusal to administer bodily punishment

is not due to the fact that we are not responsible for beliefs and intentions. It is rather put down to

the fact that our accountability-practices are keyed to the norms to which one is answerable. The

violation of rational norms on believing and intending certainly place an agent at fault. But they

do not constitute a moral trespass worthy of bodily punishment or sanction. We hold one another

accountable to rational norms by expecting justifications when appropriate and by placing

burdens on others to furnish those justifications. Our refusal to punish those who violate rational

norms says something about the norms to which our justificatory demands are anchored, not to

the presence or absence of responsibility.

Watson, recall, notes something else about responsibility in the sense of accountability. He

writes that, because blame carries a characteristic force, it must be fair or reasonable to blame

another. According to Watson, it is “unfair to impose sanctions upon people unless they have a

reasonable opportunity to avoid incurring them” (1996: 237). Attitudinal blame, even if it is not

a form of sanction, still counts as a form of accountability. As a form of accountability, blame

can be deserved or undeserved, and Watson is lucid on the point that we must exercise some

form of agency over our attitudes in order to be fairly accountable for them. This leads to the

third factor occluding moral responsibility for the attitudes: the fact that we do not control our

beliefs and intentions in the same ways we exercise control over overt intentional action. We

must understand just what this lack of control consists in, and why it constitutes a challenge to

attitudinal blame.

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Attitudes and the voluntary

Our overt intentional actions are voluntary. The voluntariness of overt intentional action

provides a satisfying legitimation of such reactive attitudes as blame, resentment, and

indignation. Our attitudes of belief and intention, in contrast, are not voluntary. That is to say, we

do not have voluntary control over what we believe and what we intend. This is why we are

reluctant to ascribe moral responsibility for the attitudes: if we do not possess voluntary control

over the attitudes, how can it be legitimate to direct attitudinal blame to another (or even to

oneself) on account of what one believes or intends? A satisfying answer to this question is the

task of the dissertation at large. In this section I say what ‘voluntariness’ amounts to and why it

matters for responsibility for overt intentional action. Then I will say why our attitudes, while not

voluntary, are nevertheless not involuntary.

I have two senses of ‘voluntary’ in mind.14 In the first reason-based sense, an action is

voluntary if it can be done for any reason that recommends its performance. Our overt intentional

actions are certainly voluntary in just this sense. For any overt intentional action-type I am able

to perform, I can token an instance of that type for any reason that points up the rightness,

goodness, desirability, or value of doing just that thing. Ditto for the events and states of affairs

that I am able to act in order to realize. Many of these reasons will be instrumental ‘further’

reasons: they will count in favor of raising my arm in virtue of the right, good, desirable, or

valuable consequences that raising my arm will go on to bring about. But the reasons-for-which I

raise my arm needn’t be further instrumental reasons. For I may raise my arms just for the very

sake of doing it, for the intrinsic joy I take in raising my arm. So, this first sense of ‘voluntary’

links the performance of an action with considerations that the agent takes to recommend its

14 Cf. Hieronymi (2006, 2009). My terms ‘reason-based sense’ and ‘will-based sense’ come from McHugh (2011),

who makes the same distinction I have in mind.

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performance. Voluntariness in the reason-based sense underscores that an action-type can be

done for any reason that recommends its performance. The reason-based sense of voluntariness

concerns the plurality of reasons for some given overt intentional action, rather than the

connection between reason and action per se.

This link permits a form of appraisal that carries an obvious ethical significance. When an

action is voluntary in this first reason-based sense, we can interpret the performance of the action

as an expression or manifestation of the agent’s evaluative capacities and ability to set ends for

himself (cf. Watson 1975, 1996). Thus, voluntary actions are those that are performed in the light

of, and so express, the agent’s conception of the good (or other ethically relevant appraisals of

value). Because of this connection, appraising an agent’s actions also appraises the agent himself.

This is because, as we have seen in connection with Watson’s discussion of attributability, our

appraisals of value articulate a certain practical standpoint, a ‘place to stand,’ from which we

intervene in the world in order to change it according to our purposes. When action is not

voluntary there is a question about how an overt intentional action can express the kind of quality

of will that, Strawson tells us, our reactive attitudes are primarily reactions to.

I turn to a second sense of ‘voluntary.’ In this second will-based sense, an action is voluntary

if it is brought about in the right way by a mental state or episode that represents the very action

in question. This second sense of ‘voluntary’ is associated with the concept of willing, as when

we say that an agent wills to φ or that φ-ing was, at the point of action, the agent’s will. A

paradigmatic type of voluntariness in this second will-based sense is manifested when an agent

acts from a prior intention. A great many overt intentional actions are like this. In the morning I

might form the intention to walk to the café in the afternoon; come the afternoon, I execute this

intention just by doing the very thing that my intention represents.15

15 This will-based sense of voluntariness roughly corresponds to Hieronymi’s notion of managerial control (cf.

Hieronymi 2006; 2009). I discuss this notion more fully in Chapter 5 in connection with the unity of action.

37

Whereas the reason-based sense of ‘voluntary’ carries an obvious ethical significance, this

will-based sense of ‘voluntary’ carries an obvious action-theoretic significance. It is frequently

because a bodily movement is voluntary in this second sense that it counts as an intentional

action at all. Intentional bodily actions are those bodily performances by which an agent brings

the world into conformity with his will (cf. Hieronymi 2009: 140ff.) When a performance is

voluntary in the will-based sense, its performance is a deliberate action—something that the

agent means to do. It is thus a will-manifesting intentional action, rather than a mere event.

Furthermore, the will-based sense of voluntariness grants us a commonsense notion of control

over an event or state of affairs. On at least one notion of intentional control, it consists in the

degree to which the agent can make the world correspond to the practical representations that he

has of it (cf. Shepherd 2014). I exert control over my body just to the extent that my bodily

movements correspond to my intentions to move my body in the relevant ways.

Correspondingly, I fail to control my body to the extent that they occur in the absence of my

intentions or even in outright defiance of my intentions. This notion of control extends to my

immediate environment: I exercise control over my immediate just to the extent that I can bring

that environment into accord with my intentions for how the environment ought to be. In general,

voluntary control is a matter of bringing the world into accord with my mind.

These two senses of ‘voluntary’ throw moral responsibility for overt intentional action into

sharper relief. When an overt intentional action is voluntary in both the reason- and will-based

senses, it is a deliberate performance that expresses the agent’s evaluative conception of the

good. Thereby, the quality of the agent’s will—the regard or disregard that the agent displays for

his fellows—can be the target of such reactive attitudes as resentment, blame, and indignation.

These twin senses of voluntariness, I am now suggesting, serve as conditions for the possibility

of an agent’s quality of will manifesting in outward behavior. They are fundamental for making

the reactive attitudes intelligible, at least when these attitudes concern “actions which confer

38

benefits or inflict injuries over and above any conferred or inflicted by the mere manifestation of

attitude and intention themselves,” as Strawson has it (2003: 76).

In light of this intimate connection between voluntariness and moral responsibility, it is

significant that our attitudes of belief and intention are voluntary in neither the reason- nor the

will-based sense.

Begin with the reason-based sense. I cannot believe that p or intend to φ for any reason that

recommends having the belief that p or the intention to φ. Consider Kavka’s (1983) well-known

toxin puzzle (cf. Pink 1996: 147ff). Kavka asks us to imagine an eccentric billionaire who on

Monday offers you $1 million to intend to drink a mild toxin on Wednesday. Upon verification

that you possess the intention on Tuesday to (Drink the toxin on Wednesday), the billionaire will

deposit the reward into your account. Of course, the mild toxin will have no lasting ill effects.

But such effects are not to the point, anyway: the billionaire’s offer does not require that you

drink the toxin. You stand to gain $1 million just by intending on Tuesday to drink it on

Wednesday. Earning this reward seems the easiest thing to do in the world: just form the

intention today to drink the toxin on Wednesday. And yet, you cannot instill in yourself the

intention to drink the toxin for the reason that you stand to gain a financial reward by having the

intention. Your intentions register a rational response to reasons that (you take to) recommend

performing the intended action. They do not register a rational response to reasons that

recommend merely having the intention to act, even though in this case there is a compelling

reason to have the intention in question. Notice that the upshot of this puzzle is not that we are

barred from forming the intention to φ for instrumental reasons. I certainly can form the intention

39

to φ out of an appreciation of instrumental reasons; but these will typically be instrumental

reasons to φ, rather than instrumental reasons solely for having the intention to φ.16

Kavka’s toxin puzzle generalizes to the case of belief. Suppose I offer you $1 million to

possess the belief that Michael Dukakis won the presidential election in 1988. You will have

great trouble earning this reward, though. Your belief about who won the election in ’88 is

responsive to evidence that bears on who in fact won the election, and not responsive to the

benefits to be gained by having a given belief about who won the election. Since your belief

about the election is not responsive to Kavka-esque practical, you cannot instill in yourself a

belief that Michael Dukakis won in 1988—even for a million dollars. You can come to believe

that Michael Dukakis won the 1988 election only in the light of reasons that (you take to) bear

positively on the truth of this proposition. The incentive to believe, though it evinces a positive

rationale for having the belief in question, does not count in favor of the truth of what it is you

are incentivized to believe. (See Hieronymi 2006.)

And so, our attitudes are not voluntary in the reason-based sense: we cannot form the

intention to φ for any reason that recommends having the intention to φ, just as we cannot form

the belief that p for any reason that recommends having the belief that p.17 (I will register some

caveats about this point below.)

Nor do we exercise will-based voluntary control over our attitudes. Will-based voluntary

control is epitomized by an agent’s φ-ing out of an intention to φ, where the intention to φ plays

an explanatorily salient role in the agent’s φ-ing. So, will-based voluntary control over the

attitudes of belief and intention will involve an agent acquiring the belief that p or the intention

to φ just out of an intention to acquire the very attitude in question. This would mean exercising

16 An important class of exceptions to this claim stems from Buridan-type situations wherein an agent chooses

between two alternatives that are incompatible and equally worthy of choice. See the Appendix for more discussion.

I thank Alfred Mele for drawing my attention to this issue. 17 I have learned from Thomas Pink’s (1996) discussion of similar matters.

40

the very same kind of intention-based control over the attitudes that we normally exercise over

our overt bodily movements. If we possessed this sort of control over our attitudes they simply

would not be what they are. This is because, as a constitutive matter, beliefs aim at the truth and

intentions aim at what ought to be done.18 These constitutive aims mean that we cannot believe

and intend ‘at will,’ with the same sort of voluntary control that characterizes our overt

intentional actions. To underline this point, think again about reasons to have the belief that p

that do not bear on p’s truth, or reasons to have the intention to φ that do not bear on the

desirability of φ-ing. This occurs when an eccentric billionaire offers an agent $1 million to

believe something that the agent knows to be contrary to fact, or to intend something the agent

knows is not worth doing. If we did possess will-based voluntary control over our beliefs and

intentions, there should be no bar to earning such incentives by acting from intentions to acquire

the belief in question.

Notice here a connection between the two sense of voluntariness. It is because our attitudes

are not voluntary in the reason-based sense that they cannot be voluntary in the will-based sense.

It is because we cannot form the belief that p or intention to φ for any reason that recommends

having that belief or intention that we cannot form attitudes just out of the intention to have the

attitude in question. If our attitudes were voluntary in the reason-based sense, then we would be

able to form the belief that p or intention to φ for reasons that do not bear on the truth of p or

desirability of φ-ing; we would thus be able to form beliefs or intentions for reasons based in an

eccentric billionaire’s $1 million incentive to have beliefs that go contrary to our own knowledge

or intentions to perform pointless or undesirable actions. Having formed such an intention to

acquire the belief that Michael Dukakis won the 1988 presidential election or the intention to

drink the toxin on Wednesday, I would then be free to go on to act from this very intention in

18 For a well-known argument along these lines, see Williams (1973: Ch. 9).

41

acquiring the attitude in question. But since the attitudes are not voluntary in the reason-based

sense, they cannot be voluntary in the will-based sense.19

There is a caveat to this point. To say that our attitudes possess constitutive aims does not

rule out cases in which an agent comes to find that his ‘real’ reasons for believing p or intending

to φ in fact do not bear on the truth of p or the desirability of φ-ing. Someone might come to

understand that he holds an intention to φ or a belief that p only due to social pressure, rather

than out of an appreciation of the reasons to φ or evidence for p, respectively. Such an agent

learns that his attitudes are not sensitive to the right reasons—those that bear on the truth of the

belief’s content or the desirability of the intention’s content, respectively. But these cases do not

speak against the idea that beliefs and intentions have constitutive aims. To say that beliefs and

intentions have constitutive aims is to say that it is part of the nature of belief and intention that

an agent ought not believe that p for reasons other than those that count as evidence for p and

that an agent ought not intend to φ for reasons other than those that count in favor of φ-ing. But

this ‘ought’ can be violated without the attitude in question ceasing to count as a belief or an

intention. Such violations only mean that the relevant attitude is a defective instance of its kind

and must be revised. The agents in our envisaged scenario will experience a correlative rational

tension or dissonance upon realization that the reasons he believes and intends as he does are

reasons of the wrong kind. It is precisely this susceptibility to rational pressure in the light of

reasons of the wrong kind that evinces the constitutive nature of the rational norms in question.

19 Carol Rovane asks whether my point is that the actions I can perform as a means to some further end are al so

actions I can perform ‘at will.’ I believe that my present point about the lack of either reason - or will-based

voluntariness over the attitudes cuts deeper than this. If we cannot form an attitude voluntarily in either of these

senses, there is a real question about just how it is that attitude-formation can be something for which an agent is

responsible. Without voluntariness, there is not only a constraint in the types of reasons-for-which I can hold a given

attitude, but also a total lack of an ordinary notion of will-based control over my own mind. I thank Carol Rovane

for raising this question. Since our attitudes are not voluntary in both senses of ‘voluntary,’ we cannot choose what

to believe or what to intend with the same sort of agency that we employ in choosing to move our bodies.

42

A second caveat: we might imagine scenarios in which one does manage to exercise will-

based voluntary control over the attitudes. Earlier in this chapter I envisioned a scenario in which

you slip me a pill that induces a specific attitude (such as an intention to see an off-Broadway

play). Suppose a company produces a pill that, when ingested, induces the belief that I will pass

my dissertation defense. Ingesting this pill and having this belief may help me to sleep at night,

so I ingest it. But suppose that I also have decisive evidence that I will not pass the dissertation

defense. Taking this pill is a way of exercising will-based intentional voluntary control over my

beliefs. These attitude-inducement scenarios are conceivable.20 However, they are interesting

only because they depict a kind of self-deceptive manipulation of our minds that is difficult to

bring about without such artificial means. To instill in myself a belief that p that is not responsive

to evidence for or against p is to deceive myself with respect to p, for I have made myself believe

that p whether or not I possess reasons that count in favor of p.

True, this belief will sit uncomfortably among the rest of the attitudes within my repertoire.

But the possibility of bringing about a belief that is insensitive to considerations bearing on the

truth of the content of what is believed means that we cannot rule out will-based voluntary

intentional control over the beliefs. It is nevertheless the case that we cannot exercise such will-

based voluntary intentional control over our attitudes in the paradigmatic way that we normally

exercise agency over our attitudes. As the rest of this discussion will bring out, the paradigmatic

ways that we exercise agency over our attitudes respects the constitutive rational norms that

make our beliefs and intentions what they are. So, even in the face of the possibility of belief-

implanting pills and other forms of self-deception, it is still true that the normal and

20 Here I concur with Pamela Hieronymi (2006: 61–64). Hieronymi argues ultimately that taking such a pill does not

mean that one believes that p voluntarily, only that one voluntarily brings it about that one believes that p. While I

find much in common with Hieronymi’s conclusion and her course of argument, it remains that case that after

ingesting the pill I am left with a belief that rationally conflicts with the rest of the attitudes in my repertoire, and if

the pill is lastingly effective it is nevertheless true that the belief in question has been installed.

43

paradigmatic way of influencing our own minds does not involve such self-deception and thus

that non-self-deceiving mental agency cannot be voluntary in the will-based sense. The rest of

what I have to say about the nonvoluntariness of the attitudes should be read as having this

caveat in mind.

The fact that our attitudes are not voluntary—in either the reason- or will-based sense of

‘voluntary’—presents a perplexity. We saw above that the voluntariness of ordinary overt

intentional action permits a close connection between action and moral responsibility, so that our

interpersonal reactive attitudes can register the quality of will manifested in an agent’s outward

bodily deeds. But since the attitudes are not voluntary, it appears that this link cannot be forged.

How then can it be legitimate to take up a reactive attitude towards another on account of his

attitudes of belief and intention? How can an agent bear moral responsibility for an attitude over

which he does not possess voluntary control?

The rest of this dissertation will be given over to answering these questions and resolving the

perplexity that gives them force. Before embarking on that work, we need to distinguish the

involuntary from the nonvoluntary.21 Involuntary occurrences are those over which we possess

no control whatsoever, and in respect of which one is merely patient rather than an agent. A

sneeze—or at least some sneezes—are like this. They simply come over one, seizing one’s body

before one can give a thought to preventing, directing, or modulating its occurrence.

And it also seems as though some token attitudes are like this, too. Take perceptual beliefs,

for instance. The generation of perception-based beliefs—such as my occurrent belief that my

laptop is just before me, or that I am presently sitting in the Rose Main Reading Room—are

induced in me involuntarily. They are taken in automatically when my perceptual-cognitive

system is functioning as it should. It is telling, then, that our responsibility practices do not

21 Here too I follow McHugh (2011).

44

comprehend a robust form of attitudinal blame for an agent who suffers from a mistaken

perceptual belief that results from a malfunction in the perceptual-cognitive cognitive system. An

agent is not attitudinally blameworthy for thinking that a straight stick is bent when looking at it

through water; nor is he blameworthy for thinking the lines of a Muller-Lyer illusion to be equal

in length. In fact, our responsibility practices include excuses that exempt an agent from

attitudinal blame. ‘My perceptual system was undergoing an illusion which landed me with a

faulty belief’ is just one sort of valid excuse, one that lets an agent ‘off the hook’ for having a

mistaken perception-based belief without thereby rendering the agent an unfit target for attitude-

targeting reactive attitudes as a whole. So, even while mistaken perceptual beliefs owing to

perceptual illusions are bad in that they mark a falling-short of the constitutive norm governing

belief, they do not on that account open the agent suffering from the illusion to attitudinal blame.

This I put down to the involuntariness of (at least a wide range of) our perception-based beliefs.

So it seems that the involuntary might indeed undermine any attempt to explain the sort of

agency that we exercise over our attitudes in virtue of which it is legitimate to target an agent

with attitudinal blame.

Not all of our attitudes are involuntary in this way, though—even if all of our attitudes are

not voluntary. For in between the voluntary and the involuntary there is a middle category: the

nonvoluntary (cf. McHugh 2011). If we exercise any agency at all over our attitudes, this agency

must be of a nonvoluntary sort—bearing in mind the caveat I entered above about self-deception.

Let us say that a form of agency is nonvoluntary when it (a) cannot be exercised for any reason

that recommends the target of agential control and (b) does not consist in bringing the world into

accord with some mental state or episode that represents the target of agential control. These two

constraints correspond to the reason- and will-based senses of ‘voluntary,’ respectively. Together

they allow for a form of agency that is restricted with respect to the range of reasons that

recommend its exercise and which does not consist in acting so as to bring the world into accord

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with some prior intention representing the very state of affairs to be brought about. I underscore

that at this point the possibility even of nonvoluntary control over the attitudes cannot be taken

for granted. For there are those who insist that we can be morally responsible only for that over

which we exercise voluntary control.

Attitude-formative mental agency

Earlier we separated two questions about moral responsibility:

a. What is it for an agent to be responsible for x?

b. In virtue of what is an agent responsible for x?

In reply to question (a), I argued that we are answerable for our beliefs and intentions, and that it

is in virtue of this answerability that we hold one another accountable for the attitudes by taking

up attitude-targeting reactive practices (such as attitudinal blame). I now want to turn to question

(b). To ask question (b) is to ask after the conditions that an agent must meet in respect of x to be

morally responsible for x. In the case of responsibility specifically for the attitudes, this question

(b) takes on added urgency. The attitudes, we have seen, are nonvoluntary. Thus, we cannot

appeal to voluntariness as a responsibility-grounding agency-condition for the attitudes as we can

in the case of overt intentional action.

Volitionists about moral responsibility deny this possibility entirely. They claim that we are

morally responsible only for what is voluntary. On this view, attitudinal blame is never

legitimate. For the volitionist, we might say that an agent’s attitudes are bad—subpar, below a

standard, not as they ought to be—but never blameworthy. To illustrate the difference between

the bad and the blameworthy, consider relative judgments of physical attractiveness. To say that I

am less handsome than my brother is not to blame me for coming out the worse in the

comparison. But insofar as I do come out the worse according to some standard that measures

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value, the assessment is a kind of normative evaluation. It is not my fault that I am less

handsome than my brother, but that does not mean that the evaluation is not a matter of assigning

value according to some ideal or some standard. But there is a distinction here between the bad

and the blameworthy. Here is Neil Levy on the point:

Volitionists agree that we can assess agents upon the basis of their morally relevant

attitudes […] What they deny is that finding that an agent is morally flawed is necessarily

to hold that agent responsible for her flaws; [volitionists deny] that all negative assessment

is blame. After all, volitionists might point out, even [opponents of volitionism] find fault

with agents without holding them to be at fault: when these faults are the product of

transient mental illness, for instance. It is, therefore, false that there is no conceptual room

for a distinction between the bad and the blameworthy, and [opponents of volitionism] owe

us an argument for closing the gap between the two. (Levy 2005, p. 6)

On this volitionist account of moral responsibility we cannot subject agents to attitudinal blame.

We cannot fault another on account of his beliefs and intentions; the most we might do is to

deem that they are not as they ought to be. Attitudes can be bad, but an agent cannot be

blameworthy for his beliefs and intentions. The challenge from the volitionist is to explain how it

is we satisfy the agency-conditions for responsibility for the attitudes—whatever these may be—

even though our attitudes are nonvoluntary.

Angela Smith has taken up this volitionist challenge (2008). Smith’s strategy is to enter two

agency-conditions on moral responsibility in general, and to argue that both of them are met

when an agent enjoys the right sort of relations among his evaluative judgments. She terms this

the Rational Relations View (2005).

Smith’s first agency-condition on moral responsibility is that moral blame,

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unlike many other forms of negative assessment, seems to imply something about our

activity as rational agents […] Moral criticism in general […] can only be directed to a

person with regard to things that involve her rational activity in some way” (2008: 380–

381).

This is why it is illegitimate to direct moral blame to me for being less handsome than my

brother. Being less handsome than my brother is not something I have exercised my rational

agency in order to achieve. (Things would be different if I had done something to deliberately

disfigure my appearance.) Call this the Activity Condition on moral blame. It is clear enough how

the Activity Condition gets a hold in blame for overt intentional action. In the case of the

attitudes, though, the Activity Condition seems to call for some species of mental agency that is

exercised in the formation of belief and intention. I return to this point below.

The second condition centers on the justificatory demand at the heart of answerability.

“Moral criticism,” Smith writes, “by its very nature, seems to address a demand to its target. It

calls upon the agent to explain or justify her rational activity in some area, and to acknowledge

fault if such justification cannot be provided” (2008: 281). This is the very demand that renders

an agent answerable for overt intentional action as well as for the attitudes of belief and

intention. Here, Smith is noting the very same link between answerability and moral blame that I

noted earlier. When an agent is answerable for x, then he is the appropriate target for demands for

justification for x and is the proper target of blame should he proffer a poor reply to the ‘Why?’-

question. So, another reason it is inappropriate to blame me for being less handsome than my

brother is that I cannot be called upon to justify by attractiveness. I am simply the inappropriate

target for such a justificatory demand. Call this the Demand Condition on moral blame.

With Smith, I find both conditions highly intuitive. Notice how the Activity and Demand

Conditions are jointly satisfied when an agent performs a voluntary intentional action. An overt

intentional action is an occurrent happening, an occurrent event whose performance is subject to

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the agent’s executive control. This satisfies the Activity Condition. At least paradigmatically,

overt intentional actions are performed out of a sense for the reasons that recommend its

performance. The agent’s understanding of the practical case in favor of acting works to satisfy

the Demand Condition. The reason overt intentional action can jointly satisfy both the Activity

and the Demand Conditions, though, is that overt intentional action is voluntary. My action

meets both conditions because I can act for any reason that recommends acting as I choose and

exercise control in bringing the world in conformity with that choice. This only serves to

reemphasize the question before us: how can these conditions be satisfied in the case of beliefs

and intentions that are not voluntary?

According to Smith, attitudinally blameworthy beliefs and intentions “are not failures of

[voluntary] choice, but failures of judgment and the ‘demand’ we make of [the agent] in this case

is that she acknowledge the inappropriateness of her attitude and reassess the objectionable

judgments they reflect” (2008: 383). It is telling that Smith’s characterization of the rational

activity that legitimates attitudinal blame elides quickly into that which satisfies the Demand

Condition. For Smith, the rational activity that satisfies the Activity Condition for attitudinal

blame is not voluntary choice per se but, Smith tells us, “rational activity more generally” (2008:

383).

What is this ‘more general’ rational activity? According to Smith, when we criticize another

on account of some belief or intention, we are targeting other attitudes that are implicitly

‘behind’ the attitude singled out for criticism. In another paper, Smith takes these implicit

attitudes to be evaluative judgments which “make up the basic evaluative framework through

which we view the world” (2005: 251). Such judgments “comprise the things we care about or

regard as important or significant” (2005: 251–252). Importantly, Smith claims these evaluative

judgments do not need to be explicitly entertained; nor need they be arrived at by a process of

reasoning or even rational reflection. They are simply the bedrock web of evaluative judgments

49

whose consequences ripple throughout the agent’s other beliefs and intentions. When we blame

an agent on account of an attitude of belief or intention, the target is the evaluative judgment the

that the belief or intention reflects. When I hold an evaluative judgment of the sort that Smith is

interested in, rationality dictates that the other attitudes within my repertoire ought to shift

accordingly. In this way, the surface-level beliefs and intentions singled out for attitudinal blame

are dependent on our evaluative judgments; Smith’s claim is that attitudinal blame targets these

deep-level evaluative judgments (cf. 2005: 260ff). In turn, “we take these attitudes [viz., the

deep-level evaluative judgments], like our explicit choices and decisions, to reflect our own

judgmental activity,” even though “we may never have consciously entertained the judgments in

question” (2005: 264). Indeed, Smith claims that that “we may even be surprised by our own

reactions in certain circumstances, precisely because they reveal rational or evaluative

commitments which we were hitherto unaware of holding” (2005: 264). So, the evaluative

attitudes in question need not even be something of which we possess self-knowledge. The

overall view is that the “rational activity more generally” that Smith has in mind is not any kind

of mental action, but simply the fact that the agent possesses a network of evaluative judgments

which is reflected in some belief or intention that comes in for attitudinal blame.22

At this point, though, it is easy to see the justice in the volitionist’s complaint. For it is hard

to see how a standing network of implicit evaluative judgments can satisfy the Activity

Condition, even when we interpret that condition as calling for “rational activity in general.”

Indeed, it is hard to see what is active my possessing a standing network of evaluative judgments

which may even fall outside of my own ken. In what sense can such a network be put down to

my activity qua rational agent? What is the mark that separates such a network of evaluative

22 True, Smith does say that “the justificatory demand implicit in moral criticism is a demand to reassess, modify,

and in some cases apologize for those [evaluative] judgments” (2008: 383). But it is not clear that she conceives of

these as activities per se.

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judgments from the things that I cannot be morally blamed for, such as my physical appearance?

Obviously, a person’s network of evaluative judgments, like his physical appearance, can come

in for evaluative assessment. My evaluative judgments can be rational or irrational, warranted or

unwarranted; and my surface-level attitudes might accord or fail to accord with the deeper-level

evaluative judgments that my beliefs and intentions reflect. In the same way, my appearance can

be pleasant or unpleasant, attractive or unattractive. In neither case, though, is it evident that

these evaluative assessments carry the characteristic force of genuine blame. The complaint I am

describing is that there is nothing in the idea of such an interconnected network of evaluative

judgments (and the ‘surface-level’ beliefs and intentions that such evaluative judgments reflect)

that can make good on the Activity Condition. For I might possess just such a network of

evaluative judgments without engaging in any rational activity whatsoever. Though Smith

presents this network of evaluative judgments as constituting an agent’s ‘rational activity in

general,’ it is hard to see why she is entitled to this claim since it is unclear just why a standing

network of evaluative judgments is ‘active’ in the right way.23

We arrive at the following impasse. The volitionist’s account of the agency-conditions on

moral blame respects both the Activity and the Demand Conditions. Precisely because of this, on

the volitionist view we can be morally responsible only for voluntary overt intentional actions.

This means that the attitude-targeting reactive practices we examined in this chapter must either

come in for revision or be downgraded as consisting in non-forceful evaluative assessment.

Against the backdrop of these consequences, Smith’s Rational Relations View seems promising:

on this latter view we can be open to genuine forms of moral blame on account of our beliefs and

intentions. Thus, we can accept that the attitude-targeting reactive practices amount to genuine

forms of attitudinal blame. However, while this option respects our attitude-targeting

23 For a similar criticism of a view that resembles Smith’s Rational Relations View, see Pink (2016: 12 –16).

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responsibility practices as they are, it cannot respect the Activity Condition on blame. Neither

option leaves our starting assumptions unscathed.

To break through this impasse, we require a notion of attitude-formative mental agency.

Attitude-formative mental agency will consist in the nonvoluntary mental activity that consists in

the productive generation of beliefs and intentions for which an agent is subsequently

answerable. I propose that we look to the mental activity of reasoning, the very form of activity

that Strawson indicated as possible only from within the engaged stance. The mental activity of

reasoning—understood as a nonvoluntary but responsibility-grounding form of agency—is a

promising candidate for a way out of our impasse. This is because, as I will point out shortly,

reasoning is an occurrent activity within a thinker’s dynamic conscious stream of thought. Prima

facie, the mental activity of reasoning differs in just the right way from the standing network of

evaluative states with which Smith seeks to satisfy the Activity Condition. There are three broad

points that indicate why this is so, having to do with (a) the ontology of conscious mental

episodes, (b) rational agency, and (c) the formation of attitudes.

(a) Ontological considerations. Actions are event-like: an action is a singular, non-

repeatable particular.24 That is why the paradigmatic example of an action is a bodily movement,

for every token bodily movement is an isolable occurrence with a determinate spatiotemporal

location and an individuating suite of causal and other relational properties. In order to speak of

intentional mental actions, we should first need to find a proper candidate type in the right

ontological category—mental entities or aspects of mind that possess such an event-like

ontological profile. Are our mental lives the scene of such occurrences?

24 I shall simply presume this Davidsonian (2011: Essay 6) thesis here. The thesis rules out some views about what

actions are at the ontological level. Alvin Goldman (1970) argues that actions are abstract exemplifyings of

properties. More recently, Helen Steward (2012) and Jennifer Hornsby (2013) have argued that actions are not

momentary events, but rather processes. Steward and Hornsby can reconcile themselves to this discussion, though,

insofar as I shall respect the general idea that actions belong within the broad class of episodic occurrences, set apart

from states in ways that I describe presently.

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Yes—but to see why, we must take care to observe a distinction between mental states and

mental episodes. For our purposes, the most important types of mental states are an agent’s

standing propositional attitudes—his beliefs, desires, intentions, and so on. I follow

philosophical mainstream in accepting that each token attitude is individuated by two features:

the (sentence-like) intentional content that the attitude represents, and the attitudinal modality in

which it is represented. Propositional attitudes are temporally non-dynamic. They do not possess

temporal parts. They do not enter into causal relations with other aspects of mind (though

perhaps they may be influenced by causal events). An agent’s attitudes simply persist. It would

seem, then, that mental states cannot themselves be mental actions. They do not possess the

requisite ontological profile to count as particularistic occurrences.

Mental episodes, in contrast, are temporally dynamic. They include all of the conscious

events that occur within what James (1890) labeled the “stream of consciousness.” Mental

episodes may be momentary or temporally extended. They include the sorts of events that begin

and end “in an instant” (such as a person’s consciously noticing something), or they may be

temporally extended activities that an agent can be up to (“in the present progressive,” so to

speak—such as one’s consciously calculating something, or daydreaming about an upcoming

vacation). 25 They run the gamut from conscious perceptual experiences to “higher level”

conscious cognitive episodes—conscious thoughts, I take it, also figure in the stream of

consciousness.26 Like attitudinal states, token content-bearing mental episodes are partly

individuated by the content that they represent and by the attitudinal modality under which they

occur. But they are also token-individuated by their temporal location in the agent’s stream of

consciousness, and the relations that they enter into with other token episodes. The conscious

25 See Vendler (1957) for an influential classification of episodic verb-types. For application to conscious mental

occurrences, I have been influenced by Helen Steward (1997), Matthew Soteriou (2007, 2013), and Sebastian Watzl

(2017). 26 For a defense of this position, see Tim Crane (2013: Ch. 13).

53

belief that The defendant is guilty tokened at t is a distinct episode from the same conscious

thought tokened at some later time.

So understood, mental episodes possess the event-like temporal profile that also

characterizes ordinary intentional bodily actions. Like ordinary bodily actions, the mental

episode of John’s noticing something occurs at a determinate time (even if we remain silent

about the spatial location of John’s noticing something), and has a suite of causal and other

relational properties that contribute to its individuation. If this much is allowed, then we can

understand the possibility of genuinely intentional mental actions by classing them as mental

episodes in the stream of consciousness. We can understand intentional mental actions as

episodes that play a role in, and help to fix the nature of, other aspects of mind. To stress the

episodic character of mental actions, I will speak (somewhat awkwardly) of an agent’s judgings,

decidings, imaginings, rememberings, (etc.), and, later, his inferrings. These terms refer to

episodes of judging, deciding, and so on; they are distinct from the judgment or the decision

reached, which are naturally construed as the stable thought-contents that persist as mental states

or attitudes on the part of the subject.

Reasoning belongs within the category of occurrent mental episodes. As I will stress in later

chapters, reasoning is something that an agent can be up to or which can go on for an extended

period of time in the conscious stream of thought. On that score, reasoning is at least within the

correct ontological category of the kind of thing that can satisfy the Activity Condition on moral

responsibility.

(b) Reasoning and rational agency. Reasoning is related to our specifically rational agency

in an obvious way. Here we can make a rough distinction between epistemic reasoning and

practical deliberating. Epistemic reasoning aims at belief or knowledge; practical deliberating

aims at an intention for action (or simply action forthwith). I have already remarked that

reasoning and deliberating are occurrent mental activities that ‘go on’ in the stream of thought.

54

But so too are daydreaming, idle mind wandering, counting, attending to something, and trying

to remember something. However, these are not cases of reasoning. What distinguishes

reasoning is that it is mental activity that aims at some conclusion. True, not all bouts of

reasoning conclude in this way. Sometimes I am interrupted in the midst of figuring out what is

the case or what to do. Other times my reasoning is stopped short because I come to understand

that I do not have sufficient information to come to any conclusion at all (which is a kind of

meta-conclusion). In all cases of reasoning, though, I am engaged in an occurrent mental activity

that aims at reaching a conclusion.

To reach a conclusion, though, I must do so via consideration of premises that support that

conclusion. If I do not reach my conclusion by way of conclusion-supporting premises, then I

have not properly terminated my reasoning—I have merely cut it off abruptly, by fiat. I will say a

great deal more about the tie between premise and conclusion in reasoning as we go on. The

thing to notice at this point is that the premises entertained in reasoning are reasons that bear, or

at least seem to bear, on the conclusion that terminates my reasoning successfully. Obviously I

might make mistakes about this, and conclude that p for reasons that do not in fact count at all as

evidence for p. What matters, though, is that the considerations that do figure in my reasoning,

and for which I conclude that p, must at least seem to me to support the conclusion. Otherwise

they simply are not premises, for I cannot conclude from them the conclusion that p. This is due

entirely to the rational norms constitutive of belief that p.

The very same is true of practical deliberating. Suppose I reason to the practical conclusion

that I ought to walk to the café this afternoon. I must do so via the consideration of premises that

bear positively on this conclusion. Often these considerations take the form of instrumental

reasons, reasons that point up an instrumental connection between some goal to which I am

already committed and the conclusion that terminates my practical deliberation. For instance, I

think that I need to stay awake this afternoon and get some exercise, and that walking to the café

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is a way of doing both things at once. Putting aside whether this latter belief constitutes

knowledge on my part, it cannot constitute a premise in my practical deliberating unless I take it

to be the case. The premises of practical reasoning, then, frequently operate in our reasoning by

specifying more and more proximate means I can take to realize my end. But it remains the fact

that in order to so much as count as a species of reasoning, it must be case that I aim to reach a

conclusion by way of premises that, at the conclusion of my reasoning, will count as reasons for

my conclusion.

When engaged in conscious reasoning an agent treats with reasons and attempts to arrive at

a conclusion via consideration of these reasons. So it appears that reasoning manifests our

rational agency in an obvious way. This is another mark in favor of investigating reasoning as a

candidate mental episode-type for satisfying the Activity Condition together with the Demand

Condition.

(c) Reasoning as attitude-productive mental agency. Lastly, engaging in reasoning is

paradigmatically a way of reaching new beliefs, intentions, and actions. If I am conflicted about

whether p, you will no doubt instruct me to engage in reasoning as to whether p (or engage in

reasoning with me about whether p). If I am unsure of what I ought to do, surely you will instruct

me to enter into practical deliberation with a view to settling on an intention for future action. If I

already possessed the belief that p or an intention about what to do, your advice would be

useless. Your advice presupposes that by engaging in epistemic or practical reasoning I will

generate a novel attitude, one that I did not possess when my reasoning began. It is part of our

commonsense picture of reasoning that reasoning at least aims for the production of novel

attitudes.

Reasoning, then, aims at a premise-guided termination in the generation of a new attitude.

The generation of a novel attitude is itself a mental episode in the conscious stream of thought.

As we have seen, such episodes terminate reasoning only if their occurrence is linked to the

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agent’s treating with reasons that support the very attitude that is generated. It will be helpful to

have a ready handle to refer to such attitude-formative and reasoning-terminating mental

episodes. In the epistemic case, reasoning terminates in episodes of judging-that-p; whereas in

the practical case deliberating terminates in episodes of deciding-to-φ. As I use these terms, to

undergo a judging-that-p or a deciding-to-φ is to occurrently form the stably persisting belief that

p or intention to φ, respectively. We can thus think of judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ as the

event that is the onset of the persisting belief that p or intention to φ.

I emphasize that judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ are episodes in the conscious stream of

thought on a thinker’s part. So, judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ need to be held distinct from

judgments and decisions, understood as ‘judgmental’ and ‘decisional’ thoughts (cf. Dorsch

2009). Judgments and decisions are persisting states that are not temporally dynamic. They

belong in a totally distinct ontological category in mental life.

A second stipulative point: judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ are mental episodes that consist

in, respectively: the occurrent formation of the belief that p undertaken for reasons that (the agent

conceives as) evidence for p and the occurrent formation of the intention to φ undertaken for

reasons that (the agent conceives as) reasons for φ-ing. So, judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ

need to be distinguished from the mere occurrent thought that p or thought of φ-ing. As I will use

these terms in this dissertation, not even an occurrent thought that p in the awareness of one’s

epistemic acceptance of p, or an occurrent thought of φ-ing in the awareness of one’s practical

commitment to φ-ing, count as judging or deciding, respectively. Judging and deciding are

attitude-formative events linked to the considerations that the agent takes to support the content

of these very episodes. I make this stipulation just to focus our attention on the character of

judging and deciding as functioning to conclude reasoning successfully in the generation of a

novel attitude undertaken in the light of reasons that support the very attitude that is generated.

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Summing up, reasoning is an activity that engages our rational agency in the production of

novel attitudes of belief and intention. In this, reasoning is similar to overt intentional action.

Intentional actions are episodic in temporal profile: actions are particulars that occur at a specific

place and time. Also like overt intentional actions, reasoning manifests our rational agency. Just

as I perform a bodily movement for reasons that recommend its performance, so too I reach

conclusions in reasoning by way of premises that I acknowledge as reasons for the very

conclusion that terminates my reasoning. Lastly, reasoning to a conclusion involves

(paradigmatically) the production of some change—in this case, a change in my standing

attitudes of belief and intention by terminating reasoning in a judging-that-p or a deciding-to-φ.

This is akin to the changes I bring about by engaging in bodily action, which is likewise

productive in nature. On these counts reasoning appears at least to be a promising candidate for

satisfying the conditions for moral responsibility for the attitudes and the reactive attitudes we

take to others’ attitudes.

Before concluding this chapter, I want to pause over one important feature of reasoning. As

an occurrent mental activity, reasoning is voluntary. I can engage in reasoning for any reason that

recommends doing so; and I can begin reasoning just out of an intention to do so, by directing

my attention to considerations that bear on the matter I hope to settle. But, while reasoning is

voluntary, judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ are not voluntary. If judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ

were voluntary, then we would indeed possess voluntary control over the attitudes. This follows

from our stipulative notions of judging and deciding, according to which judging and deciding

consist in the occurrent formation of novel attitudes of belief and intention, respectively. So,

while I might open a deliberative (epistemic or practical) question by engaging in reasoning, my

reasoning must aim at conclusion in a nonvoluntary type of mental episode, a judging-that-p or a

deciding-to-φ.

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It looks, then, as though we might break through the impasse described in this section by

paying closer attention to the interplay between reasoning and the attitudes. What we must

understand is how reasoning to a conclusion might count as an intentional but nonvoluntary

species of rational agency, by the exercise of which an agent satisfies both the Activity and the

Demand Conditions on moral blame.

Conclusion: Three desiderata

In this chapter I have argued that we bear a distinctive form of responsibility for our

attitudes of belief and intention. We are answerable for our beliefs and intentions, in the sense

that we stand subject to a justificatory demand to provision reasons why we believe or intend as

we do, and are open to distinctive patterns of forceful normative criticism according to how well

we are prepared to discharge this demand. True, this species of responsibility rarely rises to the

level of serious moral concern, and it would be unjust to bodily punish those who fall short of

the rational norms that govern the attitudes. Despite these factors, I have tried to show that our

responsibility for belief and intention is no less a fixture of the inter- and intrapersonal reactive

practices that constitute our stances of participatory engagement.

But in virtue of what do we bear this responsibility? How can we bear responsibility for the

attitudes when we do not have the same sort of control over them as we enjoy over overt

intentional action? We require an account of the attitude-formative mental agency that

legitimates attitudinal blame. This account must meet the following three desiderata:

Desideratum 1: Responsibility-grounding. The account must explain how it is that exercising

this species of agency works to ground our responsibility for belief and intention. The account

must be responsibility-grounding. As we have seen, the shape of our attitudinal responsibility is

that of answerability. So, the account of mental agency that emerges must explain how it is that

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we are fit subjects for requests for justification on account of our attitudes, and subject to forceful

normative criticism according to how well a thinker meets this demand.

Desideratum 2: Nonvoluntariness. But our account of responsibility-grounding attitude-

formative mental agency must respect the nonvoluntariness of our beliefs and intentions. Our

attitudes are nonvoluntary in a twofold sense: we cannot believe that p or intend to φ for any

reason that recommends having the attitude in question, and nor can we directly executive

intentions to believe that p or intend to φ.

Desideratum 3: Productivity. In addition to nonvoluntariness, the account must also explain

how it is that manifestations of this sort of agency are productive. How does the exercise of a

nonvoluntary form of mental agency produce or generate novel beliefs and intentions for which

we subsequently bear answerability?

I have suggested that a promising way forward in meeting these desiderata is to concentrate

on reasoning that terminates in a judging-that-p or a deciding-to-φ. But can judging and deciding

count as a type of mental action that meets these desiderata? That is the question I turn to in the

next chapter.

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Chapter 2

The Mark of Mental Action

The criterial question

To what extent are we agents, rather than patients, in our mental lives? Which mental episodes

count as intentional mental actions on the agent’s part? What is the mark or criterion that

distinguishes genuine mental actions from those conscious mental episodes that merely happen

to us? Call this latter question the criterial question about mental action.1

Aside from its intrinsic interest for the philosophy of mind and action, our answer to the

criterial question bears directly on the legitimacy of attitudinal blame. A primary route to

responsibility is via fully intentional actions—those actions an agent does knowingly and

deliberately. But is conscious mental life the scene of such intentional performances? We cannot

say so without an idea of that which separates the active from the passive in mental life. If we are

to say that we are responsible not only for our outward bodily deeds but also for aspects of our

own minds, we must first answer the criterial question.

This is why I argued in Chapter 1 that our inquiry into responsibility for the attitudes must

proceed by investigating the species of agency we exercise over our own attitudes. In what does

such attitudinal agency consist? In particular, we must determine whether two mental episode-

types in particular—judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ—can rate as fully intentional mental

actions in their own right, and if so on what grounds. As I remarked near the end of the last

chapter, these mental episode-types have an attitude-formative character. It is in judging p to be

1 With this, I mean to ask a set of questions about mental action that Donald Davidson raised about bodily action.

Davidson asked: “What events in the life of a person reveal agency; what are his deeds and his doings in contrast to

mere happenings in his history; what is the mark that distinguishes his actions?” (2011: 43). Note at the outset that

my concern is with mental actions—the mental counterpart to fully intentional bodily performances. There may be a

wider class of ‘agentive’ mental phenomena that don’t quality as fully intentional mental actions in this sense.

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true that I acquire the belief that p, and it is by deciding to φ that I acquire the intention to φ. Yet

it is highly contentious whether these attitude-formative mental episode-types can rate as

intentional actions. This is because we cannot place judging and deciding either within or outside

the scope of mental agency without knowing what it is in general for a mental episode to count

as active or passive. Hence our focus in this chapter on the criterial question.

My aim is to explicate and evaluate an answer to the criterial question that rests on a

distinction between what an agent does directly—without reliance on distinct causal-instrumental

means—and what is merely brought about as the receptive causal product of what the agent does.

Only the former count as action, according to this approach. I call the view instrumentalism since

its proponents assign great significance to an agent’s use of ‘mediating’ causal-instrumental

processes to bring about some intended mental episode. In this, the instrumentalist carries over to

the mental domain Donald Davidson’s famous conclusion that “our primitive [i.e., direct]

actions—those we do not do by doing something else, mere movements of the body—these are

all the actions there are. We never do more than move our bodies: the rest is up to nature”

(2011b, 59). Keeping to Davidson’s conclusion, the instrumentalist claims that every mental

action is direct; the rest is up to nature.

Proponents of instrumentalism include Strawson (2003), O’Shaughnessy (2008: 543–547;

2000: 382ff), and Dorsch (2009). Dorsch, for instance, describes the view this way:

The contrast between straightforward [i.e., direct] and mediated [i.e., indirect] deliberate

agency […] is best drawn […] in terms of the fact that, while the latter involves the

instrumental reliance on certain epistemic or merely causal processes and their passive

effects, the former does not. The relevant processes are thereby characterized by the fact

that, once they are triggered by us and progress normally, they lead by themselves—that is,

without further help or involvement of agency and other factors external to them—to their

desired or intended outcome. (2009: 41)

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Here, Dorsch explicitly links passivity with a mental episode’s being brought about by a causal

process that an agent instrumentally relies upon to bring it about. If that is right, then the

instrumentalist can sort out the active from the passive in mental life by looking to the “epistemic

or merely causal processes” that we rely upon to bring about desired or intended mental

episodes.

In treating with instrumentalism, though, I will generalize away from any one philosopher’s

views with an eye towards capturing a compelling model of how we exercise agency over our

minds. As we will see, the instrumentalist takes a familiar model of intention-based control as

central to intentional action (at least, in paradigmatic responsibility-grounding cases). This form

of control is typified by an agent’s forming an intention to φ and φ-ing from this very intention.

One reason instrumentalism is attractive is that it applies this paradigmatic model of control to

bodily and mental action alike. Whether over our bodies or over our own minds, key to the

instrumentalist’s view is the agent’s forming and executing intentions without reliance on distinct

causal means to bring about what she intends. In treating critically with the instrumentalist reply

to the criterial question we will also learn something positive about the limits of this intention-

based model of control for mental agency. In what follows I am more interested in evincing these

broader lessons than I am in targeting the views of any one specific philosopher.

I wish to explore what instrumentalism implies for the mental episode-types that are central

for the possibility of attitudinal agency. My worry will center on what the instrumentalist must

say about the relationship between (i) the temporally extended episodes of deliberation and

reasoning wherein I work to settle for myself the answer to some question, and (ii) the attitude-

formative episodes of deciding-to-φ and judging-that-p wherein I arrive at an answer to the

question at issue. As we will see, the instrumentalist comprehends the relationship between (i)

and (ii) in causal-instrumental terms. For the instrumentalist, deliberating (reasoning) is a causal-

instrumental cognitive process that brings about a deciding (judging). It is this feature of

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instrumentalism I wish to question. Pace the instrumentalist, deliberating (reasoning) is not a

cognitive process that is undertaken in order to causally bring about some deciding (judging).

Rather, the relation between the reasons that figure in deliberating (reasoning) and deciding

(judging) is more broadly normative, in that one comes to a deciding (judging) for the normative

relations recognized between the reasons the figure in deliberating (reasoning) and the deciding

(judging) that the agent undertakes. I argue on these grounds that the two mental episode-types at

the center of this study, judging and deciding, present significant problems for the

instrumentalist. Judging and deciding are neither ‘direct’ nor ‘indirect,’ neither basic nor non-

basic, in the sense relevant for instrumentalism. Since this is so, instrumentalism cannot provide

a reply to the criterial question.

We must find an alternative way of answering the criterial question. My suggestion will be

that we draw the distinction between mental agency and mental passivity in terms of rule-

following. I can do no more than motivate the rule-following approach in this chapter, since the

rest of the dissertation will work towards an account of that in which the agency of attitude-

formative mental actions, considered as rule-governed occurrences, consists. The purpose of this

chapter is to motivate an approach to mental agency that takes reasoning and deliberating as the

paradigm of intentional mental action.

Over the next few sections, I will explicate instrumentalism first with respect to ordinary

bodily action. Then I will demonstrate the instrumentalist criterion of mental action with respect

to two mental episode-types for which it seems particularly suited: remembering that p and

imagining x. I bring this instrumentalist analysis to bear on the mental episode-types relevant for

attitudinal agency: deliberating, reasoning, deciding, and judging. Then I shall try to set out the

aforementioned worries about instrumentalism. That argument allows us to draw some positive

upshots about a better reply to the criterial question what this might mean for how to draw the

scope of mental agency.

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Instrumentalism: bodily action

Action is productive. To perform an action is to bring about an event or a change. To

intentionally raise my arm is to bring it about that my arm moves from a stationary to an upright

position. Now, some of the changes that I bring about by acting are done by doing something

else. Suppose I press a button on a remote control attached to my keychain; when pressed, this

button emits a signal that unlocks my car’s door. Here, the event that I bring about is the car

door’s unlocking. But I bring this event about by doing something else: button-pressing on the

remote control. What is involved in doing one thing by doing another? Action theorists

distinguish between basic, non-basic, and direct action to answer this question in a principled

way.

First, we need to separate the results of an action from its consequences.2 The result of an

action is the event or change in which the action (partially) consists. Results are constitutive of

the actions whose results they are. The result of my action of arm-raising is the rising of my arm

from a stationary to an upright position. Without the occurrence of this event of arm-rising, no

action of arm-raising can occur. However, while results are intrinsic and so necessary for the

actions whose results they are, the occurrence of a (token) result that is associated with a given

action-type is never by itself sufficient for the occurrence of an action of that type. This is just to

say that while every time I raise my arm there is an arm-rising, it is not the case that I raise my

arm every time it rises. My arm might rise due to non-actional reflex.

An action’s consequences, in contrast, are the effects that the action causes. In contrast to its

results, consequences are extrinsic to the action whose consequences they are. My arm-raising

might have a plethora of consequences. It might cause a lecturer to grant me attention to pose a

question, or annoyance in the person sitting beside me. Neither of these causal effects are

2 See McCann (1998: Part II), Stoutland (1968), Danto (1970), Smith (1988), and Enç (2003).

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intrinsic to my arm-raising. Consequences, then, are neither necessary nor sufficient for an

action; they are simply events causally downstream of an action.

The distinction between results and consequences permits a preliminary construal of basic

and non-basic action. It will be helpful to work with a simple example.

Key: In approaching my car from ten feet away, I depress a button on a remote control

attached to my keychain. When the button is pressed, the remote control emits a signal that

unlocks the driver’s side door.

Here, the (putative) action of unlocking my car door has a result that is necessary but not

sufficient for its occurrence: namely, the event of the door’s unlocking. But this result is also a

consequence of the result of another (putative) action that I perform: that of pressing the button

on the remote control. I unlock the car door by pressing the button on the remote. In general:

when an agent S performs an action of ψ-ing by performing some distinct action φ-ing, the result

of S’s ψ-ing is a consequence of the result of S’s φ-ing. When this is the case, we say that S’s φ-

ing is basic relative to his ψ-ing, and S’s ψ-ing is non-basic relative to his φ-ing.3

A most basic action is one in relation to which there is no distinct action that is basic relative

to it. When this is the case, I will say that the agent φ’s directly, or that φ-ing is a direct action. In

Key, my button-pressing is basic relative to the door’s unlocking. But it is not a direct action,

since pressing the button is non-basic relative to another action that I perform: namely, moving

my thumb. This is because the result of my button-pressing is a consequence of the result of the

distinct action of thumb-moving. Since (let us suppose) my thumb-moving is not the

consequence of any distinct action’s result, my thumb-moving is the most-basic—and so,

direct—action.

3 I focus on causal non-basicness. See Goldman (1970: Ch. 2) for different kinds of non-basicness.

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There is another aspect of doing one thing by doing another that we must capture. This is the

idea of an agent’s doing something in order to do something else. When I unlock the car door by

pressing the remote by moving my thumb, I do so for the sake of a purpose or goal that, in

moving my thumb, I aim to realize. We need to capture this purposive element. Three conditions,

(A)–(C), must be met for an agent to φ in-order-to ψ.

(A) An agent φ’s in-order-to ψ only if the agent intends to bring about the result of ψ-ing. If

the agent does not intend the result of ψ-ing, then its occurrence can be nothing more than

unintended consequence of whatever direct action he does perform. It is this condition (A) which

prevents us from saying that every one of my arm-raisings is performed in order to disturb a

local collection of air molecules. Without this first condition, the things I bring about by dint of

doing something else cannot count as agentive in any meaningful sense.

In correspondence, Alfred Mele asks if the following scenario is a counterexample to this

first condition (A). Imagine an agent, Fred, who knows that a nuclear reactor is set to explode

soon. The only way to prevent this disaster is to enter a 10-digit code into a nearby console. Fred

does not know the code and has no way to learn it before the reactor’s melting down. He begins

typing numbers into the console at random. Luckily, he strikes upon the correct sequence and

prevents the reactor’s melting down. Has Fred typed in the code in order to shut down the

reactor? If so, the case appears to count against (A), since then Fred has entered in the correct

code, and has done so in order to prevent the reactor’s melting down, but cannot be said to intend

to prevent the reactor’s melting down. The difficulty lies in a belief-condition on intending to φ.

Proposals vary as to the specific condition involved, but Mele supplies a modest version: “One

cannot intend to φ while believing that one will not, or probably will not, φ” (1992b: 176). Yet

Fred certainly believes that he probably will not prevent the reactor’s melting down, since he

strikes the numbers on the nearby console at random. Since Fred violates the belief-condition on

intending and so cannot intend to prevent the reactor’s melting; still, Fred seems to enter in the

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code in-order-to prevent the reactor’s melting. Understood in this way, it does seem that Fred’s

case presents a counterexample to condition (A).

In reply, I suggest we follow Will Small (2012) in making a distinction between intention

and aspiration. The difference between aspiring x and intending to φ comes down to a number of

factors, including know-how, belief that circumstances are appropriate, and other factors that

ground the belief-condition on intending. I might aspire to do something or to bring something

about that I have no inkling how to do or produce. For instance, an adolescent might aspire to

become an astronaut without having any conception of the types of training this career will

require. Most importantly, while there is a belief-condition on intending, no such condition

constrains an agent’s aspiring to bring something about. We should say that Fred aspires, but

cannot intend, to prevent the reactor’s melting down. While Fred acts intentionally in the hope of

realizing his aspiration (in entering random combinations into the console), he cannot be said to

have intentionally prevented the reactor’s shutting down. Fred’s preventing the reactor’s

meltdown is a happy accident, a lucky turn, but not something he does intentionally. Such chance

occurrences bear too accidental a relation to what Fred does do intentionally to fall within the

scope of the in-order-to relation I am attempting to clarify here.

(B) An agent φ’s in-order-to ψ only if he acts from an instrumental belief in the efficacy of

φ-ing. The agent must reasonably believe that the result of ψ-ing can come about as the

consequence of the result of φ-ing.4 Lacking such an instrumental belief, we cannot say that the

agent conceives of his means-action as bearing any significant relation to the end he intends to

bring about. The occurrence of that end will strike the agent as a mere happy coincidence. Such

an instrumental belief needn’t rise to the level of knowledge. Nor must it attribute to one’s

selected means a guarantee of success. Oftentimes we engage some means in the belief of likely

4 Cf. Goldman’s discussion of ‘means-end knowledge’ in (1970: Ch. 2).

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success. To simplify discussion, though, I will restrict attention to instrumental beliefs that

represent one’s chosen means as causally sufficient for the results of the intended end.

Instrumentalism is most plausible when these simplifications are in place.

(C) An agent φ’s in order to ψ only if he φ’s for the reason that the result of φ-ing is

efficacious of the result of ψ-ing. The basic idea behind (C) is that settling on and engaging a

means is something done for reasons; the reason-for-which an agent φ’s, when he φ’s in-order-to

ψ, is precisely the causal-instrumental relation that the result of φ-ing bears to that of ψ-ing. This

is reflected in, among other places, an agent’s practical deliberation about what to do. Practical

deliberation frequently (if not always) involves settling on an action the result of which bears the

right causal relation to the results of the goals we intend to realize. And this (purported) causal

relation is what constitutes for the agent an instrumental reason to φ.

Following John Gibbons, we can say something stronger here. The notion of a means is

already inflected with normativity. To see φ-ing as a means to ψ-ing when one intends to ψ is to

recognize an instrumental reason to φ to bring about the result of ψ-ing. For there is a sharp

distinction between grasping two events as merely related by a causal relation and understanding

one event as a means to a further end. As Gibbons has it, “To see A as a means to B is to see the

connection between A and B as a reason for A-ing. To see A as a means rather than merely as a

cause or a necessary or sufficient condition is to see it as something you have reason to do”

(2009: 90). So, in employing some means for the reason of its efficacy of a further end, the agent

also acts for a reason—namely, the instrumental reason that φ-ing is a means to ψ-ing. This is our

condition (C).

Since this condition (C) will be important to the argument to follow, let me buttress it by

considering a putative counterexample from Alfred Mele.5 An agent Joe sees that cutting off his

5 I thank Professor Mele for posing this question in correspondence.

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head is a means to killing himself. But he also recognizes that there is no reason to kill himself

and no reason to cut off his own head. Yet the case of Joe is not a counterexample to condition

(C). For all that has been said, Joe merely recognizes a causal relation between cutting off his

head and committing suicide. To see the former as a means to the latter, Joe has to at least put

himself in the position of conditionally taking up the intention to committing suicide to ask

himself how he would kill himself were he to (attempt to) do so. To look upon cutting off his own

head as a means, Joe must enter into the practical analog of suppositional epistemic reasoning. In

suppositional epistemic reasoning, a thinker supposes that p to discern p’s epistemic entailments.

Similarly, if Joe is to discern the means to ψ-ing (as opposed to causal relations among event-

types) he must at least take up a suppositional intention to ψ, to discern what he would have to do

to bring about a ψ-ing were he to intend to ψ.

In the absence of condition (C), the occurrence of the agent’s end cannot be something

brought about intentionally. Consider our Key case again. Suppose I satisfy conditions (A) and

(B), but not (C): I endeavor to unlock the car door from ten feet away; I believe that pressing the

button on the remote control is efficacious of this result; but when I do press the button on the

remote, I do not do so for the reason of its efficacy of my end. Rather, I press the button only for

the reason that doing so gives off a pleasant tactile sensation. In these circumstances, it seems

proper to say that while I have the intention to unlock the car door, and the right sort of

instrumental belief linking the button-pressing to the door-unlocking, these two events are not

integrated into the sort of instrumental act-complex that allows us to say that I act in order to

bring this end about. Instead, the occurrence of my intended end figures as an unintended, though

happily convenient, consequence of something else that I do intentionally (induce the pleasant

tactile sensation). If this is right, then (C) is a necessary condition on an agent’s doing something

in-order-to bring about some further end.

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We can now enter a substantive necessary condition on an agent’s doing something in order

to do something else.

In-order-to: S successfully φ’s in-order-to ψ only if: S successfully φ’s; and the result of ψ-

ing is a consequence of the result of φ-ing; and (A) S intends to bring about the result of ψ-

ing; and (B) S φ’s from a reasonable instrumental belief that the result of ψ-ing is a

consequence of the result of φ-ing; and (C) S φ’s for the very reason that the result of ψ-ing

is a consequence of the result of φ-ing.6

We will repeatedly revisit this In-order-to condition in connection with mental action. I will refer

to actions so related as causal-instrumental act-complexes (or ‘act-complexes,’ for short). To

signify that an act-complex meets this condition, I will use the hyphenated expression ‘in-order-

to,’ as in ‘Heeney presses the remote in-order-to unlock the car door.’

As Arthur Danto (1963, 1965) originally pointed out, it seems as though whenever an agent

φ’s in-order-to ψ, there is some action the agent does directly—without having to do anything

else. Otherwise, the agent will never so much as commence acting at all.7 We can use the

foregoing notions to furnish a necessary condition on doing something directly:

Direct: An agent φ’s directly only if the agent forms an intention to φ and φ’s out of that

very intention.8

6 I have said that condition (A)–(C) are individually necessary, but not sufficient. Sufficient conditions might involve

reliability of the relevant causal chains and the lack of ‘causal deviance,’ skill on the part of the acting agent, a nd so

on. The argument to follow rest only on the necessity of these conditions, especially (C). 7 Danto’s argument has recently been criticized by Thompson (2008) and Lavin (2013). I propose here to grant

provisionally the need for direct actions, though, since one upshot of the arguments to come will be that certain

mental episode-types (deliberating and deciding, primarily) do not fit easily within this scheme. 8 One might worry that Direct presupposes the so-called ‘Simple View’ about the relation between intention and

intentional action. On the Simple View, an agent intentionally φ’s only if he has an intention to φ. Readers who deny

the Simple View are free to substitute the following amended version of Direct: An agent φ’s directly only if either

the agent forms an intention to φ and φ’s out of this very intention or φ’s from an attitude that lies within the

motivational potential of some other intention within the agent’s repertoire. Even this amended version of Direct

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Why does Direct take off from our prior notion In-order-to? Because Direct requires that the

agent φ out of the very intention to do just that. This cannot be done when the agent does one

thing in-order-to do another. I certainly can form the intention to Unlock the car door when I am

ten feet away from the car; but I cannot do so out of that very intention. I must cast about for a

distinct instrumental means and form the intention to employ these means in-order-to execute the

further intention. Direct, then, precludes the use of distinct causal-instrumental means, since such

means require that I form a distinct intention.

We have defined basic action, non-basic action, and direct action all while taking the core

notion of an action for granted. Which events are actions?

According to many action theorists, some event counts as an action just in case there is some

act-description under which the event is intentional.9 One immediate consequence of this view is

that the class of an agent’s actions cannot be specified extensionally, since the very same episode

will be intentional under some act-descriptions and nonintentional under others. ‘Heeney’s

unlocking the car door’ is an act-description under which the event of the door’s unlocking

counts as an intentional action on my part; ‘Heeney’s disturbing the nearby prowler’ may refer to

the very same event (viz., the door’s unlocking), but fail as a description of what I intend to bring

about (I did not even know that the prowler was lurking by my car). Our first step in isolating the

class of events which count as actions, then, is to heed the descriptions under which events can

be described as intentional.

‘Heeney’s pressing the remote’ and ‘Heeney’s unlocking the car door’ are certainly two such

descriptions. But do these two act-descriptions refer to two distinct actions? Or do they rather

precludes the formation of a distinct intention, one to do a distinct action, ψ-ing; the intention to φ and the

‘intention-serving’ attitudes within its motivational potential are the only allowable action -making attitudes. For the

notion of a motivational potential and how it interfaces with the Simple View, see Bratman (1984). 9 See again Davidson (2011: Essay 3), Anscombe (1957), Moya (1990).

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refer to the very same event under two distinct descriptions? If I φ in-order-to ψ, do I do one

thing or two?

Instrumentalism is predicated on the view that in such cases there is but one thing the agent

does. To claim this is to accept a so-called coarse-grained view of action-individuation. On this

view, the act-description ‘Heeney’s unlocking the car door’ refers to my direct action, the one

whose result is the moving of my thumb; the act-description ‘Heeney’s unlocking the car door’

refers to this action by citing one of its consequences.

For the coarse-grained theorist, it turns out that ‘non-basic action’ is a misnomer. The

distinction between basic and non-basic action is not a distinction among actions, but rather a

distinction among the descriptions we employ to think and talk about actions. Though the act-

descriptions ‘Heeney’s moving his thumb,’ ‘Heeney’s pressing the button on the remote,’ and

‘Heeney’s unlocking the car door’ are intensionally distinct, they are extensionally equivalent,

referring to the very same event—in this case, the movement of my thumb.

The coarse-grained theorist can respect the distinction between an action’s results and its

consequences with the notion of semantic indication (Smith 1988). The act-description ‘Heeney’s

unlocking the car door’ semantically indicates the event of the door’s unlocking, while ‘Heeney’s

pressing the remote’ semantically indicates the depressing of the remote’s button. Adapting a

definition by A.D. Smith (1988: 404), we can say:

Act-description D is non-basic relative to a distinct act-description D′ if and only if the event

semantically indicated by D is an effect of the event that is semantically indicated by D′.

Act-description D is a direct act-description if and only if there is no such distinct act-

description D′.

The coarse-grained theorist claims that when an agent φ’s in-order-to ψ, there is but one thing

that the agent does. The action in question consists in the bringing about of the event that is

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semantically indicated in the direct act-description. When I unlock the car door by pressing the

button on the remote by moving my thumb, there is but one thing that I do, and the description

‘Heeney’s moving his thumb’ is the direct act-description throwing this action into relief.10

Again, the other act-descriptions here refer to that event by citing the consequences of the event

it semantically indicates.

The upshot for the coarse-grained view is that all actions are direct. Proponents of the

coarse-grained scheme of action-individuation frequently motivate this conclusion on the basis

of the following intuition. There is nothing more that I need to do in-order-to unlock the car door

after my thumb has depressed the button on the remote control. In general: for every causal-

instrumental act-complex, there is nothing more an agent does after the occurrence of the event

that is semantically indicated by the direct act-description of that act-complex.11 After I bring

about a movement of my thumb, I merely need to let the causal chain do its work. To see this,

recall our conditions (A)–(C): I intend to bring about some distal effect, believe that φ-ing will

cause that very effect, and φ for the very reason of its efficacy of this effect. Given that this

causal-instrumental structure is in place, all I need do by way of intentional action is bring about

the event that is at the ‘near side’ of the causal chain; “the rest,” as Davidson puts it, “is up to

nature” (2011: 59).

The instrumentalist reply to the criterial question takes off from this coarse-grained theory of

action individuation.12 Given that distinct act-descriptions of a given act-complex refer to one

10 Actually, there is dispute among coarse-grained theorists whether bodily movements are the results of direct

action-descriptions. Hornsby (1980) argues that direct act-description must semantically indicate events causally

upstream of bodily movements. 11 See Davidson (2011: Essay 3), Hornsby (1980). 12 There are compelling reasons to reject the coarse-grained view. As others have noted, the view faces a serious

difficulty: intensionally distinct act-descriptions appear to refer to events that take place at distinct times and places,

and which bear asymmetrical causal relations to the direct actions that take place at the outset of the relevant act-

complex. The description ‘Heeney’s unlocking the car door’ refers, among other things, to an episode of door-

unlocking, which takes place after and as an effect of the event that the description ‘Heeney’s moving his thumb’

refers to. It seems impossible that these descriptions refer to the very same event. See McCann (1998: Part I) and

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and the same action, we can separate the active from the passive with reference to the agent’s use

of distinct causal-instrumental means. Whenever we find a causal-instrumental act-complex in

which an agent φ’s in-order-to ψ, we need only discern the direct action that the agent performs.

Since “the rest is left up to nature,” the events downstream of direct action fall outside of the

scope of agency proper.

The instrumentalist thereby furnishes something of a procedure for determining whether

some mental episode x counts as a mental action on the agent’s part: first, determine the

descriptions under which x is intentional; then, determine whether the agent brought x about by

employing distinct causal-instrumental means. If so, then x cannot count as an action; the agent’s

action must lie causally upstream of x’s occurrence. Instrumentalism relies on the intuitive

distinction between what an agent does and what, in contrast, the agent merely brings about by

doing something that eventuates in the event in the question.

Instrumentalism: remembering, imagining

This instrumentalist criterion seems particularly well-suited for remembering and

imagining.13

Mental actions of remembering and imagining certainly possess results.14 When one

deliberately attempts to remember or to imagine something, there are mental episodes the

occurrence of which mark success in what one was attempting to do. When I set about

attempting to remember a student’s name, success in my attempt is marked by the occurrence in

my stream of thought of a conscious mental episode that represents that the student’s name is

Ginet (1990: Ch. 3) for argument along these lines. Still, I propose to grant the coarse-grained view about

individuation for present purposes. Disputing instrumentalism by taking issue with the coarse -grained view on

which it relies would not require us to dwell on specifically mental actions. One of my broader aim here, though, is

to point up some of the special problems that arise when we consider actions in the specifically mental domain. 13 See Dorsch (2009) and Strawson (2003) for characterizations of instrumentalism about mental action. 14 Pace McCann (1979), Steward (2012: 33 fn. 17).

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(say) Adam. And in setting out to imagine the Eiffel Tower, success means the occurrence of

(what I’ll call) a presentational image of the Eiffel Tower, perhaps as-if-seen from some specific

vantage point (from the north bank of the Seine, say).15 These success-conditions are not trivial.

We all know what it is like to try and fail to recall a person’s name, or to be unable to summon

the desired sort of presentational image. Importantly, the occurrence of these mental episodes is

necessary but not sufficient for the correlative mental action-type (a remembering or an

imagining, respectively) to occur. So, we can designate them as the results of mental actions. (Or

as the mental episode-types that are semantically indicated by mental act-descriptions.)

Is remembering that p a mental action? We must first reckon with the fact that I cannot

remember that p directly. I can φ directly, we said, only if I can form and execute an intention to

φ, and φ out of that very intention. But if I could form an intention to remember that p, then I

would have thereby remembered that p. And if I could thereby remember that p just by forming

an intention to remember it, I would not be in my present predicament of having to remember

that p.

But I can form an intention to bring about a remembering under some distinct description.

Suppose I am speaking with a student after class; I recognize the student’s face but cannot recall

his name. (His name is Adam.) While I cannot form an intention to Remember that this student’s

name is Adam, I can form the intention to Remember this student’s name (where ‘this’ refers

demonstratively to the very student before me). This suggestion gets us closer to satisfying

Direct, but not all the way. While I can form the intention to Remember this student’s name, I

cannot remember the student’s name just by executing this very intention. Unlike raising my arm

out just out of the very intention to raise it, I cannot call the student’s name to mind just by

15 For the view that every imagining of x is an imagining of a possible experience as of x, see Martin (2002).

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executing the intention to remember this student’s name. If I could do so, I would (as before) not

be in my present predicament.

What I can do—and do directly—is to try to remember the student’s name. Trying to

remember something is a mental action-type is its own right. It has its own characteristic result,

which consists in the activation of a cognitive process that, while hardly transparent to the

conscious subject who engages it, does possesses its own distinctive phenomenology.16

Furthermore, trying to remember cannot be identified with the remembering itself. Otherwise,

there would be no such phenomenon as trying but failing to remember that p. It is possible to

engage in trying to remember something—to ‘chase after’ in conscious thought a salient ‘tip of

the tongue’ sensation—but fail to remember the item in question.

What is the relationship between trying to remember that p and remembering that p, when

the attempt is successful? Notice that the following features all seem to hold true of our scenario,

provided I am successful: the result of remembering the student’s name is a consequence of the

result of my trying to remember it; (A) I intend to bring about a remembering of the student’s

name; (B) I possess a reasonable instrumental belief regarding the causal efficacy of trying to

remember the name; and, most importantly, (C) I try to remember the student’s name for the very

reason of the efficacy of the cognitive process that is activated in trying to remember it. The two

mental episode-types, trying to remember and remembering that p, form a causal-instrumental

act-complex that satisfies In-order-to.

The outcome of this instrumentalist analysis is that remembering that p—the mental episode

that (at least partly) consists in the occurrence in conscious thought of p—is not itself an action.

The action, the instrumentalist tells us, is confined to my trying to remember, to my activating the

16 William James vividly describes this phenomenology. “Suppose we try to recall a forgotten name. The state of our

consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein, but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith

of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness,

and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term” (1890 v. 1: 251).

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cognitive mental mechanism that causes the student’s name to come to mind. The act-description

‘Heeney’s remembering that the student’s name is Adam’ refers to the mental activity of my

trying to remember the student’s name. This is because trying to remember is the direct mental

action at the nearest end of the causal chain that eventuates in the occurrence of my intended end.

It is because I have resorted to a distinct causal-instrumental means that the instrumentalist

places the event of remembering Adam’s name outside of the scope of mental agency (cf.

O’Shaughnessy 2000: 382ff; Dorsch 2009: 42).

This is how the instrumentalist furnishes us with a criterion of mental action. The

instrumentalist proposes to separate the active from the passive in mental life with reference to

the distinction between what is done directly and what is, in contrast, the receptive causal

product of what is done directly. The In-order-to condition is a useful heuristic in addressing

ourselves to the criterial question because the actions—or act-descriptions—that can be

legitimately substituted within it allow us to separate the active from the passive by specifying

the most direct means, and the end these means are engaged to bring about.

It is important, though, that instrumentalism leaves room for theorists to disagree about what

falls within and what falls outside the scope of mental agency. Instrumentalism just means that

two philosophers who disagree about whether some mental episode-type x falls within the scope

of mental agency disagree about whether x can be brought about without reliance on distinct

causal-instrumental means.

We find just such a disagreement among instrumentalists regarding imagining. Galen

Strawson suggests that (at least in many cases), just as we are receptive in relation to the

occurrence of the remembering that p, so too we are receptive in relation to the occurrence of a

presentational image. Strawson believes that presentational images spring up in one’s awareness

at the slightest suggestion, a suggestion that causes one’s imagination to run off of its own

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accord. In a portion of his paper that especially highlights the coarse-grained theory of action-

individuation animating the instrumentalist reply, Strawson writes:

One entertains the verbal specification and waits for the mechanisms of imagination—the

(involuntary) spontaneity of imagination—to deliver the [presentational] image […] To

think that the actual content-issuing and content-entertaining that are at the heart of

imagining are themselves a matter of action seems like thinking, when one has thrown a

dart, that the dart’s entering the dartboard is itself an action. (2003: 241–242)

Strawson discerns room for an instrumental analysis of imagining x. He suggests that we

perform mental actions in-order-to bring about a presentational image. So, the only action in

imagining is confined to what is done directly (issuing a “verbal instruction,” according to

Strawson). The occurrence of the presentational image is something in relation to which the

agent, having performed the direct action, is merely receptive. The act-description ‘Heeney’s

imagining of the Eiffel Tower’ just describes my action (the issuance of the verbal instruction) in

terms of one of its salient consequences.

In contrast, Fabian Dorsch assigns to imagining the status of fully intentional mental action.

Unlike Strawson, Dorsch cannot discern in imagining the same kind of reliance on instrumental

means that characterizes successful remembering. For Dorsch, in imagining a sunny forest

we do not thereby think of the link between our employment of this capacity (or similar

capacities, such as the capacity to visualize trees) and the occurrence of the visual

[presentational] image in both causal and instrumental terms […] In particular, we do not

form the intention to use our capacity to visualize sunny forests in rational response to our

intention to visualize a sunny forest and an instrumental belief that making active use of

this capacity is likely to cause the occurrence of the desired visual image. (2009: 43)

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Here, Dorsch argues that imaging x does not stand in the In-order-to relation to some prior

mental action on the agent’s part. Dorsch classifies imagining within the scope of mental agency

for the very reason that he can discern no distinct mental action that, together with the

occurrence of the intended presentational image, makes up a causal-instrumental act-complex.

But what is important is that while Dorsch and Strawson disagree over whether imagining x

is active, they agree that the instrumentalist reply provides the right criterion of mental agency.

They both hold that episodes which are brought about via instrumental reliance are passive; they

merely disagree over which episodes are brought about this way.

Instrumentalism: deciding, judging

Our purpose all along has been to determine whether judging and deciding can count as

intentional mental actions, and if so on what grounds. We now have ready to hand a developed,

widely espoused, and independently motivated reply to the criterial question. Let us bring this

reply to bear on the attitude-formative episode-types that matter most for attitudinal agency. I

will treat first with deciding (and deliberating), and only afterwards briefly apply the following

instrumentalist analysis to judging (and reasoning).

Is deciding-to-φ a mental action? The instrumentalist answers this question by falling back to

another question: Can an agent decide-to-φ directly, without relying on distinct causal-

instrumental means? Do we decide directly, in this sense?

We do not. An agent can φ directly only if the agent can form an intention to φ and φ out of

that very intention. But we do not form intentions to decide-to-φ; nor can we execute an intention

to decide-to-φ just out of an intention to do just that. Indeed, such an intention—an intention to

decide on some specific course of action—would render the resulting intention superfluous.

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To bring this out, suppose that I do enjoy just such an intention, say an intention to Decide to

walk to the café. Now, every intention embodies a distinctive species of practical commitment to

the performance of the intended action. In intending to φ, I am rationally accountable for φ-ing

so that failing to φ at the appropriate time opens me to a distinctive pattern of rational criticism,

or even to a species of attitudinal blame in case φ-ing is not an all-things-considered desirable,

valuable, or choiceworthy thing to do. (I shall revisit this specific form of practical irrationality

in later chapters.) So, if I were to enjoy an intention to Decide to walk to the café, this intention

must embody a practical commitment to deciding to walk to the café at noon. But, as several

philosophers have noted, such a commitment obviates the very intention to walk to the café at

noon that is formed in my deciding to do so.17 Why should I enjoy a commitment to adopting the

commitment to walking to the café at noon? Why not just move now to the commitment to

walking to the café at noon by so deciding to act? For most agents, in most circumstances, it is

hard to understand just how one might enjoy the commitment to deciding without therein taking

up the commitment to the action.18 If that is right, then we should not suppose that agents enjoy

intentions to decide to perform some specific future course of action. The upshot is that deciding

to perform a specific course of future action does not satisfy Direct. We do not decide-to-φ

directly.

How then do our decisions come about? Are they entirely passive mental occurrences, which

do not involve our agency in any respect? If this were so, it would be hard to imagine how the

actions that flow from these decisions could be active in any sense whatever. Luckily the

instrumentalist needn’t claim this. While I cannot decide-to-φ out an intention to do just that, I

17 See McCann (1998: Ch. 8), Levy (2013). 18 The ‘most agents, most circumstances’ qualification must be added to accommodate a thought experiment of

Mele’s (2000). Mele’s experiment seems to show that the intention to decide-to-φ is not conceptually incoherent.

This qualification does not weaken the present argument, though, since most decisions are not undertaken in the face

of the demonic constraints that Mele imposes on the decider who figures in his example.

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can form a distinct intention, say an intention to Make some decision or other.19 I can form such

an intention readily in the face of some practical uncertainty about what I ought to do. In contrast

with an intention to Decide to walk to the café, the intention to Make some decision or other does

not render otiose the eventual decision I do make, the decision to walk to the café.

However, while I may readily form the intention to Make some decision or other, I cannot

execute this intention just out the intention to do so—at least, I cannot do this if I want to come

to a decision on the basis of reasons. To execute the intention to Make some decision or other

and to decide in accordance with reasons I must treat with practical reasons in deliberation. It

appears, then, that I can bring about some decision or other only by engaging in a suite of distinct

mental actions, namely mental actions in which deliberation consists. Such mental actions might

include: posing questions to oneself (e.g., ‘What ought I to do?’); attending to reasons (e.g.,

attending to the potential health benefits of walking to the café); or trying to remember

considerations that will prompt and feed into subsequent deliberation. We find a nice

enumeration of some relevant mental action-types in a recent paper by Lindsay Rettler (2018).

While Rettler is concerned with settling one’s mind on some epistemic matter of fact, the very

same considerations apply to the practical case. According to Rettler,

The mental actions that compose reflection include asking ourselves various questions and

directing our attention in various ways […] One might direct one’s attention toward a

certain class of reasons, such as relevant memories, or away from certain reasons. One

might try to compare or contrast the case at hand with other similar cases. Trying to

remember various reasons, synthesizing them, reconstructing an argument for a

proposition—all these are examples of the various mental actions that are part of critical

reflection. (2018: 2217)

19 See Robert Kane (1996), Alfred Mele (2000), Randolph Clarke (2003).

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I will call the mental actions that ‘compose reflection’ on some epistemic or practical question

reflective mental actions. In performing a suite of reflective mental actions, one directs one’s

attention to reasons, poses questions oneself to prompt and sustain thought, or tries to remember

considerations that bear on the question one wants to resolve.

It is plausible that reflective mental actions of this sort causally influence the attitudes to

which we arrive in deliberation. If this were not the case, it would be hard to make sense of the

fact that we often instruct others to perform reflective mental actions when they face a practical

uncertainty and need to make up their minds one way or another on the basis of reasons. Faced

with a practical uncertainty, then, I can make up my mind some way or other by performing a

chain of such reflective mental actions—bringing considerations to mind, attending to reasons,

posing questions to myself, and so on.

Reflective mental actions have another feature worth pointing out: they can be done directly.

I can form the intention to perform a reflective mental action and execute that intention

forthwith, without having to form a secondary intention that will bring it about. Indeed, the

voluntary and immediate use of the attention—as when, for instance, I attend to some practical

consideration that recommends one plan of action over others—is a paradigm of direct mental

action.20 There is simply no instrumental ‘distance,’ when it comes to reflective mental actions,

between the agent’s intention to do them and their performance. Similarly, there is no such

distance between reflective mental actions and deliberation. The relation between reflective

mental actions and deliberation is instead constitutive. Deliberation consists in the performance

of a suite of reflective mental actions. Or so it seems consonant with other instrumentalist

commitments to say.

20 William James agreed. In fact, he took all action, bodily as well as mental, to consist in the direction of the

attention. See his Principles of Psychology, especially his chapters on “Attention” and “The Will.”

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We arrive now at the central matter. Suppose that, faced with some practical uncertainty, I

form (or anyway, acquire) the intention to Make some decision or other. To execute this

intention, I perform a chain of direct reflective mental actions. The causal upshot of such

reflective mental actions is the occurrence of a deciding in my conscious stream of thought. This

will be a conscious deciding to perform some specific course of action, say to Walk to the café.

What is the relationship between the reflective mental actions I perform directly and the

occurrence of my deciding?

It looks as though the relationship is given by the In-order-to condition set out above. The

result of my action of settling on some decision or other, namely the formation of an intention to

Walk to the café, is a consequence of the result of some antecedent reflective mental action on

my part. (A) I intended to come to some decision or other; (B) I believed reflective mental actions

to be a sure route to executing this intention; and (C) I performed reflective mental actions for

the very reason of their efficacy of some decision or other. This means that my reflective mental

actions and the resulting deciding to Walk to the café together compose a causal-instrumental act-

complex.

By this token, the instrumentalist classifies deciding to act not as an action, but as something

brought about by my action. Or better: the act-description ‘Heeney’s making some decision or

other’ refers to my reflective mental actions—but does so in terms of one of their causal

consequences. (Notice that the act-description ‘Heeney’s deciding to Walk to the café’ is not a

description under which any action of mine is intentional; no deciding is intentional under any

description that mentions the specific action decided upon, for the instrumentalist. That is one of

the morals of our argument that deciding-to-φ is not, and cannot occur as, a direct action.) Since I

must rely upon distinct causal-instrumental means (reflective mental actions), the occurrence of

my deciding in my conscious stream of thought is a receptive intentional episode in relation to

which I am passive. It is like the conscious occurrence of the name ‘Adam’ in the midst of my

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trying to remember This student’s name. Since I deliberate in-order-to decide some way or other,

deciding itself is a passive mental episode, outside of the scope of mental agency.21,22

The instrumentalist provides the same account of reasoning and judging. I cannot judge-that-

p directly. If I could judge-that-p directly, then I could believe that p at will, for any reason that

makes the belief that p good to have. I could believe for reasons of the wrong kind. But I cannot

do this: I cannot believe that I will pass my dissertation defense just because having such a belief

will let me sleep at night. I can, though, form the intention to Judge some way or other for the

sorts of epistemic reasons. I can execute this intention by performing a suite of reflective mental

actions—by, say, attending to the right kinds of evidence. If I am successful, then some belief or

other will be formed by my judging. In that case, I will have successfully performed a suite of

reflective mental actions in-order-to bring about some judging or other. By that token, my

judging-that-p is a passive mental episode that is merely brought about by my performance of

distinct causal-instrumental means.

I mentioned that one noteworthy outcome of this instrumentalist analysis is that deciding-to-

φ and judging-that-p cannot be intentional under any act-description that semantically indicates

the specific action decided upon or specific proposition judged to be true. My deciding to Walk to

the café can be intentional under a more general description, such as ‘Heeney’s deciding what to

do this afternoon.’ Already this raises suspicion. Our entire enterprise has been to legitimate

attitudinal blame. But now we learn from the instrumentalist that no episode of attitude-

formation can count as an action under any description that semantically indicates the specific

21 Someone might wonder whether deciding specifically to φ can be rendered intentional because it is within the

motivational potential of the intention to make up my mind one way or the other (see above, note 8). But this

deciding specifically to φ will be intentional by dint of some other pro-attitude within the motivational potential of

the intention in question. Then the agent must have some species of pro -attitude towards deciding specifically to φ.

This result encounters two problems. First, it is unclear just what such pro-attitudes are, if not intentions (cf.

McCann 1998: Ch. 10). Second, such pro-attitudes to deciding to φ presuppose the very commitment to φ-ing that

deciding to φ inaugurates. This is just to reiterate the previous conclusion that deciding cannot be direct. 22 For defense of this view of the genesis of deciding-to-φ, see O’Shaughnessy (2008: 543–547).

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attitude therein formed. If we have firmer allegiance to our responsibility-practices surrounding

the attitudes than we do to the instrumentalist reply to the criterial question, we might on that

account look elsewhere for a responsibility-grounding account of attitudinal agency. I caution

against such a quick dismissal. One reason to dwell on the instrumentalist reply to the criterial

question is that doing so will be highly instructive for a positive theory of attitudinal agency. Just

what is wrong with supposing that reasoning and deliberating stand in causal-instrumental

relations with the episodes of judging and deciding (respectively) that conclude these mental

activities? This will be the question we take up in the following section.

Against instrumentalism

I will not, then, attempt to show that the instrumentalist returns a mistaken verdict with

respect to judging or deciding. Instead I will argue that the distinction between causally basic and

non-basic action on which instrumentalism rests is not adequate to the relationship between

deliberating and deciding (reasoning and judging). Deciding-to-φ and judging-that-p are neither

direct nor indirect in the instrumentalist’s sense. Instrumentalism cannot furnish a criterion of

mental action because it cannot return a stable verdict with respect to the attitude-formative

mental episode-types that are important for attitudinal agency. I’ll discuss deliberating and

deciding first, then briefly apply the same lessons to reasoning and judging.

I first want to take issue with the instrumentalist’s conception of deliberating as consisting in

the performance of a suite of reflective mental actions. What is it to deliberate?

As a constitutive matter, deliberating is an answer-seeking activity. One seeks in deliberation

an answer to (what I’ll call) a deliberative question, such as ‘What ought I to do?’ or ‘What shall

I do?’ In pursuit of an answer to one’s deliberative question, one treats with reasons that bear on

live practical alternatives, such as ‘Walking to the café’ or ‘Staying at home.’ These practical

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alternatives figure as candidate answers to the deliberative question that one has taken up in

deliberation.23 We can model such an ordinary course of deliberation as follows:

1. I ought to: stay awake this afternoon and get some exercise.

2. Walking to the café is the (all-things-considered) best way to stay awake this afternoon

and get some exercise.

3. So, I shall walk to the café.

The first premise modeled here is a normative commitment, or a desiderative state, or an all-

things-considered assessment of what one ought to do. The second premise is a belief about some

means the taking of which would advance the state of affairs depicted in the first premise.

Together these items constitute what Davidson called a primary reason (2001a: 4). Many

construe primary reasons as belief/desire complexes. However, composition by a belief and

desire is not in fact essential to primary reasons. What is essential is that they together provide

(what we can call) an instrumentalizing explanation of why the agent eventually did what he did

(viz., walk to the café). The explanation is ‘instrumentalizing’ in that it consists in two elements:

a goal the agent seeks to achieve or realize and a plan of action that the agent takes to advance

that goal. I shall have much more to say about these matters in the next few chapters. For now I

only want to enter two intuitive starting claims about this model of deliberating, claims that will

provide a suitable starting-place for critical reflection on the instrumentalist conception of the

relationship between deliberating and deciding.

The first of these claims is that the episode of my deciding just is my reaching the conclusion

(3) from premises (1) and (2). There is no other mental event in which my deciding consists. Put

another way, my deciding just is the mental episode that marks the conclusion of my practical

reasoning. If this claim is not granted, it will be difficult to locate my deciding in the conscious

23 For the view that reasons are considerations that bear upon (deliberative) questions, see Hieronymi (2005).

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stream of thought. In what might a deciding-to-φ consist, if not in the transition in thought that is

the formation of an intention?

Secondly, deciding closes reasoning via the premises that figure in reasoning. When I close

deliberation in a deciding, the reasons-for-which I decide-to-φ are the premises that figured in

my practical deliberating. Like the first claim, this second claim derives its plausibility from

starting intuitions about our ordinary experience of deciding. When I decide on the basis of

reasons, it is no mystery just why I decide as I do; I am always cognizant of deciding for the very

reasons that figured in my prior deliberation about what I ought to do. This is easy to understand

if every deciding for reasons involves recognizing the normative significance of the reasons-for-

which I decide as I do. (This so-called Taking Condition on inference will be defended and

explained more thoroughly in Chapter 3.)

We arrive at the following simple (and no doubt incomplete) account of what is involved in

deliberating-closing deciding. Deliberating consists in treating with premises that together make

up an instrumentalizing explanation of why I decide as I do. The deciding that closes my

deliberating just is the premise-guided transition to the episode that is the formation of a stable

intention to act. To say that this transition is premise-guided is just to say that in deciding I

appreciate the normative force of the practical reasons that are the premises from which I decide.

Observe, though, that the instrumentalist cannot accept even this much as stated. For there is

no evident role here for reflective mental actions—mental actions such as attending to reasons.

To fit reflective mental actions into the picture, the instrumentalist must say something more: that

the intentional episode (3) must come about as the consequence of some distinct direct reflective

mental action. The instrumentalist claims that I treat with (attend to, dwell upon) reasons (1) and

(2) in-order-to induce in myself some deciding or other; the occurrence of (3) satisfies my

intended end of reaching some decision or other. This means that on the instrumentalist’s

account, I attend to reasons (1) and (2) not in the first instance for their normative bearing on my

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deliberative question. Rather, I do so because it constitutes effective causal-instrumental means

of bringing about a mental episode that I cannot bring about directly. But this seems incorrect.

It seems incorrect because it locates instrumental relations in the wrong place: as inhering

among intentional episodes that make up a causal-instrumental act-complex in my own mind,

rather than among states of affairs in the world and the plans of action I settle upon to realize

these states of affairs. In deciding, we said, I appreciate the reasons that bear on the action I

decide on. Appreciating these reasons involves recognizing that the prospective plan of action at

issue will contribute to the satisfaction of my settled objectives. It is this worldly instrumental

relationship—the relationship between my settled objectives and the plans that will advance

those objectives—that I recognize in deciding on those very plans. This is because it is the

worldly relationship between these items which constitutes an instrumental reason for the plan of

action I decide upon, and it is in recognition of this instrumental reason that I decide as I do.

The instrumentalist, though, illicitly ‘psychologizes’ these relations. For the instrumentalist,

the relevant instrumental relations for the genesis of my deciding hold between mental episodes:

between my attending to the contents (1)–(2) and the deciding, (3), which is the causal upshot of

my attending. The relations are psychologized in that I no longer decide just out of an

appreciation of the normative support that the instrumental reason provides for the plan of action

of walking to the café at noon. On the instrumentalist’s picture, I decide only by doing something

else that causes episode (3) (viz., attending to (1) and (2) as a means of activating some

cognitive-causal process that will bring about (3)). This move locates the instrumental relations

as holding among my employment of a mediating means and its distal effect. For the

instrumentalist, agency in deliberating and deciding is a matter of the causal-instrumental

relations within an act-complex that is composed entirely of intentional episodes.

And so, the instrumentalist’s story of how deciding concludes deliberating is more

complicated than the simple story we set out in describing (3) as a premise-guided transition

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from (1) and (2). Why should we prefer the simpler account of deliberating and deciding over the

instrumentalist’s psychologized construal? Here there are two interconnected problems.

The first problem is that the instrumentalist’s account in fact presupposes the more basic

rational ability modeled in (1)–(3). Recall condition (C) within the In-order-to relation: an agent

employs a causal-instrumental means φ-ing in order to bring about a distal end ψ-ing only if the

agent φ’s for the very reason of its efficacy of a ψ-ing. In the present context this means that

when I perform some reflective mental action in-order-to bring about some decision or other, I

must attend to reasons for the reason that doing so will bring about some decision or other. But

this is the very same rational ability that is modeled above, in (1)–(3): it is the very same rational

ability at issue in reasoning to a conclusion. The instrumentalist’s psychologized conception of

employing deliberation as a means of bringing about some decision or other adds nothing to the

explanation of how a decision comes about that is not already present in the simple description I

offered above of (1)–(3).

Secondly, and relatedly, the instrumentalist account introduces a vicious regress. Earlier I

remarked that when an agent cannot bring about a ψ-ing directly, he faces a further practical

question. This is a how-to question: What should I do in-order-to bring about a ψ-ing? This is

itself a deliberative question, a question whose answer I seek in subsequent deliberation. The

answer to this question will be some action φ-ing, which is both a direct action and whose result

bears the right sort of causal relation with (the result of) ψ-ing. In settling such a further practical

question, I therein settle how I will directly act, given my further aim of ψ-ing. This latter species

of settling—the sort which results in a fully-formed practical plan of action that is not vulnerable

to a further how-to question regarding means—presents the instrumentalist with a regress.

To illustrate, let us label my decision to walk to the café ‘deciding1.’ The instrumentalist tells

us that deciding1 is not something I do directly, but something I bring about by employing

causal-instrumental means. This raises for me a further practical question—a how-to question

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about the best possible means of bringing about my end. So, I must settle on deliberating—

performing a suite of reflective mental actions—in-order-to bring about some decision or other.

This requires that I deliberate as follows:

4. I ought to bring about some decision or other.

5. By deliberating (attending to/dwelling upon reasons for action) I can bring about some

decision or other.

6. So, I shall deliberate.

Is mental episode (6) an action? It appears itself to be a decision to act, namely a decision to

perform a mental action that will cause some further mental episode to come about (a decision to

act). Call the episode in (6) ‘deciding2,’ a decision to do something to bring about my deciding to

walk to the café (deciding1). The instrumentalist tells us in turn that deciding2 is not an action,

but in fact the mere receptive causal product of something else that I do by performing some

distinct causal-instrumental means. If so, then I must do something else in order to bring about

deciding2. This will require a further deciding, deciding3, wherein I settle upon the best

instrumental means of bringing about deciding2. But deciding3 is also a deciding to act, and so

the receptive causal product of something else that I do. This will require that I make some

deciding4, wherein I settle on the best efficacious means…Clearly, we are off on a regress.

Given this regress, it cannot be the case that I employ some distinct causal-instrumental

means in order to bring about a decision. In employing that distinct causal-instrumental means, I

will already have settled on something for a reason. And this phenomenon—settling on a plan of

action out of an appreciation of reasons for that action—is the very phenomenon the

instrumentalist attempts to explain by positing some causal-instrumental causal structure in the

genesis of an ordinary decision to act.

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I want to pause at this point to note a structural similarity between this regress and the one

that Lewis Carroll (1895) famously pointed out for epistemic reasoning. I shall discuss Carroll’s

regress in further detail in Chapter 3. Briefly, Carroll pointed out that if a thinker is not prepared

to reason directly from premises that support an epistemic conclusion, furnishing that thinker

with a rule cannot help him. If I refuse to conclude that ‘Socrates is mortal’ from the premises ‘If

Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal’ and ‘Socrates is a man,’ no rule of reasoning can help

me. Suppose you tell me that the indicated pattern of reasoning corresponds to modus ponens,

and so on this basis I ought to accept the conclusion that ‘Socrates is mortal.’ Carroll points out

that I cannot apply the modus ponens rule to the first-order premises without exercising the very

ability to reason to a conclusion that we are attempting to explain. It will be no use to provide me

with yet further rules of reasoning, as this will simply generate a regress of premises from which

no conclusion at all can emerge. Each such further premise will be meta-level rule of reasoning

relative to the premise that precedes it. And so, each meta-level premise takes the thinker further

away from a conclusion guided by reasons that count as evidence for that conclusion.

The regress I am describing now has a similar structure but corresponds to a distinction

between epistemic and practical reasoning. Practical reasoning (paradigmatically) begins with an

end and concludes with a suitable means that an agent can perform forthwith. My practical

deliberating cannot conclude in action I can perform forthwith unless I conclude in an action that

I can perform without reliance on distinct causal instrumental means. But the regress argument I

have just described rules out this possibility of conclusion in direct action. The regress consists in

further and further premises that are instrumental means to something I might be able to do

directly—but with no end at all in sight. Just as in Carroll’s regress I never reach premises from

which I can reach an epistemic conclusion, so too in the regress just described I can never settle

on an action I can perform forthwith from premises that together constitute an instrumental act-

complex connecting a direct action to my distal end.

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Note that I do not dispute the instrumentalist’s claim that I perform reflective mental actions

directly. I am not claiming that I must perform some intermediate action in order to bring about

deliberation. Deliberation can be entered into just by attending in various sorts of ways upon the

occasion of practical uncertainty. Instead, the argument targets the tacit claim on the part of the

instrumentalist that I might settle on deliberating (reflective mental actions) without thereby

doing the very thing the instrumentalist has sought to explain by positing a causal-instrumental

act-complex.

Before defending this argument against various objections, I want, briefly, to state an

analogous argument for reasoning and judging. Suppose I want to know Blair’s location. I know

that she’ll be at the café if Alice is and I have just learned that Alice is at the café. I am now in a

position to reason as follows:

7. If Alice is at the café, then Blair is at the café.

8. Alice is at the café.

9. So, Blair is at the café.

As before, we can assume that my judging that Blair is at the café just is an inferring, in

which I move from (7) and (8) to episode (9) on the basis of those very same reasons. There is no

separate episode in which my judging consists. Secondly, in inferring that (9), I appreciate the

reasons (7) and (8) that license the inference. Here we do not find that (7) and (9) together make

up an instrumentalizing explanation for the belief that Blair is at the café. The relation is one of

epistemic evidential support. This is a difference we will discuss in subsequent chapters.

The instrumentalist will claim that I attend to, dwell upon, or otherwise treat with reasons (1)

and (2) so as to cause in myself some judging or other; doing so brings about episode (3), which

marks the successful execution of my intention to make up my mind with respect to the

deliberative question I have taken up.

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Yet, this instrumentalist account presupposes the basic rational ability modeled in moving

from (7)–(8) to episode (9). Before I can practically settle on reasoning—attending to reasons (7)

and (8)—as a way to bring about a judging, I must first settle on an epistemic matter regarding

the effectiveness or the desirability, in my present circumstances, of attending to reasons in order

to bring about some judging. These are indeed epistemic matters: it is a matter of belief whether

adopting some means φ-ing is an effective way to bring about a ψ-ing. This means that the

instrumentalist provides no explanation of how my judging is brought about, since the very same

ability the instrumentalist seeks to explain is at issue in any instrumental-act complex in which

an agent performs a basic action to bring about some intended further event.

This opens the door to regress. The instrumentalist tells us that my judging is not an action,

but something I must bring about with the use distinct causal-instrumental means. As we have

seen above, this raises a how-to question about just which means I ought to employ. I cannot

settle this further practical question without settling on the epistemic question of which means

will in fact be the most effective (reliable, convenient, suitable for present circumstances, etc.). I

must, then, reason as follows:

10. I ought to make up my mind one way or another.

11. By engaging in reasoning, I am most likely to end up with a judging that accords with

my evidence.

12. So, reasoning to a conclusion is the best way to make up my mind.

13. So, I will attend to reasons that will cause some judging or other.

Here, step (12) is an epistemic conclusion, one that consists in acceptance of all-out belief

regarding the best efficacious means to employ in order to bring about some judging or other. But

is step (12) a mental action? It seems itself to be an action, namely an action of judging wherein I

form the belief represented in (12). The instrumentalist must say that such a belief only comes

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about by doing something else that is more basic. So, I shall need to need engage in some prior

mental activity to bring it about, and so on.

Just as before, it cannot be the case that I employ some distinct causal-instrumental means in

order to bring about a judging. In employing that distinct causal-instrumental means, I will

already have settled on something for a reason. And this phenomenon—settling on something for

a reason—is the very phenomenon we were attempting to explain by positing some causal-

instrumental causal structure in the genesis of an ordinary judging. Once more, we are directed to

the more fundamental phenomenon: inferring for reasons. Although this last run of the argument

involves epistemic reasoning, it the regress nevertheless has the practical character of a regress

of means indicated earlier.

Before moving on to register objections and replies, let me briefly comment on what these

arguments bring out. Again, the point I have been driving is not that the instrumentalist provides

a faulty verdict regarding the action-status of this or that mental episode-type. My point is that

judging and deciding are neither direct nor indirect in the instrumentalist’s sense. Deciding-to-φ

and judging-that-p are not direct mental action because an agent cannot perform a deciding-to-φ

or a judging-that-p just out of an intention to do so. However, we also cannot make sense of the

proposal that deciding-to-φ and judging-that-p are brought about by dint of performing some

more direct mental action. This is because, I have argued, we cannot understand an agent’s using

distinct causal-instrumental means to bring about some deciding or other, or some judging or

other, without presupposing the very ability at issue.

If this is right, then judging and deciding are neither direct nor indirect in the

instrumentalist’s sense. So, there is simply no way for the instrumentalist to issue an answer to

the criterial question with respect of these mental episode-types: regarding them, we simply

know not what to say.

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Two objections

I want to address two main lines of objection to these arguments. The first objection is an

attempt to stop the regress by refusing to posit some explicit judging or deciding; the second line

takes off from the evident goal-directed nature of deliberating and reasoning.

The regress arguments rest on the following charge: that the instrumentalist’s analysis of

deciding and judging must posit in the explanation the very thing the instrumentalist seeks to

explain—a judging or a deciding. I allege that in performing mental actions in order to bring

about a deciding, I must decide to use those very means; and in performing mental actions in

order to bring about a judging, I must judge those very means to be efficacious of my further end.

Against this, someone might object that reasoning and deliberating do not involve an explicit

judging and deciding in this way.24

The objection can be set out in a number of ways. First, one might suggest that deliberation

begins this way: upon realization that I face a genuine practical uncertainty, I am automatically

thrown into the sorts of reflective mental actions that constitute deliberation. On this suggestion,

I cannot but engage in the sorts of direct mental action-types that cause decidings to come about.

I passively confront the need to make up my mind some way; this sets in play my attending to

various considerations; and this in turn causes some decision or other to come about. Call this the

automaticity reply.

The automaticity reply, though, threatens to erode the very means-end structure in terms of

which the instrumentalist explains the genesis of our decisions. If deliberating is induced in me

automatically, then I cannot really be said to be engaged in deliberating as a means to some

further end. Suppose you ask me for the sum of 5 and 7. My calculating is then immediately set

off and I arrive at the answer, 12. Here, there is no question of my engaging in some mental

24 This objection was put to me by Gordon Cooper in helpful commentary at Florida State University.

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operation of calculating in order to reach a sum. There is simply a conscious mental process that

is sparked by a stimulus, delivered in the form of your request for the sum. In particular, I am not

performing a calculation for the reason of arriving at the sum, which is our condition (C) on φ-

ing in-order-to ψ. If some mental process, conscious or not, is induced in me automatically, then

I cannot be said to be engaged in that process for a reason. The upshot is that even if this is the

right thing to say about the relationship between deliberating and deciding, it cannot make

instrumentalism more plausible.

Can the instrumentalist claim that deliberation begins automatically and that the agent, in a

supervisory role, intervenes in the process after it has begun? This version of the automaticity

objection certainly preserves the instrumental structure of deliberating in order to decide. But it

does so only at the cost of inviting the regress. On this suggestion, I must make an explicit

deciding, deciding2, to intervene in the deliberative process that has begun automatically and will

culminate in deciding1. Now, deciding2—the deciding to intervene in the deliberative activity

that is now underway—is not something I can do directly (according to the instrumentalist). On

this suggestion, then, I must make yet another deciding, deciding3—which is the decision to

decide2—to intervene in the deliberation that will culminate in deciding1. On this version of the

automaticity objection, there is an explicit need to decide to deliberate.

Moving on from the automaticity objection, consider instead a habituation reply. On this

reply, when I face practical uncertainty I move into deliberation with the kind of deft swiftness or

easy facility that obviates the need to dwell explicitly on alternatives and decide2 to deliberate in-

order-to decide1. On this reply, moving from practical uncertainty to deliberation is agentive and

undertaken in-order-to decide one way or the other; but it is not itself an explicit deciding to use

deliberation as a means to this end. Picture a swift and circumstance-appropriate reflex

movement, such as suddenly ducking to avoid the path of a moving object headed right toward

you. You do not deliberate and decide to avoid the moving object. But doing so is nevertheless an

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intentional action on your part, indeed an intentional action you perform in-order-to do

something else (avoid being struck).

But we must be careful not to overload what we mean by deciding. Recall the intuitive claim

I entered above: decidings just are premise-guided conclusions that close deliberation. To decide-

to-φ is to transition to an intention to φ for reasons that recommend φ-ing. Decidings can occur

as deftly, swiftly, and fluidly as any other kind of inference, and I would suggest that our mental

lives are absolutely teeming with such inferential activity. The moving from practical uncertainty

to deliberation in order to bring about a deciding is, then, itself a deciding to use deliberation in

order to bring about a deciding to act. This is because the transition from the awareness of some

practical uncertainty to deliberating for-the-reason that doing so is an effective causal-

instrumental means of bringing about some deciding or other counts itself as an inferential

transition. By that token, it counts as a deciding—which is the very thing the instrumentalist was

attempting to explain.

True, such movements in thought may not involve conscious mulling over alternative

options. (Though I think there is something to be said for the idea that all deliberation takes place

against an implicit awareness that one alternative is to do nothing at all, or simply to evade the

deliberative question at issue.) Again, I do not think such alternatives are necessary for deciding.

What is all-important is that decisions are inferential transitions undertaken for reasons (and I

doubt there is anything more basic to which we might hope to reduce this phenomenon).

I turn to a second line of objection. This one takes off from our ordinary image of

deliberating and reasoning. What makes deliberating and reasoning distinctive as the types of

mental activities that they are? Deliberation and reasoning are not idle mind-wandering. Rather,

they are mental activities that are oriented toward a goal. What goal is that? It seems as though

the goal must be deciding and judging, respectively. And so, it seems that an agent engages in

deliberation and reasoning for the sake of some further goal, namely reaching a judging or a

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deciding. If it is true that (as we say) “inquiring minds want to know,” reasoning and deliberating

are the means we employ in order to get what we want. If we accept the regress arguments,

though, it seems we cannot accommodate this end-directed nature of reasoning and deliberating.

The instrumentalist accommodates the end-directed nature of deliberating and reasoning by

positing reflective mental actions that serve as the efficient causes of the deciding or the judging

that concludes inquiry. As I have argued, this only generates a regress. To accommodate the end-

directed nature of deliberating and reasoning, we cannot posit mental actions undertaken in-

order-to bring about some deciding or judging. We need to make a different kind of distinction

between the episodes the figure in deliberation and reasoning and do away entirely with the

instrumentalist’s reflective mental actions.

To do so, let us heed more closely the relationship that intentional episodes (1)–(3) bear

among themselves in the conscious stream of thought of the deliberating thinker. And that

relation seems not, or at least not originally, efficient causal in nature at all. Rather, the episodes

are related as premises to conclusion. The content of episodes (1) and (2) constitute reasons that

count-in-favor-of the conclusion, (3). The regress for the instrumentalist arises precisely from the

attempt to explain this normative, premise-conclusion relationship by positing reflective mental

actions that are done in-order-to bring about the conclusion. As we have seen, the very notion of

φ-ing in-order-to ψ presupposes the premise-conclusion relationship, since our notion of a means

undertaken in-order-to bring about an end is already a thoroughly normative notion (as we said

above). In shifting away from the instrumentalist’s emphasis on efficient-causal relations

between these intentional episodes, we should seek to understand how premise is related to

conclusion in the stream of conscious thought.

This will be a matter I explore in subsequent chapters. To anticipate that discussion, we

should emphasize what is granted by all parties: that, in some sense, deliberation properly

concludes in deciding and that reasoning properly concludes in judging. The fact that these

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mental activities are ‘concluded properly’ in deciding or in judging is not something incidental to

them. It is a constitutive feature of deliberation and reasoning that they conclude in the agent’s

being settled upon some course of action or in some belief about what is the case. To say this is

just to say that part of what makes deliberating and reasoning the kind of mental activities that

they are is that they conclude properly in episodes of deciding or judging, respectively.

I suggest that we conceive of deciding and judging as the final causes of the mental

activities of deliberating and reasoning, respectively. Deciding is the telos toward which

deliberating is directed, as judging is the telos toward which reasoning is directed. This

teleological relationship is grounded in the premise-conclusion relations among the intentional

episodes in the agent’s stream of conscious thinking. The key to avoiding the regress arguments

that greet the instrumentalist reply to the criterial question is to take these premise-conclusion

relations as basic, not to be explained in further terms—in particular, not to be explained by

positing additional mental actions that can serve as the efficient-causal spurs to the episode that

closes deliberation or reasoning.

I do not wish to consider, here, just how to understand the teleological relationship between

deliberating (reasoning) and deciding (judging). For all that has been said so far, we can

understand this relationship in causal-dispositional terms (though I will ultimately argue against

this way of understanding the premise-conclusion relationship). On such a view, we enjoy causal

dispositions to move to a conclusion-episode upon the occurrence of the premise-episodes. Here,

the idea of deliberating (reasoning) as a goal-directed activity is the idea that we disposed to

move to conclusions on the basis of reasons. Even this causal-dispositional construal is able to

avoid the regress that confronts the instrumentalist reply to the criterial question.

In sum, we can respect the goal-directed nature of deliberating and reasoning by construing

deciding and judging as the telos of these mental activities, as their final causes. Final causation

is a concept of goal-direction if anything is. Thereby, we avoid the regress that arises from the

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suggestion that we perform reflective mental actions in-order-to bring about some deciding or

other while preserving the goal-directed nature of these mental activities.

Judging and deciding as inference

According to the instrumentalist, we determine whether a given mental episode-type belongs

within or without the scope of agency by determining whether the episode in question was

brought about by dint of reliance upon distinct causal-instrumental means. I have argued that this

reply to the criterial question is inadequate to the relationship between an agent’s premises and

the conclusion that one reaches by way of these premises. With respect to this relation the

instrumentalist can return no stable verdict.

This conclusion is significant, for it further underscores the nonvoluntariness of attitude-

formative mental agency. If judging and deciding could be comprehended according to

instrumentalist terms, then we might source the agency in judging and deciding not in attitude-

formative mental episodes themselves, but in the voluntary mental activity of reasoning and

deliberating that eventuate in judging and deciding. Then we might claim that while judging-that-

p and deciding-to-φ are not themselves agentive, they are nevertheless the causal-instrumental

upshot of mental action that is voluntary (in both the reason-based and will-based senses of

‘voluntary’ set out in Chapter 1). This route is closed to us. We cannot suppose that judging and

deciding come about as the nonvoluntary causal effect of voluntary mental action. The regress

arguments described here suggest that there must be some prior exercise of agency that explains

the agent’s performance of reflective mental actions for the reason that such actions will

eventuate in some judging or some deciding or other. And it is this prior exercise of mental

agency—the sort that consists in the premise-guided transition to a conclusion in thought—that

we had hoped to explain in the first place.

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My proposal is simply to take such premise-guided conclusions as our topic in what follows.

What is it to reach a conclusion via premises? Are such transitions mental actions of any sort? If

so, might their performance legitimate attitudinal blame?

We can begin by labeling more clearly these attitude-formative episodes. Over the course of

this chapter I have put down two of their features. First, deciding-to-φ and judging-that-p just are

occurrences that mark the conclusion of a chain of reasoning. Second, these episode-types

involve an appreciation of the normative force of the premises that count in favor of the action

decided upon or proposition accepted as true. This means that whatever else we say about

judging and deciding, to judge-that-p or decide-to-φ is to reach a conclusion via premises. In

this, judging and deciding both possess an inferential character. As I wrote in Chapter 1, judging-

that-p is always to accept that p is true in the acknowledgement of reasons that show p’s truth,

and deciding-to-φ is always to settle on φ-ing in the acknowledgement of reasons that count in

favor of φ-ing. These reasons, in turn, constitute the premises of an inference to conclusion to

which the judging-that-p or deciding-to-φ corresponds. Thus, we can see every judging and every

deciding as an inferring to a conclusion in the agent’s conscious stream of thought.

The upshot of this chapter’s argument is that if we exercise some blame-legitimating species

of attitudinal agency, it is in inferring to a conclusion. Deciding-to-φ and judging-that-p are

inferences that conclude deliberating and reasoning, respectively. The relationship between

deciding and deliberating, and that between judging and reasoning, is the relationship that a

conclusion bears to the premises on the basis of which that conclusion is drawn. This relationship

is, in the first instance, normative and teleological, rather than causal-instrumental.

Indeed, given condition (C) of the In-order-to relation, the concept of a causal-instrumental

act-complex is conceptually and explanatorily posterior to the premise-conclusion relation that

characterizes inference. And once we recognize this fact, our concern in answering the criterial

question should shift accordingly. Our concern will be to center our inquiry on the peculiarities

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of the premise-conclusion relation as it surfaces in the conscious stream of thought. Instead of

importing to the mental domain a reply to the criterial question that adequately regiments our

intuitions with respect to bodily action, we might better understand the distinction between the

active and the passive in mental life by taking, as our exemplar of mental activity, the drawing of

an inference.

We can bring this out by noting a nearby distinction: that between following a rule and

merely conforming with one. When I make an inference to a stable belief, I seem to follow

something like an epistemic inference-rule that licenses the transition as one that is preservative

of knowledge, truth, or warrant. When I infer to a stable intention, I follow a practical inference-

rule, one that licenses the action decided upon for features having to do with its all-things-

considered goodness, desirability, or value of the action that I decided upon. Furthermore,

following a rule seems to involve the thinker’s appreciation (however tacit) of the fittingness of

the conclusion’s following from the premises in the light of that very rule. All of this is quite

distinct from cases when I enjoy a succession of conscious intentional episodes that happen to

merely conform to a rule. In that case I might happen to light upon a belief or intention after

having had consciousness of reasons that do in fact recommend the truth of the proposition

believed or the action that I now intend. But if the successions of intentional episodes in my

stream of thought merely conforms with the rule, then it seems I do not judge the truth of the

relevant proposition or decide to perform the relevant action. Rather, I simply passively acquire

the belief or intention at issue.

What informs this intuition? Plausibly, it is the sense that when my intentional episodes

merely conform to a rule the intentional episodes that occur before the onset of the belief or

intention at issue do not play a rationalizing role in the production or genesis of the attitude in

question. If there is no rationalizing role then there are no reasons; if there are no reasons then

there cannot be anything like a premise-conclusion relationship among the intentional episodes

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that make up the putative reasoning. In fact, there is no reasoning or deliberating at all. Since

there is no reasoning and no deliberating when my stream of thought merely accords with a rule,

we have in this case no teleological relationship between a set of intentional episodes and a

concluding episode that figures as their final end. It appears that the distinction between rule-

following and mere conformity with a rule also corresponds with the presence or absence

(respectively) of inferring itself, defined as it is by the premise-conclusion relations among the

intentional episodes that make up a stretch of reasoning.

All of this suggests a different orientation to the criterial question. Instead of investigating

whether attitude-formative mental episodes conform to what is involved in the voluntary exercise

of intentional action we ought to examine the nature of inferring to a conclusion. Then we can

examine whether inferring to a conclusion is something agentive and legitimating of attitudinal

blame or instead passive. In taking this tack, I will be especially concerned with how it is that in

inferring to a conclusion in thought, a thinker follows a rule that licenses the very transition that

culminates in concluding that p or settling upon φ-ing. To understand our agency over the

attitudes, we must understand inferring on its own terms.

Conclusion: Two new desiderata

In Chapter 1, I introduced three guiding desiderata for an account of attitudinal agency.

First, attitudinal agency must be responsibility-grounding. Our account of attitudinal agency

should specify just why, in virtue of this exercise of agency, an agent comes to enjoy

responsibility for his attitudes. Now, we noted that responsibility for an attitude is keyed to the

specific proposition that an agent believes, or the specific plan of action that the agent intends to

execute. So, attitudinal agency must explain how it is that we are responsible for these items.

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However—and this is our second desideratum—our account must explain this while

respecting the non-voluntariness of attitudinal agency. One straightforward way to explain

responsibility for the attitudes would be to say, flat-footedly, that an agent chooses to believe that

p, or simply decides to intend to φ. Yet can neither believe nor intend at will. If we could, then

we would be in perfectly good rational standing to believe or intend for reasons of the ‘wrong

kind’—reasons that recommend having the belief that p, or the intention to φ, rather than

recommend the proposition believed or action intended. As I argued in Chapter 1, this is quite

unlike the ordinary responsibility that we bear for the attitudes. The upshot is that attitudinal

agency ground responsibility while refusing to impute to ourselves a purely voluntary form of

attitude-formation.

Third, I argued there that attitudinal agency must be productive in form. Our account of

attitudinal agency must make sense of the fact that attitudinal agency is exercised—at specific

times in the stream of thought—to generate novel attitudes. These attitude-formations are events,

or intentional episodes. Should we fail to capture the productive dimension of attitudinal agency,

we will not be able to make sense of core exercises of attitudinal agency, as when an agent

revises his attitudes in the light of new evidence. This third desideratum rules out the

Answerability View, on which attitudinal agency consists simply in holding an attitude for

reasons. What we must understand is how these attitudes come to be held for reasons.

In light of these desiderata, I suggested we understand attitudinal agency as consisting in an

agent’s performance of mental actions, actions that are productive of the attitudes. This raised a

preliminary question, though: which mental episode-types can count as mental actions? The

present chapter has investigated this question, focusing on a criterion of action that is widely

endorsed in the theory of action. This is the instrumentalist reply to the criterial question,

according to which, on a coarse-grained scheme for the individuation of action, we look to

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whether the agent brings an intentional episode about by using distinct causal-instrumental

means.

We are now in position to appreciate, though, that such an instrumentalist reply to the

criterial question is inadequate to attitudinal agency. This is because we cannot construe the

relationship between deliberating and deciding, or between reasoning in judging, in causal-

instrumental terms. Judging and deciding are neither direct actions nor non-basic mental

episodes an agent acts to bring about. I suggested instead that we investigate rule-following

inferrings as that in which attitude-formative mental episodes consist.

This leads to a new and fourth desideratum: attitude-formative mental agency must be non-

instrumental in character. Deciding-to-φ and judging-that-p do not take their place as causal-

instrumental means or ends. But this fourth desideratum raises a problem of its own.

Instrumentalism rests on a conception of that which makes an episode count as an intentional

action. The instrumentalist takes the very conception of that which makes an episode actional

from the bodily domain and applies it to the mental domain. Even if the instrumentalist is

mistaken with respect to mental action, one sure advantage of the view is that it offers the very

same criterion of action across the mental and bodily domains. The instrumentalist can

accommodate the unity of agency: for the instrumentalist, the mental actions in which attitudinal

agency consists count as actions on the very same grounds as the ordinary bodily actions we

perform in-order-to achieve our long-run goals and projects.

I have argued we must walk away from the instrumentalist criterion. What does this mean,

though, for the unity of agency? This is certainly a feature we ought to respect, if possible. So we

come to a fifth and final desideratum on a theory of attitudinal agency: it ought to make good on

the unity of agency. Our account of that which makes a mental episode count as a mental action

ought also to apply mutatis mutandis, to bodily actions as well.

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Chapter 3

Inference and Attitudinal Commitment

Attitudinal agency as inferring

The regress arguments set out in Chapter 2 show that we cannot use the model of voluntary

intentional action to understand the agency we exercise over our attitudes in judging-that-p and

deciding-to-φ. Over this and the following chapter, I pursue in earnest the suggestion that

responsibility-grounding attitudinal agency consists in an agent’s inferring to a conclusion. My

purpose in this chapter is to better understand the difference between inferring to a conclusion

and non-inferential transitions in conscious thought. Only in the next chapter do I argue that

inferring to a conclusion, understood along the lines I set out here, qualifies as a fully intentional

(though nonvoluntary) exercise of rational agency.

I will argue that inferring to a conclusion consists in a kind of rule-following. The best

reason to pursue such a conception is that it makes ready sense of the traditional Taking

Condition on inferring. The Taking Condition stipulates that every inferring involves a thinker’s

‘taking it’ that his premises provide rational support for his conclusion. The notion of rule-

following is well-suited to accommodate this Taking Condition, since it is part of the notion of

following a rule that the agent enjoys some appreciation of the rule that guides his performance.

The difficulty—much addressed in recent work on inferring—lies in just how to specify that in

which an agent’s ‘taking’ consists. In particular, it must be shown that the agent’s taking does not

launch a regress of premises from which no inferring at all can take place.

I will attempt to provide an account of inferring that satisfies the Taking Condition while

avoiding such a regress. I propose that the rules that guide a thinker’s inferring are not separate

premises at all. Instead, the rules are located in the very form of the first-order premises from

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which the thinker infers to a conclusion. This suggestion will seem natural when we mind the

distinctive first-personal perspective or point of view from which a thinker addresses himself to a

live question in reasoning or deliberating. From that position, a thinker’s attitudes figure as

commitments that register rational permissions or obligations. As irreducibly normative states,

such attitudinal commitments cannot be reduced to the manifestation of causal dispositions. But

they do permit a regress-blocking way of making out the Taking Condition; and this, I will go on

to press in the next chapter, gets the agent into the act.

Before setting out, I want to enter a few points of clarification. To save space, I will run

through the entire argument focused solely on epistemic reasoning—reasoning to a belief. Once

the account is on the table, I will quickly carry the same morals over to the case of practical

deliberating to an intention. Also, I am concerned throughout with conscious reasoning, not with

any sort of informational transactions beneath the level of the thinker’s awareness. This is

because such transactions cannot satisfy the Taking Condition; and anyway, it is not plausible

that they count as active in any sense, let alone the sort of robust intentional agency with which

we hope to ground responsibility for the attitudes. Lastly, I will work only with simple examples

of all-out deductive inference, since concentrating on more complicated sorts of reasoning would

not help to illuminate the basic points I wish to elaborate here.

The Taking Condition

I pointed out in Chapter 1 that reasoning possesses an episodic temporal profile. It takes the

form of an occurrent process, something that goes on in a thinker’s life. Though reasoning has

obvious consequences for a thinker’s persisting epistemic states, in reasoning episodic

occurrences play the primary role. Ontologically, what figure in reasoning are conscious

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intentional episodes: particular datable content-bearing episodes in a thinker’s conscious stream

of thought.

Reasoning is not the mere idle passing by of intentional episodes, though. Reasoning is

distinct from daydreaming and mind wandering. Part of what makes reasoning distinctive is that

it is mental activity that takes on a final or teleological end: a thinker cannot be engaged in

reasoning unless the activity in which he is engaged will properly conclude in a judging-that-p.

For this to be so, the intentional episodes that figure in reasoning relate to one another in specific

ways (or at least admit of specific types of relations). Namely, the episodes’ contents must be

related as premise to conclusion. The premise-conclusion relation is one of normative or rational

support.

Notice, though, that there is a difference between (on the hand) enjoying an intentional

episode at t that represents a normative relation among contents and (on the other) inferring from

one set of contents to another. A thinker might enjoy an experience of the former without thereby

accomplishing the latter. I might enjoy an intentional episode with the content If Alice is at the

café then Blair is at the café. This episode represents a logical relation between two contents, to

the effect that Blair’s presence at the café is conditional upon Alice’s presence there. But there is

no need to assume that in enjoying such an episode I infer anything at all. Inferring involves

something more than merely enjoying an intentional episode that represents a content that

exhibits normative relations among its sub-propositional parts. There is in inference an additional

dynamic element at work.

To infer is not, then, simply to represent. It is to take a step—make a transition, a shift, a

leap, a movement in thought—to a novel content. It’ll help to have an example before us.

Consider a thinker who performs the following bout of reasoning:

1. If Alice is at the café, then Blair is at the café.

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2. Alice is at the café.

3. So, Blair is at the café.

In line with what we’ve already said, episodes (1), (2), and (3) are distinct intentional episodes:

tokened at distinct and successive times in the stream of thought. Episodes (1) and (2) constitute

the premises of the thinker’s reasoning, while (3) marks the conclusion with which his reasoning

terminates. To respect the dynamical nature of reasoning, we represent the premise-conclusion

relation as holding not within a single intentional episode but across a chain of them. Episodes

(1) and (2) constitute the premise for the thinker’s conclusion (3), so that the premise-conclusion

relationship is one that spans the intentional episodes within the stream of thought. Modifying a

practice of John Broome’s (2014a), I’ll refer to episodes (1) and (2) as premise-episodes and

episode (3) as the conclusion-episode.

Is this all there is to inferring? Can inferring be understood as a succession of intentional

mental episodes whose contents, taken together, exhibit premise-conclusion relations? No. For

an agent may enjoy a close succession of episodes (1)–(3) without inferring anything at all. The

episodes may simply come across the thinker’s mind without his recognizing that their contents

bear premise-conclusion relations. This is a common enough occurrence in conscious life, or at

least in the conscious life of a dissertation-writer. Call any such case an experience of mere

succession. What is the difference between inferring to a conclusion and undergoing a mere

succession of intentional episodes?

It appears causation cannot provide the missing element. Paul Boghossian (2014) supplies

the following illustration. Suppose a severely depressed person enjoys an intentional episode that

represents I am having so much fun followed an episode that represents But there is so much

suffering in the world. There might be a regular, reliable, and non-deviant causal relation linking

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these episodes. Yet the depressive does not infer the second from the first. This is mere

succession, not inferring. (I will address a more sophisticated appeal to casual dispositions soon.)

Evidently, what is missing is some species of recognition or acknowledgement on the

thinker’s part of the normative relations holding among the contents of the intentional episodes

that make up his reasoning. To infer is not to experience a mere succession of normatively

related intentional episodes, but to move from one set of episodes to another in the light of these

normative relations. For it seems that only if an agent moves to a conclusion in the light of

premises can we speak of the intentional episodes as falling into ‘premises’ and ‘conclusion’ at

all for the thinker. Furthermore, the inference itself must be taken out of this selfsame

recognition of these relations. Put another way, premises (1) and (2) must serve as the reasons-

for-which the thinker moves to episode (3). Otherwise, the content of the premise-episodes can

play no role in explaining why the thinker infers as he does.

Following Paul Boghossian (2014: 5), call this the Taking Condition on inferring:

Taking Condition: Inferring necessarily involves (I) the thinker taking his premises to

support his conclusion and (II) drawing his conclusion because of that fact.1

Notice that the Taking Condition involves two sub-conditions. Not only must the thinker

appreciate the support his premises provide for the conclusion, he must also move to the

conclusion out of this very appreciation. The thinker’s appreciation of the rational support that his

premises grant to his conclusion must play some explanatory role in the fact that the thinker

concludes as he does. I’ll call these the two sub-conditions on the Taking Condition.

Taken together, these two sub-conditions on the Taking Condition render inferring to a

conclusion a thoroughly normative phenomenon. As Ulf Hlobil (forthcoming) argues, it is a

1 The numerals are my own, added to separate out two different questions we can ask about the Taking Condition:

What does it mean to ‘take’ one’s premises to support one’s conclusion? What is it to draw a conclusion because one

‘takes’ the premises to support the conclusion? I deal only with sub-condition (I) in this chapter.

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consequence of the Taking Condition that every thinker who infers to a conclusion is committed

to the goodness of his inferring: in inferring to a conclusion that a thinker takes to be supported

by his premises, he is thereby under a rational obligation to accept that the very reasoning

undertaken is good reasoning. Of course, this does not mean that the reasoning is in fact good

reasoning. A thinker’s reasoning might be unsound, invalid, or simply confused. But a thinker

cannot infer to a conclusion unless it is at least apparently a good inference. As we shall see

below, this means that inferring is perspective-dependent—essentially something that is done

from within a thinker’s rational point of view.

The Taking Condition seems to make the right sort of difference with respect to the examples

we’ve considered so far. What distinguishes inferring from mere succession is that when I infer I

meet sub-condition (I): I take the content of (1)–(2) episodes to provide rational support for (3).

Sub-condition (II) guarantees that I move to the conclusion out of this very appreciation of the

rational support provided by the content of the prior episodes. Whereas the severe depressive

who enjoys the intentional episodes (t1) I am having so much fun; (t2) But there is so much

suffering in the world does not appreciate any relation of rational support. And if there is no

relation of rational support at all, there can be no question of coming to the ‘conclusion’ out of

such an appreciation. Prima facie, it seems as though it is (I) and (II) which serve as the

inference-making condition.

But in what does such an inference-making ‘taking’ consist? Just what is it to take the

content of one set of intentional episodes to provide rational support for another?

It is natural to suggest that a thinker’s taking consists in some explicit representing that p

provides rational support for q. And the most natural way of explicitly representing such a

support relation is simply to enjoy a belief, or an occurrent thinking, that p supports q. Following

McHugh and Way (2016), call such a belief a taking-belief. To satisfy both (I) and (II) of the

Taking Condition, the taking-belief must figure explicitly in the premises from which the thinker

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reasons to the conclusion. This means that we must recast the reasoning (1)–(3) as follows (I

underscore intentional contents for convenience):

4. If Alice is at the café, then Blair is at the café.

5. Alice is at the café.

6. If Alice is at the café, then Blair is at the café and Alice is at the café provide rational

support for Blair is at the café.

7. So, Blair is at the café.

Here, premise (6) is a taking-belief. Its content represents a relation of normative support

between the contents (4)–(5) and the conclusion (7). This taking-belief is one of the very

premises from which the thinker infers to the conclusion. Since this is so, one of the reasons-for-

which the thinker infers that (7) is the taking-belief itself.

As Lewis Carroll (1895) observed, this is just where problems arise. For with respect to this

latest construal of the thinker’s reasoning we can raise the very same question that inspired the

Taking Condition. What makes the thinker’s movement from episodes (4)–(6) to episode (7) a

genuine inferring, rather than a mere succession? In particular, what does the thinker who infers

his conclusion (7) possess that is not possessed by our earlier examples, when the thinker infers

(3) from (1)–(2)? For it seems as though the thinker who infers (7) from (4)–(6) must take the

earlier premises to support this conclusion. If this is right, we face the very same question as

before: In what does the thinker’s taking consist?

We cannot answer this question by positing yet another taking-belief. That would only lead

to yet more premises:

8. If Alice is at the café, then Blair is at the café.

9. Alice is at the café.

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10. If Alice is at the café, then Blair is at the café and Alice is at the café provide rational

support for Blair is at the café.

11. If (8)–(9) and (10), then Blair is at the café.

12. So, Blair is at the café.

Step (11) constitutes a taking-taking-belief: a belief that one’s taking-belief rationally supports

the conclusion (12). Positing such a taking-taking-belief launches us into a regress. This regress

equally counts against even the taking-belief (6). For the regress-launching taking-taking-belief

demonstrates that taking-beliefs (of any order) can add nothing to the thinker’s reasoning that is

not already present in the first-order intentional episodes (1)–(3) with which we began.

So much for taking-beliefs. What if the relevant species of taking consists in something less

than explicit belief, such as an intuition that a thinker’s premises support her conclusion? (Cf.

Boghossian 2014: §7.) Yet it is not clear how such a taking-intuition can succeed where taking-

beliefs fail. Even if we suppose that the Taking Condition is met by taking-intuitions, it still

seems as though to satisfy the Taking Condition the relevant intuitions must figure in every

inference that the agent makes. As McHugh and Way have it, “it’s not clear how a taking

intuition is supposed to get you to draw your conclusion if not by providing an extra premise”

from which to reason (2016: 320). And that was the very regress-launching problem confronting

fully fledged taking-beliefs.

This leaves us in the following position. The Taking Condition secures the inference-making

features that distinguish inferring from experiences of mere succession. But so far, we have

struggled to understand what the ‘taking’ at issue involves without generating a regress of

premises that will prevent the thinker from ever moving from premise to conclusion.

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The appeal to rules

On a rule-following conception of inferring, taking consists in a thinker’s being guided by

rules. In the sort of cases we are considering, it is plausible to assume that the rules in question

are inference rules that the thinker implements in carrying out his reasoning. While natural and

compelling, this way of rendering a rule-following account view suffers from the very problems

we have diagnosed with taking-beliefs and taking-intuitions.

For illustration, consider the following explicit case of rule-following. Suppose I am

assembling a piece of furniture and do not know what step comes next. I consult the assembly

instructions, which include step-by-step diagrams for assembling the furniture properly. The

instructions prompt me to gather four wooden planks and arrange them in a certain manner.

Doing this allows me to proceed, moving on to the next step in accordance with the instructions.

Here it seems as though we have direct analogues for the elements of the Taking Condition. The

instructions serve as an explicitly articulated rule (or set of rules) for proceeding in the right way

to the next step in my project. There is accordingly no difficulty in understanding how it is that,

in moving to the next step I (I) take it that the instructions provide rational support for the very

step that I take, and (II) take the next step out of this very appreciation. This is because the rules

written into the assembly instructions are rules for correctly moving from an unassembled heap

of planks and screws to a sturdy piece of furniture.

Compelling though it is, we cannot import this model to help us to specify a thinker’s taking.

Doing so involves attributing to the thinker some mental representation that corresponds to the

instruction sheet—some explicit rule for moving from one state to the next. If it is to play the

same role as it does in our furniture story, this explicit state must represent the very rule that the

thinker means to follow in inferring to a conclusion. It seems that such a state must represent an

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inference-rule: a rule that licenses the thinker to move from a belief (or set of beliefs) to a

conclusion. Boghossian (2008: 472) represents modus ponens this way:

(MP): If you are rationally permitted to believe both that p and (p → q), then, you are prima

facie rationally permitted to believe that q.

The suggestion is that a thinker consults (MP) in the very same way the builder consults the

assembly instructions. Just as the assembly instructions direct the builder to assemble four

wooden planks, (MP) directs the thinker to infer that q when he believes both p and (p → q). The

thinker’s taking consists in his appreciation that the inference-rule (MP) provides rational

support for inferring that q, because the inference rule (MP) is a rule for correctly moving from a

set of premises to a conclusion that follows from those premises.

This analogy can only describe the thinker’s reasoning if we ascribe to the thinker some

explicit rule-belief that represents (MP). What’s more, we must suppose that this rule-belief

figures in the very reasoning that terminates in the thinker’s concluding just what (MP) directs

him to conclude. Without these two assumptions it will be hard to say just what sort of resource

(MP) really provides for the thinker.

As Boghossian (2008) points out, herein lies our trouble. We have fallen into the very same

difficulty as those theorists who posit a taking-belief or a taking-intuition; accordingly, the very

same regress will greet this (simple) appeal to rules. To see how the regress arises, we can model

the thinker’s reasoning with (MP) as follows:

13. If Alice is at the café, then Blair is at the café.

14. Alice is at the café.

15. (MP): If you are rationally permitted to believe both that p and (p → q), then you are

prime facie rationally permitted to believe that q.

16. Steps (13) and (14) instantiate the antecedent of (MP).

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17. So, Blair is at the café.

We will naturally raise the very same questions regarding (13)–(17) that we raised earlier about

taking-beliefs and taking-intuitions. What does step (15) provide that was not already given to

the thinker in the earlier reasoning (1)–(3)? It seems that we can imagine these intentional

episodes (13)–(17) taking place without the thinker’s inferring anything at all. What the thinker

requires, we will go on to say, is some additional premise that registers his grasp that (17)

follows from what has gone on before. We will then have to insert into the thinker’s reasoning

some further step, to the effect that steps (13)–(16) license the movement to the conclusion (17).

As we have seen, positing such a further step invites the regress.

This simple appeal to rules, then—wherein we model a thinker’s reasoning by close analogy

with what goes on when a builder assembles a piece of furniture from a set of instructions—is no

better off than proposals we have already rejected. But this is not to say that every appeal to rules

is hopeless. It only points up a constraint on how the appeal is made. We mustn’t attribute to the

thinker any explicit rule-belief that figures as a separate step in his inferring to the conclusion.

Guidance by a rule is not to be construed according to the simple analogy we set out with

assembling a piece of furniture: we do not ‘consult’ inference rules in reasoning the way a

builder consults a set of instructions for what to do next.

The appeal to dispositions

John Broome (2013, 2014a, 2014b) proffers a dispositional account of rule-following that is

sensitive to this constraint. As Broome acknowledges, every rule-following account of inferring

worth its name must respect the idea that inference-rules guide a thinker from premise to

conclusion. Broome’s suggestion is that guidance by a rule consists in a complex disposition; the

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manifestation of this disposition does not involve imputing to the thinker some explicit rule-

belief that figures as a premise in his reasoning.

According to Broome, such rule-dispositions (as I’ll call them) have two distinct

dispositions as components. The first component is a disposition to make transitions in thought

that conform to inference-rules. For instance, a (rational) thinker possesses a disposition to make

the transition from p to q. The transition from p to q just is the manifestation of this disposition.

As we have seen, though, even a reliably well-functioning disposition of this sort cannot be

sufficient for inferring. The manifestation of a reliable disposition can explain patterns of

intentional episodes that conform with a rule, but not get us patterns that evince a thinker’s

following a rule. This is where the second disposition enters the picture. Broome tells us that

upon the manifestation of the disposition to transition to an intentional episode in accordance

with a rule, we enjoy a second disposition to appreciate the rightness of that very transition. So,

in addition to the disposition to transition from p to q, the thinker is also disposed to appreciate

that the transition from p to q seems right.

Broome insists that this disposition to seem right is not itself a phenomenal feeling or state.

It rather consists in (yet another) complex disposition (Broome 2014a: 22ff). Specifically, the

disposition to seem right is an attitude to (a) the manifestation of the first disposition (i.e., the

transition in thought that is the inferring) and (b) the rule that (putatively) guides the

manifestation of the first disposition. On Broome’s view, this latter disposition essentially

involves the recognition that one’s transition in thought is open to correction by the rule that

guides it. This disposition may be a mere counterfactual disposition, though, since a thinker may

never go through the process of checking his inferring. So, the disposition to seem right is an

attitude towards the transition in thought and the rule that guides that very transition; this attitude

consists in a (counterfactual) disposition to check the inferring for rightness relative to that very

rule.

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It is one thing to seem right relative to a rule, and another to be right relative to a rule.

Brome accounts for this distinction by building the notion of being right out of that of seeming

right. On his view, to be right relative to rule R is to enjoy a “steady disposition” that inferrings

of this type are right relative to R (2013: 239). To correctly follow R—which may itself be an

incorrect rule of reasoning—is to enjoy a steady disposition of this sort. To correctly follow a

correct rule of reasoning is, correspondingly, to enjoy a steady disposition for inferences guided

by such a correct rule to seem right: “[your] reasoning is correct if and only if you correctly

follow a correct rule” (2013: 247).

Broome has provided a thoroughly dispositional approach to rule-following. To follow a rule

in reasoning is to manifest a rule-disposition. A rule-disposition consists in both the transition in

thought as well as a distinct disposition consisting in the agent’s being guided by the rule. And to

be guided by a rule R is to manifest a (suitably robust) disposition to make transitions in thought

that conform to R and for such transitions to seem right—which in turn consists in a (perhaps

counterfactual) disposition to accept criticism for incorrectly conforming with R. It will be

important for our discussion of Broome’s view that these are separate dispositions: the

disposition to conform to a rule is a separate disposition from the one manifested in the

transition’s seeming right to the thinker. Before moving to that discussion, I want to bring one

more aspect of Broome’s view on the table.

According to Broome, inferring to a conclusion is active—something that an agent does,

rather than something that merely happens to him. Tellingly, Broome claims that inferring is

agentive because it is a rule-guided activity. Consider the thinker who infers q from p. On

Broome’s view, the inference to q will be accompanied by this very inference seeming right. This

seeming right counts, Broome thinks, as a form of endorsement on the agent’s part of the very

transition in thought that has taken place. As Broome has it, a “process’s seeming right to you is

a sort of personal endorsement from you. This is part of what makes the process yours:

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something you do” (2013: 238). One needn’t endorse the specific rule that guides the inferring; it

is enough, Broome thinks, to believe the content to which a thinker transitions in being guided by

the rule (2013: 233). On Broome’s account, rule-following is agentive because it involves a

thinker’s endorsement of the transition in thought from premise to conclusion; accepting the

deliverance of the rule-disposition is the agency-making endorsement.

It appears that Broome has provided just what was needed: an account of inferring that

distinguishes between rule-following and mere conformity with a rule by appealing to the Taking

Condition. On Broome’s account, it is insufficient for inferring just to enjoy a disposition whose

manifestations conform with inference-rules. The transitions in thought cannot count as

inferrings unless they seem right to the thinker, and this seeming right is the part of the account

that satisfies the Taking Condition. What’s more, it seems that Broome can also explain just why

inferring is something active on the agent’s part, rather than something that passively occurs in

thought—precisely by appealing to non-regress generating notion of rule-following.

These advantages notwithstanding, I wish to part ways with Broome’s proposal (and with it,

the very project of providing a rule-following account of reasoning in terms of dispositions

alone). The problems I will set out for Broome’s proposal arise from his separating into distinct

existences (a) the disposition manifested in a thinker’s transition to a conclusion-episode from

(b) the disposition manifested in this very transition’s seeming right to the thinker.

To set the stage for these worries, note the tight cluster of interconnections among the

notions of rule-following, norms, and reasons (cf. Boghossian 2014). To follow a rule is to treat

it as prescriptive, in at least this minimal sense: in following a rule, what occurs next will be

incorrect according to the rule that I mean to follow if it does not accord in with what the rule

demands. This is just to say that the rule and what it demands must have a normative bearing on

what happens next. To this extent at least, to follow the rule I must treat the rule and what it

demands as constituting a reason for me to act in accord with it—to do as the rule demands.

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When a thinker infers to a conclusion-episode by following a rule, then, the thinker takes the rule

as demanding (or at least licensing) the very inferring that the thinker performs; the thinker takes

it that he does well relative to the rule and would be doing poorly were he to fail to do what it

demands. In so doing, the thinker takes the rule as normative.

It is to capture these tight interconnections that we impose the Taking Condition and seek a

rule-following account of inferring. The promise of rule-following accounts of the Taking

Condition lies in the hope of recovering these matters of normative significance. In fact, it is an

understatement to say that these notions—that of a rule, of a norm, and of a reason—are merely

‘tightly interconnected.’ It is difficult to see how any one of these notions might be reduced to

another in the network, so that we might define one in terms of the others (or even the network as

a whole in terms of something else). This is just the point that I will press against the idea of

reducing rule-following to a complex set of dispositions.

The chief problem with Broome’s notion of a complex rule-disposition is that it severs these

interconnections by cleaving apart the disposition manifested in moving to a conclusion-episode

from the disposition that is manifested in this transition’s seeming right to the thinker. Once these

dispositions are separated into distinct existences, the thinker’s taking (seeming right) merely

‘runs alongside’ the disposition that is manifested in the transition from p to q. The closest

relation that we can ascribe to these two dispositions is to say that they share a common cause.

There is no reason, though, to suppose that two joint effects of a common cause relate causally to

one another. And if these two dispositions cannot relate (causally or otherwise) to one another,

then one cannot guide the other. The upshot is that the rule that the thinker follows cannot

provide normative guidance for the thinker’s inferring. As I’ve just noted, guidance by a rule

involves treating the rule’s prescriptions as a reason for doing what the rule recommends. And it

is this reason—the reason that is sourced in the normativity of the rule I mean to follow—that

must rationalize (serve as the reason-for-which) my transition to the conclusion-episode.

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With this, we have effectively re-discovered a motivation for sub-condition (II) of the Taking

Condition, namely that that the thinker infers because of the relations of rational support that he

discerns between the premise and conclusion. When sub-condition (II) goes unmet there cannot

be normative guidance in the sense relevant for rule-following. Should we accept Broome’s rule-

dispositions, the thinker’s grasp of the relations of normative support is merely a byproduct of

the manifestation of the disposition to transition to the conclusion. On this view, the most that we

may say is that every inferring is occasioned by a thinker’s taking it that his premises support his

conclusion. We cannot say that a thinker moves to the conclusion because of this very

appreciation of rational support. This result falls short of what we hoped to explain by appealing

to guidance by a rule.

This first problem feeds into a larger issue concerning agency in inferring. Appealing to rule-

dispositions cannot make good on the idea that rule-following is what renders reasoning active.

To make this second worry vivid, consider yet another conception of inferring. As it happens, it

is a candidate conception that Broome himself wants to dismiss. Broome labels this the Jogging

Account (2013: §13.3). According to the Jogging Account, “in reasoning you call to mind some

of the premises, and doing so jogs into operation an automatic process that causes you to acquire

a conclusion-attitude” in a way that is reliably correct (2013: 226).2 On this view, an inferring is

indirectly brought about by attending to the premises. This exercise of attention sets into motion

some ‘merely ballistic’ process that causes the occurrence of the conclusion-episode. The Jogging

Account is so named because this ‘jogging’ activity is modeled according to the way we often

‘jog’ our memories into throwing up a forgotten item into consciousness. (See my discussion of

instrumentalist accounts of remembering and imagining in Chapter 2.)

2 So described, the Jogging Account is reminiscent of Strawson’s (2003) account of mental agency as consisting

almost entirely in merely ‘ballistic’ cognitive processes. It also accords well with the kind of indirect reflective

mental actions that we rejected in the last chapter. Though Broome does not argue for the intuitive claim that such

automatic processes cannot be actional, the argument in Chapter 2 fills this lacuna.

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Broome rejects the Jogging Account on the following grounds:

The jogging account is a poor account of active reasoning. If, when you call things to mind

during the course of reasoning, all you do is jog into operation an automatic process,

reasoning would scarcely be an act of yours. Most of it would not be done by you; all you

would do is call the premises to mind. The core of reasoning would be a passive process,

which sometimes needs a jog. But intuitively there is more to reasoning than that. (2013:

226)

Broome rejects the Jogging Account because according to it the agency exercised in reasoning

cannot reach into the inferring itself. At the most it consists in the prompting that sets automatic

processes in motion. According to the Jogging Account we merely act indirectly on our minds. I

share Broome’s intuition. The Jogging Account is a poor model of reasoning to a conclusion, and

it is hard to see, on this model, just why inferring to a conclusion—rather than attending to a set

of contents that cause the occurrence of a conclusion-episode—should count as active in any

sense.

However, Broome’s own view is close to the Jogging Account in relevant respects. The

grounds on which we join Broome in rejecting the Jogging Account count equally against an

account in terms of rule-dispositions. To bring this out, let us supplement the Jogging Account

with Broome’s conception of guidance by a rule. Suppose I attend to the content p. This use of

the attention ‘jogs’ the occurrence of the episode q. The cause of this episode q in turn ‘activates’

a disposition for this very occurrence to ‘seem right’ to me. We may grant that this ‘seeming

right’ consists in the very sort of further complex disposition that Broome envisions. Does the

manifestation of this rule-disposition render inferring any more active? It seems not. The agent’s

action is still confined to the exercise of attention in order to bring about some conclusion-

episode; the occurrence of this episode is entirely passive, and so too is the manifestation of the

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disposition to see this occurrence as ‘seeming right’ to the thinker. So, it seems that even with the

addition of the rule-disposition, the Jogging Account remains insufficiently active. If this is right,

then it is hard to see how agency really can be located in the manifestation of a rule-disposition.

If the manifestation of a rule-disposition introduced agency into the account, then we should

expect its addition to the Jogging Account to seem prima facie agentive. It appears, then, that the

manifestation of a rule-disposition cannot furnish for our account of inferring the missing

agentive element.

Why is this? I propose that it is because of the first problem we have already pointed out for

the theory. The sort of endorsement that figures in Broome’s rule-disposition view can only be

the joint product of the cause that is common to whatever brings about the occurrence of the

conclusion-episode. The thinker’s endorsement cannot—on either Broome’s rule-disposition

view or the Jogging Account—play any role in guiding the thinker to the conclusion. So long as

this problem goes unfixed, any endorsement on the thinker’s part will be after-the-fact, and an

after-the-fact endorsement of some occurrence does not render the occurrence itself something

that the agent did. Such an endorsement only renders the occurrence something that, having

taken place, the agent now approves of. It seems, then, that we cannot provide a rule-following

account of inferring only in terms of complex sets of dispositions.

Taking as commitment

Our problem remains. While the Taking Condition plausibly captures the distinction

between inferring and mere succession, we have yet to specify that in which a thinker’s taking

consists. Appealing to taking-beliefs and taking-intuitions generates a regress, while appealing to

taking-dispositions cannot satisfy both sub-conditions (I) and (II) of the Taking Condition. We

need to capture the notion of a thinker’s being guided by a rule without thereby positing either

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some separate intentional state that figures in the thinker’s reasoning or rule-dispositions that

reliably manifest in certain transitions seeming right to the thinker.

For the duration of this chapter I will pursue a positive account of sub-condition (I) of the

Taking Condition with an eye towards these constraints. (Sub-condition (II) will be taken up in

the next chapter, when we turn to an explanation of the agentive character of inferring.) My

proposal will locate the relevant rules within the agent’s grasp of the very first-order premise-

episodes from which he infers to the conclusion. To properly introduce this proposal, though, we

must first expand the theoretical resources we bring to the problem of inferring. To understand

inferring, I want to suggest that we first heed the peculiar first-personal perspective, or rational

point of view, of the thinker who undertakes a bout of reasoning.

THE ENGAGED STANCE

As I indicated in Chapters 1 and 2, as a constitutive matter reasoning is an answer-seeking

activity. Paradigmatically, reasoning terminates with an inferring to a conclusion that answers the

question that the thinker has taken up.3 I will call the questions that invite and sustain inquiry

deliberative questions. Deliberative questions may be epistemic or practical. Epistemic

deliberative questions ask whether p; practical deliberative questions ask whether to φ. What is

it, and what is it like, to take up a deliberative question?

One cannot so much as address oneself to a deliberative question without occupying a

distinctive stance on the subject matter into which one seeks to inquire. From this stance, one is

in position to register and to respond to reasons that bear on one’s deliberative question. From

this point of view, ordinary facts and states of affairs take on more than merely descriptive

3 I say this is so paradigmatically because strictly speaking it is not always true that inferring closes inquiry.

Sometimes, I cannot discern whether p unless and until I have settled whether q; and I may need to infer that q in

order to progress properly to the question whether p. So, while reasoning always terminates with an inferring,

inferring does not always close inquiry.

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significance. They also take on an immediate normative salience for the thinker. It is from this

stance that a fact or a state of affairs is grasped as having some normative force for the thinker—

as being immediately normatively relevant for the revision and formation of the thinker’s own

further thought and action. I will call this stance the engaged stance of inquiry. So conceived, the

engaged stance of inquiry is distinctively first-personal.4 When a thinker occupies the engaged

stance, it is always with the self-conscious understanding that I am inquiring into whether p from

my own rational point of view.

Following Carol Rovane and Akeel Bilgrami, we should distinguish the engaged stance qua

rational point of view from a conscious subject’s phenomenal point of view.5 The phenomenal

point of view is the perspective from which a sentient being registers qualitative sensations, such

as the felt redness of a red patch of carpet. A subject who possesses a phenomenal point of view

is one for whom there is ‘something it is like,’ phenomenally, to be that subject. The phenomenal

point of view is easy to confuse with the engaged stance, since both are first-personal

perspectives that a subject takes on the world. But it is possible to coherently imagine a

phenomenally conscious subject who inhabits the phenomenal point of view but has no grasp of

reasons or other normative relations.6 Such a creature is wholly reliant on its surrounding

environment for its sustenance, but there seems no conceptual bar to the possibility that it might

enjoy a coherent phenomenal experience of the passing show. At the very least, it would take

substantial philosophical argument to show the incoherence of such a creature; we cannot begin

by assuming that the engaged stance perfectly corresponds with the phenomenal point of view of

a conscious subject.

4 See esp. Burge (2013b, 2013c). 5 See Rovane (1998), Bilgrami (2006: Ch. 4–5). Here as ever I owe much to their work on this topic. The view that

attitudes are commitments stems from work by Isaac Levi. 6 Compare Galen Strawson’s ‘Pure Observers’ (2003), or Bilgrami’s Oblomov (2006: Ch. 4 ). But perhaps these

thought experiments already bring in the close connection between agency and the engaged stance.

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A rational point of view is different from such a phenomenal point of view. As I have

indicated, it is from the rational point of view that one registers the normative force of

considerations that constitute reasons that bear on one’s deliberative question. Two well-known

illustrations bear this out. Consider, first, Moore’s Paradox. The paradox is that the claims p and I

do not believe that p do not have contradictory truth-conditions. And yet, there is an immediate

rational tension whenever a thinker asserts these two claims. With many, we may understand this

tension as evincing the import of a thinker’s (speaker’s) rational point of view: for it is from that

point of view that a thinker’s beliefs are regulated by the constitutive norm governing belief

(viz., believe that p if and only if p is true). It is only from the engaged stance that a thinker is

subject to the immediate rational tension in asserting p and I do not believe that p. Or, to take a

similar point from Bernard Williams, consider the propositions p and ¬p.7 The assertion of both p

and ¬p can mark a disagreement among two speakers; or, it can mark a logical contradiction.

Whether it marks a contradiction will depend upon whether both p and ¬p are held within a

single rational point of view. Burge’s point is that it is only from within such a point of view that

a thinker can be moved by, and implement, the reasons within his possession.

I have taken care to explicate the engaged stance using examples drawn from epistemic,

rather than practical, inquiry. It is important not to identify the engaged stance with what we

might call the point of view of freedom: the point of view that is appropriate to an agent’s

planning of future-directed action. From the point of view of freedom, one’s own future seems

open, as up to one’s own decisions. When one occupies this point of view, one is concerned to

settle practically the question of one’s future conduct. It is from this point of view that one

arrives at intentions as to what one shall do, rather than predictive beliefs about what one will do.

In this, the point of view of freedom is certainly a rational point of view, and indeed one from

7 See Williams (1978), and Burge’s discussion at (2013b: 388, 393).

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which an agent registers and responds to reasons. When one occupies the point of view of

freedom, one seeks to settle the question of what one shall do with reference to one’s

assessments of what is good, right, desirable, and valuable. This cannot be done unless one is in a

position to register and treat with reasons. This means that an agent cannot so much as occupy

the point of view of freedom without also taking up the engaged stance of inquiry. Yet the two

points of view cannot be identified: it is possible to take up the engaged stance of inquiry without

thereby occupying the point of view of freedom.

To see this, consider those cases in which one enters the engaged stance by taking up an

epistemic deliberative question regarding one’s own future conduct. Sometimes, reaching such a

prediction can inform one’s course of practical deliberation. Suppose I receive a dinner invitation

tonight from an old friend passing through town. But I also have an important meeting tomorrow

for which I must prepare this very evening. I then enter the point of view of freedom, to decide

upon a practical course of action: shall I go to dinner, or instead stay home to prepare for my

meeting tomorrow? I might think: What I really ought to do is both: attend the dinner and simply

work late into the night upon coming home. This would be an ideal plan, but for the fact that I

have a terrible habit of failing to return to work at night after returning home from evening

socializing. My record in this respect is abysmal, and I know this about myself. Given this, it

makes sense for me to ask an epistemic, rather than a practical, question about how I am likely to

behave in the future. If I am unlikely to work after returning home, it behooves me to decline the

dinner invitation. To be sure, in arriving at the prediction that informs this choice I have taken, in

some sense, a passive or merely observational stance with respect to my own future conduct.

Nevertheless, I have arrived at the prediction by taking the engaged stance to worldly facts and

states of affairs that bear upon an epistemic, rather than a practical, deliberative question. I have

concluded as I have in view of strong inductive evidence that constitutes a compelling case for

thinking that I will not in fact work after returning home from dinner. In contrast, the point of

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view of freedom seems not to allow me to look upon my own future conduct through such a

merely predictive lens. When I occupy the point of view of freedom, my future course of action

seems to be a matter that can be settled (or at least strongly influenced) by my undertaking a

present commitment to resume my work after returning from dinner. Given this disparity, the

engaged stance must be recognized as something more general than the point of view of

freedom, in that one can inhabit the former without thereby stepping foot in the latter. This helps

to clarify the engaged stance as a distinctive perspective that makes reasons available for

reasoning; it is not already a point of view wherein one settles practically what one shall do.

(Though, to be sure, the inverse implication does hold: if one takes up the point of view of

freedom, one must therein occupy the engaged stance of inquiry.)

Now, introduction of the notion of a stance or a rational point of view raises a host of deeply

controversial philosophical matters that cannot be addressed here. Still, I hope that it is clear

enough that a full specification of the Taking Condition must introduce some such notion of a

rational point of view. As Williams’ point and Moore-type paradoxical statements seem to

evince, we need the notion of a point of view in order to make sense of the Taking Condition.

What can a thinker’s taking be, if not something locatable from the thinker’s rational point of

view?

Having introduced this notion of an engaged point of view, I turn now to drawing out its

significance for inferring. My claims will be three: All inferring happens from the engaged

stance; From this stance, one’s intentional attitudes figure as normative commitments on the

thinker’s part; Qua normative commitments, these attitudes take on an imperatival rule-like

character insofar as a thinker’s attitudes enjoin him to discharge attitudinal commitments in

further thought and action. The upshot: when a thinker is in a position to infer, his intentional

episodes are themselves rules for reasoning. By understanding the imperatival dimension of

beliefs and intentions, we locate all the normativity required for sub-condition (I) of the Taking

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Condition without having to posit any separate intentional state in which the thinker’s taking

consists. I’ll take these three claims in turn.

INFERRING AND THE ENGAGED STANCE

I have already foreshadowed the first of these claims and will quickly dispense with it.

Every inferring is undertaken from within the engaged stance. Inferring is reasoning, and

reasoning is constitutively an answer-seeking activity. It is the quest for an answer to a

deliberative question that distinguishes reasoning from idle daydreaming or aimless mind

wandering. To take up a deliberative question is to orient oneself towards considerations that are

relevant to one’s answer, so that those considerations can be implemented in the course of

inquiry. If one cannot do this, then one can merely contemplate the question rather than earnestly

pursue an answer to it.8

To see the same point from another angle, consider: what is it like to fail to occupy the

engaged stance? Such a stance will not be first-personal at all. Even if from such a stance a

thinker can recognize reasons, the thinker will be unable to implement those reasons in the

formation or revision of attitudes.9 If a thinker is not at all able to implement reasons in inquiry,

then there can be nothing genuinely at stake for the thinker’s progression of thinking. From

within the confines of such a disengaged stance, a thinker can be only a passive observer of his

own thoughts. They pass by, adrift and undirected, to assail the thinker.10 And if the thinker

cannot so much as register and respond to reasons, there is no way in which the thinker can

8 I do not endorse any sort of verificationism, according to which understanding the meaning of a proposition

consists in a grasp of what might count as evidence for it. No claim here is being made about understanding

meaning. An agent, in contemplating a deliberative question for which he knows not what could count as a

normatively significant consideration that bears on that question, can still understand what the question asks. My

claim is just that the agent cannot make real progress inquiring into that question until he has some sense of what

could count as a reason for or against some possible answer, or range of answers, to it. 9 For these points, see Burge (2013a). 10 Compare Bilgrami’s thought-experimental character Oblomov, in (2006: 161–166).

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satisfy the Taking Condition. So long as we impose the Taking Condition on inferring, then, we

must also recognize that inferring can only happen from within the engaged stance.

ATTITUDINAL COMMITMENT

From the engaged stance, a thinker’s attitudes do not figure as mere descriptive facts that are

true of him. By ‘descriptive facts,’ I mean such ordinary facts as the fact that I am over six feet

tall and born of American parents. These facts are fully graspable from a third-personal point of

view. To be sure, a thinker can conceive of features of his own mind in just this way. I can take a

detached point of view with respect to my own mind by reporting that I become annoyed by

tardiness and frustrated with messiness.

In contrast, from the engaged stance a thinker’s attitudes figure as normative commitments

on one’s part. I call these attitudinal commitments.11 A thinker’s attitudinal commitments register

his rational obligations or permissions. I want to elucidate the notion of an attitudinal

commitment by minding the fashion in which one’s extant attitudes figure, from the engaged

stance. But I caution the reader at the outset that this is a mere expository strategy: as we shall

see, attitudinal commitments are often themselves the product of a thinker’s inferring.

In taking up a deliberative question, a thinker brings a set of beliefs, desires, or intentions to

bear on that question. That is, one always addresses oneself to a deliberative question from some

prior deliberative position: a network of extant attitudes whose contents bear on the question that

one seeks to answer. So, if I have addressed myself to the question whether q, and already

believe that p and that (p → q), then the deliberative position I bring to bear on whether q

includes the beliefs p and (p → q). Often one’s deliberative position is rather more impoverished

11 In addition to Rovane (1998) and Bilgrami (2006: Ch. 4), see also recent work by Pamela Hieronymi, who writes

of belief and intention as ‘commitment-constituted attitudes’: attitudes that embody an agent’s reply to a deliberative

question. Hieronymi (2005, 2006, 2009). See also Moran (2001) for a similar characterization of ho w our attitudes

figure from the first-personal stance of engagement.

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than this. There is also the possibility that one’s deliberative position itself undergoes refinement

or revision in the course of inquiry. Still, no account of inferring can pass over the significance of

the prior deliberative position. That is because inferring is conceived of as a movement from

some set of content-bearing intentional episodes to a novel intentional episode. The intentional

episodes from which one infers are always (at least partial) elements comprising one’s prior

deliberative position. Put another way: elements of a thinker’s prior deliberative position figure

as the premises from which he infers to a conclusion. The question is how, from the first-personal

engaged stance of inquiry, this prior deliberative position figures for the agent carrying out the

inferring.

The premises of one’s inferring certainly do not figure as causally-efficacious states

impelling the thinker to some conclusion or other. One simply does not ascribe to the items

within one’s prior deliberative position this species of merely ballistic significance. To do so is to

construe one’s inquiry as a matter of hurling oneself along by the causal force of one’s states and

episodes. This is not to say that the states and events that realize transitions in reasoning play no

causal role in the generation of novel contents. Neither is it to foreclose the possibility that, as

causal theorists of action maintain, reasons-explanations are a species of efficient-causal

explanation. It is just to say that from the engaged stance, as one is taken up with a deliberative

question, the attitudes from which one reasons are not conceived of as causal-instrumental means

of bringing about some novel intentional episode. That is precisely the mistake we diagnosed in

the instrumentalist account of mental action back in Chapter 2; it is also what gives rise to the

Jogging Account that we have followed John Broome in rejecting. As Stuart Hampshire puts the

point, a person “who changes his mind, in response to evidence of the truth of a proposition, does

not act upon himself, nor does he bring about an effect” (1975: 100).12 Even if this ‘change in

12 I came to this apt quotation by way of Moran (2001: 132, n. 11).

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mind’ involves the bringing-about of some causal effect (e.g. at a neuronal or sub-personal level

of description), the first-personal engaged stance of inquiry is not one from which I am

concerned to employ such causal relations to bring about an intended effect in my own mind.

Rather: I grasp the content of the episodes that comprise my prior deliberative position as

having a normative bearing on further thought and action. In fact, it is already a mistake to speak

of attitudes as figuring as such in the engaged stance, at all. In the first place, it is worldly facts

and states of affairs which are taken to bear normative significance for one’s inquiry. I do not

reason from the fact that I believe that Alice is at the café, but from the (apparent) fact of Alice’s

being present at the café.13 It is not psychological states that are ‘reason-giving,’ but the worldly

facts and states of affairs represented in their contents which provide reasons. As Gareth Evans

observed, our attitudes are directed outwards, towards the facts and states of affairs that the

attitudes work to put us in touch with.14

Obviously, this does not mean that my own attitudes are inaccessible to me from the

engaged stance. It only means that reasoning does not and cannot begin by considering what

must be the case given one’s own psychological states. To begin inquiry from a determinate

deliberative position is to begin inquiry with a certain picture of what is the case, of what the

world is like.

My prior deliberative position is given to me, from the engaged stance, in terms of

normatively salient worldly facts and states of affairs. This means that my prior deliberative

position at once provides a normative direction for my inquiry as it progresses. If I already

believe that Alice is at the café, this (apparent) fact—that Alice is present at the café—can be

treated as a reason that bears on a range of further deliberative questions. And in this, the

13 This is a point that recent ‘anti-psychologist’ philosophers of reasons and normativity have pointed out. See e.g.

Jonathan Dancy (2000) and Maria Alvarez (2010). 14 See Evans (1982) and Moran (2001). Broome is also onto this same point in insisting that inferring is an operation

on contents of attitudes, not on attitudes per se (2013: Ch. 13).

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(apparent) fact that Alice is at the café is a state of affairs that my further inquiry mustn’t

contradict, as such a contradiction amounts to an incoherent picture of the world. It is here that

we arrive at the notion of an attitudinal commitment. If p is represented by an intentional episode

that figures in my reasoning, then I am obligated to ‘live up to’ p in subsequent thought. What

does it mean to ‘live up to’ p in subsequent thinking? At a minimum, it means refusing to

endorse anything that outright contradicts with p. It also means endorsing p’s implications,

material and logical. This is what it means to say that my occurrent intentional episode is more

than merely a relation to a proposition, but a commitment that I am concerned to uphold. Akeel

Bilgrami fittingly describes beliefs as internal oughts: the belief that p incorporates the rational

obligation to accept the consequences of p and to reject what is inconsistent with p (2006: 212).

This is an apt construal of an attitudinal commitment.

In this, attitudinal commitments are akin to interpersonal commitments familiar from

everyday ethical life. Suppose I promise to help you move to a new uptown apartment on

Saturday afternoon. My promise to you inaugurates a range of commitments on my part, which

figure as oughts that I am obligated to observe in further thought and action. To take some of the

most obvious: I ought not to make alternative plans on Saturday afternoon; I ought to stay in

Friday evening to conserve energy, and come Saturday I ought not to lie to you to escape my

obligation to help you move that day. These commitments all arise from the fundamental

obligation to help you move on Saturday. I am obligated to live up to this commitment by

discharging it in the very action of assisting you with your move. (What it means to ‘discharge’ a

commitment is not something we can explain without having on the table a conception of

inferring. For it seems that to discharge a commitment is just to do what the commitment obliges

me to do, out of an appreciation of the normative force of the very commitment that I discharge

in action. My proposal over this and the following chapter is that to infer, and to intentionally

act, is just to discharge a commitment.)

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Come Saturday, I can do well or worse relative to my promise to help you move. One way

of going worse will be to disregard my promise to you and stay home on Saturday afternoon. My

commitment to assist you brings in train the possibility that I might fail to live up to this very

commitment when the time comes. A commitment to act involves the possibility of falling short

of it. However, falling short of a commitment does nothing to impugn the presence of the

commitment itself (see Bilgrami 2006: Ch. 4, §§3–4). If I leave you in the lurch on Saturday,

there is no conclusive ground to judge that I never really committed to helping you move at all.

There is only conclusive ground to criticize me for falling short of my commitment—for not

doing what, by my own lights, I ought to do. In cases where a person falls short of his

commitments, the mistake is in the performance, as Anscombe had it, and not in the commitment

itself (1957: 57).

This differs sharply with causal dispositions. Unlike normative commitments, a causal

disposition’s failure to manifest does impugn the presence of the disposition in question. Take a

paradigm exemplar of a disposition: the fragility of a plate. The plate’s fragility consists in its

being disposed to shatter in a range of specifiable conditions. But suppose that the plate persists

intact after being thrown, kicked, dropped, and otherwise abused. This will constitute evidence

that the disposition to break was mistakenly attributed to the plate, and that it is in fact not fragile

at all, but rather quite durable. In general, an entity’s reliably failing to manifest a disposition in

relevant circumstances counts as evidence that the entity does not really possess the disposition

in question. We will come to judge that the plate is not fragile after all, but instead rather durable

(fit for camping and not fine dining).15

15 This assessment is complicated by the fact that the manifestation of a disposition might be ‘masked’ by a range of

conditions that suppress or otherwise prevent its manifestation even in the presence of the relevant conditions. For

discussion, see Schlosser (2011). This complication can only bear on the present argument if it is assumed that

failure to discharge a commitment can always be subsumed to such cases of masking. To say this, though, would be

to embark on a reductive project of explaining normative commitments in thoroughl y causal-dispositional terms,

which is the very approach I sought to reject in distancing myself from Broome’s account of rule -dispositions.

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As I’ve already indicated, though, our responsibility-practices evince quite a different

pattern of evaluation and revision in the case of commitments. Should I fail to discharge my

commitment, the appropriate response is not to conclude that I never enjoyed the commitment at

all, but rather to criticize me for failing to live up to what, by my own lights, I ought to do. This is

not to say that it is never appropriate to conclude that I never really had the commitment at all to

help you move. If you find that I am not at all disposed to accept criticism for my failure, nor to

acknowledge any fault or to re-commit to doing better in the future, then it may be appropriate to

conclude that I never really had the commitment at all.16 Yet this pattern of evaluation and

revision only serves to underscore the difference with causal dispositions: once more, we find

that in the case of normative commitments the error is located in the performance, rather than in

the attribution of the disposition.

With Rovane and Bilgrami, I am suggesting that this very notion of a commitment

characterizes the attitudes that comprise a thinker’s prior deliberative position as he addresses

himself to a deliberative question from the engaged stance. It is just that the commitments at

issue are more broadly rational, rather than ethical—but no less normative for all that. From the

engaged stance, my belief that p is a commitment to p’s truth. My commitment to p’s truth is

something that I can dutifully discharge or something I can fail to live up to. I discharge my

commitment to p by accepting p’s consequences and by rejecting those propositions that conflict

with p. Just like promising, though, the commitment to p’s truth is something of which I can fall

short. This will be the case when I refuse, evade, or delude myself with respect to p’s

consequences; or when I maintain both p and ¬p (or a separate belief that I recognize to conflict

with p). Crucially, though, falling short of my commitment to p does not count as conclusive

evidence that I do not really believe that p. In such cases, the mistake will be in my performance

16 See Bilgrami (2006: Ch. 4, §4).

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(in the normative sense pointed up by Anscombe). The possibility of falling short—of making a

mistake, of standing in need of correction—is a direct and ineliminable consequence of

conceiving of intentional episodes in these normative terms. This means that my commitment to

p renders me liable to a distinctive pattern of rational appraisal.17 All of this differs sharply with

the case of causal dispositions. From the engaged stance, the items within my prior deliberative

position do not figure as causal dispositions, but as normative commitments that I aspire to live

up to. Attitudinal commitments are commitments of just this kind.

ATTITUDES AS RULES

So far, I have argued that from the engaged stance the beliefs that make up a thinker’s prior

deliberative position take on a normative profile. They figure as a suit of rational permissions and

obligations that a thinker must live up to in subsequent epistemic dealings. We are now in a

position to show how these attitudinal commitments furnish the rules for a thinker to reason by.

Suppose my prior deliberative position includes not only the attitudinal commitment to p,

but also to r. This latter belief involves its own normative profile, given to me from the engaged

stance in terms of a suite of rational obligations and permissions. Just as I am committed to

accept the consequences of p and to reject that which p contradicts, so too I am committed to r’s

consequences and to the rejection of its contraries. This will be the case for all of the attitudes

that figure in my prior deliberative position—all of the attitudes that have a bearing on the

deliberative question that I am addressing in inquiry. So, my commitment to p and my

17 The reader will wonder: is this not the core of the very sort of answerability for belief that I am attempting to

ground? I shall address this circularity worry only after the account of sub-condition (I) of the Taking Condition is

on the table. As I will go on to address more fully: here I am characterizing the nature of intentional attitudes; the

question of that in virtue of which intentional attitudes have this nature is a separate, and more fundamental,

question—one that I seek to answer by way of the irreducibly normative account of inferring issued here.

Circularity worries only get a grip if we assume a foundationalist account according to which normative

commitments are got from some non-normative causal disposition, which I think is not possible given the previous

arguments.

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commitment to r must agglomerate together into a commitment that incorporates the truth of p

and the truth of r. My subsequent thought and action must live up to the commitment to (p ˄ r),

and not just one of these commitments alone. We find the very same agglomeration in the case of

ordinary ethical commitments. If I commit to helping you move on Saturday afternoon and to

reading a student’s essay draft Saturday morning, then I must live up to both of these

commitments on Saturday. The very same species of constraints and oughts that spring from my

commitment to helping you move will also spring from my commitment to reading the draft

essay in the morning.

But now suppose that I learn that r has a consequence that conflicts with p. I cannot live up

to both of these commitments, because I cannot discharge a commitment to a contradiction or

other type of inconsistency. (I am happy to take this as a brute, basic fact about belief and

epistemic norms.) So, I must resolve this tension, and do so in the direction of fidelity to the facts

as I am best able to discern them. From the engaged stance, then, I am gripped by the demand to

achieve coherence and consistency among my commitments. Rovane calls this a demand to

achieve rational unity. I will achieve rational unity among my attitudinal commitments by either

abolishing the commitment to p, or to the commitment to r, or to inquiring further as to whether r

really does bring in a conflict with p.

From the engaged stance, then, my commitments on the whole agglomerate into overall

demands to achieve rational unity among all of the attitudes from which I am prepared to reason.

This is why, in Rovane’s terms, the engaged stance is one from

which contradictions and conflicts ought to be resolved, implications ought to be accepted,

preferences ought to be ranked, means and consequences ought to be taken into account—

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and more generally, it is something from which all-things-considered judgments ought to

be reached and implemented. (1998: 21)18

Rational unity is achieved when the thinker’s intentional states and episodes satisfy the

normative prescriptions of epistemic (as well as practical) rationality. An outright contradiction

among my beliefs, or a failure to accept that which (by my own lights) my beliefs entail,

amounts to rational disunity. Rovane’s characterization underscores another face of the

normativity of my prior deliberative position, this time with respect of the global demands for

consistency and coherence among all of a thinker’s attitudes. The demand to achieve rational

unity is a mark of the engaged stance, one that shows up perspicuously when we consider the

fact that rational commitments agglomerate together.

In sum, the engaged stance is normative in two closely related respects. First, it is normative

in that it is from the engaged stance that I am put in touch with worldly facts and states of affairs

qua reasons that take on an immediate force for me. The second normative aspect of the engaged

stance has to do with the prior deliberative position from which I take up a deliberative question.

This prior deliberative question carries its own normative significance: it comprises a set of

normative commitments which agglomerate into an overall demand for rational unity.

Let us observe how the demand for rational unity plays out when a thinker addresses himself

to a deliberative question. I am concerned to reason to Blair’s present location. My prior

deliberative position includes the beliefs that If Alice is at the café, then Blair is at the café and

the belief that Alice is at the café. The second of these beliefs involves a commitment to accept

its consequences; the first belief involves a commitment to accepting Blair is at the café as just

one such consequence. These two commitments agglomerate together into a rational demand to

18 I am unsure whether Rovane would agree that the overall demand to achieve rational unity arises from the specific

normative demands embedded in our attitudinal commitments. I have stated things this way because it coheres

nicely with a ‘reasons-first’ approach to rational norms that I find otherwise persuasive.

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discharge these commitments by accepting that Blair is at the café. It is by discharging these

commitments with the inference that Blair is at the café that I live up to them in subsequent

epistemic dealings.

The moral I wish to draw from this is that from the engaged stance, a thinker’s first-order

intentional episodes are already rule-like. My belief that p is a commitment to uphold the truth of

p in further thought and action; the same goes for all of the beliefs in my repertoire that together

impose an overall rational demand for unity among my commitments. To occupy the engaged

stance is to be in a position to recover and to receive the normative force of these rational

commitments. I cannot so much as set out on my inquiry without addressing myself to a

question; I address a question from a prior deliberative position; and, from this position, I am

concerned to discharge my attitudinal commitments. This means that a thinker needs nothing in

addition to the first-order intentional episodes that make up the premises of his inferring in order

to grasp the relations of normative support that are relevant for the Taking Condition.

This allows us to say, finally, that in which a thinker’s ‘taking’ consists. It consists in an

appreciation of the obligations rooted in the attitudinal commitments making up his prior

deliberative position. The mistake is to search for some separate premise to include within the

thinker’s reasoning. It is a mistake to do so because this strategy overlooks entirely what it is

like, from the first-personal point of view of the reasoning thinker, to enjoy beliefs from which I

am prepared to reason. The premises that comprise my prior deliberative position are themselves

rules to reason by. To take one’s premises to provide support for the conclusion is to grasp that

the conclusion is a consequence of an attitudinal commitment that one has undertaken. It is in

this sense that we can say that attitudes are rules. Since there is no extra premise attributed to the

thinker about what follows from what, there is no threat of regress.

I’ll call this the commitment-theoretic account of the species of taking that is significant for

the Taking Condition. I emphasize that my discussion in this chapter has been confined to sub-

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condition (I) of the Taking Condition, which requires of every inferring that the thinker take his

premises to provide rational support for his conclusion. My point has been that this taking is not

a separate premise at all, but simply the committal dimension of the attitudes as they appear to us

from the engaged first-personal stance. Another noteworthy feature of the commitment-theoretic

approach is that it makes out a clear sense in which a thinker is guided by rules when reasoning

to a conclusion. These rules, though, are not explicitly represented as a separate premise that

makes a claim about what follows from what. They are rather encoded in the very first-order

attitudes that constitute a thinker’s reasoning.

Importantly, the commitment-theoretic approach respects the deep interconnections that I

noted earlier between rule-following, norms, and reasons. We said earlier that when an agent

follows a rule, he treats the rule as prescriptive of what he ought to do next, so that the thinker

treats the rule as a reason for doing what it recommends. These interconnections explain why,

when the thinker follows a rule in reasoning to a conclusion, he takes himself to be doing well

relative to the very rule he means to follow. The present account sources these interconnections

in the thinker’s attitudinal commitments. When a thinker discharges an attitudinal commitment,

he also takes himself to be doing well relative to the demand for rational unity by living up to the

very commitments he discharges in reasoning. We needn’t ascribe to the thinker a specific belief

about what follows from what to account for this. We only need to point out that inferring is self-

conscious: that the thinker, in inferring, knows just what he is doing. This is a matter I’ll address

more fully in the next chapter.

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Worries and refinements

With the main contours of the commit-theoretic approach on the table, I want to address

some possible worries and introduce some refinements into the account before drawing

analogous conclusions about practical deliberating.

THE PLACE OF INFERENCE RULES

One immediate consequence of this commitment-theoretic approach to ‘taking’ is that it

removes from the thinker’s ken any explicit representation of inference rules such as (MP):

(MP): If you are rationally permitted to believe both that p and (p → q), then, you are prima

facie rationally permitted to believe that q.

We have already seen why (MP) causes trouble when it is enlisted as an explicit premise in a

thinker’s reasoning. But can we really dispense with them altogether in an account of what goes

on when a thinker reasons to a conclusion?

I am suggesting that we can. A thinker does well by the lights of such inference rules when

he discharges those of his attitudinal commitments which count as instantiations of such

argument-forms. But they need not be grasped as such by the thinker who infers in accord with

them. To suppose that we learn rules the other way around—by first grasping their form, and

then coming to understand that some particular combination of contents instantiates that form—

will make the inference-rules unlearnable. If explicit articulations of (MP) have a role in our

concrete epistemic dealings, it is by grasping their form in some first-order content. Otherwise,

the attempt to learn an abstract inference rule like (MP) will presuppose the very thing we are

attempting to explain.

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IMPERATIVAL ASPECTS OF BELIEF

On the commitment-theoretic approach to taking, attitudinal commitments take on an

imperatival aspect. A thinker cannot take up a deliberative question without occupying a prior

deliberative position. And to occupy a position to reason from, one must appreciate that the

attitudes in the prior deliberative position enjoin the thinker to live up to the individual attitudinal

commitments as well as the overall demand to achieve rational unity. From the engaged stance,

my belief that p possesses an imperatival dimension: the belief that p also calls me to live up to it

in further epistemic dealings. This imperatival aspect really does fall directly from the idea that

there are attitudinal commitments.

One might worry about construing a thinker’s beliefs as imperatival commitments on a

thinker’s part. Ordinarily, imperatives are communicated in a distinctive mood that differs

sharply with indicative expressions. Open the door! is a familiar indicative; John opens the door

a familiar indicative. Am I suggesting that all of the beliefs within a thinker’s prior deliberative

position are cast in an imperatival mood? If so, this would threaten an extraordinary revision to

our usual way of ascribing beliefs to thinkers; after all, the ‘that’-clauses we use to ascribe such

beliefs employ an indicative mood, and it would be odd if such ascriptions were to be held to

fundamentally misconstrue the contents of the attitudes ascribed.

Luckily, no such revision is forced on us. Indeed, such a revision of ordinary belief content

is inadvisable on its own terms: by itself such a proposal does not help to inform us of that in

which the imperatival dimension of belief consists. Suppose we do revise the content of every

belief to include an indicative proposition and an imperative committal element. Such a revision

might go this way: the contents of ordinary beliefs such as (a) Alice is at the café can be recast as

having the content (a*) Alice is at the café, and uphold this very belief!. But with respect to the

content of (a*) we can ask: In what does its imperatival dimension consist? We certainly cannot

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further revise its content to (a**) Alice is at the café, and uphold this very belief!—and uphold

this very belief in turn!. This move courts the very same regress worries with which we are by

now familiar. So, it can be no help to us to add some imperatival ‘tag’ to the ordinary indicative

contents related within ‘that’-clauses.

The imperatival dimension of belief is located not in the content of any particular belief, but

in the very form that makes believing distinctive (cf. Kietzmann 2018). If believing is a way of

relating to a proposition, the imperatival dimension of belief is rooted in what is special about

this, rather than some other, way of relating to a proposition. What it is to believe that p—rather

than hope, suppose, or dread that p—is (at least in part) to come in under the normative

commitments that I have described so far. One cannot properly be said to believe that p without

also appreciating the normative commitment to uphold p’s truth in further epistemic dealings by

e.g. accepting p’s consequences and resolving tensions with p among the other attitudes in one’s

repertoire. From the engaged stance the very modality (or form) of belief possesses an

imperatival aspect. From the engaged stance, one’s belief that p is not the mere representation

that a fact obtains, but also comprehends a normative commitment to upholding the truth of this

fact in further epistemic and practical dealings.

COMMITMENT AND BELIEF: TWO WORRIES

I want to turn now to two worries about what the commitment-theoretic approach to taking

may imply for what it is an agent believes.

The first worry is that the commitment-theoretic approach threatens to overburden belief. If

belief does possess such an imperatival dimension, then it seems as though I must grasp and

pursue these imperatives whenever I am cognizant of any one of my beliefs—or at least, any one

of the beliefs that figures in the prior deliberative position I take with me into the engaged stance.

But any one of these beliefs will have its own vast array of implications and entailments; and for

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all I know, each one of my beliefs may have implications of its own that generates conflicts with

other beliefs that do not presently occupy my attention. This poses a remarkable burden upon me

as I go to prosecute my inquiry into a deliberative question. It begins to appear as though the

imperatival dimension of the beliefs within my prior deliberative position will frustrate any

attempt to take the truth of those beliefs for granted in reasoning to new conclusions. The worry

is that as a practical matter, the imperatival dimension I am attributing to the form of belief will

undermine any attempt to prosecute a deliberative question in inquiry.

This burden is eased, though, by two important features of attitudinal commitment. For one

thing, there is nothing in this account requiring me to be cognizant of all my epistemic

commitments. Rather, the only imperatives relevant for me are those that lie within my ken—

those which are accessible, reasonably held, appropriately sensitive to evidence, and so on. As I

put it above, I treat my belief that p as a commitment that I must live up to in my further

epistemic dealings. All that this requires is that I am prepared, on pain of criticism, to live up to

this commitment when the right sorts of circumstances arise—when the relevant sort of

epistemic dealings are undertaken.

For another thing, one may also fall short of one’s commitments, and in that way fail to live

up to them. This possibility is part of what it means to have a commitment at all, when we think

of commitments as irreducibly normative attitudes rather than those with a merely causal or

dispositional significance. Clearly, such an agent is irrational in falling short of his attitudinal

commitments. Every view must allow room for such failures in irrationality.

This last consideration might tease the deliberative burden that I am claiming agents do in

fact carry while retaining the burden that agents are rationally obligated to undertake. This latter

burden is eased by the presence of what we might call rational excuses: special extenuating

circumstances that comprehend the inevitable limitations in an agent’s information, perspective,

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expertise, and other factors.19 Such rational excuses come into play because many of the logical

consequences of p will simply be unknown to the agent. And some of the logical consequences

of p can surface only after lengthy investigation on the agent’s part, or in the light of technical

expertise that the agent lacks and cannot be fairly expected to carry out. When an agent falls

under such a rational excuse, it does not count against his commitment to p that he fails to

endorse one of p’s logical consequences. What matters when the agent falls under such an

excusing condition is that the agent is prepared to endorse the logical consequences of his belief

should he be made aware of them, and that he takes himself to come in for legitimate criticism

should he fail to do so. When this condition is in place, ignorance is a legitimate excuse: in such

cases there is no reason to fault the agent for failing to live up to his attitudinal commitments.20

Such rational excuses remove the burden of inquiring into the logical consequences of one’s

extant attitudes ad infinitum, allowing agents to (rationally) move to the deliberative matter at

hand.

However, taking this line raises another question—a second worry about the relationship

between belief and commitment. The reply I have just entered trades on a distinction between

that which an agent believes and that to which an agent is attitudinally committed. An agent

might believe that p; and it may be the case that, unbeknownst to the agent, p implies q; the agent

is certainly committed to q, though the agent does not know this. This is because an agent is

attitudinally committed to all of the implications of his beliefs, whether he knows them or not.

The worry I want to consider now concerns whether this separation is licit. For it rests upon a

distinction between what an agent believes and what he is committed to; and it may be suggested

19 Here I recapitulate the solution of Bilgrami (2006: 372, n. 8). 20 This is not the place to generate a final accounting of the kinds of rational excuses that figure in our ordinary

judgments, and in any case the question seems to be highly contex tual. There are certainly times when ignorance is

not an excuse: I may be responsible for attending a departmental meeting even if I have lazily failed to read the

notifications in my e-mail inbox. When the agent does not fall under a legitimate rational excuse, the agent can

certainly be at fault for failing to have a belief that is the logical consequence of one of his beliefs.

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that the normative content of a belief includes all of its consequences (whether the agent

possesses self-knowledge of these consequences is another matter). If this is right, then the

distinction I relied on above—that between the content of an agent’s beliefs and that to which the

agent’s beliefs commit him—collapses. On this view, we speak only of the total stock of an

agent’s commitments. Even if the agent does not realize that p implies q, q belongs within the

normative content of his belief that p, since p really does imply q. Since (as Carol Rovane

informs me) Isaac Levi held to such an identification, I will call it Levi’s View of the relationship

between belief and commitment.

Levi’s View retains the distinction between living up to and falling short of one’s

commitments. On Levi’s View, we will describe the agent we have been considering as someone

who so far has failed to live up to his commitment to p; he will live up to this commitment only

when he accepts that q (and, for that matter, all of the other implications of p and of q). In light

of this, it is tempting to put my differences with Levi’s View down to a verbal dispute.

We might think that a proponent of Levi’s View will simply use the descriptor ‘commitment

to which I have lived up’ as a synonym for what I have called a belief. On this usage, the

distinction between those commitments within and those outside a thinker’s ken is just the

distinction between commitments the thinker has discharged and those of which he has fallen

short. Our thinker who believes that p, but who has no inkling that p implies q, and who does not

believe that q can simply be described, by the proponent of Levi’s View, as someone who has

only partially lived up to his commitment to p. But on reflection, this verbal suggestion cannot be

quite right. Consider an agent who believes that p and that ¬p. Clearly, such an agent is

irrational, and if he understands p and ¬p his irrationality is criticizable. The point, though, is that

the agent does possess both beliefs, even while falling short of both the commitment to p (and its

consequences) and the commitment to ¬p (and its consequences).

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A better tack, then, is to think of what I have called beliefs as simply commitments that lie

within my ken. My beliefs are those attitudinal commitments that are accessible to me and can be

called up for conscious reflection. This allows us to make ready sense of the idea of an agent who

falls short of the commitments that are constitutive of his beliefs. A proponent of Levi’s View is

free, I think, to conceive of my talk about the attitudes in this way. The key point, though, is to

bear in mind the ethical and action-theoretic aims of this dissertation. We need to capture the

distinction between commitments inside and those outside of a thinker’s ken, since it is only for

falling short of the former that an agent is subject to attitudinal blame. It is for the purpose of

preserving this important ethical distinction that I insist on a distinction between the content of

an agent’s belief and that to which the agent, on account of his beliefs, is attitudinally committed.

On the commitment-theoretic approach to taking, the imperatival dimension of belief is a matter

of the modality through which an agent relates to a content. Attitudinal commitments, from here

on out, are not located within the content the belief itself. Rather, the truth of the content is that

to which the agent is committed to uphold and respect.

BOOTSTRAPPING

We must treat with ‘bootstrapping’ worries regarding belief.21 I have said that in taking my

belief that p into the engaged stance, I am thereby committed to the truth of p and all that p

entails, barring some legitimate rational excuse. But p’s most conspicuous entailment is p itself.

This would seem to make every one of my beliefs problematically self-justifying: in believing

that p, I am also attitudinally committed to p’s truth. The worry is that I will be committed to a

belief of mine that is untrue, held for the wrong kinds of reasons, or is the outcome of some other

rational failing on my part. Surely this is a worrying result of the view that intentional attitudes

possess an implicit imperatival dimension.

21 Bilgrami (2006: 372–3) deals with the same worry and issues a similar reply. See also Moran (2001).

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To defuse this worry, it will be helpful to recall and slightly expand upon a point that Gareth

Evans made in a related context (Evans 1982: Ch. 7). Evans’ question was: What is involved

in—how do I go about—self-ascribing the belief that p? He proposed that the method whereby I

self-ascribe the belief that p is the very same method whereby I determine an answer to the first-

order deliberative question whether p. If an interlocutor asks me whether I believe that Alice is at

the café, I furnish my reply not by ‘introspecting’ some interior domain of mental facts, but by

taking up the first-order deliberative question: What is Alice’s present location? Commentators

after Evans have used the metaphor of transparency to describe this phenomenon: it is said that

the second-order introspective question of whether I believe that p is transparent to the first-

order deliberative question of whether p. Even if this transparency phenomenon does not hold in

all contexts, I submit that it does hold always when a thinker inhabits the engaged stance of

inquiry. For it is in the engaged stance that an agent is prepared to assess the reasons that bear on

the deliberative question that is the subject matter for inquiry. Part of the broader significance of

Evans’ point, I take it, is to get us on to characterizing the engaged stance as we find ourselves

when we take up a deliberative question. And this brings in train a deep distinction between two

ways of treating with facts that are true of one’s own mind.

For it to be so much as possible to answer the second-order introspective question by

engaging in such a deliberative procedure, it must be the case that the deliberative procedure

itself is such that deliberative questions can be answered from the engaged stance only by

minding the worldly considerations that take on a normative bearing for one’s question. (This is

the slight extension of Evans’ point that I alluded to.)

The upshot is that there are really two ways of considering one’s own present epistemic

profile—the suite of epistemic (and other attitudinal) commitments that at any given time

characterize one’s own mind. One can look upon them as introspective data, as states and facts

that are true of one. In looking upon them this way, one takes one’s belief that p or intention to φ

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as a brute fact that is true of one. Just as I am over six feet tall and born of American parents, so

too I have the belief that p and the intention to φ. In contrast, one can take up the engaged stance

towards the contents of these attitudes. To do so, though, is not to take up the engaged stance

towards an attitude, but to be engaged in (e.g.) believing or intending something with that very

content. When one takes up the engaged stance towards the (apparent) truth that p, one is

believing that p; and when one takes up the engaged stance towards φ-ing, one therein

undertakes a practical commitment to φ-ing, for it is in intending to φ that one is ‘in touch’ with

the considerations that make φ-ing good, desirable, or valuable.22 From this stance, Evans’ point

is relevant: we are confronted with deliberative questions. And once we are confronted with

deliberative questions, we are thereby concerned with worldly considerations that bear

normatively on these questions. (This is why I have favored the locution of ‘taking up’ a

deliberative question: it is not a matter of merely attending to some fact, but of putting oneself in

a position to determine whether a fact obtains.)

But this means that there really is no bootstrapping worry. From within the engaged stance,

one does not look upon one’s belief that p as a self-justifying fact. From within the engaged

stance, one’s belief that p strikes one as the best response to the worldly considerations qua

reasons that bear on whether p. When I take up a deliberative question, the attitudes that figure in

my prior deliberative position are not self-justifying at all; rather, my very mode of access to my

attitudinal commitments is via the worldly considerations that bear positively upon them. Fears

about bootstrapping—and, more generally, about persisting in some attitude in the full

knowledge that is not the best response to one’s reasons—crop up only when one’s attitudes are

conceived as mere facts that are true of one. It is from that standpoint that one seeks to preserve a

mental fact irrespective of the considerations that bear positively or negatively upon it. Since my

22 I thank Carol Rovane for helping me to emphasize this point.

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concern has been solely with how items in one’s prior deliberative position show up for an agent

from the engaged stance of inquiry, the worry about bootstrapping does not arise. Rather,

concerns about bootstrapping—and relatedly, questions about self-deception—arise when our

own minds show up for us as objects in the world we seek to arrange according to our purposes.

Having treated two worries about the imperatival dimension of the attitudes, let me now

draw the upshot for inferring and rule-following. From the engaged stance, one’s attitudes are

themselves already rule-like. (Later, the same point will be made about the attitude of intention.)

In taking up a deliberative question on which (the belief that) p has a normative bearing, p itself

is taken as a settled fact that can play a justificatory role with respect to any new proposition that

figures in subsequent inquiry. In addition, p has the character of a commitment: p is something

that the agent ought to live up to by refusing to endorse a proposition with which p conflicts.

(Unless the reasons for this new proposition militate against p, in which case the demand for

rational unity is to be satisfied by abandoning p in favor of this new proposition.) From within

the engaged stance, the deliberating agent’s beliefs—at least, those within the thinker’s prior

deliberative position—assume this rule-like character. Put metaphorically, the attitudes that an

agent takes into the engaged stance are rules to reason by. This normative feature of believing

(and intending) only comes into view once we assume the first-personal engaged stance of a

thinker who is occurrently occupied with a deliberative question.

TAKING: SUFFICIENT FOR INFERRING?

I have inherited from Boghossian the following construal of the Taking Condition:

Taking Condition: Inferring necessarily involves (I) the thinker taking his premises to

support his conclusion and (II) drawing his conclusion because of that fact.

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I have been concerned in this chapter only with sub-condition (I): with specifying what it is a

thinker’s ‘taking’ amounts to. I have said (to repeat) that the taking at issue consists in a thinker’s

self-conscious recognition of an attitudinal commitment (or set of attitudinal commitments). This

is a necessary, but still not sufficient, account of what is involved in inferring to a conclusion. For

we still need an understanding of condition (II): of how the self-conscious recognition of an

attitudinal commitment can play a ‘becausal’ role in producing the thinker’s transition to the

conclusion that terminates the inferring.

Some philosophers challenge this assessment. They claim that (I) is both necessary and

sufficient for inferring. On this view, all that it is to infer from premise to conclusion just is to

recognize that the conclusion follows from the premise. The suggestion here is that all there is to

infer is to ‘take’ the premises to provide sufficient support for the conclusion.23 This is because

premise and conclusion are not causally related at all; there is rather a constitutive relation

between thinker’s belief in the conclusion and his belief that the conclusion follows from

available premises. If we take this line to heart, we might question whether we have not already

said all that needs to be said about inferring by providing this characterization of how a thinker’s

attitudes figure as rules to reason by.

There are two problems, though, for this approach to inferring. First, it cannot account for

the productive dimension of inferring. By engaging in reasoning, a thinker can expand the beliefs

within his repertoire given other things he knows, and thereby conclude reasoning with beliefs

that he did not have when he took up a deliberative question. It is hard to see how we might

accommodate the productive dimension of inferring view that sub-condition (I) is sufficient for

inferring. This is because the productive dimension of inferring is secured by the generative

nature of inferring: in inferring, a thinker goes from beliefs held to the endorsement of a new

23 See Valaris (2014) and Marcus (forthcoming).

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belief. For this to be possible, it seems that the premise and the conclusion must be ‘distinct

existences,’ at least insofar as the conclusion-episode existentially depends on the premise-

episodes.24

This leads us to the second problem for the view that taking is sufficient for inferring, one

that I have already foreshadowed in my description of an attitudinal commitment. Earlier, I wrote

that it is part of the nature of commitments that an agent may fall short of them, and that falling

short of a commitment to p does not at all impugn the ascription of this commitment to the

thinker. But this also means that there is always a ‘gap’ between an agent’s recognition that his

commitments require him to φ and the agent’s discharging this selfsame commitment out of the

very commitment recognized. To be sure, this is a conceptual, and not a causal, gap: in a wide

swath of cases, recognizing and discharging a commitment is done in one and the same episode.

Even this conceptual gap, though, frustrates the proposal that taking is sufficient for inferring.

For there is always the possibility that an agent might recognize that his attitudinal commitments

require him to infer that q and nevertheless fail to do so. I might utterly fail to live up to what my

attitudes require of me. True, such a failure introduces rational disunity and opens a thinker to

rational criticism. But the very possibility of such a ‘gap’ between commitment and performance

is important for any theory to recover, and it is hard to see how these latter approaches to taking

can recover this phenomenon. We can understand irrationality as the failure to live up to one’s

attitudinal commitments.25

24 Kietzmann is on to a similar point when he writes that an inferring and the conclusion-episode bear an asymmetric

existential dependence, so that the conclusion-episode relies upon the inferring (2018: 5–6). I am unsure of this way

of putting the point, though, since the inferring need be nothing o ther than the movement form premise to

conclusion; there need be nothing over and above this movement from premise to conclusion that causes the

conclusion-episode. 25 Bilgrami (2006: 240ff) offers this very characterization of irrationality.

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Practical deliberating

The commitment-theoretic approach also covers practical deliberating. I mentioned that

deliberative questions may be either epistemic or practical. Practical deliberative questions, no

less than epistemic ones, must be taken up from the engaged stance. And just like the epistemic

case, the engaged stance is one from which worldly facts and states of affairs carry an immediate

and implementational normative force for subsequent thought and action. These normatively

salient facts and states of affairs do not, in practical deliberating, figure as evidence for the truth

of a proposition. But they can be considered evidence of another kind: evidence for the value,

rightness, justice, goodness, etc. of performing some course of action.

We often reason from ends to means. In doing so, our intentions figure as attitudinal

commitments just as our beliefs do. Intentions involve a commitment to their own execution in

action. From the engaged stance, one’s extant intentions figure as imperatives to act just as

intended. This distinctive species of commitment to future action brings in train the commitment

to do what is necessary in order to achieve the intended outcome. So, just as the belief that p

involves a commitment to accept p’s entailments, so too the intention to φ involves a

commitment to intend that which (from the agent’s point of view) is necessary for φ-ing. These

commitments to intend to perform the means to φ-ing in turn commitments to execute those very

intentions in action.

I leave it open whether practical deliberating is always concerned with means, or whether

instead can encompass settling on an end as well. All that matters for present purposes is that

practical deliberating takes place from the engaged stance from which the attitudes within one’s

prior deliberative position figure as commitments that the agent must ‘live up to’ in subsequent

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practical dealings.26 (In any case, I am suspicious that in the rough and tumble of inquiry

practical and epistemic concerns are as neatly separated as the topics have come to be treated in

philosophical treatments of these matters.)

Just as in the epistemic case, then, our practical attitudes figure as rules to reason by. My

intention to φ enjoins me to φ and incorporates a demand also to intend to do that which is

necessary for φ-ing. It is part of the very nature of these attitudes that from the engaged stance

they figure as commitments that I must uphold in subsequent thought and action.

Here it might seem that we arrive at a stark dissimilarity between the epistemic and the

practical. In the epistemic case, it is natural to think of the relevant rules on the model of modus

ponens—as rules for deductive truth-preservation. In the practical case, I might enjoy an

intention to φ and a belief that ψ-ing is a necessary means to φ-ing. Discharging this commitment

in acquiring the intention to ψ does not ‘preserve truth’ in the way that I preserve truth when I

discharge the commitment to (p; p → q) by acquiring the belief that q. How then can we apply

the same style of rule-following account to the case of practical deliberating?

To answer this question, we should first take note that even in these epistemic cases truth is

not all that is preserved. The thinker’s warrant for believing that (p; p → q) is also preserved

across the transition. With Tyler Burge, we might think of epistemic warrant as a basic normative

good that attaches to beliefs and to transitions among beliefs.27 Epistemic warrant consists in

meeting normative standards that are constitutively associated with belief. Satisfying such

standards constitutes for the thinker a right to rely on the belief in further epistemic dealings

(such as reasoning, attitude revision, and so on).28 These standards pertain to representing the

26 Carol Rovane has suggested to me that deliberation as to ends belongs to practical inquiry, which might

seamlessly interact with practical deliberating about means. 27 See Burge (2013). See also Graham (2012, 451). In what follows I borrow from my treatment of diachro nic

agency in Heeney (2020). 28 Burge (2013a, 1–4).

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truth reliably well, given limitations in a thinker’s perspective, information, and resources.29 To

say that such standards are constitutively associated with belief is to say that part of what it is to

be a belief is to be governed by norms pertaining to the truth reliably well relative to one’s

information and perspective. Epistemic warrant consists in doing as well as possible in the

service of satisfying such constitutive normative standards. I propose to understand practical

warrant analogously. Just as an epistemic warrant is a right to rely on a belief or transition among

beliefs, we may conceive of a practical warrant as a right to rely on a decision, an intention, or an

intentional action. What makes the warrant practical is that the agent relies on the warranted

item in the pursuit and attainment of rational aims.

Now, we have said that epistemic warrant consists in success relative to normative standards

that are constitutively associated with belief. If we carry this conception over to the case of

practical warrant, we should attempt to specify the normative standard which, when fulfilled by a

decision, intention, or intentional action, confers upon the agent a warrant to rely upon the item

in question in the prosecution of his rational aims. In what, then, does practical warrant consist?

Well, what are the normative standards that are constitutively associated with decisions,

intentions, and intentional actions?

As a first pass, consider what I’ll call an executive approach to this question. The executive

approach keys the relevant normative standards to the role that decisions and intentions play in

the future-directed planning and execution of coordinated schemes of action. On the executive

approach, decisions and intentions constitutively aim at their own execution in action. An

intention to (say) Work at the library on Wednesday morning is successful qua intention when it

causes an action that marks the intention’s execution. The executive approach can accommodate

‘internal’ requirements on an agent’s overall set of intentions, since mutually conflicting

29 Burge (2013a, 1).

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intentions cannot together agglomerate into an overall realizable success-condition. On this

executive approach practical warrant is achieved when the success-conditions of intentions are

satisfied in the actions that constitute successful intention-executions.30

The trouble with the executive approach is that it does not specify a meaningful constraint on

deciding and intending. The only intentions it renders defective are those with unrealizable

success-conditions—and it is questionable whether agents can genuinely intend actions they take

to be unrealizable. On the executive approach practical warrant is secured just by having an

executable intention and by executing that intention at the appropriate time. This is quite unlike

the proposal that belief constitutively aims at truth. The truth-aim for belief amounts to a

substantive constraint on which beliefs count as defective qua beliefs in a way that the executive

approach does not in the case of deciding and intending. The executive approach sets an ‘aim’ for

intention that is trivially easy to satisfy.

The proponent of the executive approach might reply that this result is mitigated by the

presence of other intentions in the agent’s repertoire. Perhaps practical warrant consists not only

in satisfying the success-condition embedded in this or that intention, but instead in the pursuit

and realization of one’s overall system of coordinated intentions.

But I doubt this reply can do the work required of it. Not every intention to act is an element

in a larger coordinated plan of action, and with respect to these intentions the reply faces the very

same worry about triviality. What’s more, the triviality worry also confronts the agent’s overall

system of coordinated intentions. What makes such a coordinated plan one that confers a

practical warrant? It appears that even on this latter reply, the answer is just that the agent intends

to realize that plan (or the goal subserved by that plan). This does nothing to resolve our worry

30 This executive approach appears to be endorsed by Michael Bratman in at least one place. Bratman he writes that

an “intention aims at its own realization in coordination with one’s overall system of intentions” (2009 b: 25). I am

unsure whether Bratman, in later work, remains committed to this executive approach to the aim of intention.

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about triviality: the larger coordinated plan is warranted (or confers warrant) just in virtue of

being intended. This does not provide a meaningful constraint.

These problems attend the executive approach due to a failure to distinguish an intention’s

success-condition from its correctness-condition. The success-condition for my intention to Work

at the library on Wednesday morning is that I work at the library on Wednesday out of this very

intention. It is a separate matter, though, whether this intention is the correct one for me to have,

given my other rational goals and the reasons I take to count in favor of their pursuit. It is this

latter question we are interested in, since our concern is to specify the normative standards

which, when fulfilled, confer upon the agent a practical warrant.31 So, even if an intention

includes the attitudinal commitment to carry it out by performing the action it represents (as well

as the means required to perform this action), this is a separate question from what renders an

intention a good intention as such.

Let us consider instead a normative approach to our question about the constitutive aim of

deciding and intending. On the normative approach, decisions and intentions aim not at their own

execution, but at what an agent ought to do. The correctness-condition for deciding and intending

is specified accordingly: an agent’s decision or intention to act is correct if and only if the agent

ought to perform the action that is decided upon or intended. Or, as Nishi Shah amends the

condition: an agent’s decision or intention to act is correct if and only if it is not the case that the

agent ought not to perform the action that is decided upon or intended.32 This normative construal

applies readily to intentional actions themselves: an agent’s intentional action is correct if and

only if it is not the case that the agent ought not to perform that very action.

31 On the distinction between an intention’s success-condition and its correctness-condition, see (Shah 2008). 32 See again Shah (2008). This amendment is required in order to handle Buridan cases in which one is faced with

two incompatible courses of action that are both rationally permissible.

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On this normative approach, the correctness-condition on deciding and intending is specified

with reference to what an agent ought to do. What an agent ought to do, in turn, is determined by

the preponderance of the normative reasons there are to act, given perspectival limitations in the

agent’s information, perspective, and so on. Warrant is conferred on the agent’s decision,

intention, or intentional action when his decision or intention is sourced in a reliable competence

in satisfying the indicated correctness-condition.33

Unlike the executive approach, the normative approach provides a non-trivial constraint on

deciding and intending. For instance, if I reach an all-things-considered evaluative judgment that

the balance of reasons favors working at the library over working at home, but I decide against

this balance to work at home, then the resulting intention to work at home violates our proposed

correctness-condition. Even if the resulting intention represents a stable plan that will lead me in

a reliable way to execute this very intention in action, my intention to work at home (rather than

the library) is nevertheless defective qua intention.

To draw together and summarize the proposal: practical warrant is a positive normative

status that consists in reliably satisfying standards that are constitutively associated with states

and episodes that serve a practical function in the pursuit and attainment of an agent’s rational

aims. The states and episodes in question are primarily decisions, intentions, and intentional

actions themselves. The normative standard at issue is the correctness-condition on deciding and

intending: an agent’s decision or intention is correct if and only if it is not the case that the agent

ought to perform the action decided upon or intended. When an agent’s decision or intention

33 I understand normative reasons as constituted by objective facts and states of affairs. But it does not follow from

this view of reasons that what an agent ought to do—the ought relevant for satisfying the correctness-condition on

deciding and intending—is fixed by all of the objective reasons that there are to act, irrespective of limitations in

one’s perspective. Epistemic as well as practical warrant is keyed to such limitations. That is why there can

epistemically warranted but false belief. Warrant is not a matter of infallibly detecting all of the reasons that there

are. Warrant is less demanding than this. Warrant is obtained by doing as well as one can in the service of reliably

satisfying standards that are constitutively associated with deciding, intending, acting, judging, inferring, and

believing. So, while what reasons there are to act is one question, another question is what the agent ought to do,

given the reasons within his possession . The second question is the relevant one for assessing warrant.

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stems from a psychological competence in meeting this standard, the agent enjoys a practical

warrant for the item at issue.34 The agent thereby accrues a right to rely on that decision or

intention in further practical dealings. Correspondingly, an intentional action is warranted when

it issues from a decision or intention that is warranted in turn, or when the action’s performance

constitutes satisfaction of the relevant standards—i.e., if the action itself marks a reliable

competence in satisfying the relevant norm. What is preserved in these practical transitions, then,

is practical warrant so conceived. The rules that figure in practical deliberating are rules for

preserving practical warrant. If my intention to φ is practically warranted, and my belief that ψ-

ing is necessary for φ-ing, then my intention to ψ will preserve the very same practical warrant.

Let us return to the question of the apparent asymmetry between truth-preserving deductive

epistemic inference and the sort of transitions between practical states and episodes. I suggest we

see epistemic warrant as the relevant status that is preserved across such epistemic transitions.

Truth-preservative deductive inference is one—admittedly central—type of warrant-preserving

transition. But it is not the only kind; indeed, preservation of truth is not even necessary for

warrant-preservation, since there can be false yet epistemically warranted beliefs that are the

outcome of such transitions. Truth matters for epistemic warrant in that epistemic warrant marks

a competence in representing the truth reliably well. Truth-preserving deductive inference is one

way of satisfying this norm.

If it is the preservation of warrant (instead of truth per se) that is fundamental for inferential

transitions, then there really is no asymmetry between the epistemic and the practical case. Both

epistemic as well as practical inferring is a matter of preserving warrant—when the inferring is a

34 For his part, Burge sketches a quasi-biological construal of practical warrant, writing that “A cognition’s […]

operating well practically is serving the function of forming states that benefit the individual’s survival for mating,

or that serve some other practical—perhaps moral—function or purpose” (2013a: 3, n. 5). I do not take my construal

to part ways significantly from Burge’s. It is, though, geared towards a higher level of cognitive sophistication on the

part of the relevant individuals.

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good one. Correlatively, a bad inferring, epistemic as well as practical, will be one that fails to

preserve warrant across the transition. Admittedly, there is no direct analogue of deductive truth-

preserving inference in the practical case. But this is put down to a peculiarity about the norms

that constitutively govern belief, not to a conceptual hurdle to the very notion of a warrant-

preserving practical inference.

We can now draw the key parallel with the epistemic case. To make a practical inference is

to discharge an attitudinal commitment. And the ‘taking’ relevant to satisfying the Taking

Condition on practical inferring is the very same as the sort at issue in epistemic inferring: it

consists in recognition of the imperatival dimension of the attitudinal commitments making up

the agent’s prior deliberative position. This does not mean attributing to the agent some separate

state that explicitly represents these commitments; what it is to take up the engaged stance is

already to appreciate the normative purport of these imperatives. And this allows, in turn, a rule-

following conception of practical inferring along the very same lines as I have been elaborating

for the epistemic case.

Judging and deciding as inferring

Attitudinal commitments, we have seen, may be epistemic as well as practical. At this point,

it is worth reiterating a point that I made in the last chapter concerning the relationship of

judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ to inferring. To judge-that-p just is to perform an epistemic

inference, whereas to decide-to-φ just is to perform a practical inference.

Sometimes these equivalences are disputed. It is said that judging is in some sense the

mental analogue of the act of assertion. To judge that p is to give a form of inner ‘assent’ or

‘endorsement’ to p as it is held ‘before one’s mind,’ as it were. On this usage, a judging is just an

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occurrent belief, one to which a thinker is now attending in conscious thought.35 An occurrent

belief, though, is quite different from an inferring. As I have stressed throughout this chapter,

inferring is constitutively an appreciation of a rational relation between premise and conclusion.

To occurrently entertain the belief that p involves no such rational relation. I may simply

occurrently dwell upon my belief that Blair is at the café, without any thought as to what this

portends for any of the other beliefs within my repertoire. Analogous considerations might be

raised to dispute the parallel equivalence between deciding-to-φ and making a practical inferring

to the intention to φ.36

I do not deem it profitable to engage in lengthy argument about just which conception of

judging and deciding to adopt. Instead, it will serve for the purposes of this study to recall just

why we have come around to the problem of inferring at all. I will simply point out that the

alternative conception of judging and deciding is not relevant for the purposes we have set for

ourselves—the purpose of discerning a species of attitudinal agency that grounds responsibility

for the attitudes.

Recall our interest in judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ. We are seeking to ground

responsibility for the attitudes in a species of intentional mental action that generates the attitudes

of belief and intention. Such attitude-formative mental episodes must be such that by their

performance the agent is in a position to answer Anscombe’s ‘Why?’-question. This is necessary

for securing answerability for the attitudes, the pervasive form of responsibility that w bear for

35 For this usage, see Soteriou (2005). 36 In the case of deciding-to-φ there is a separate worry. I might make a ‘snap’ deciding, without dwelling at all on

reasons that I take to support the course of action I decide upon. It is questionable whether such ‘snap’ decidings

count as inferrings, or indeed whether they have a rational basis whatsoever. As I will go on to explain, though, my

interest is with attitude-formative mental episodes that ground stable attitudes for which an agent bears

responsibility. Snap decisions give rise to no stable intention to act as decided—after making a snap decision, one is

just as likely, and indeed cannot even be rationally faulted for, ignoring the decision and the course of action that it

recommends.

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belief and intention. This is why, in Chapter 1, I proposed to investigate responsibility-grounding

attitudinal agency by minding the peculiar status of judging and deciding.

Inferring, as we have understood it here, provides just the materials we were looking for.

This is because the ‘Why?’-question seeks the reasons that figure as premises from which the

agent infers to the conclusion. We can bring this out by first noting the inappropriateness of

answering the ‘Why?’-question with a set of reasons that did not figure as premises to the

conclusion targeted by the question. Suppose I respond to the ‘Why?’-question with reasons that

justify having the belief that p, or having the intention to φ, rather than reasons that justify p or

that justify φ-ing. Consider these exchanges:

“Why do you believe that you will pass your dissertation defense?” “The belief that I will

pass my dissertation defense helps me to sleep at night.”

“Why do you intend to go to seminary?” “Oh, I don’t see anything worthwhile about going

to seminary. But the intention to go to seminary is an intention it makes me feel good to

have.”

These replies to the ‘Why?’-question are unsatisfactory. But they are unsatisfactory not in that

they answer the ‘Why?’-question with reasons that fall short of justifying the belief or the

intention at issue. Rather, they are unsatisfactory in that they do not answer the ‘Why?’-question

at all.37 They bypass that question altogether by citing the wrong kind of reasons: reasons that

justify having the belief that p or the intention to φ and which do not (also) justify p or φ-ing. But

in virtue of what are these answers to the ‘Why?’-question unsatisfactory?

The explanation for the unsuitability of these replies, I submit, is precisely that the ‘Why?’-

question asks for the very reasons that rationalize the belief or intention targeted. The ‘Why?’-

37 Their inappropriateness can be traced to the following norms on belief and intention: Believe that p only for

reasons that constitute evidence for p; intend to φ only for reasons that justify φ-ing.

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question asks, not just why I have the belief or intention that I do, but more specifically what

considerations I took in favor of the content of the attitude in question. Just as when I direct the

‘Why?’-question to elicit the reasons-for-which an agent performs an intentional bodily action,

when I direct the ‘Why?’-question to another, I am not after some epistemic or practical case for

the attitude in question; nor do I seek to elicit some practical case for merely having the belief or

intention in question. Rather, I ask for the agent’s own reasons why he believes or intends as he

does. Thus, the ‘Why?’-question asks: What epistemic or practical considerations does the agent

take to support the proposition in which he believes, or the plan of action that he intends to

execute?

In short: the ‘Why?’-question, when directed to a belief or an intention, seeks the premises

from which the agent inferred to the conclusion that constitutes the content of the belief or

intention that is asked about. And, because every inference satisfies the Taking Condition, to cite

these premises is thereby to cite the reasons-for-which the agent holds the attitude in question—

the reasons that the agent, in inferring to the conclusion, took to support that very conclusion,

and came to that conclusion for the very reason of this appreciation. So, every agent who infers

to a conclusion is positioned to issue an appropriate reply to the ‘Why?’-question regarding the

attitude that the conclusion constitutes. In turn, being in a position to issue an appropriate reply

to the ‘Why?’-question means that the agent is an appropriate target of the ‘Why?’-question

when it targets one of his beliefs or intentions.

Being an appropriate target for the ‘Why?’-question, though, does not ensure that one’s

answer to that question is satisfactory. I might answer the ‘Why?’-question with considerations

that are appropriate to that question, but insufficient for justifying the proposition that I believe

or the action that I intend to execute. I might have reasoned badly (committed some fallacy in

reasoning, say), or I might have inferred to an intention on the basis of practical premises in

which I ought not to have placed stock (an akratic desire, say). In either sort of case, my reply to

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the ‘Why?’-question is appropriate in that I have provided what was asked for, but nevertheless

insufficient in that the reasons I cite do not amount to a compelling epistemic or practical case for

the conclusion of my reasoning or deliberation (respectively).

The possibility of such appropriate but insufficient replies to the ‘Why?’-question is

important to recover. For it is this possibility which opens an agent to attitudinal blame. I could

not be open to attitudinal blame unless my inferring were open to criticism. For this to be the

case, it must be possible for me to answer the ‘Why?’-question more or less well. Here, ‘more or

less well’ has to do with the strength or weakness of the premises from which I inferred my

conclusion. An insufficient reply to the ‘Why?’-question, understood as communicating having

reasoned poorly from prior premises, does open an agent up to a range of distinctive sorts of

normative criticism. This is why it is important to underscore the interconnections between

inferring to a conclusion and being in position to proffer an appropriate reply to the ‘Why?’-

question.

Conclusion

I have attempted in this chapter to provide the materials for a rule-following conception of

inferring. I have concentrated solely on sub-condition (I) of the Taking Condition. This sub-

condition requires that an agent ‘take it’ that his premises provide support for his conclusion.

However, we cannot make out this sub-condition by positing formal inference rules as a premise

from the thinker infers; nor, I argued, can we decompose a thinker’s taking into a complex set of

causal dispositions. Taking up a compelling view of the attitudes from Levi, Bilgrami, and

Rovane, I have suggested that we cannot characterize inferring to a conclusion without minding

the peculiar first-personal stance of engagement from which a thinker addresses himself to a live

deliberative question. From that stance, the thinker’s attitudes themselves exhibit the requisite

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normativity. From the engaged stance the beliefs and intentions from which I infer are already

rule-like. They possess an imperatival dimension, figuring as normative oughts that I am

obligated to discharge in further thought and action. Given the normativity of the attitudes

themselves (from the engaged stance), we do not need to appeal to taking-beliefs, taking-

intuitions, rule-beliefs, or taking-dispositions. The problem all along has been one of description:

of failing to take heed of what it is like to occupy the stance of the thinker in the midst of

reasoning.

It is important to note explicitly what I have not shown, and have not attempted to show:

namely, some sort of reductive account of rule-following to something else. And I have

specifically argued against one sort of reduction, a reduction of rule-following to the

manifestation of causal dispositions. Rather, I have followed Boghossian (2008, 2014) in taking

rule-following as a primitive notion, unanalyzable to the non-normative. I have not yet attempted

an account of the second-sub-condition of the Taking Condition. Sub-condition (II) requires that

an agent infer to a conclusion because of the very taking that figures in sub-condition (I). That is

the task for the next chapter.

I conclude by giving an indication of our location in the broader dialectic of this dissertation.

I have argued—well, stipulated—that judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ are simply inferrings to a

conclusion. Inferring to a conclusion, in turn, can be conceived as a rule-guided mental activity,

in that in inferring a thinker takes it that his premises are commitments which he is obligated to

discharge. This points up the close connection between the premises from which the agent infers

and the fact that, having inferred, the agent is therein the appropriate target of the ‘Why?’-

question. So, there is a close connection between inferring and responsibility for the attitude that

is formed in inferring. In the next chapter, I will argue that when we understand what it is for a

thinker to infer to a conclusion because of this very appreciation of his attitudinal commitments,

we see why inferring counts as a fully intentional (yet nonvoluntary) exercise of rational agency.

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Chapter 4

Inferring as Intentional Agency

The Action Thesis

I have argued that attitudinal agency—the conscious mental episodes of judging and

deciding that legitimate attitudinal blame—consists in a thinker’s inferring to a conclusion.

Inferring to a conclusion, in turn, involves a thinker’s appreciation of the normative support that

his premises provide for his conclusion, in line with Boghossian’s (2014: 5) Taking Condition on

inference:

Taking Condition: Inferring necessarily involves (I) the thinker taking his premises to

support his conclusion and (II) drawing his conclusion because of that fact.

In Chapter 3, I argued that sub-condition (I) of this condition ought to be understood in

commitment-theoretic terms. But I have not yet said how it is that an agent comes to infer to a

conclusion because of the attitudinal commitments from which he infers. It is my purpose in this

chapter to address this second sub-condition of the Taking Condition.

In doing so, I will also attempt to fulfill another promise of this dissertation: to show that

inferring to a conclusion is an exercise of rational agency. More specifically, I will argue that

inferring to a conclusion in thought is an intentional yet nonvoluntary action. I label this the

Action Thesis.

Since the argument of this chapter depends upon the possibility of intentional and

nonvoluntary action, let me reiterate what I mean by these terms.

There are two senses of voluntary. In the first reason-based sense, an action is voluntary if it

can be done for any reason that recommends its performance. Arm-raising is voluntary in just

this sense. I can raise my arm for any reason that makes raising my arm a good, rational,

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desirable, or appropriate thing to do. An action is voluntary in the second will-based sense if it is

brought about in the right way by a mental state or episode that represents its very occurrence.

The paradigm of voluntariness in this second sense is intention-executing bodily action. Take

again the case of arm-raising. My arm-raising is voluntary in this second sense when my raising

it comes about as the product of an intention to make my arm rise. Voluntariness in this second

sense captures a dimension of control over our actions. I control an unfolding event just to the

extent that it unfolds in accordance with my representation of what I want (most) to happen. It

does not matter for our argument just what we designate as the relevant representational states.

They may be efficacious desires, distal or proximate intentions, volitions, or tryings. Each of

these state- or episode-types are posited to capture voluntariness in this second, will-based sense

of voluntariness. I shall speak of intentions throughout, but the reader may substitute the

preferred candidate to play this role.

Inferring to a conclusion is nonvoluntary in both of these senses. While you can infer to a

conclusion q for any reason that you take to provide sufficient rational support for q, you cannot

infer to q for any reason you take to support making that very inference and possessing that very

conclusion as a stable attitude. If inferring were voluntary in this sense, then there would be

nothing keeping us from inferring to conclusions for reasons of ‘the wrong kind’—those that

have nothing to with the rational support that the premises grant to the conclusion. Neither are

our inferrings prefigured by an explicit intention just to infer as we do. I do not form the

intention to infer from p to q and execute this intention by performing the indicated inference. If

that were so, then we would have no trouble inferring ‘at will,’ again irrespective of the rational

support that the premises grant to the conclusion. This would make inferring to a conclusion

voluntary in the way that trying to remember is a voluntary mental activity. The result would be a

distortion of the ordinary notion of an inference. There would in this case be no close link

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between the conclusion to which a thinker arrives and the (apparent) reasons that count in favor

of that very conclusion.

Despite being nonvoluntary in these senses, I will argue that inferring is nevertheless fully

intentional. What is it for an action to be intentional? It is a daunting action-theoretical task to

specify necessary and sufficient conditions for an action’s being intentional. I will settle for a

sufficient condition. It is sufficient for an action to count as intentional if it is done for reasons.

Even if there are intentional actions that are not done for reasons, every action that is done for

reasons counts as intentional. But what is it for an action to be ‘done for reasons’? I shall operate

under the plausible assumption that when a thinker infers from p to q because of the support that

p provides for q, his inferring to q is done for the reason that p in the relevant sense. This

wording echoes sub-condition (II) of the Taking Condition. To understand inferring, we must

understand the Taking Condition; and to understand the Taking Condition, we must understand

the sense in which inferring in thought is an intentional nonvoluntary action.

I will also assume that it is not necessary for an action to be intentional that it is undertaken

out of an intention so to act. Imposing this condition on an action’s being intentional simply

identifies intentionality with the will-based sense of voluntariness, thereby foreclosing the very

possibility of intentional nonvoluntary action. I hope that the discussion to follow will motivate

keeping open the theoretical possibility of nonvoluntary action. But there are also independent

grounds to resist identifying intentionality with will-based voluntariness. Many action theorists

recognize the possibility of actions that are intentional but neither preceded nor accompanied by

a specific intention so to act (Bratman 1984). Consider my walking to the department. Walking to

the department is certainly an intentional act of mine. And so is every step that I take along the

way. But I do not from an intention for every single step that constitutes my journey. Putting

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aside popular philosophical treatments of this possibility, it does not seem forced on us that an

intentional action occurs without being preceded by a prior intention so to act.1

I’ll begin by pointing out a telling symmetry between inferring and intentional action. Just as

Wittgenstein asked for the difference between action and non-actional bodily movement, so too

we face the problem of distinguishing inferring from non-inferential transitions in thought.2

Taking a cue from recent Anscombean treatments of intentional agency, I’ll show that the

arguments of the last chapter point up the need for a non-decompositional answer to both the

problem of action and the problem of inference.3 After exhibiting Anscombe’s non-

decompositional approach to intentional action, I apply it to the case of inferring. Key to this

Anscombean approach is the claim that practical knowledge of what I am doing and why is

constitutive of intentional action, marking the difference between a series of mere bodily

movements and an intelligible order of means directed to an end. In like manner a thinker’s self-

conscious appreciation of what follows from what is constitutive of inferring, distinguishing an

intelligible premise-conclusion order from a mere succession of intentional episodes. It is this

practical self-consciousness, and not any efficient-causal link, which secures sub-condition (II) of

the Taking Condition. In this, overt intentional action as well as attitude-formative mental action

1 Bratman claims that while each step is not preceded by a prior intention, each step does fall within (what he calls)

the motivational potential of my intention to walk to the department. Even though not every intentional φ-ing is

undertaken out of an intention to φ, it is still the case that some other intention explains the intentionality of φ-ing.

See Bratman (1984). One might attempt to account for the intentionality of inferring in an analogous way. On this

suggestion, an agent enjoys an intention to decide what to do or judge what is the case, and the specific deciding -to-

φ or judging-that-p belongs within the motivational potential of this intention. But this would count as an

objectionable form of instrumentalism of the sort I argued against in Chapter 2. How does an agent arrive at such an

intention? Only by exercising a more fundamental species of rational agency —and it is this exercise of agency that I

am attempting, here, to explain. The wider action-theoretic upshot is this. If my argument in this chapter is correct,

then there are nonvoluntary intentional actions whose intentionality is not to be explained with reference to any

intention, thus refuting what Bratman calls the Single Phenomenon View. 2 Also, both contrasts admit of middle ground cases. There are bodily movements that seem agentive even if not fully

intentional, and there are transitions in conscious thinking that are not inferential but nevertheless not cases of idle

mind wandering. My focus in this chapter is on the stark contrasts, leaving the interesting middle cases for another

occasion. I thank Katja Vogt for bringing this to my attention. 3 My understanding of Anscombe’s work has been informed by work by Will Small (2012), Joh n Schwenkler

(2015), and Lucy Campbell (2017). Later in the chapter I draw on Ursula Coope’s (2013) interpretation of Aquinas.

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likewise consist in a distinctive species of self-consciousness. This line of argument vindicates

the Action Thesis and sub-condition (II) of the Taking Condition at once.

The problem of action and the problem of inference

The problem of action is summed up in Wittgenstein’s question: “what is left over if I

subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?” (1953: §621). (Put aside

the issue whether Wittgenstein meant this question literally. He probably did not.) To ask for the

thing left over after we ‘subtract’ the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm is

to ask after the isolatable element that, when admixed with an arm-rising, renders the event an

intentional action of raising my arm. What is the extra factor that renders a non-actional bodily

movement a full-blooded intentional action? So understood, the question presumes that

intentional bodily action and non-actional bodily movements share a common factor. The

presumption is that when I raise my arm intentionally, a non-actional bodily movement is

situated ‘inside’ the action as a standalone component, one that is just the same kind of thing that

can happen of itself. Following Lavin (2016), call this the decompositional approach to

intentional action.

The decompositional approach construes the action-making factor as something wholly

extrinsic to the bodily movement that is the action. We see this feature at work in the causalist

conception of intentional action. According to the causalist, a bodily movement is an action when

it is caused ‘in the right way’ by a suitable belief-desire pair (or by an intention, volition, or

trying that is in turn the causal product of such a pair). As Davidson pointed out—and I am not

here placing him within the standard causalist camp—the contents of these belief-desire pairs

lend themselves to a distinctive pattern of explanation of the bodily movement that they cause.

As I described in Chapter 2, the relevant explanations are instrumentalizing. This is because the

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desire points up something which the agent sees as (prima facie) good, valuable, rational, or

worthy of pursuit, while the belief represents that an action (under some description) will

promote or further the very element picked out by the desire. Such a belief-desire pair permits an

instrumentalizing explanation of action because it represents a bodily movement as an

instrumental means to a further end. For the causalist, a bodily movement is an intentional action

just in case it is caused ‘in the right way’ by such a complex. (When understood in this way, it

makes no difference whether the most proximal cause of the bodily movement is an intention

rather than a belief-desire pair. This is because the intention itself is conceived to be the causal

product of such a complex.) For the causalist, the problem of action is to specify the belief-desire

complex and the causal relation that unites this complex to a mere bodily movement. Since

causes must be distinct existences from their effects, the causalist will say that the action-making

factor, the belief-desire pair, is extrinsic to the bodily movement that it causes. On this view, a

bodily movement is rendered actional in virtue of its extrinsic causal history and not in virtue of

anything intrinsic to the action itself. This decompositional approach really does take

Wittgenstein’s question literally: according to it, that which is ‘left over’ when we subtract the

fact that my arm goes from the fact that I raise my arm is a belief-desire pair that represents the

arm-rising as contributing to the satisfaction of my desires.

Now consider a corresponding problem of inference. The problem of inference is to specify

the distinction between a thinker’s inferring to a conclusion and a thinker’s undergoing a mere

succession of intentional episodes in the conscious stream of thought. Echoing Wittgenstein:

what is left over when we subtract the fact that a thinker experiences such a mere succession

from the fact that the thinker inferred to a conclusion? To drive the question home, consider the

following inferring:

1. If Alice is at the café, then Bill is at the café.

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2. Alice is at the café.

3. So, Bill is at the café.

As I explained in Chapter 3, each of these items (1)–(3) corresponds with a conscious content-

bearing episode in the thinker’s stream of thought. But what distinguishes a thinker’s inferring

that (3) from merely undergoing a mere succession of intentional episodes, without any inkling at

all that the contents of (1) and (2) together count as conclusive reasons for the content of (3)? We

have here the very same problem that Wittgenstein diagnosed in the case of bodily action. Just as

Wittgenstein’s question asks for the factor that is present in intentional arm-raising but missing

when one’s arm merely rises, here we ask after the factor present in a thinker’s inferring to a

conclusion but missing when he undergoes such a mere succession of intentional episodes in the

stream of thought.

On a decompositional approach to the problem of inference, the inference-making features

are wholly extrinsic to the transition between premise- and conclusion-episodes in the thinker’s

stream of thought. However, a decompositional approach to inference cannot succeed. This

argument will rehearse some considerations we have already encountered in Chapter 3 but will

place them in a new light.

Consider first a causalist conception of inferring. On this suggestion, an inferring occurs just

when the premise-episodes cause the conclusion-episode ‘in the right way.’ (On such a view, the

inferring is the token occurrence of the conclusion-episode, just as the causalist identifies

intentional action with bodily movement.) But we need not appeal to deviant causal chains to

imagine a counterexample to this suggestion. Recall Boghossian’s (2014: 4) depressive, who

experiences a reliable and non-deviant transition from I am having so much fun to the episode

representing But there is so much suffering in the world. The depressive does not infer the latter

from the former; he is simply subject to the operation of a blind psychological association. This

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psychological association can be as reliable, non-deviant, or counterfactually robust as the

causalist prefers. Such features cannot make the connection an inferential one. There seems no

legitimate sense in which the depressive’s resulting belief that there is so much suffering in the

world is based on his belief that he is having so much fun. It was in the light of such cases that

we followed Boghossian in placing the Taking Condition on inferring. The problem for the

causalist about inferring is that there is nothing in the idea of a reliable efficient-causal link

between the premise- and conclusion-episodes that involves the thinker’s appreciation that his

premises support his conclusion. And yet, without incorporation of this appreciation, it is hard to

see how the relevant episodes can figure in a premise-conclusion relation at all.4

To satisfy sub-condition (I) of the Taking Condition, we might posit an additional cause of

the conclusion-episode. The suggestion is to add another premise as cause:

4. If Alice is at the café, then Bill is at the café.

5. Alice is at the café.

6. If (If Alice is at the café, then Bill is at the café) and (Alice is at the café), then Bill is at

the café.

7. So, Bill is at the café.

With premise (6) we set off a Lewis Carroll-style regress of premises from which no inference at

all can issue. For if the thinker cannot infer from an appreciation of (4) and (5) together, there is

no way that a premise like (6) can make the difference. This way of incorporating a thinker’s

‘taking’ cannot make for a satisfying causalist solution to the problem of inference.

4 Katja Vogt raises the following question regarding Boghossian’s case of the depressive. Perhaps the depressive’s

psychological association is not ‘blind’ per se, but rather the product of some other quasi -rational form of

association linking the suffering in the world as rendering cheerfulness inappropriate. My reply is that insofar as the

depressive faults himself for having fun in recognizing the suffering of the world, then he has performed a kind of

inference, which is just the sort of dynamic mental occurrence I am trying to explain in this chapter. But insofar as

the depressive’s occurrent thought that There is so much suffering in the world strikes him as an unfit reason to not

enjoy himself, he is as it were the passive bystander subject to a blind psychological force.

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So, we might try another tack. Perhaps the thinker’s taking consists not in any additional

premise about what follows from what, but in the causal play of dispositions. As we have seen,

Broome (2013) suggests that a thinker’s taking consists in a two-track disposition: a disposition

for conclusion-episodes to occur immediately after premise-episodes and a corresponding

disposition for this succession to ‘seem right’ (which consists in turn in yet further dispositions).

As I argued in Chapter 3, this appeal to rule-dispositions renders the thinker’s taking a mere

epiphenomenon. No such account can respect sub-condition (II) of the Taking Condition, which

requires that the thinker move to the conclusion because of an appreciation of the relations of

rational support that the premises provide for the conclusion.

These considerations point up a dilemma for causalism about the problem of inference. To

satisfy the Taking Condition, the causalist can either posit an explicit premise about what follows

from what as an efficient cause of the conclusion-episode; or else account for the thinker’s taking

by positing a network of causal dispositions. However, the first horn gives rise to a regress from

which no inferring at all can issue, whereas the second horn undermines sub-condition (II) of the

Taking Condition. The upshot is that the causalist cannot account for both sub-conditions of the

Taking Condition together.

This dilemma stems from a sole source. That source is the decompositional approach to the

problem of inference. These causalist approaches to the problem of inference certainly are of a

piece with decompositional approaches to the problem of action. Like in the case of intentional

action, the causalist claims that the inference-making features are wholly extrinsic to the

transition between premise- and conclusion-episodes in the stream of thought. But since the

inference-making features are wholly extrinsic to the transition in thought, we cannot capture the

way that a thinker’s ‘taking’ plays a guiding role in the thinker’s arrival to the conclusion-

episode. The only way to secure the right relation between the succession of episodes and the

thinker’s appreciation of relations of rational support is to divorce ourselves from the

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decompositional approach to inferring. So long as the inference-making factor is something

wholly outside the succession of intentional episodes, we cannot accommodate both sub-

conditions of the Taking Condition together.

To evade the dilemma, we apparently require a non-decompositional approach to inferring.

On such an approach, we do not identity the inference-making factor as an extrinsic factor in a

Wittgensteinian equation (cf. Lavin 2016: 612). Rather, we source the inference-making feature

in something that is intrinsic to every inferring. On this competing approach, we will look to

something intrinsic to inferring—something which makes an inferring what it is. My suggestion

is to draw on a recently recovered non-decompositional approach to intentional action sourced in

Anscombe’s Intention. After laying out the rudiments of this approach to action, we will be

positioned to apply its morals back to the problem of inference.

Intentional action and practical knowledge

My concern in this section is to exhibit Anscombe’s non-decompositional approach to

intentional action, in order to later conceive of inferring to a conclusion in analogous terms. The

hallmark of Anscombe’s approach is an emphasis on the distinctive knowledge that a rational

agent possesses of occurrent intentional action. The approach is non-decompositional in that this

practical knowledge is conceived to be the formal rather than efficient cause of intentional action.

Practical knowledge of what I am doing and why articulates a ‘mere heap’ of bodily movements

into an ordered unity of means undertaken for the sake of an end. In virtue of this constitutive

role, it is only because an agent possesses this knowledge that he is intentionally acting at all. I

wish to trace Anscombe’s route to this conclusion. We will find it an instructive one.

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THE ‘WHY?’-QUESTION AND INTENTIONAL ACTION

Lavin (2016) argues that Anscombe’s non-decompositional approach takes off from a

starting place that is altogether different from the decompositional theorist’s way of posing the

problem of action. Anscombe does not attempt to locate intentional actions by isolating an

intrinsically non-intentional factor that renders a non-bodily movement an intentional action.5

Instead, intentional actions are distinguished by their susceptibility to a characteristic form of

explanation. As I quoted her in Chapter 1, Anscombe starts with the claim that intentional actions

are “actions to which a certain sense of the question ‘Why?’ is given application; the sense of

course is that the answer, if positive, gives a reason for acting” (1957: 9). Anscombe registers an

immediate circularity worry in this formulation, since it tells us no more about intentional actions

than that they are done for reasons (Stoutland 2011: 24).

Anscombe works her way out of the circle by considering, first, cases where the ‘Why?’-

question fails to apply. The question ‘Why are you doing that?’ is refused application when the

agent answers, ‘I wasn’t aware that I was doing it’ (1957: 11). If an agent (sincerely) answers in

this way, then there cannot be an intentional action going on. Much of what I will elaborate in

this section will go towards explaining why this is so.

An important complication is that since intentional actions are description-sensitive, a

person might know that he is doing something under one description and fail to know it under

another (1957: 11–12). For instance, I might know what I am doing under the description ‘MH’s

pouring himself a gin and tonic’ and yet reply that ‘I wasn’t aware I was doing that’ when asked

why I am mixing gasoline and tonic. In this, my knowledge of what I am doing resembles my

knowledge of what I believe and what I intend. Like our beliefs and our intentions, “to say that a

5 Indeed, Anscombe’s approach is notable for the way she eschews the attempt to isolate some action -making mental

element (see e.g. Intention, §27; Stoutland 2011: 28; Schwenkler 2015: 5). This is another reason to take

Anscombe’s approach seriously in an attempt to lay bare the active character of inferring to a conclusion: as I have

argued, inferring is not rendered intentional on account of any intention to infer just as one does.

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man knows he is doing X is to give a description of what he is doing under which he knows it”

(1957: 12). Every intentional action, then, will be known by the agent performing that action at

least under one description. Intentional actions are not the kind of thing that can go on ‘behind

the agent’s back,’ as it were.

What’s more, an agent knows his own occurrent action in a distinctive way: namely, non-

observationally. Anscombe has it that we do not know of our own actions by observing, as I

might know by sight that a bus is crossing the street one block away. Now, not all of the things

that an agent knows non-observationally are intentional actions (1957: 13–15). A person also

knows the position of his limbs without observation since “nothing shows him the position of his

limbs” (1957: 13).6 Still, the claim that we know our intentional actions non-observationally

helps to further delimit cases where the ‘Why?’-question fails to apply. It is refused application

when the agent answers either with “I was not aware I was doing that,” or when, if the agent

knows he is doing it, he knows it only by observing himself do it (1957: 24). Intentional actions

are known, and this knowledge is not based on observation.

But what distinguishes intentional action from other things (such as one’s present bodily

position) that are known without observation? Here Anscombe introduces the notion of a mental

cause. Mental causes include such things as feelings or images that figure in an efficient-causal

explanation for why the relevant event took place. “A mental cause,” Anscombe has it, “is what

someone would describe if he were asked the specific question: what produced this action or

thought or feeling on your part: what did you see or hear or feel, what ideas or images cropped

up in your mind and led to it?” (1957: 17–18).

The operative notion of ‘cause’ is opaque in this portion of Intention (cf. Stoutland 2011: 25–

26). But I think we do no injustice to Anscombe’s discussion to conceive of mental causes as

6 Anscombe makes a special point here of justifying the use of the word ‘knowledge.’ An agent knows the position of

his own limbs because he can be wrong about this very fact (§8).

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events that constitute merely explanatory reasons: reasons that explain why something occurred,

but which do not justify the event in question.7 Suppose you ask me why I stayed up all night last

night. One way of refusing application of this question will be to reply that the constant sirens

just outside my window kept me from falling asleep. The sound of the sirens is here cited as an

explanatory reason for the occurrence of some event (or rather, the non-occurrence of the event

of my falling asleep). This explanatory reason does nothing to justify my staying awake at night,

and indeed my reply is not even offered under the guise of providing such a justification. But it

does offer a satisfying explanation of why I was up all night, and upon receiving this explanation

there is nothing more you need to know in order to understand why it was I was up all night.

Contrast this citation of a merely explanatory reason with the provision of a justifying reason:

one that provides a point or purpose furthered by my staying up at night (“I wanted to see the

referendum results in real-time”). Providing such a point or purpose—what Anscombe, later in

Intention, calls a ‘desirability-characterization’ (1957: 72)—communicates that which is

furthered by my staying up all night. In contrast, citing the merely explanatory reason (“Sirens

kept me up all night”) does nothing to justify my staying up all night, because it is not offered as

even a potential justification of doing so. (Obviously, some justifying reasons might fail to justify

the behavior in question.) The ‘Why?’-question is refused application when the answer cites just

such a mental cause (or merely explanatory reason for why something has occurred).

Anscombe distinguishes such mental causes from an agent’s motives, which do grant the

‘Why?’-question application. Motives divide into three sub-kinds (Stoutland 2011: 25). First,

backward-looking motives include such things as revenge or gratitude. To answer the ‘Why?’-

question by citing a backwards-looking motive is to cite a past occurrence as the “ground of an

action” (1957: 20). For instance, my receipt of a birthday gift can be the ground of my action of

7 In support of this interpretation, notice that Anscombe says that the ‘Why?’-question is refused application when

the agent cites evidence for the occurrence of the event in question (1957: 15–16).

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sending off a note of thanks. Such backward-looking motives are distinct from mental causes in

that citing a backward-looking cause mentions, perhaps implicitly, something good or evil that

the agent discerns in the past occurrence (1957: 21); this needn’t be the case when a mental cause

(merely explanatory reason) is cited in response to the ‘Why?’-question. Second, what

Anscombe calls motives-in-general provide re-descriptions of an action which point up the

proper light in which to interpret an action (1957: 21). For instance: “Why are you holding your

arms up?” “I am stretching my sides.” This reply to the ‘Why?’-question re-describes the action,

since here the very same event falls under two descriptions, only one of which captures my

purposes. Notice that this reply to the ‘Why?’-question does not refuse its application, even

though the description that figures in the question is substituted for a distinct description. This

leads to the third kind of motive, forward-looking motives. When the ‘Why?’-question is

answered by citing a forward-looking motive, some future event is given in reply: “Why are you

packing up your bag?” “To work at the library.” Anscombe calls such forward-looking motives

intentions. The ‘Why?’-question has application in all three cases. This is because in each case, to

cite the motive or the intention is to communicate a consideration that counts in favor of the

action in question. As I mentioned above, this is not so when an agent cites a mental cause

(merely explanatory reason).

There are two other telling cases where the ‘Why?’-question finds application, both of which

I mentioned earlier in Chapter 1. I might reply to the question by saying “No reason.” For

Anscombe, this reply no more refuses application to the ‘Why?’-question than the reply “None”

refuses application to the question, “How much change is in your pocket?” (1957: 25). Secondly,

the ‘Why?’-question can be legitimately answered with “No particular reason,” so long as,

Anscombe says, we can “make sense” of the person so acting (1957: §18; Stoutland 2011: 26). In

many cases, ‘No particular reason’ can indicate that I am doing something merely for the sake of

doing it (for its own sake), where there is no further objective I achieve by the performance.

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Drawing all of this together: intentional actions are events for which the question “Why are

you doing that?” has application. This ‘Why?’-question is refused application when: the recipient

replies “I wasn’t doing that,” or if his knowledge of its going on is based on observation, or if his

answer cites a merely explanatory reason. The ‘Why?’-question finds application when the

answer cites some good or evil in a previous occurrence; when the answer re-describes the action

in an intelligible (but not merely explanatory) light; when it mentions something future; or even

if the answer is ‘No reason’ or ‘No particular reason.’ Since these types of legitimate answers

make up a wider class than reasons for action, the ‘Why?’-question “can now be defined as the

question expecting an answer within this range” (1957: 28; Stoutland 2011: 26). Following Lucy

Campbell (2017), we can say that for Anscombe the ‘Why?’-question finds application when it

asks about behaviors that have a point: they are behaviors that contribute towards some good

(avoid some evil) or to the realization of some aim.

There are two reasons I have set out to describe all the cases in which the ‘Why?’-question

applies and fails to apply. First, as we have seen, Anscombe’s remarks clarify what intentional

actions are—namely, behaviors that have a point or purpose. Second, the applicable range of

answers to the ‘Why?’-question evokes Anscombe’s all-important starting-point—the claim that

intentional actions are distinctive in that the agent in the midst of an intentional action has a

distinctive kind of knowledge of its performance. As we have seen, the ‘Why?’-question is

refused, rather than answered, when the agent says that his knowledge of the relevant event is

based on observation, or when the agent was flatly unaware of the event at all.

However, this way of demarcating the class of intentional actions leaves us with a question.

What is it about the nature of intentional action that places an agent in position to answer the

‘Why?’-question? To answer this question, we need to delve further into Intention, wherein

Anscombe indicates the content of an agent’s practical knowledge of what he is doing. This will

enable us to then go on to say why applicability of the ‘Why?’-question is criterial for intentional

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action, and ultimately why practical knowledge serves as the formal principle that makes

intentional action what it is.

THE CONTENT OF PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE

We can make progress on these questions by treating with one of Anscombe’s central

examples in Intention. The example concerns a person who operates a water pump in order to

poison the inhabitants of a nearby house (1957: §23ff). Here as ever we have an event that falls

under a range of true descriptions. What is more, there are several distinct descriptions under

which the event is intentional. Call these intentional descriptions. Anscombe tells us that in the

midst of his pumping, the man can be truly described as intentionally:

A. Moving his arm;

B. Operating the water pump;

C. Replenishing the water supply;

D. Poisoning the inhabitants of the house. (1957: 45)

Notice that each of the intentional descriptions in A–D can be incorporated into a corresponding

‘Why?’-question:

A′. Why are you moving your arm?

B′. Why are you operating the water pump?

C′. Why are you replenishing the water supply?

D′. Why are you poisoning the inhabitants in the house?

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Each of these ‘Why?’-questions A′–D′ finds application—each one falls within the range that

Anscombe demarcates in the opening sections of Intention.8 Since this is so, the agent in this

example must possess practical knowledge that he is: (A) moving his arm; (B) operating the

water pump; (C) replenishing the water supply; and (D) poisoning the inhabitants. This is

because the ‘Why?’-question will simply fall to the ground should the agent reply that “I didn’t

know that I was A-ing/B-ing/C-ing/D-ing.” This secures an important preliminary feature of

Anscombe’s non-decompositional approach to action: as the agent in this example acts, he must

possess practical knowledge of what he is doing under each of the intentional descriptions A–D.

(If not, then the description in question cannot be counted as an intentional description and drops

out of our consideration.)

In fact, Anscombe tells us that the agent must possess practical knowledge of more than

simply act-descriptions A, B, C, and D taken separately (1957: §26). These descriptions A–D are

interrelated and hold together as a unity. If an agent knows any of the descriptions A–D, he must

know all of them and know them in a particular way. This we can bring out by noting two series

of questions we might pose to the agent in the midst of his action.9

The first is our familiar ‘Why?’-question. Suppose we ask the agent, ‘Why are you X-ing?’,

where ‘X’ stands for any of the intentional descriptions A–D. The agent can issue a legitimate

reply to this question by citing any one of the intentional descriptions in the series that comes

8 Anscombe is clear in Intention that each of the intentional descriptions A–D describe one action: the man’s moving

his arm is his operating of the water pump, which is his replenishing of the water supply, and so on (1957: 46). In

this, Anscombe offers, like Davidson, a ‘coarse-grained’ individuation of actions. Crucially, though, Anscombe does

not share Davidson’s view that all the man does is the most proximate event in the series. (At least, this

interpretation is not forced upon us by anything that Anscombe says in Intention.) As I read Anscombe, the view is

that distinct act-descriptions correspond to distinct parts within the same unity. More on this to come in the main

text. We must not read into Anscombe all of the features that are frequently grouped together under the heading of

the so-called ‘Davidson-Anscombe coarse-grained theory of act-individuation.’ Doing so risks obscuring the non-

decompositional approach to intentional action that we are seeking in Intention. 9 In what follows I have learned from Small (2012: §2.2), Schwenkler (2015: §2), and Lavin (2016: 619 –622).

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after X.10 ‘Why are you moving your arm up and down?’ can be answered with ‘Because I am

operating the water pump’; and the question ‘Why are you operating the water pump?’ can be

answered with ‘Because I am replenishing the water supply,’ and so on. (The replies needn’t cite

the next adjacent intentional description in the series; the agent can answer ‘Why are you moving

your arm like that?’ with ‘Because I am poisoning the inhabitants,’ trusting, thereby, that context

will indicate that moving his arm is poisoning the inhabitants. See Intention, p. 46.). In this way,

as Small (2012) puts it, we can move up the A–D series to arrive at progressively more articulate

answers to the ‘Why?’-question. The answers are progressively more articulate in that with each

round of question and answer one gets a better sense of just what the agent is doing—we arrive

at a clearer picture of the agent’s purpose.

Just as we may move up the A–D series in this way, we may also ‘move down’ the series.

We move down the series not by asking ‘Why?’, but ‘How?’. If we ask the agent, ‘How are you

poisoning the inhabitants?’ the agent may reply by citing any of the prior descriptions C–A: ‘I am

(D) poising the inhabitants by (C) replenishing the water supply/(B) operating the water

pump/(A) moving my arm.’ Whereas moving up the A–D series elicits the purpose for which the

agent acts, moving down the series elicits the means that the agent employs in order to realize

that purpose (1957: 46).

In a moment, I will return to this peculiar feature of the A–D order. Why is it that we can

both ‘move up’ the series by asking ‘Why?’ and ‘move down’ the series by asking ‘How?’ This is

something that we might expect Anscombe to explain, and indeed she gives us the tools to

explain it, as Will Small (2012) points out.

10 If the agent is asked ‘Why are you poisoning the inhabitants of the house?’, then Anscombe tells us the agent can

cite the further distal purpose for which he acts, such as: ‘I want to replace this crop of leaders with another one.’

See the discussion in Intention at §27ff and Stoutland 2011: 27. Anscombe does say that this sort of reply constitutes

a ‘break’—though not a sharp one—with the A–D series.

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Anscombe writes that “When terms [i.e. intentional descriptions A–D] are related in this

fashion, they constitute a series of means, the last term of which [i.e., D] is, just by being given

as the last, so far treated as end” (1957: 46–47). In this connection, Anscombe speaks of the last

term in the series “swallowing up” the previous ones, in that it is perfectly appropriate the cite D

in a response to the question ‘Why are you A-ing?’ (1957: 46).

This allows us to characterize more fully the content of practical knowledge. An agent does

not know each of the intentional descriptions separately. Practical knowledge must be more

articulate than this. The agent knows that the intentional descriptions of his action hang together

as a unity—an instrumental act-complex such that each description in the complex bears a

teleological relation to the other items in the series. The mark of such a unity is that, given the

series A–D, we can ‘move up’ the series with the ‘Why?’-question as well as ‘move down’ the

series with the ‘How?’-question. Practical knowledge is not just knowing that one is A-ing/B-

ing/C-ing/D-ing, but also that one A’s in order to B, B’s in order to C, C’s in order to D. Only

such a more articulate practical knowledge can provide a principled explanation of why the agent

is positioned to reply to any of the ‘Why?’-questions A′–D′. Taken together, the agent’s replies to

all of the ‘Why?’-questions A′–D′ draw on practical knowledge of how intentional descriptions

A–D hang together as a unity. The content of practical knowledge is a unified order of means

undertaken for an end: when an agent acts, he knows what he is doing, why he is doing it, and

how he is getting it done.

Anscombe tells us that we cannot understand practical knowledge without understanding

practical deliberation (1957: 57). She subsequently devotes §§33–44 of Intention to this topic.

For our purposes, the key point to take away from Anscombe’s discussion of practical reasoning

is the following. When an agent begins with a practical commitment to D-ing, the action A-ing is

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reachable by a consideration of progressively more specific means to D-ing.11 Practical reasoning

or deliberation is in this sense calculative. I begin with the practical commitment to poisoning

the inhabitants in the nearby house. How can I poison them? By replenishing the water supply

with poison. How can I replenish the water supply? By operating this pump. But how can I

operate this pump? By moving my arm up and down. In this way, as Schwenkler puts it,

“practical reasoning is a form of thought that proceeds from a general action-type to a particular

bodily movement by identifying means to a given end” (2015: 5). (For Anscombe’s talk of

‘calculation,’ see e.g. Intention, p. 79.)

This form of thought is exemplified, Anscombe tells us, by the Aristotelian practical

syllogism (understood in this calculative way). But she also enters a word of caution: “if

Aristotle’s account were supposed to describe actual mental processes, it would in general be

quite absurd” (1957: 80). Her emphatic point is that it is not the case that every intentional action

of which an agent possesses practical knowledge is preceded by an explicit bout of practical

reasoning in which premises which correspond to the A–D order are explicitly entertained or

contemplated. Rather, her view is that the rational order which corresponds to that bout of

reasoning—i.e., the A–D teleological order of end-directed means itself—“is there whenever

actions are done with intentions” (1957: 80). Put another way, the unified teleological order

exemplified by the series of descriptions A–D is sometimes arrived at by dint of practical

reasoning that is completed well before the agent ever approaches the handle of the water pump.

11 The phrase ‘practical commitment’ does not occur in Intention. Still, I think that this is what Anscombe has in

mind with her discussion of wanting over §§36–41. First, practical commitments are all-out rational commitments,

and this appears to correspond to the fact that ‘wanting,’ in Anscombe’s sense, “is neither wishing nor hoping nor the

feeling of desire, and cannot be said to exist in a man who does nothing towards getting what he wants” (1957: 67 –

8). Anscombe goes on to say that wanting is connected to the good as truth is connected to judging (1957: 76).

Throughout her discussion, Anscombe insists that the relevant sense of ‘wanting’ and ‘good’ are not ethical: they

correspond instead to the agent’s own appraisals (hence her talk of heinous action-descriptions figuring as

‘desirability characterizations’ for heinous men). All of this supports the idea that what Anscombe has in mind is a

notion of practical commitment, so that my practical commitment to D-ing serves as a kind of rational ‘baseline’

from which, by consideration of more and more specific means, I can act with an eye towards D-ing.

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But whenever the agent operates the water pump with an eye to poisoning the inhabitants, the A–

D order is present. I shall return to this issue in a later section.

What we have to understand, now, is how this is so. How is it that intentional action, as

evinced in the A–D series of intentional descriptions, itself has the very same structure—the very

same means-end or teleological unity—as the practical knowledge that an agent enjoys of his

intentional action as it occurs? To answer this latter question, we must understand what it is for

practical knowledge to be action-constitutive—what it means to say that practical knowledge is

‘the cause of what it understands.’

THE ACTION-CONSTITUTIVE ROLE OF PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE

At this point we come to a worry that occupies a few sections of Intention (§§28–32).

Understanding Anscombe’s response to this worry shows how practical knowledge constitutes

intentional action, and how the resulting picture resists the temptation to ‘decompose’ intentional

action into non-intentional atoms.

Practical knowledge is non-observational: I do not have practical knowledge of my action by

observing its occurrence. In connection with the A–D order, we have seen that practical

knowledge is knowledge of what I am doing, why I am doing it, and how I am getting it done.

But some of the things I do—some of the things that are happening—are at some remove from

my own body. It follows from what Anscombe has told us so far about practical knowledge that

an agent in the midst of action enjoys a non-observational knowledge of events taking place out

in the distal environment. In operating the pump, I know non-observationally that the inhabitants

are being poisoned. Anscombe shares in the reader’s perplexity at this consequence. How can I

know non-observationally that something out there is going on?

It is tempting to ease this perplexity by making practical knowledge a composite. On this

suggestion, practical knowledge is made up out of (on the one hand) the agent’s non-

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observational knowledge of what he intends, together with (on the other hand) observational

knowledge of what occurs in the agent’s immediate distal environment (cf. Donnellan 1963). On

this mixed view, practical knowledge is only partly non-observational and concerns only the

willing, trying, or intention.

Anscombe pushes against this conception, pointing out that sometimes the only intentional

descriptions available to an agent mention distal occurrences (1957: §30). She concedes, though,

that sometimes my practical knowledge of something occurring in the distal environment

presupposes ordinary knowledge that is “based on observation, inference, hearsay, superstition,

or anything that knowledge or opinion ever are based on” (1957: 50). She writes:

When knowledge or opinion are present concerning what is the case, and what can

happen—say Z—if one does certain things, say ABC, then it is possible to have the

intention of doing Z in doing ABC; and if the case is one of knowledge or if the opinion is

correct, then doing or causing Z is an intentional action, and it is not by observation that

one is doing Z; or in so far as one is observing, inferring etc. that Z is actually taking place,

one’s knowledge is not the knowledge that a man has of his intentional actions. (1957: 50)

The crucial point for Anscombe is that in these circumstances I possess non-observational

practical knowledge that I am Z-ing, even if this presumes some prior observational, inferential,

etc., knowledge that I can Z by ABC-ing. My practical knowledge will fail should these

presumptions be mistaken. But where the presumptions are knowledgeable my practical

knowledge of Z-ing is secured. This is because the practical knowledge of my Z-ing by doing

ABC, while presuming a connection between ABC-ing and Z-ing, is nevertheless neither based

on nor inferred from the observational knowledge that ABC-ing is a way to Z. (Cf. Moran 2004:

48–49.)

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Consideration of this point leads Anscombe to this formulation: “I do what happens” (1957:

53). How is it that my doing can comprehend events that occur in the distal environment? To

answer this question, we have to draw on two of Anscombe’s most enduring contributions: the

proposal that practical knowledge is distinct from speculative knowledge in the way it is open to

correction; and the proposal that practical knowledge bears a constitutive, rather than causal,

relation to the intentional action that it directs.

It is in connection with the first proposal that Anscombe gives one of the most celebrated

examples in Intention, that of the man walking about town with a shopping list (1957: §32). The

man is observed by detectives who meticulously jot down the items that the man places within

his cart. The man’s shopping list and the detective’s list of the items might agree with respect to

the items that figure on it. But they disagree in the following respect. If the contents of the man’s

shopping bag do not conform to the list, then the man’s error lies in his performance, whereas for

the detectives the error is in their list. For the man doing his shopping, the list plays a guiding

role in the prosecution of his ends. The man’s shopping venture will be counted a success only if

the contents of his bags correspond exactly to the enumerated list with which he set out to the

store. Since this is so, the list sets down a standard or rule for the successful execution of his

aims. On the other hand, the detectives’ list plays a different role: it works not to guide the action

and set down criteria for a successful performance, but merely to accurately represent what is the

case. Anscombe’s point is that practical knowledge functions like the shopper’s list, not the

detectives’ list. Where there is a discrepancy between an agent’s practical knowledge and what is

actually taking place, the mistake lies in the performance, not in the practical knowledge.

This is one respect in which practical knowledge is practical. It is directive in that the

content of practical knowledge sets a standard for success. This is in distinction with what

Anscombe calls speculative knowledge, the aim of which is to represent a state of affairs that is

already the case and which fails by its own measure when it fails to do so. And so, Anscombe

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writes that it is a mistake to cast about for two distinct kinds of speculative knowledge.

Understanding practical knowledge will be impossible—we will continue to find ourselves in

“utter darkness”—so long as we adhere to the speculative conception of knowledge while

“look[ing] hopelessly for the different mode of contemplative [i.e., speculative] knowledge in

acting, as if there were a very queer and special sort of seeing eye in the middle of the acting”

(1957: 57). The solution is to cease thinking of knowledge on a strictly speculative or

contemplative model. The alternative is to construe practical knowledge as directive in the

aforementioned sense (Campbell 2017).

How does this practical, as opposed to speculative, dimension of knowledge clarify

Anscombe’s formula that “I do what happens”? Because it allows us to classify discrepancies

between what occurs and that which I intend to bring about as errors in performance, rather than

errors in my practical knowledge. Clearly, such discrepancies do not get to count as knowledge

anyway—failure to accord with the facts undermines any sort of knowledge, practical or

speculative (cf. Moran 2004: 61). Nevertheless, it is significant just where the error lies in such

cases. When there is accord between the agent’s practical knowledge and the facts, it is because

the facts are fitted in the right way to the agent’s practical knowledge. What I do—what I know

practically—is what happens, because what happens must be fitted to that knowledge.

This first point—that practical knowledge is directive, and so not at all a species of

speculative knowledge—goes some way toward addressing the worry about the very idea of non-

observational knowledge of what happens ‘out there.’ But it cannot be the entirety of the

explanation of the ‘I do what happens’ formula. This is because we can accept that an agent has

directive practical knowledge of some occurrent episode while also accepting that practical

knowledge is not sufficient for the content of that practical ‘knowledge’ to cohere at all with the

world. We need some way of securing a connection between practical knowledge and the

worldly intentional action it knows.

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Here, towards the end of Intention, Anscombe clarifies the role of practical knowledge as

constitutive of intentional action.12 Here is one place where Anscombe expresses the main idea:

[W]here (a) the description of an event is of a type to be formally the description of an

executed intention [and] (b) the event is actually the execution of an intention (by our

criteria) then the account given by Aquinas of the nature of practical knowledge holds:

Practical knowledge is ‘the cause of what it understands,’ unlike ‘speculative’ knowledge,

which ‘is derived from the objects known.’ This means more than that practical knowledge

is observed to be a necessary condition of the production of various results…It means that

without [practical knowledge] what happens does not come under the description—

execution of intentions—whose characteristics we have been investigating. (1957: 87;

footnote omitted)13

Condition (a) is not about material bodily movements, but about intentional descriptions.14

Anscombe’s claim is that intentional descriptions take on a distinctive form, one that consists in

the teleological unity evinced in the A–D order. As we have seen, this teleological unity

corresponds to the content of an agent’s practical knowledge. Anscombe goes on to say that this

correspondence is no accident. The reason that intentional descriptions possess the form that they

do is because of the way that the events properly brought under those descriptions—viz.,

intentional actions themselves—are constituted by an agent’s practical knowledge. Practical

knowledge, then, is action-constitutive: if not for practical knowledge, we could not so much as

describe bodily movements as executions of intentions.15 It is the agent’s practical knowledge or

understanding of the teleological order in the content of his practical knowledge which renders

12 On this aspect of Anscombe’s view, see especially Moran (2004), Small (2012), and Schwenkler (2015). 13 An editorial remark: I take myself to be correcting a simple typographical error in adding ‘and’ in this passage,

turning condition (a) and (b) into a single conjunction. This seems the right way to read Anscombe here, since she

prefaces this quotation with, “Putting these remarks together…” (1957: 87). 14 On the importance of this point to the general Anscombean approach, see Lavin (2016: 615 ff). 15 Cf. Pink’s (2016) use of the term ‘action-constitutive.’

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the movements of his body an intentional action at all. With John Schwenkler, we can

characterize practical knowledge as “the formal principle that unifies an action, or that in virtue

of which certain physical happenings are constituted as parts of a person’s intentional activity”

(2015: 6).

What does it mean to say that practical knowledge is the formal principle that unifies an

action? Recall: Anscombe is concerned with sets of descriptions of events that possess a certain

form. That form is the A–D order we have discerned holding among the descriptions under which

what an agent does counts as intentional. Each such description, recall, can be given as an

admissible reply to the ‘Why?’-question. Relative to one another, the intentional descriptions A–

D possess an internal structure. This structure is teleological, in that an agent can ‘move up’ the

A–D order to say what he is doing and why he’s doing it, and ‘move down’ the A–D order to say

how he is getting it done. The question we are asking is: in virtue of what does a series of bodily

movements come under such a teleologically-ordered structure of intentional description(s)?

To bring this question into relief, consider the way we are inclined to describe other

occurrent episodes as they unfold over time (cf. Lavin 2016: 619–622). What makes an

unfolding occurrent process the very process that it is? For instance, what makes a series of

occurrent events ‘hang together’ as the different innings within a single baseball game? The

question seeks, in Lavin’s words, “some principle in virtue of which the phases of the process

constitute a whole” (2016: 619). If there were no such principle, then there would be little ground

for our sense that the very same token process is suspended at the conclusion of the seventh

inning but resumed at the bottom of the seventh inning. Or take an ongoing process with an

inbuilt terminus that is interrupted before reaching its proper endpoint. What makes it the case

that I am walking to the café, even if I never reach the café? It cannot be my eventual arrival at

the café, for I may never reach it. Still, I am walking there, despite the fact that I never arrive (cf.

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Lavin 2016: 618).16 And what is it for an ongoing process to progress to another phase of its

activity? These questions ask after the principle that as it were ‘organizes’ these events into the

process that it is. Here again is Lavin:

Not just any collection (A, B) constitutes the progress of wider process (C). But when such

happenings (A, B) constitute the progress of some wider process (C), when they are lesser

phases of some more inclusive going on, the whole is in the parts. (Lavin 2016: 619)

By ‘the whole is in the parts,’ Lavin means that the parts are what they are in virtue of the

principle that unifies them into the whole of which they are parts. This principle is the formal

principle that unifies the collection of episodes into the progression underway. I will return to this

point.

We can raise the very same questions about an intentional action that is occurrently

underway. Suppose we take a single time-slice of an agent’s occurrent bodily movement as he is

in the midst of operating the water pump. This is no mere bodily movement. It is an event that

falls under an intentional description; as such, it bears the aforementioned structural relations to

the events falling under the other intentional descriptions that belong within the A–D order. Why

is this so? What is the principle of unity in virtue of which our chosen time-slice “constitutes the

progress of some wider process”? This is the question that practical knowledge answers, for

Anscombe. For Anscombe, it is the agent’s practical knowledge of what he is doing, why he is

doing it, and how he is getting it done which makes whatever occurs within our selected time-

slice a part of an ongoing process, namely the process of poisoning the inhabitants. For

Anscombe, practical knowledge is the formal principle of an action’s internal unity. Practical

knowledge inserts the whole into each of the parts of the agent’s ongoing intentional activity.

16 As Lavin points out, these and other features are at home in the way ordinary thought and talk employs the present

progressive to describe occurrent events. For these features of the present progressive, see Falvey (2000).

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I have been describing two features of practical knowledge: that it is directive of intentional

action and that it serves as the formal principle that makes an intentional action just what it is.

These two features explain why we enjoy non-observational practical knowledge of what occurs

at some remove from our own bodies. The first feature ensures that where there is an error, “the

mistake is in the performance,” not the agent’s standing purported practical knowledge of what

he is doing. (The practical knowledge in such cases is merely ‘purported’ because, as Moran

points out, failure of correspondence with the world undermines any species of knowledge,

practical or speculative.) Practical knowledge of what I am doing, why I am doing it, and how it

is getting done can comprehend the occurrence of extra-bodily events in that this very knowledge

sets the standard of success for the extra-bodily events in question. When I am successful, the

success will be put down to the practical knowledge of my occurrent action.17 Secondly, practical

knowledge comprehends extra-bodily events because it is the formal principle in virtue of which

what happens counts as something I am doing at all. Practical knowledge does not play an

efficient-causal role in bringing about an action, but a formal or action-constitutive role with

respect the bodily movements and distal events that constitute it.18

PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE AND DECOMPOSITION

The final task of this long section is to draw out just why Anscombe’s approach is not

decompositional, and indeed why it is impossible to provide a decompositional approach to

action when we begin with the ‘Why?’-question rather than with Wittgenstein’s ‘arithmetical’

17 See Small (2012: §4) and Lavin (2016: 621–622) for argument that practical knowledge secures a principled basis

on which action underway can be considered a genuine process in development. 18 Schwenkler (2015) argues that practical knowledge cannot be wholly non -observational, but that the observational

knowledge implicated in practical knowledge is nevertheless practical insofar as it works to keep an action “on

course” until completion. Schwenkler’s relaxation of Anscombe’s insistence on non -observational practical

knowledge is consistent with what I have said in this subsection, since we might motivate the very same puzzle with

the weaker question: How can there be any degree of self-knowledge in the knowledge of what happens at some

remove from my own body?

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question. The key claim in this connection is the one that I have just been at pains to describe—

viz., that an agent’s practical knowledge of what I am doing, why I am doing it, and how it is

getting done is the formal principle of unity of an intentional action, or the “the cause of what it

understands” (1957: 87). Intentional action cannot be decomposed into non-intentional and non-

actional components because these components can only be what they are—the parts of a unified

intentional action—unless they are comprehended in an agent’s practical knowledge.

In taking this line, Anscombe’s account of intentional action is analogous to the so-called

Substance Theory of concrete particulars. On this account, the parts of a living organism are

posterior in explanation to the whole that the parts jointly compose. From this point of view, it is

mistaken to seek the organic units that together make up my living body. On the contrary, it is the

fact that each of my gross organic parts are parts of my body that they are what they are. Here is

Michael J. Loux (summarizing Aristotle) on that point:

[T]he organic parts of living beings are such that to specify what they are one must make a

reference to the whole living being whose parts they are. Thus, to specify what a liver is,

one must identify its biological function; and that, Aristotle wants to say, requires a

reference to the role of the liver in the maintenance of the whole living being to which it

belongs. He wants to claim, then, that so far from being reducible to their organic parts,

living beings as wholes are prior to their organic parts […] Thus, as organic parts of living

beings, the parts of substances have a nature or essence that presupposes a reference to

whole whose parts they are; and while they can exist in separation from those substances,

qua existing apart, they are no longer the sorts of things that can be the parts of living

beings. (1979: 171, footnotes omitted)

With respect to the parts that make up a whole organism, then, we might say with Lavin (quoted

above) that the whole is in the parts: the part of an organic unity is what it is only because of the

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way it is arranged in the whole that it makes up. There is thus a kind of ‘downwards constitution’

in the case of ordinary organic unities: the whole is what makes a given part just what it is.

Though I find this Substance Theory of concrete particulars plausible, it is not my aim to

argue for it here. Rather, my point is that Anscombe has a similar thesis in mind; and the

argument for this Anscombean view of intentional action has been unfolding over the course of

this entire chapter so far. It is because the parts of an intentional action are constituted by the

whole that we cannot arrive at an account of intentional action by decomposing actions down to

their constituent elements. Wittgenstein’s question presupposes that a non-intentional and non-

actional mere bodily movement is an action when produced by the right kind of extrinsic

efficient cause. But on Anscombe’s approach we cannot solve Wittgenstein’s arithmetical

question because there is on this approach no such thing as a mere bodily movement in the

relevant sense.

Let us attempt to pose Wittgenstein’s question with respect to water-pumper in Anscombe’s

example. Wittgenstein asks, “what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the

fact that I raise my arm?” (1953: §621). In the same way, we will ask “what is left over if we

subtract the fact that the man’s arm goes up and down from the fact that he is operating the water

pump?” Read in the spirit of a decompositional approach to intentional action, this question asks

for the non-intentional and non-actional ingredients that, when added with the action-making

element, renders the man’s arm going up and down an intentional action. But this is like asking

for the ingredients that, when added together, make up a human organism. Really the direction of

explanation goes the other way: just as a liver is what it is only when integrated in a whole

human body, so too the man’s arm’s going up and down is what it is only in reference to the

teleological unity that constitutes the parts of the man’s intentional action as means that the man

engaged towards achieving his settled aim of poisoning the inhabitants in the nearby house. The

man’s arm’s going up and down is a means undertaken for an end, and this means-end structure

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is precisely what the A–D order captures; and the A–D order itself is the content of the man’s

practical knowledge. So, the agent’s practical knowledge makes the bodily movement what it

is—a part of an intentional action that is occurrently unfolding in time.

The upshot is that we cannot answer Wittgenstein’s question in a decompositional way. We

can only say what makes a bodily movement an intentional action with reference to an agent’s

practical knowledge that both comprehends and constitutes the bodily movement in question as a

means directed towards a further end. Practical knowledge is what articulates bodily movements

into an intelligible means-end or teleological unity. Practical knowledge, as the formal principle

of this unity, makes the parts of an intentional action what they are. So there can be no question

of decomposing these parts into atoms that are rendered intentional actions by something

extrinsic to them.

To anticipate later discussion, it is important that this non-decompositional approach to

action does not go as far as utterly disintegrating the parts into the whole.19 On this latter

suggestion, we cannot speak of the parts of an intentional action at all, but merely the whole

intentional action. On such a view, an agent’s fine-grained practical knowledge of the various

intentional descriptions that constitute his intentional action are as it were flattened into but one

intentional description—the one under which he possesses knowledge of his end. (Anscombe

herself might be interpreted this way, since she speaks of the man’s knowledge of his D-ing

‘swallowing up’ his practical knowledge of his A-ing/B-ing/C-ing. Cf. 1957: 46.)

To take this suggestion, though, is to hold that the agent in Anscombe’s example possesses

practical knowledge only of one thing: poisoning the inhabitants. But surely the agent in

Anscombe’s example knows more than this. He also knows how he is getting this done. This is

why I have stressed that we can ‘move down’ the A–D order by specifying progressively more

19 I was pressed on this point by Akeel Bilgrami in conversation (December 3, 2019).

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articulate means that the agent takes in order to realize his end of D-ing. The suggestion at issue

runs into the mirror of this problem as well. If the agent possesses practical knowledge only of

D-ing (poisoning the inhabitants), then many of the events falling under apparently intentional

descriptions must be refused this status. We cannot ask the agent why he is operating the handle

of water pump, or why he is moving his arm up and down. If the agent possesses practical

knowledge only of poisoning the inhabitants, then these latter descriptions are not intentional

descriptions at all. Correspondingly we cannot pose the ‘Why?’-questions that correspond to

such descriptions: to the question “Why are you operating the water pump handle,” the agent

should have to refuse this question application altogether by saying, “I’m not operating the water

pump handle, I am poisoning the inhabitants.” Now, while it is certainly true that the action-

constitutive role of practical knowledge allows the agent who is operating the water pump handle

to say that he is D-ing (poisoning the inhabitants), this very practical knowledge allows him to

say more than this—namely, he can say that ‘I am A-ing/B-ing/C-ing.’ Were this not the case,

then the agent’s action under these more proximate descriptions—‘I am moving my arm up and

down’ / ‘I am operating the water pump’ / ‘I am replenishing the water supply’—would not be

intentional descriptions at all and his action, under these descriptions, would be unintelligible.

This consequence is implausible. Practical knowledge constitutes the parts of an intentional

action into a unity without thereby disintegrating the parts into the most distal end that the agent

hopes to realize. This is because practical knowledge is not just of an end, but of actions

undertaken for the sake of the end’s realization. The means-end structure is constituted with the

intentional action whose formal principle is the agent’s practical knowledge.

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Inferring and practical self-consciousness

I propose to vindicate the Action Thesis by generalizing the non-decompositional approach

to action that figures in Anscombe’s Intention. We will see that inferring to a conclusion counts

as intentional action on the very same grounds, and in the very same respects, as ordinary

intentional bodily action. And since the resulting conception is non-decompositional, it will pass

through between the horns of the dilemma facing causalist and dispositionalist accounts of

inferring.

Return now to the Taking Condition:

Taking Condition: Inferring necessarily involves (I) the thinker taking his premises to

support this conclusion and (II) drawing his conclusion because of that fact.

I will read the ‘because’ in sub-condition (II) as announcing a formal cause, or a formal principle

of unity. A thinker’s appreciation of what follows from what plays a similar role as an agent’s

practical knowledge of what I am doing, why I am doing it, and how I am getting it done: it

works to constitute the premise- and conclusion-episodes as the parts of a wider unity in the

thinker’s conscious stream of thought. These parts are explanatorily posterior to the whole in

which they figure, since apart from this inferential order they cannot figure as premises or

conclusion at all.

In working up to these claims, we must begin with a better understanding of what a thinker’s

taking is. In Chapter 3, I argued that a thinker’s taking consists in attitudinal commitments. This

commitment-theoretic account of sub-condition (I) of the Taking Condition, though, does not by

itself tell us what it is for a thinker to infer from p to q because of an attitudinal commitment. To

better understand sub-condition (II) of the Taking Condition, we must appeal to the notion of

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self-consciousness. I will argue that the ‘because’ in sub-condition (II) constitutes an inferring by

dint of a distinctive kind of self-consciousness of one’s own attitudinal commitments.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN INFERRING

What does it mean to say that inferring is self-conscious mental activity? Here I want to set

out a recent account of this question proposed by David Jenkins (2018) in working towards a

positive proposal of my own.

Self-consciousness is an awareness that a thinker has of oneself as oneself (Rödl 2007: Ch.

1). When one is self-conscious of some mental episode one is not merely conscious of something

that happens to be oneself. Rather, in one’s self-conscious grasp of the mental episode, one

consciously grasps that one is grasping some mental episode of oneself (Smith 2017). This is

what it means to say that self-consciousness is consciousness of oneself as oneself.

Self-conscious mental activity is thus a conscious grasp of what I am doing or undergoing.

Self-consciousness in this sense is distinct from reflection on what I am doing or undergoing.

Reflection on what one is doing or undergoing involves some separate higher-level state that

takes a first-order mental episode as its object. The best case for distinguishing self-

consciousness from such reflective apprehension is perhaps that of intentional bodily action

itself. Intentional bodily action is (at least frequently) self-conscious without being reflective: a

person who walks to the café may do so self-consciously without enjoying any explicit second-

order reflective state that represents his walking. Indeed, it is a commonplace in our ordinary

intentional activities that such bouts of reflection can interfere and hinder, rather than make

possible, the first-order intentional activity that it contemplates.

To carry this conception over to the case of inferring: inferring from p to q is self-conscious

in that when one infers, one is aware of oneself as oneself in inferring as one does. My inferring

from p to q is self-conscious in that it involves an awareness that I am so inferring. Again, this is

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not to introduce any explicit reflective belief about my own inferring as it takes place. In

inferring from p to q I need not introspectively reflect upon my own inferring in this way. Such a

reflective belief would be a belief about my first-order beliefs p and q. Perhaps we sometimes

take such a reflective stance towards our own beliefs as such. But this kind of reflective belief is

not necessary for inferring; it is not the sort of self-consciousness that, I am proposing, is

involved in every inferring.

My claim is that inferring involves self-consciousness. Inferring is not merely sometimes

self-conscious. Rather, inferring is necessarily self-conscious mental activity; a purported

inferring that fails to be self-conscious will be no inferring at all. This means that self-

consciousness of inferring is not a matter of apprehending one’s own inferring in a sensory

mode.20 When apprehending an object in a sensory mode, one’s apprehension of the object of

awareness is but contingently related to the object itself. To model self-consciousness of

inference after such sensory modes of awareness is to suppose, for instance, that my inferring q

from p reliably causes a consciousness of my inferring as my inferring.21 But since efficient

causes possess an existence that is distinct from their effects, any such causal relation can be only

contingent. This cannot secure the necessity connection between inferring and self-consciousness

of that very inferring (Jenkins 2018: §4.3).

Since we cannot understand self-consciousness of inferring as apprehension in a sensory

mode, self-consciousness “must be an indissoluble component of the self-conscious act itself”

(Kitcher 2011: 130; Jenkins 2018: Ch. 4). It is here that Jenkins proposes that self-knowledge of

one’s inferring is a conscious state or episode that is contemporaneous with the inferring itself

(2017: 106). On Jenkins’ proposal,

20 This point is frequently recorded in discussions of self-consciousness. See Jenkins (2018, Ch. 4) and references

therein, including O’Shaughnessy (2000: 106–7) and Kitcher (2011: 130). 21 See Koziolek (2017); for persuasive argument against the suggestion, see Jenkins (2018: 99–105).

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One knows that one is inferring when and because one infers whenever one infers. This is

not because one’s inference causes or is identical to knowledge of one’s inference, but

because when one infers a contemporaneous state which is one’s knowledge of one’s

inferring constitutively depends on the conscious occurrence which is one’s inference. On

this suggestion, when a self-conscious reasoner makes an inference this suffices for

knowledge of the inference where this is understood as a matter of the obtaining of a

contemporaneous state of awareness which constitutively depends on the conscious

occurrence which is the inference. (2018: 106)

On this proposal, inferring is self-conscious because inferring from p to q guarantees that

one knows that one is inferring q from p. For Jenkins, self-consciousness of inference is a

constitutive component of one’s inferring, so that the very act that is the inferring suffices for a

contemporaneous state or episode of self-consciousness of that very inferring. This proposal

appears to secure the right connection between inferring and self-consciousness of inferring.

Jenkins goes on to clarify that this proposal does not require some further explicit judging, since

“Coming to know does not always require conscious judgment in a mediating role” (2018: 108).

This qualification is important, since as already mentioned we must keep self-consciousness

distinct from reflection.

This allows Jenkins to understand what inferring is and when it occurs:

For one to infer q from p is for one to consciously accept p and then consciously accept q

where a contemporaneous state of knowledge that one is inferring q from p constitutively

depends on the conscious occurrence that is one’s acceptance of q […] An inference is a

kind of conscious event and conscious act. Namely, it is the conscious event and act of

acceptance which is one’s acceptance of that which one infers. (2018: 112)

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Jenkins here identifies an inferring with the episode that marks acceptance of the conclusion. On

this view, inferring is an episode of mere succession which constitutively involves a

contemporaneous state of self-knowledge of the transition from premise to conclusion. Jenkins

goes on to clarify the sense in which this species of self-conscious makes one’s inferring

intelligible to oneself, so that when one infers from p to q, one is thereby in touch with the

rational support that p provides for q.

There is a great deal to recommend Jenkins’ proposal (and I have learned much from his

treatment). But the view is open to objection. The objection can be introduced by pursuing

Jenkins’ answer to the question: When does an inferring take place in the stream of thought?

Jenkins asks: “What determines that one is inferring when one infers? The question is to be

understood as asking what, metaphysically speaking, settles that one is inferring when one

infers” (2018: 121). In contrast to causalist accounts of inferring, Jenkins writes that we

determine when an inferring occurs by way of the distinctive self-conscious knowledge we have

of its occurrence. As I have related, for Jenkins this self-conscious knowledge is constitutively

dependent on the occurrence of the inferring itself. “One’s inferences thus depend for their status

as inferences,” Jenkins has it, “upon one’s knowledge of them” (2018: 121). This proposal does

not stray into the inner sense model of self-consciousness that he rejects. Neither does Jenkins

accept that knowledge is conceptually or explanatorily posterior that which is known; if his

proposal is along the right lines, then just the opposite is true in the case of inference.

The trouble, though, is that this species of self-conscious self-knowledge, like all speculative

knowledge, is factive. I can have speculative knowledge of p only if p takes place or is the case.

My self-conscious self-knowledge that I infer q from p is no different in this respect. Like all

speculative knowledge, self-conscious self-knowledge of my occurrent inferring must be

“derived from the object known,” as Anscombe has it (1957: 87). My self-conscious self-

knowledge that I infer from p to q stands or falls as knowledge according to whether it accurately

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reflects the facts as they are independently of my self-conscious grasp of the object known. This

is something that Jenkins, too, seems to accept: he repeatedly claims that self-consciousness of

inferring constitutively depends upon the inferring itself.

But if this so, we cannot answer the question when inference occurs, metaphysically

speaking, by citing self-conscious knowledge of inference. This is because self-conscious self-

knowledge of the inferring, on Jenkins’ proposal, constitutively depends on the inferring’s having

taken place. Thus, to cite self-consciousness of my inferring q from p as grounds for asserting

that I have inferred q from p presumes that an inferring has indeed taken place. We can appeal to

self-consciousness of inferring as grounds for asserting that inferring has taken place only if self-

consciousness of inferring determines that the inferring takes place. In importing a speculative

model of self-conscious self-knowledge, though, Jenkins has opted for a direction of constitutive

dependence that runs in the opposite direction.22 Evidently, this problem only arises because

Jenkins is working with what, adapting from our prior discussion of Anscombe, we can term a

speculative conception of self-conscious self-knowledge. On this conception, inferring

constitutively involves a self-consciousness that must accurately reflect the obtaining of some

fact or occurrence of some episode.

Apparently, we require a practical conception of self-consciousness. A practical self-

consciousness will not reflect an inferring that it knows, but rather constitute an inferring by

serving as the formal cause of what it is conscious of. On this alternative conception, rather than

self-consciousness constitutively depending on inferring, the inferring will constitutively depend

on whether an agent possesses the requisite self-consciousness. Call this practical self-

consciousness, in distinction with speculative self-consciousness.

22 In addition, it is difficult to see, on this conception of self-conscious inference, how to vindicate the Action Thesis.

(It should be noted, though, that Jenkins is not out to vindicate any such thesis.) This is because there seems nothing

to distinguish self-consciousness of inferring per se from self-consciousness of purely receptive thought.

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PRACTICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

Practical self-consciousness does not constitutively depend upon the occurrence of an

inferring. Rather, inferring constitutively depends on the practical self-conscious grasp that a

thinker enjoys of the normative relations among intentional episodes in the stream of thought.

Practical self-consciousness is to inferring what practical knowledge is to intentionally acting.

As a species of self-consciousness, this practical grasp of one’s inferential activity will be a

grasp of one’s inferring, as one’s own inferring. What makes this species of self-consciousness

properly practical is that it is ‘the cause of what it understands.’ This is just what Ursula Coope

finds in the work of Thomas Aquinas. According to Coope’s interpretation of Aquinas, the power

to make rational judgments (to infer)

can be exercised in a way that is at once, and inseparably, a kind of self-knowing and a

kind of self-causing. More precisely, his [viz., Aquinas’] view is that because intellect is

self-reflective…it is capable of a certain kind of exercise, φ-ing, which is such that one

makes it the case that one is φ-ing by being aware of oneself as φ-ing. (Coope 2013: 7)

In what does this practical self-consciousness consist? How does practical self-

consciousness make inferring possible? I propose that we answer these questions just by drawing

on the Taking Condition, especially sub-condition (II). Just as Anscombe suggests that practical

knowledge of what I am doing and why constitutes an intentional action, practical self-

consciousness of what follows from constitutes a premise-conclusion order from the intentional

episodes within the conscious stream of thought.

An immediate problem arises for this proposal. Above, I followed Jenkins in the view that

self-consciousness of inferring consists in a contemporaneous state of self-knowledge that one is

inferring from p to q, where this knowledge constitutively depends on that very inferring. But

what is the content of this self-knowledgeable state? It cannot be a self-standing state that

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represents the very inference undertaken, namely the one from p to q. If this were the case, then

the idea of a practical self-consciousness would come down to this: that a state which is

contemporaneous with my inference from p to q, and which represents the very inference from p

to q, makes it the case that I infer from p to q. This leaves us with the need, though, to explain

how it is I come to have self-knowledge of the inference from p to q: how do I come to the self-

conscious grasp of the inference which explains the very inference it is knowledge of? This

question threatens a circular and uninformative account of inferring as constituted by practical

self-consciousness.

In this respect, practical self-consciousness appears to differ from Anscombe’s treatment of

practical knowledge of intentional bodily action. The present threat of circularity can be brought

out by considering this (apparent) difference. As we have seen, Anscombe holds that practical

knowledge of occurrent intentional action is knowledge that constitutes a certain form of

description—namely, the teleological unity evinced by the A–D order. It is not necessary that this

practical knowledge is sourced in some prior stretch of practical reasoning. All the same, it

reflects a possible exercise of practical deliberating, wherein the agent progressively calculates

more determinate means to realize the end from which deliberation begins. It is this practical

knowledge, this self-conscious grasp of the A–D order, which constitutes ‘mere bodily

movements’ as the parts of an intentional action. In this, the form of an intentional bodily action

is given by the practical knowledge wherein an agent grasps its occurrence. (Later, I will offer a

more specific proposal about how to understand how this knowledge is manifest in an intentional

agent.)

However, this cannot be transported to the case of inferring. My inferring from p to q cannot

be constituted by a practical representation that q follows from p. If that were so, then we should

need to appeal to a still further species of practical self-consciousness that represents, at a still

‘higher’ level, the inferential relation between p and q. This is the very supposition that launches

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a regress. To be sure, it not the same Carroll-style regress we have met with in the previous

chapter, as there is no suggestion here that the consciousness of q’s following from p is a premise

from which I infer that q follows from p. Rather, the regress arises from positing within that

which explains my inferring—a practical self-conscious grasp that q follows from p—the very

thing we want to explain, namely an inferring q from p that includes my taking it that p supports

q.

Luckily, no such ‘meta-inference’ needs to be ascribed to the thinker. Practical self-

consciousness is not a grasp that p follows from q, but rather a grasp of the rightness of the very

inferring that it constitutes. When I infer from p to q, I am self-conscious that inferring from p to

q is correct. Inferring is constituted by this practical self-consciousness of the rightness of the

very inferring that is underway. This self-consciousness of the rightness of the transition between

p and q is constituted by two elements working in tandem.23

The first element of practical self-consciousness is the grasp that the mental activity in which

I am engaged falls under a certain standard of success.24 The standard in question is not merely

truth, but more broadly truth in the service of achieving overall rational unity among my

intentional episodes (Rovane 1998). Practical self-consciousness articulates this demand by

imposing on an inferring a standard of success that must be met by the very inferring of which it

is self-conscious. In undertaking an epistemic inference, this demand for rational unity is itself

governed by the aim of truth: the inference is defective qua inference just in case the truth of the

conclusion is not guaranteed by the truth of the premise. At least, this is so for deductive

inference. Practical self-consciousness of inductive inferring is weaker, demanding only

likelihood of the truth of the conclusion given the (perhaps likely in turn) truth of the premise.)

23 Coope (2013: 10) also attributes this twofold structure to Aquinas, with some differences concerning the role of

rational unity in the overall account. I have learned from Coope’s interpretation of Aquinas. 24 Cf. my earlier discussion of Anscombe’s shopping list example.

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Practical self-consciousness of practical inferring likewise imposes a normative demand for

rational unity. But here the demand is itself governed with the aim of goodness or promotion of

the agent’s rational ends. In practical inferring, the transition from premise to conclusion is

oriented towards the formation of the sort of teleological unity that characterizes Anscombe’s A–

D order.

Second, practical self-consciousness involves a grasp that the very inferring underway

marks success in meeting the normative demand for rational unity, either by preserving truth or

preserving goodness. My transition in thought from p to q involves not only a grasp that this

transition falls under a normative demand, but also that the transition from p to q marks success

in this very demand. This second element of practical self-consciousness can be mistaken. I

might be mistaken in grasping that the transition from p to q satisfies the normative demand for

rational unity. This is an important possibility to accommodate: in some particular instance, the

inference from (p → q; ¬p) to ¬q might fail to meet the demand for rational unity because, in

that instance, the transition is not truth-preserving. But the thinker may fail to recognize this. Bad

reasoning still counts as reasoning: what distinguishes it from good reasoning is something

which may in some particular instance lie outside the thinker’s ken.

Practical self-consciousness of inferring is consciousness of myself in the midst of the

transition from p to q, of the demand for rational unity that normatively governs the transition,

and of the transition as a successful making-good on that demand. This practical self-

consciousness is not itself an inference; it is, instead, an inference-constituting grasp of a

transition in thought. I shall go on to explain how this practical self-consciousness constitutes the

inference that it grasps. Before doing so, it is important to ward off a potential misunderstanding.

In Chapter 2, I argued that we cannot understand inferring in instrumentalizing terms. That

is, we cannot understand a possible course of inferring going as follows:

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8. I want to aim at truth.

9. P

10. P → Q

11. The inference from P to Q is truth-preserving.

12. So, I can accept Q as a way to satisfy my aim for truth.

13. So, Q.

This model of inferring is instrumentalizing, I said, because it represents even every epistemic

inferring as something done in order to promote an explicit aim: namely, the aim to produce true

and knowledgeable beliefs. On this model every epistemic inference involves a practical

syllogism. Yet this model takes for granted the very thing we need to explain: if the thinker

cannot infer (13) from premises (9) and (10) together, the additional practical syllogistic

premises (8), (11), and (12) cannot help.

At this point it might be asked whether I have tacitly employed the very same

instrumentalizing conception of inferring. Aren’t the two elements making up practical self-

consciousness—grasp of the normative demand and grasp that the transition in thought satisfies

this demand—analogous to the major and minor premise of a practical syllogism? And if so,

haven’t we snuck in a kind of hidden practical syllogism tucked away inside every epistemic

inference, just as the above model (8)–(13) represents?

No. The grasp that constitutes a thinker’s practical self-consciousness is not itself a premise

that figures in the thinker’s reasoning. A thinker does not infer from his grasp of the intentional

episodes that figure as premises in his reasoning. Rather, it is practical self-consciousness which

constitutes the very relation that his premise-episodes are understood to bear to the conclusion-

episode. So it is not as though the thinker begins with a set of premise- and conclusion-episodes

which are brought into an inferential relation due to the addition of more premises. That really

would lead to the instrumentalizing conception of inferring that I rejected in Chapter 2. Practical

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self-consciousness does not supply additional premises at all; it rather constitutes an intelligible

premise-conclusion order holding among the contents of conscious intentional episodes.

This point is borne out, I think, by common sense reflection on our responsibility-practices

surrounding answerability for the attitudes. Suppose I do infer from p to q. If I am asked ‘Why

do you believe that q?’, I need cite only p—the premise that, in inferring, I take to support q. The

‘Why?’-question here does not ask for some additional practical syllogism that captures the

desirability of inferring to q in order to satisfy my desire for knowledgeable belief. The ‘Why?’-

question, in asking for the grounds from which I inferred that q, takes this structure for granted.

The elements comprising practical self-consciousness explain how the ‘Why?’-question is able to

presume these elements. Namely, it is because the ‘Why?’-question asks for the premises from

which one inferred to the conclusion cited in the question, and, on the view I am attempting to

set out, it is practical self-consciousness which makes the inference what it is at all.

In sum, along with Soteriou (2013) and Jenkins (2018) I hold that inferring involves

occurrent self-conscious self-knowledge. But whereas they model occurrent self-conscious self-

knowledge as constitutively dependent upon what it is knowledge of, on the present account the

direction of constitutive dependence moves in just the other direction. Practical self-

consciousness is an occurrent conscious episode that makes an inferring what it is. To see just

how this is so, the notion of practical self-consciousness needs to be integrated with Chapter 3’s

account of attitudinal commitment.

WHAT INFERENCE IS

We can now account for both sub-conditions of the Taking Condition by integrating the

foregoing account of practical self-consciousness with what was said in Chapter 3 regarding

attitudinal commitment.

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Taking Condition: Inferring necessarily involves (I) the thinker taking his premises to

support his conclusion and (II) drawing his conclusion because of that fact.

To briefly recapitulate my treatment of sub-condition (I): a thinker’s ‘taking it’ that his

premises support his conclusion does not consist in some separate premise or a disposition to

move from premise-episode to conclusion-episode. Rather, all of the normativity relevant for a

thinker’s taking lies within the very first-order attitudes from which he infers. Attitudinal

commitments represent the content of the thinker’s premises in a distinctive imperatival fashion:

as propositions or prospective actions that an agent ought to respect in subsequent thought and

action. From the engaged stance of reasoning and deliberating, the premises from which I infer

take on the character of rational obligations. This is because the attitudinal commitment to p, and

the attitudinal commitment to (p → q), agglomerate together in a normative demand to accept q.

From the engaged stance, the premises from which a thinker is prepared to infer are already rules

to reason by.

Inferring involves an occurrent transition between contents in the thinker’s conscious mental

life. Inferring to a conclusion is a dynamic conscious mental episode that involves taking a leap

or step in thought. Inferring to a conclusion, then, involves a thinker’s appreciation of normative

relations holding among contents that span over several conscious intentional episodes in the

stream of thought.

Practical self-consciousness is itself an occurrent episode of self-conscious self-knowledge.

Specifically, it is self-knowledge of the first-order occurrent intentional episodes that figure in the

inferring that is known. Suppose I infer from p to q. Because I infer from the engaged stance, the

intentional episode representing p figures as an attitudinal commitment to uphold the rational

obligations that are grounded in the (apparent) truth of p. These obligations concern e.g.

accepting p’s consequences and rejecting what is incompatible with p. But an inferring involves

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a dynamic transition from premise to conclusion—here, from p to q in the conscious stream of

thought. Practical self-consciousness is a comprehension that to make this transition and accept

that q is a making-good on the very attitudinal commitment to p that I am, from the engaged

stance, concerned to uphold. What is self-consciously self-known in an inferring is that the

attitudinal commitments that the thinker incurs in a premise are discharged in the conclusion-

episode. This is because when I enjoy practical self-consciousness of a transition between

intentional episodes, I grasp that the episodes in question are (a) assessable according to a

normative standard of correctness and (b) mark success according to that very standard. Practical

self-consciousness of an inferring is a self-conscious grasp that a thinker’s attitudinal

commitment to the premise is discharged by acceptance of the conclusion.

Without practical self-consciousness, one can enjoy only a mere succession of intentional

episodes. This is so even if these intentional episodes are taken in from the engaged stance that

reveals their imperatival dimension. Such a mere succession of intentional episodes would

consist in acknowledgement of one’s rational obligations to p and then in an occurrent conscious

episode that represents q. But there could be in this scenario no grasp that adopting a rational

obligation to q discharges my standing commitments to p. To infer q from p, I must have self-

conscious self-knowledge that accepting q is to make good on my standing commitment to p.

Sub-condition (II) of the Taking Condition requires that an agent infer from p to q because

of his taking it that p supports q. The ‘because’ in sub-condition (II) does not announce an

extrinsic efficient cause, but rather a formal cause, or a formal principle of unity, that makes an

inferring what it is. This formal principle of unity is the thinker’s practical self-conscious grasp

of his attitudinal commitments being discharged in the acceptance of a novel content. Therein,

the thinker grasps that a set of intentional episodes both falls under and succeeds according to a

rational obligation intrinsic to his attitudinal commitment. In this, practical self-consciousness

works in much the same way as practical knowledge of intentional action. Practical knowledge

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constitutes intentional action by bringing events under a certain form of description, one that

exhibits teleological unity. In the same way, a thinker’s practical self-consciousness of what

follows from what constitutes a series of conscious intentional episodes as a structured unity in

the stream of thought. This structured unity is not a teleological unity of means-end relations, of

course, since an inferring does not exhibit instrumentalizing relations. It is a more fundamental

rational unity, a premise-conclusion order. The parts of this integrated premise-conclusion order

are the occurrent intentional episodes in the stream of consciousness that make up the inferring,

such as the intentional episode that p and the one representing q. When these episodes figure in a

premise-conclusion order, q is self-consciously self-known as a discharging of the attitudinal

commitment to p. Practical self-consciousness of an inferring, like practical knowledge of an

intentional action, is thus ‘the cause of what it understands.’ This means not only that practical

self-consciousness always attends a thinker’s inferring to a conclusion; in addition it means that

without practical self-consciousness what occurs in a thinker’s conscious stream of thought does

not come under the description inferring to a conclusion at all (cf. Anscombe 1957: 87–88).

The thinker’s self-conscious appreciation that accepting q on the basis of p is a way of

unifying the episode representing p with the episode representing q. The premise-conclusion

order that is constituted by a thinker’s practical self-consciousness is a relation between p and q

such that in appreciating that p provides adequate support for q, one also thereby appreciates that

q is rationally reachable from p. Just as in the case of teleological unity among intentional act-

descriptions, then, a thinker can ‘move up’ the premise-conclusion order to discover conclusions

that are supported by grounds, or ‘move down’ from the conclusion to an appreciation of the

grounds for that conclusion. A thinker’s appreciation of this premise-conclusion order allows us

to understand the transition from p to q as a step or movement from a premise-episode to a

conclusion-episode as such. It is certainly appropriate to say, then, that a thinker infers to a

conclusion because of the fact that he takes his premises to support his conclusion.

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It might be worried that this emphasis on a thinker’s own self-conscious grasp of the

premise-conclusion order ushers in an overly psychologistic conception of inference. It may

appear that a good inference is just what a thinker presumes to be a good inference, however

erroneous the presumption may be. But recall that we are attempting to characterize how an

inferring occurs within a thinker’s conscious stream of thought, from within the thinker’s own

rational point of view. So, we need to distinguish between objectively good or bad inferences and

those that are merely apparently good or bad from the thinker’s point of view. In the good case,

apparently good inferrings involve a practical self-consciousness that constitutes a premise-

conclusion order among intentional episodes that, as an objective matter, involve a premise that

really does support the conclusion. In the bad case, one infers from p to q when in fact p does not

provide (adequate) support for q. This is to ‘appreciate’ a premise-conclusion order where in fact

none exists. But bad reasoning is still reasoning; and reasoning, I am arguing, requires that a

thinker appreciate at least an apparent premise-conclusion order among intentional episodes. By

the same token, there is more to good reasoning than merely seeming right: appreciating a

premise-conclusion order that really does exist among facts is to get on to an objective relation in

the world. So, I have not offered a psychologistic construal of good inference since non-

psychologistic relations of rational support exist in the objective world. (Or at least, such a

conclusion is compatible with everything I have said here.) A good inference is one that is made

up of contents that accurately reflect the facts.

PRACTICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND DECOMPOSITION

The foregoing formal causal reading of ‘because’ in the Taking Condition yields a non-

decompositional understanding of inferring. When it comes to practical self-consciousness of an

inferring, we can say with Lavin that “the whole is in the parts.” The parts of an inferring—

namely, the premise-episode(s) and the conclusion-episode—are what they are only in virtue of

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their being united in a whole. That whole is the premise-conclusion order, an order that is

constituted by a thinker’s self-conscious grasp that accepting the conclusion discharges the

rational obligations in the premise(s). Thus, the premise- and conclusion-episodes that are the

parts of a thinker’s inferring cannot be what they are apart from the thinker’s practical self-

consciousness. A mere succession is not rendered an inferring in virtue of some extrinsic factor,

but in virtue of the way the premise- and conclusion-episodes are apprehended together in the

stream of thought. All of this is strictly analogous to what Anscombe writes ab out the way

practical knowledge is constitutive of action. What makes a bodily movement an action is the

way it is apprehended as a means to an end; in the same way, what makes a succession of

intentional episodes an inferring is the way the thinker apprehends one of these episodes as a

conclusion reachable by the premise.

This non-decompositional approach to inferring evades the dilemma facing causalist

accounts and dispositional accounts, a dilemma that I described in a prior section of this chapter.

Here again is the dilemma. To satisfy the Taking Condition, the causalist can either (i) posit an

explicit premise as a cause of the conclusion-episode, a premise about what follows from what;

or (ii) account for the thinker’s taking by positing a network of causal dispositions. However,

horn (i) gives rise to a regress from which no inferring at all can issue, whereas horn (ii)

undermines sub-condition (II) of the Taking Condition since the play of dispositions renders the

thinker’s taking a mere epiphenomenon. The upshot is that the causalist cannot account for both

sub-conditions of the Taking Condition together.

Yet the non-decompositional approach canvassed here evades both horns. We needn’t

ascribe any additional premise whose vehicle plays an efficient causal role in producing the

inferring. The only premises in the inferring are those pertaining to the first-order matters which

bear on the thinker’s live deliberative question. We thereby sidestep Carroll-style regresses. With

respect to the second horn of this dilemma, the thinker’s ‘taking’ really does play a causal role in

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the inferring. The difference with extant theories of inferring, though, comes in when we specify

the kind of causality at issue. I contend that the relevant causal role is formal: a thinker’s taking

is the formal principle of unity that unites premise and conclusion in an inferring.

As I examined in the case of overt intentional action, it is important not to take this point

about non-decomposition too far. One might suggest that in taking a non-decompositional

approach to inferring, the separateness of the constituent premise- and conclusion-episodes is (as

it were) dissolved into a whole. According to this suggestion, the thinker enjoys only an

occurrent intentional episode that represents the contents of both the premise- and the

conclusion-episodes together. This suggestion is analogous to one I considered in connection

with Anscombe’s non-decompositional approach to intentional action. There, the suggestion was

that a non-decompositional approach to intentional action subsumes all of the teleological

structure holding among the parts of an intentional action into the ultimate end for which the

agent acts. On this suggestion, it is incorrect (or at least, inappropriate) to say that the man in

Anscombe’s example moves his arm in order to operate the pump in order to replenish the water

supply in order to poison the inhabitants; rather, he simply replenishes the water supply. Here,

the suggestion is that a non-decompositional approach to inferring subsumes all of the premise-

conclusion structure among the parts of an inferring into the conclusion that terminates the

thinker’s inquiry. On this suggestion, it is incorrect (or at least, inappropriate) to say that a

thinker’s inferring consists in two separate intentional episodes representing p and q respectively;

rather, inferring consists in a single intentional episode that represents the rational relation

between p and q together.

As before, the present suggestion threatens to dissolve the articulate structure evinced in the

premise-conclusion order. As I mentioned above, just as we can move up the A–D order to

determine why an agent acts, so too we can move down the A–D order to determine how he

prosecutes his aim. I pointed out above that the same is true when a thinker infers to a

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conclusion: one can move up the premise-conclusion order to determine the conclusion reached,

and down the order to determine the grounds in the light of which the thinker accepts the

conclusion. This articulate structure is important to preserve in an account of inferring. An

inferring is not merely the occurrent conscious contemplation of a proposition; rather, inferring

to a conclusion involves the grounds on the basis of which one infers.

It might be replied that the premise-conclusion structure is preserved in a single intentional

episode that represents the rational relation between p and q. For instance, I might enjoy an

occurrent conscious thought that If Alice is in the library, then Bill is at the library. This episode

represents that Alice’s presence at the library is a sufficient condition for Bill’s presence there. A

thinker who enjoys such an episode (and understands its content) can thus take Alice’s presence

at the library as a premise for the conclusion that Bill is at the library. While this may be so, the

resulting conception runs counter to the notion of inferring that we isolated back in Chapter 3.

There, I pointed out a distinction between a thinker’s conscious contemplation of a logically

structured content and the thinker’s inferring one content from another. Inferring to a conclusion

involves a thinker’s appreciation of normative relations that span the occurrence of two separate

intentional episodes, whereas the former does not. I might enjoy a conscious intentional episode

representing that If Alice is at the library, then Bill is at the library without inferring the

consequent of this conditional from its antecedent. I grant that conscious mental life frequently

involves the occurrence of intentional episodes that represent a logically structured content. But

such episodes are not my target in this dissertation. My target is the phenomenon of normative

relations that span distinct intentional episodes so that a thinker infers a conclusion from an

appreciation of the normative force of premises.

The upshot is that we cannot solve the problem of inference by seeking an inference-making

element that, when added to a case of mere succession, results in a thinker’s inferring to a

conclusion. It is the thinker’s self-conscious appreciation that the content represented by an

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intentional episode discharges an attitudinal commitment which makes that episode count as a

conclusion at all.

Intentional action as inferring to a conclusion

Over the course of this chapter I have prosecuted two parallel investigations. I have

suggested that the problem of action and the problem of inference are frequently misconceived in

the same way: as asking for the decompositional ingredients that, when added together, make an

action or an inferring what it is. Both problems can be advanced by denying this assumption. The

chief motivation for taking this non-decompositional line to inferring is that one thereby

sidesteps the dilemma facing decompositional accounts. And there is another upshot in the

offing: if we take this non-decompositional approach to inferring, we can see why inferring is an

action, indeed a type of fully intentional action.

Let’s begin on the side of overt intentional action. How does Anscombe’s approach

illuminate the nature of action? How does her distinctive non-decompositional approach explain

what an action is? Certainly not by proffering a type of efficient cause that precedes a bodily

movement that is by itself considered non-intentional. Rather, we have seen that Anscombe’s

approach begins by (hypothetically) eliciting from an agent the reasons for which he acts. When

the agent responds (or is disposed to respond) in the right way to such a ‘Why?’-question, the

description that figures in the ‘Why?’-question is an intentional one, as is the description by

which the agent picks out the further end for the sake of which he is acting. For Anscombe—as

for Davidson (cf. above, note 8)—an event is an action when it falls under an intentional

description in just this way. Typically, the very same intentional action will fall under several

intentional descriptions, so that e.g. a man’s arm movement is describable as an operating of the

water pump, as a replenishing of the water supply, and as a poisoning of the inhabitants of a

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nearby house. The teleological unity among these descriptions makes the events so described

count as intentional action. In turn, this teleological unity as a whole is constituted by the agent’s

practical knowledge of what I am doing, why I am doing, and how I am getting it done. This is

what it means to say, with Anscombe, that an event is an action in virtue of its intelligibility in a

certain light: this intelligibility comes down to understanding the means-end relations holding

among the intentional descriptions that figure in the agent’s practical knowledge. For Anscombe,

practical knowledge is action-constitutive.

Here we must register an important aspect of the relation between means and ends,

something I remarked upon back in Chapter 2. The notion of a means is a normative notion, one

that we understand in terms of a reason for action. As John Gibbons puts the point, “To see A as a

means to B is to see the connection between A and B as a reason for A-ing. To see A as a means

rather than merely as a cause or a necessary or sufficient condition is to see it as something you

have reason to do” (2009: 90). This is manifest in ordinary deliberation, wherein an agent begins

with a practical commitment to some end and concludes with a commitment to pursue some

specific means to its realization. Take, for instance, the practical syllogism we considered back in

Chapter 2:

14. I ought to: stay awake this afternoon and get some exercise.

15. Walking to the café is the (all-things-considered) best way to stay awake this afternoon

and get some exercise.

16. So, I shall walk to the café.

The major premise in this practical syllogism specifies my end; the minor premise consists in

some instrumental knowledge about how to realize my end; and the syllogism concludes in my

settling on the means that the minor premise links to the realization of my end. The means

specified in (15) figures as a premise that supports the conclusion that I settle upon. To figure as a

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premise in this way, step (15) must present to me an instrumental reason to pursue the means, a

reason whose normative force is sourced in the instrumental connection these means bear to the

end I am committed to advancing. This is how the notion of a means is already normative.

I reiterate that Anscombe explicitly denies that every intentional action is preceded by

explicit reasoning of this sort. Her claim, though, is that the teleological unity among the

intentional descriptions of an action is a deliberative order, in that the practical syllogism

“describes an order which is there whenever actions are done with intentions” (1957: 80). This

allows us to better understand what is involved in saying that the intentional descriptions of my

action hang together as a teleological unity. To say this means that when I walk to the café in

order to get some exercise with the further aim of staying awake this afternoon, the teleological

unity among these intentional descriptions is underwritten by a deeper and more fundamental

premise-conclusion order. Hence, in acting intentionally something like the Taking Condition

holds: in performing a means undertaken in the service of a further end, (I) I take these means to

be rationally supported by the premises that are jointly constituted by my end and by my

instrumental know-how; and (II) I perform the means because of this very relation of rational

support. Though Anscombe does not explicitly draw this moral in quite these terms, I submit that

it is a natural way of understanding her claim that the practical syllogism describes an order that

is present in every intentional action. Of course, the premise-conclusion order that underwrites

the teleological unity of an intentional action is not specifically epistemic. But this only means

that the premise-conclusion order at issue is practical, describable in terms of a practical

syllogism rather than epistemic inference. The premise-conclusion order admits of both practical

and epistemic varieties.

On this basis we might be inclined to understand Anscombe’s claim in terms of aptness. On

this conception, my practical knowledge is action-constitutive in virtue of my grasp that the

intentional description of my means is apt to figure as a conclusion that is reachable from certain

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premises; these premises are in turn given by the intentional descriptions under which I enjoy

practical knowledge of my end and the instrumental know-how that I exploit in furtherance of

this end. However, I might enjoy such a grasp without performing any intentional action at all. I

might idly contemplate the practical syllogism (7)–(9) the evening before the afternoon in

question, and only later, the next day, put this knowledge to use in furtherance of my end. Such a

scenario is quite distinct from what Anscombe seems to have in mind. The line of argument in

Intention characterizes what an action is when considered as a unified process occurrently

underway (cf. Lavin 2016). The premise-conclusion order in its teleological species is present in

the agent’s self-conscious activity as he acts; and it is this self-consciousness which gives an

intelligible structure to what is happening as the agent engages in teleological activity. Practical

knowledge is action-constitutive in virtue of the way it renders a structure and form to an

occurrent bout of bodily and extra-bodily activity as it progresses. (Recall Anscombe’s slogan: I

do what happens.)

If this is the right way to read Anscombe, then practical knowledge is not best conceived as

a static state that represents intentional descriptions that are merely apt to figure in a practical

syllogism. Rather, practical knowledge must be conceived as an activity. My walking to the café

cannot be considered an intentional action unless in walking to the café I self-consciously grasp

this very activity as something I am doing for the sake of a further end. In effect, to self-

consciously engage a means as such is to draw the conclusion of the practical syllogism whose

distinctive teleological order is present whenever an action is done with an intention. Notice that

this interpretation of Anscombe’s claim preserves her emphatic denial that every intentional

action is preceded by some explicit chain of deliberating in thought. It is to say, though, that

every intentional action is constituted by reasoning—it is just that the reasoning in question is

sometimes done with the body, as it were.

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On this interpretation, action-constitutive practical knowledge is a species of inferential

activity. To act for the sake of an end just is to infer to a conclusion. Inferring to a conclusion, in

turn, consists in a practically self-conscious grasp that my attitudinal commitments are rightly

discharged in the acceptance or endorsement of a conclusion. Anscombe is rightly skeptical that

inferring must take place before the commencement of a bodily movement. Sometimes, the

acceptance or endorsement of the relevant conclusion-episode is the bodily movement that is the

means undertaken for the sake of my further end. These further ends, in turn, are the attitudinal

commitments that constitute the premises from which I infer in acting as I do (and for the sake of

which I act). This practical self-consciousness constitutes a span of normative relations between

intentional episodes—namely, the occurrent intentional descriptions under which I possess

practical knowledge of what I am doing as I am getting it done. In sum: when I act intentionally,

the teleological unity among the intentional descriptions under which I possess practical

knowledge of my intentional action is itself sourced in the practical self-consciousness that

constitutes an inferring. And so, intentional action itself is to be understood as a kind of

inferential activity.

To be sure, this sort of inferential activity is manifested in diverse ways across the three

different cases we have been considering. In epistemic inference, practical self-consciousness

constitutes a premise-conclusion order of evidentiary support; in practical inference, one of

instrumental connection with a further end; and in intentional action, the bodily movement is a

conclusion drawn to instrumentally further such an end. But these variations are species of a

single genus: an agent’s self-conscious grasp that constitutes an intelligible premise-conclusion

order among occurrent intentional episodes.

This result vindicates the Action Thesis—the thesis that inferring to a conclusion in thought

is an intentional yet nonvoluntary action. In the first section of this chapter, I indicated that it is

sufficient for an action to count as intentional if it is done for reasons. Inferring to a conclusion is

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an episode that is done for reasons in the sense that a thinker’s practical self-conscious grasp of

the rational support that his premises grant for his conclusion is what makes an inferring the very

sort of episode that it is. This is the very ‘formal causal’ sense of ‘because’ that, I argued, allows

us to make sense of sub-condition (II) of the Taking Condition on inferring.

Importantly, this also allows us to make sense of what it is to act for reasons even in the case

of overt intentional action. An agent acts for reasons when he enjoys practical knowledge of his

bodily movement under an intentional description that figures as a conclusion drawn from

attitudinal commitments that are the reasons from which he acts. Since the ‘for a reason’

formulation is understood univocally across epistemic inferring, practical inferring, and

occurrent intentional bodily action, we vindicate the Action Thesis by pointing to the very same

action-constitutive factor across all three cases. Importantly, this way of vindicating the Action

Thesis does not claim that inferring possesses the action-making quality that renders a mere

bodily movement an intentional action. Rather, inferring must be an intentional action because

ordinary bodily intentional actions themselves count as such in virtue of practical knowledge;

and this practical knowledge, I suggest, is itself a way of inferring to a conclusion (‘with the

body,’ as it were). Action is constituted by a kind of self-consciousness that is equally manifested

in certain bodily performances as well as in conscious thought. In this, inferring to a conclusion

counts as intentional action on the very same grounds as overt intentional actions.

I want to close this chapter by considering two worries about this manner of vindicating the

Action Thesis. The first has to do with voluntariness; the second, with intentional control.

The Action Thesis says that inferring to a conclusion is an intentional yet nonvoluntary

intentional action. But if intentional bodily actions are just ways of inferring to a conclusion,

then it would appear that inferring is at least sometimes voluntary. Intentional bodily action is

voluntary in both of our senses of ‘voluntary’: I can φ for any reason that recommends φ-ing, and

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I can φ just out of an intention to do so. Are we to count voluntary intentional bodily actions as

voluntary inferences?

As to the reason-based sense of voluntariness, notice that even in intentional bodily action

the reasons-for-which I φ are constrained by the range of considerations I take to grant count in

favor of φ-ing. So long as I am rational, I cannot φ for reason R unless I really do take R to

provide sufficient support for φ-ing, and this is not something subject to my whims. So there is

still a sense in which even intentional bodily action is nonvoluntary. Still, there remains a

significant contrast between intentional bodily action and inferring to a conclusion in thought.

Inferring to a conclusion in thought is nonvoluntary in that I cannot form a given belief or

intention for reasons that recommend having that belief or intention, but only for reasons that

recommend the content of the belief or the intention that will be formed thereby. In light of this,

the Action Thesis should be understood as claiming only that voluntariness is not an essential

feature of intentional action—it is a feature that can be present in intentional bodily action but go

missing in the case of inferring to a conclusion in thought. On this reading of the Action Thesis,

inferring to a conclusion in thought is a nonvoluntary intentional action; whereas intentional

bodily action is a form of voluntary inferring (with the proviso that one cannot φ for R unless one

really does take R to support φ-ing, which is not a voluntary phenomenon). This reading of the

Action Thesis allows for voluntary as well as involuntary intentional actions, which is supported

by anyone who thinks that judging and deciding are actions (see e.g. McHugh 2011).

I turn now to the will-based sense of voluntariness. An action is voluntary in this sense in

that I can φ just out of an intention to do so, whereas I cannot infer to the belief that p or to the

intention to ψ just out of an intention to do so. Here it is important to understand how future-

directed intentions, so important for the will-based sense of voluntariness, function in the

diachronic life of a practically rational agent. These intentions are themselves typically the

outcome of reasoning, and where they are rational they are at least apt to come in for revision in

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the light of reasoning. Future-directed intentions work to spare a cognitively limited agent the

considerable costs of always having to deliberate, here and now, on what to do (cf. Bratman

1987). By settling now on my conduct at a later time, I spare myself the burden of having to

decide then what I shall do. The outcome of this future-directed deliberating is a stable intention

to act, one that I carry forward up until the point of action. What matters for my diachronic life as

a practically rational agent is that at the point of action I should be reliably ‘in touch with’ an all-

things-considered case for performing the best action among the alternatives open to me. And

this is just what such a forward-looking intention enables me to do: intentions work to preserve

and to transmit a correct decision that was undertaken from an earlier time. At the point of

action, I needn’t reenter deliberation to figure out what to do; I can simply execute the intention

that is the persisting outcome of the deliberation I engaged in earlier.25

In turn, the relationship between an intention and an intention-executing voluntary action is

nevertheless an inferential one. Inferring to an intention is nonvoluntary, in that the intentions I

form via reasoning are constrained by my take on what reasons there are to act. The resulting

intention can thus function to preserve (apparently) good reasoning—reasoning that embodies an

appropriate regard for the practical reasons that figure in my deliberating. Having concluded my

practical reasoning in thought, the intention remains as something like a standing

recommendation for how to act, given my earlier nonvoluntary inferring in thought. In ways I

have already explained in connection with Anscombe’s shopping list example, at the point of

action my intention takes on the status of a rule or normative standard that measures the

correctness of the performance I engage in to realize it. To execute an intention, I must enjoy a

practical self-consciousness which constitutes a premise-conclusion order holding among my

standing intention and my performance. In this way, the intention figures as an attitudinal

25 There are many accounts available of how long-range intentions manage to keep us appropriately in touch with the

reasons that figured in earlier deliberation. See e.g. Rovane (1998: 146–159), Ferraro (2010), Heeney (2020).

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commitment that I discharge in my performance. As I have already argued, this just is to infer to

a conclusion.

Voluntariness in the will-based sense thus plays a key role in the diachronic life of a

practically rational agent. It is because I can φ just from an intention to φ—an intention that is

sourced in deliberation about what I ought to do—that intentions can work to spare us the costs

of having always to redeliberate at the point of action. Seen in this light, voluntariness in the

will-based sense is what allows the execution of a long-term intention to count as discharging the

very attitudinal commitments in the light of which intentions are formed in the first place. If

inferring to a conclusion is fundamentally a matter of discharging attitudinal commitments, then

this second will-based sense of voluntariness in intentional bodily action does not take away

from my claim that inferring is fundamental to all intentional agency. On the contrary, will-based

voluntariness allows us to discharge attitudinal commitments that are not presently in view.

This brings me to the second worry, this one having to do with control. It might be thought

that intentional action is fundamentally a matter of control. In turn, control is plausibly construed

as an agent’s ability to exercise a will-bases sense of voluntariness. On this conception, I control

some event or process just to the extent that I can bring that event or process into accord with an

antecedent intention that I possess for how it ought to occur or unfold. But since inferring to a

conclusion in thought is not voluntary in this will-based sense, it appears we do not exercise

control over what we infer. On these grounds it might be claimed that inferring to a conclusion in

thought cannot be intentional action.

My reply is to resist this identification of intentional action and will-based voluntary control.

We are inclined to make this identification, I suggest, only out of a (reasonable enough)

preoccupation with intention-executing bodily action. To be sure, this sort of control is highly

significant for our diachronic lives. But when we follow Anscombe in better understanding what

is involved in making an intentional action what it is, we ought to resist the identification. While

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will-based voluntary control is an important feature of some intentional actions, it is not an

essential feature of intentional action as such. Inferring to a conclusion in thought, while an

intentional action, is nonvoluntary and thus not subject to the kind of control at issue in will-

based voluntariness.

We can best understand the Action Thesis as the claim that inferring in thought is a

nonvoluntary intentional action. Inferrings ‘with the body’—intentional bodily actions

constituted by practical knowledge—are indeed voluntary. But even such bodily performances

stand as conclusions relative to the attitudinal commitments in the light of which they are

undertaken.

Conclusion

I began this chapter by drawing a close analogy between the problem of action and the

problem of inference. Since decompositional approaches to the problem of inference face a

dilemma that I described over Chapter 3, I sought to exhibit Anscombe’s non-decompositional

approach to intentional action. I developed a parallel non-decompositional approach to inferring

to a conclusion in thought. Once this non-decompositional approach to inferring to a conclusion

(in thought) is made explicit, however, we see that intentional bodily action is itself an inferential

phenomenon. This vindication of the Action Thesis does not subsume inferring to a conclusion to

intentional bodily action; on the contrary, the argument in this chapter vindicates the Action

Thesis by subsuming intentional bodily action to the phenomenon of inferring to a conclusion in

thought. This vindication of the Action Thesis also allows us to make good on both sub-

conditions of the Taking Condition, thereby completing the action-theoretic account of inference

I began in Chapter 3.

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In the next chapter, I want to conclude this dissertation’s argument by showing how inferring

to a conclusion (in thought), conceived as an intentional action along the lines described over this

and the previous chapter, grounds our moral responsibility for the attitudes of belief and

intention.

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Chapter 5

Responsibility Through Reasoning

Recounting the desiderata

I began in Chapter 1 by arguing that we bear moral responsibility for the attitudes of belief

and intention. I also argued there that we seek an account of the attitudinal agency that

legitimates attitudinal blame. To this end, over Chapters 3–4 I set out an action-theoretic account

of inferring. I have argued that inferring to a conclusion in thought is an intentional yet

nonvoluntary mental action. In this concluding chapter my task is to bring this notion of inferring

to bear on the problems with which we began in Chapter 1. These problems concern the peculiar

species of responsibility that we bear for the attitudes of belief and intention. There, I suggested

that responsibility for the attitudes is grounded in a thinker’s performance of mental actions.

Now, my task is to show how inferring to a conclusion in thought—conceived along the lines I

have sketched over Chapters 3–4—grounds the legitimacy of attitudinal blame.

I will begin by recounting each desideratum along with its rationale. This will serve to

summarize the main line of argument of the dissertation up until this point. Then I take the

desiderata individually but out of order, starting with Desiderata 2–5 and concluding with

Desideratum 1 concerning the grounding for our responsibility for the attitudes.

Desideratum 1: Responsibility-grounding. An account of attitudinal agency must explain

why are morally responsible for our beliefs and intentions when we are. It must also work to

legitimate the forceful rational criticism involved in attitudinal blame—blaming another on

account of what he believes or intends. Correlatively, our account of attitudinal agency ought to

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guide our intuitions about why we are not morally responsible for beliefs and intentions in

circumstances where attitudinal blame is inappropriate.

To satisfy this desideratum, our account must be sensitive to our responsibility-practices

surrounding the attitudes. In Chapter 1, I argued that these practices evince our answerability for

belief and intention. We are answerable for our beliefs and intentions in that we are appropriate

targets for requests for justification for the relevant items. This justificatory demand can be

communicated via Anscombe’s ‘Why?’-question: Why do you believe that p? Why do you intend

to φ? Standing as a proper target for these justificatory demands means that the agent is

susceptible to distinctive patterns of normative appraisal according to how well or poorly the

recipient meets the demand. Suppose I am asked to satisfy the demand to justify my belief that I

shall pass my dissertation defense. I might reply that I believe I shall pass because having this

belief helps me to sleep at night. This is a (practical) reason to enjoy the belief that p, but it is not

a reason why p, as it does not at all bear on p’s truth. Or again, I might be asked to satisfy the

demand to justify my intention to drink a mild toxin. I reply, “I will be rewarded handsomely for

having this intention.” Here again we find a reason to enjoy the intention to drink the toxin but

not a reason to drink it. The reason in question does not all bear on whether to drink the toxin.

These responses to the ‘Why?’-question open me to distinctive patterns of normative appraisal.

These appraisals go beyond ‘mere grading’ (as when I judge that I am shorter and less handsome

than my brother). They can reach genuine forms of blame. There is a sense in which a thinker is

at fault for persisting in the belief that p for reasons that fail to offer the requisite support for p,

or the intention to φ for reasons that fail to render φ-ing good, desirable, valuable, and so on.

At the same time, there are attitudes for which these normative appraisals seem to be ruled

out by our responsibility-practices. Consider my perceptually-based belief that there is a blue

coffee mug before me on the desk. Though these beliefs can certainly be appraised according to a

normative standard (say, accuracy within a specified range), our responsibility-practices do not

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license attitudinal praise and blame for them. A thinker believes falsely but is not open to

attitudinal blame for undergoing an illusion, for instance. Here, it seems that our responsibility-

practices embody a tacit policy of excusal or exemption.

To satisfy the first desideratum, our account must explain why we are answerable for our

beliefs and intentions, when we are; why we are not, when we are not; and how it is that we

come in for genuine forms of praise and blame, rather than mere grading, on account of what we

believe and what we intend.

In Chapter 1, I registered an Activity Condition on responsibility. According to this

condition, responsibility for x is grounded in agency over x, or with respect to x, or with respect

to an event or condition implicated in the obtaining of x. If an agent is directly responsible for

some episode or state of affairs, it seems reasonable to suppose that the agent did or does

something that explains the occurrence or obtaining of x. In at least a wide range of paradigmatic

cases, responsibility implies agency. Where this is not the case—where the ‘Why?’-question is

put to someone whose agency is not implicated in the state or episode that the question asks

about—it seems that the ‘Why?’-question merely falls to the ground. The ‘Why?’-question is

simply refused application by the reply, “I had nothing to do with that.”

Another reason to impose the Activity Condition centers on an ethical concern regarding the

fairness of blaming someone. As Watson recognizes, holding another accountable for an action

typically involves the imposition of sanctions, penalties, or even bodily punishments. It is unfair

to subject another to such penalties unless the (putative) wrongdoer enjoyed, at the point of

action, the opportunity to avoid incurring them (Watson 1996: 237). Of course, we do not subject

one another to punishment or sanction on account of what they believe or intend. Still, a version

of Watson’s point is applicable to the attitudes. It seems we ought not direct attitudinal blame to

another unless there is something the agent can do to rectify the blameworthy state of affairs. In

addition to the Activity Condition, an account of our agency over the attitudes should make good

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on this ethical dimension of interpersonal attitudinal blame. We can understand both of these

facets of attitudinal blame by making out a sense in which an agent acts to bring about his beliefs

and intentions.

Desideratum 2: Nonvoluntariness. It would be quick work to explain our responsibility for

the attitudes by carrying over to the case of our mental lives the very same agency-conditions

that ground our responsibility for ordinary bodily action. It is reasonable to suppose that my

answerability for walking to the café is grounded in whatever goes into making my walking an

intentional action on my part. And part of what makes the action intentional, we might think, is

that it is voluntary in the reason- and will-based senses. Recall: an action is voluntary in the

reason-based sense if it can be performed for any reason that recommends its performance; and it

is voluntary in the will-based sense if it can be brought about by an intention to bring it about.

Overt intentional actions are voluntary in both senses. I can walk to the café for any reason that

recommends doing so. The reasons-for-which I settle on walking to the café will then be reflected

in the intention that is formed in my deciding to walk there. This intention goes on to play a

controlling role in my subsequent behavior. Accordingly, I will be able to provision these reasons

in response to a ‘Why?’-question directed at me in respect of my action of walking to the café.1

It is at least a reasonable starting point in an account of my responsibility for walking to the café

that doing so was a voluntary action of mine, for on that count my walking to the café is a

manifestation of my intentional agency.

Yet, this starting point is not available to us in an explanation of our answerability for belief

and intention. This is because our attitudes are nonvoluntary. As I have mentioned in previous

chapters, our attitudes are nonvoluntary in both senses of ‘voluntary.’ In the reason-based sense,

1 Here I am not making the ‘classical compatibilist’ point that contemplation of a different set of reasons would lead

me to perform the very same action I perform. My point is that the twin senses of ‘voluntariness’ that I have set out

in this dissertation form a very plausible starting point for theorizing about why that my performance can be

considered an action for which I am answerable.

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you cannot believe that p for any reason that makes the belief that p a good belief to have. The

same goes for intentions to φ. Nor can you believe that p or intend to φ in the will-based sense of

voluntariness, by dint of enjoying some attitude-controlling intention to instill in yourself the

belief that p or the intention to φ. For if our beliefs and intentions were voluntary in both of these

senses, there would be nothing to keep us from believing and intending ‘at will.’ In turn, this

would mean that I might believe that p irrespective of the evidence I take to bear on whether p or

intend to φ irrespective of the desirability of φ-ing. And this it seems we cannot do. We cannot

believe or intend ‘at will.’ We must ground our responsibility for the attitudes in a form of

agency that we exercise over belief and intention. But this form of agency must be nonvoluntary.

These first two desiderata thus combine to place an important constraint on attitudinal

agency. We must understand what it is to exercise a nonvoluntary form of agency over our own

minds. In what might such a form of agency consist? In addition to the first two desiderata, then,

we should also hope to learn something about this exercise of agency and why we should count

the generation of (some of our) beliefs and intentions as something that an agent does, rather

than something that an agent merely undergoes in conscious mental life.

Desideratum 3: Productivity. One thing we should hope to learn about this non-voluntary

exercise of agency is the sense in which belief- and intention-generation, qua expression of

agency, counts as a doing or an action on one’s part. Ordinary bodily actions are productive: they

involve the bringing about of events or episodes that, absent the action, otherwise would not

have occurred. My raising my arm from a stationary to an upright position involves my arm’s

taking on that trajectory through space over a given interval of time; Jones’ killing of Smith

involves the occurrence of Smith’s death. As against those who locate mental agency in

something like an epistemic basing relation, I argued in Chapter 1 that our attitudinal agency is

likewise productive in that through its exercise an agent generates novel beliefs and intentions.

In this way, we can understand the generation of belief and intention as playing an analogous

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role in attitudinal agency as the rising of my arm, or Smith’s death, plays in intentional bodily

action: as constituting the result of the intentional exercise of attitudinal agency.

I closed Chapter 1 with the suggestion that we perform non-voluntary mental actions that

generate beliefs and intentions. I nominated the candidate mental episode-types of judging-that-p

and deciding-to-φ which consist in the generation of beliefs and intentions, respectively.

Desideratum 4: Non-instrumentalizing. One promising way to provide an account in line

with the aforementioned constraint is to construe judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ just like any

other intentional bodily action: as mental episodes that come about as the causal upshot of an

intention. This is the suggestion that I pursued, and ultimately jettisoned, in Chapter 2. According

to the instrumentalist about mental action, judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ are not themselves

mental action-types; instead, they are passive mental episodes that we bring about by performing

proximate means that go on to cause a judging or a deciding. An agent may open reasoning or

inquiry with the intention to come to some judging or deciding or other; but the specific judging-

that-p or deciding-to-φ is never itself an intentional mental action.

I argued in Chapter 2 that we cannot apply this model of attitude-formative mental action. In

the first place, we do not form intentions to judge and decide just as we do. If our attitudes were

formed by such intentions, then the actual judging or deciding at issue would be rendered

redundant, for the agent, in merely possessing the intention to judge-that-p or decide-to-φ, would

already be committed to the truth of p or to φ-ing. And in any case, if I could judge-that-p or

decide-to-φ just out of an intention to judge or decide, then believing and intending really would

be voluntary in just the sense that Desideratum 2 rules out.

This is why the instrumentalist proposes that judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ are the

outcome of distal intentions to do something that eventuates in a belief or an intention. This is an

instrumentalizing conception of judging and deciding, since it holds that judging and deciding

are mental actions that are causally mediated by the agent’s performance of more immediate

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mental means. On this instrumentalizing conception, I am responsible for the belief that p and

the intention to φ in the same way that I am responsible for the distal causal consequences of the

bodily actions I perform ‘immediately,’ without having to do something else in order to bring

them about. In Chapter 2, I centered discussion on the proposal that we perform reflective mental

actions, such as turning one’s attention to considerations within one’s repertoire or posing

questions to oneself. Some have suggested that these reflective mental actions initiate ‘ballistic’

causal processes that eventuate in one’s coming to some attitude or other.

I argued in Chapter 2 that this model of belief- and intention-formation falls prey to a

vicious regress from which no attitude at all can issue. I will briefly reiterate this argument with

respect to the generation of intention. Suppose an agent performs a reflective mental action in

order to induce some decision or other. But if that is so, then the agent has already decided—

namely, the agent has decided to perform the reflective mental action in question in order to

bring about some decision or other to act. So, we cannot appeal to reflective mental actions that

are at some instrumental ‘remove’ from the mental episode that the agent, in endeavoring to

deliberate, performs the reflective mental action in order to bring about.

The fourth desideratum on our account is that it must be non-instrumentalizing. One way to

frame a non-instrumentalizing account of our answerability for the attitudes is to look for the

locus of mental action not in instrumental mediation, but in the very inferential transitions to a

novel attitude that close reasoning and deliberating. Judging-that-p and deciding-to-φ are not

episodes we act in order to bring about. Instead, to judge and to decide is just to infer to a

conclusion.

Desideratum 5: The unity of action. The picture of attitudinal agency that emerges from these

desiderata seems to differ starkly from ordinary intentional bodily action. Notice, first, that

intentional bodily action is instrumentalizing. This is evinced by the reasons-explanations to

which actions are susceptible. My action of walking to the café can be explained by citing (a) my

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desire to obtain a cup of coffee and (b) my belief that by walking to the café I will be in position

to realize this desire. This is an instrumentalizing act-explanation: it identifies my action of

walking to the café as a means to some further end that I hope to bring about by dint of its

performance. Because intentional bodily action is instrumentalizing, there is a ready sense for

why the voluntariness of action points up a respect in which an agent controls the course of his

bodily movements. The elements (a) and (b) that make up an instrumentalizing action-

explanation designate reasons that the agent takes to count in favor of the very action underway

(cf. Hieronymi 2011). Clearly, these instrumentalizing action-explanations rest on the

presupposition that the belief/desire complex (or its contents) plays a guiding or executive role in

the obtaining of the action that it explains. And this connection between instrumentalizing act-

explanations, voluntariness, and control plausibly secures a familiar form of responsibility for the

action the agent performs.

This overriding explanation of responsibility is not available to us, though, if we hold to

Desiderata 1–4. This is because these desiderata call for an account of attitudinal agency that is

nonvoluntary, non-instrumentalizing, and yet nevertheless productive and responsibility-

grounding. This leaves us with a potential worry. Even if we ground responsibility for the

attitudes in the indicated sort of attitudinal agency, will it not effectively tear asunder the concept

of ‘action’? Will we not be forced to admit that there are ‘two kinds of agency,’ as Pamela

Hieronymi (2009) argues? It will be all to the good if, instead, we can preserve the unity of

action by explaining why the mental actions that ground responsibility for the attitudes are

nonvoluntary, non-instrumentalizing, productive, and of the very same kind as ordinary

intentional bodily actions. This is our fifth and last desideratum—to provide an account of

attitudinal agency that respects the unity of action.

My burden for the rest of the chapter is to show how the account of reasoning—inferring to

a conclusion in thought—satisfies all five of these desiderata. In prosecuting this account, I will

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take the desiderata somewhat out of order. As I have indicated, the general shape of the account I

want to offer grounds responsibility for the attitudes in a type of intentional mental action that

normally generates the attitudes for which one is directly responsible. But this must be a type of

intentional mental action that satisfies Desiderata 2–5. In keeping with this, I will begin with

these latter desiderata, showing how the account of inferring offered so far is non-voluntary,

productive, non-instrumentalizing, and of a kind with ordinary intentional bodily action. This

will position us to understand how inferring to a conclusion grounds responsibility for the

attitudes.

Desideratum 2: Nonvoluntariness

Starting with nonvoluntariness: what is it that makes inferring nonvoluntary? Crucial in this

connection is the Taking Condition on inferring (Boghossian 2014: 4):

Taking Condition: Inferring necessarily involves (I) the thinker taking his premises to

support his conclusion and (II) drawing his conclusion because of that fact.

When a thinker infers from p to q, he must take p to support that q. Analogously, when he infers

to the intention to φ, he must take the practical reasons from which he infers to support φ-ing.

The Taking Condition renders inferring nonvoluntary. I cannot infer from p to q for any

reason I take in favor of making this inference. An eccentric billionaire might offer me an

extravagant reward for inferring from p to q. This incentive certainly generates a compelling

reason for me to infer from p to q. But my attempts to net this reward will come to nothing

unless, from the engaged stance of inquiry, I reckon that p provides sufficient support for q. And

the same is true when I infer to an intention. By extension, I cannot enjoy the belief that p or the

intention to φ for any reason I take to count in favor of having that very belief or intention. The

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reasons-for-which I can believe that p or intend to φ are constrained by what I take, from my

own point of view, to count in favor of the truth that p or for doing φ.

On these points I agree with Pamela Hieronymi (2005, 2006, 2008, 2009). With Hieronymi,

this way of preserving nonvoluntariness leaves room for ways of manipulating our own minds in

such a way as to instill the belief that p or intention to φ in ways that are not sensitive

considerations that support p and φ-ing, respectively. For instance, I might take a belief- or

intention-inducing pill. Upon taking this pill, I will be left with some belief or intention which I

most want to have, irrespective of considerations that normatively support the content of the

belief in question, or which count in favor of performing the action I am left intending. As

Hieronymi (2006) points out, taking such an attitude-inducing pill is fully voluntary: I can take

such a pill for any reason I take to recommend having the belief that p or the intention to φ. For

instance, I might induce in myself the belief that I will pass my dissertation defense for the

reason that having his belief helps me to sleep at night. And I might induce the intention to Drink

the mild toxin for the reason that having this intention will net me a reward from an eccentric

billionaire. But these ways of influencing my own mind do not abide the Taking Condition.

While they do register my appreciation of the reasons for having the belief that p or intention to

φ, their genesis does not involve my appreciation of considerations that bear on p or on φ-ing. In

this, attitude inducement does not abide the Taking Condition, and cannot count as inferring.

They thus present no challenge to the claim that inferring is nonvoluntary—since the indicated

methods are not processes of reasoning at all. They are, rather, ways of fixing one’s attitudes in

ways that circumvent reasoning, which is constrained by the Taking Condition.

To be sure, there is certainly a process of practical reasoning at play in these examples.

Specifically, the examples involve practical reasoning that terminates in the intention to take a

pill that will induce some belief that p or intention to φ. But these stretches of practical reasoning

consist in inferrings which do abide the Taking Condition, where the conclusion is an intention to

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induce the relevant attitude. These intentions in turn are hostage to one’s taking it that there is

sufficient practical reason to induce the attitude in question. (In the above case, the eccentric

billionaire’s extravagant offer might be worth the ‘cost’ of a false belief.) And these conclusions

are reached by considerations that count in favor of these very intentions to induce the attitude.

I turn to the second sense of ‘voluntariness.’ In this second will-based sense, an action is

voluntary when I can perform that action just out of an intention to do it. Inferring is

nonvoluntary in this sense as well. I cannot infer from p to q just out of an intention to do so, for

the very same reason: my inferring from p to q is constrained by my take on what is the case. If I

could infer from p to q just out of an intention to do so, and then inferring would also be

voluntary in the reason-based sense, since my intentions in turn are constrained by the reasons I

take to support the performance of the intended action. Since inferring to a conclusion in thought

is nonvoluntary in the first (reason-based) sense, it must also be nonvoluntary in this second

(will-based) sense.

At this point, we can use the notion of voluntariness to clarify the relationship between

inferring and reasoning. In contrast with inferring to a conclusion, reasoning is voluntary. I can

set myself the deliberative questions ‘Whether p?’ and ‘Whether to φ?’ for any reason that

motivates the search for an answer. And I can turn my attention to these questions just out of an

intention to do so. Reasoning, then, is a voluntary conscious mental activity. But it is also one

that takes on a concrete formal aim or telos: the resolution of a deliberative question (such as

‘Whether p’ or ‘Whether to φ’) in such a way as to mark overall rational unity among a thinker’s

intentional episodes. It is this formal aim which distinguishes genuine reasoning (practical as

well as epistemic) from idle mind-wandering, brainstorming, or randomizing plays of

association. Reasoning is thus oriented towards conclusion in an inferring. So, while there may

be some stretches of reasoning that do not terminate successfully in the resolution of a thinker’s

deliberative question, reasoning cannot be what it is if it does not aim towards inferring. On the

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other hand, inferring to a conclusion does suffice for a stretch of conscious mental activity to

count as reasoning.

Desideratum 3: Productivity

Inferring is also a productive type of intentional episode. This is so for two reasons. In the

first place, an inferring is an occurrent episode in the stream of thought. Inferring is something

that happens. Qua occurrent episode, inferring shares an ontological category with intentional

bodily actions and other non-actional events. As in Chapter 1, we can distinguish here between

occurrent episodes and states. The difference is marked by how entities in either category take up

time (Steward 1997; Soteriou 2013). States, while they might have a time of onset, do not take

up time in the way that episodes do. Standing propositional attitudes such as beliefs and

intentions are surely mental states, whereas conscious mental happenings in the stream of

thought—e.g. a judging-that-p or a deciding-to-φ—are occurrent intentional episodes. Evidently,

inferring to a conclusion belongs in this latter class. An inferring is a conscious episode that

occurs at some determinate time in the thinker’s stream of thought. Inferrings involve a

conscious transition, step, or leap to a conclusion.

Secondly, inferring to a conclusion is paradigmatically an attitude-generative transition.

When a thinker infers from p to q, the episode that represents q persists in the form of a

corresponding stably persisting attitude with the same content. This is most familiar in the case of

belief. Suppose I infer from All men are mortal and Socrates is a man to Socrates is mortal. The

conclusion of this inferring is a judging-that-Socrates is mortal. The occurrence of this judging

marks the onslaught of a corresponding belief that Socrates is mortal. Paradigmatically, this

belief takes the form of an enduring attitudinal commitment. This is the sense in which inferring

to a conclusion is attitude-generative: the conclusion of an inferring marks the formation of a

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corresponding attitude on the thinker’s part. If this were not so, then it would be hard to make

sense of the idea that inferring is a route to novel knowledge. At least paradigmatically, we grow

our store of standing attitudes by engaging in reasoning and inferring to new conclusions. This

could not be done unless inferring were attitude-generative in the sense at issue, at least

paradigmatically. (Later, I shall consider deviations from the paradigmatic cases, in which one’s

inferring to q does not result in the stable acquisition of a novel attitude.)

Given that inferring is paradigmatically attitude-generative, we can designate the formation

of an attitude as the characteristic result of an inferring. In Chapter 2, I described results as the

necessary components of an action that are by themselves insufficient for the occurrence of an

action of the associated type. For instance, the result of my arm-raising is the rising of my arm,

and the result of my killing Smith is Smith’s death. In the same way, the generation of a belief or

intention is the result of an inferring.2 The result of an action is normally that which the action

produces or brings about. This is why actions cannot be identified with their results: my arm-

raising is not the rising of my arm, but rather the episode that consists in bringing it about that

my arm rises (McCann 1998: Ch. 4). An action produces a result but does not consist merely in

the result’s occurrence. Inferrings have the same structure. An inferring is not the occurrence of

the conclusion-episode, as such an episode can perfectly well occur without an inferring having

taken place. An inferring is rather the dynamic episode that partly consists in the occurrence of

the conclusion-episode. So, we can designate attitude-formation as the result of an inferring, just

as arm-rising is the result of arm-raising and Smith’s death is the result of killing Smith. In virtue

of their ontological-temporal category and their status as attitude-generative episodes, inferrings

are productive mental episodes. They are the right kinds of things to count as a thinker’s doing.

2 What about cases in which a thinker infers from p to q but the generated belief that q is not retained? I do not think

that these are cases of an inferring that fails to generate an attitude. After all, the judging -that-q which is the

conclusion of the inference marks the onset of the attitude. In the indicated cases, the attitude is merely exceedingly

short-lived.

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The natural suggestion is that judging-that-p brings about the belief that p, whereas deciding-

to-φ brings about the intention to φ. Now, it need not be claimed that judging is the only way to

bring about the belief that p; there may be ways of coming to believe that p without the agent’s

judging-that-p. The same goes for deciding-to-φ.

But Matthew Boyle (2009; 2011) has presented a dilemma for this natural suggestion.

Boyle asks: At the time when an agent judges-that-p, does the agent at that time believe that p? If

so, then judging-that-p does not produce a corresponding belief at all, but instead merely

expresses a belief that the agent already holds. On the other hand: if the agent in judging-that-p

does not believe that p at the time of the judging, it is hard to see what judging could possibly

consist in. An agent who judges-that-p must therein take p to be true; and if the agent takes p to

be true, how can we deny that the agent believes that p? This seems to throw us back onto the

first horn of the dilemma.

The way out of the dilemma is to claim that judging-that-p is a dynamical event-type, one

that consists in the formation of a belief that p. Judging and believing are not distinct existences.

Rather, judging-that-p is the onset of the belief that p, so that judging-that-p brings about the

belief that p by being a constitutive earliest temporal part of the belief that p. On this view, the

episode of judging and the episode of coming-to-believe that p are token identical. This reply

blunts the first horn of Boyle’s dilemma. We can maintain that at the time when the agent judges-

that-p, he believes that p in that very moment. But it does not follow that the agent believed p

before the judging took place since the time of judging is the onset of the belief.

Such a dynamical understanding of judging and deciding fits well with my proposal that to

judge-that-p or decide-to-φ is simply to make an epistemic or practical inference (respectively)

that accords with the Taking Condition. What it is to perform an inference involves an agent’s

moving from a (set of) premise-episode(s) to a conclusion-episode. The inference is something

more than the mere occurrence of the conclusion-episode; rather, the inference consists in the

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dynamical change within an agent’s stream of thought from one episode to another. On this view,

reasoning is a productive species of agency in that it involves coming to new attitudes on the

rational basis of those intentional episodes that form one’s prior deliberative position.

This is a promising strategy, but it faces an immediate question. There seem to be cases in

which an occurrent judging that p fails to give rise to a stable belief that p. Christopher Peacocke

provides this widely-cited case:

Someone may judge that undergraduate degrees from countries other than their own are of

an equal standard to her own, and excellent reasons may be operative in her assertions to

that effect. All the same, it may be quite clear, in decisions she makes on hiring, or in

making recommendations, that she does not really have this belief at all. (Peacocke 1998:

90)

Such cases suggest that an agent can judge-that-p without thereby forming the stable belief that

p. If so, then such a judging will be extrinsic from the stable belief that is typically or even

paradigmatically associated with the judging. This possibility directs us back to the second horn

of Boyle’s dilemma. Addressing this challenge will help point up a distinctive advantage offered

by the commitment-theoretic approach I canvassed in Chapter 3.

Notice that it is part of Peacocke’s example that ‘excellent reasons are operative’ in the

administrator’s judging that undergraduate degrees from countries other than her own (say, the

UK) are of an equal standard to her own (say, those issued in the USA). On my proposal that

inferring is attitude-formative, to say that such reasons are ‘operative’ is just to say that the

administrator infers from these reasons that UK degrees are equal to USA degrees (all else

equal). This means that the administrator, in forming this belief, appreciates that certain of her

own normative commitments are discharged in accepting that UK degrees are equal to those

issued in the USA. On this basis, the administrator falls short of her attitudinal commitments in

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failing to uphold that UK degrees are of an equal standard to degrees issued in the USA.

Furthermore, this latter belief about the equality of degrees issued in the UK and the USA is one

that ought to surface in her behavior, especially in ‘the decisions she makes on hiring, or in

making recommendations,’ and like matters. Crucially, this is something of which the

administrator possesses self-conscious self-knowledge. On the commitment- and action-theoretic

account of inferring I have sketched over Chapters 3–4, we can readily diagnose this

administrator as an agent who falls well short of her commitments.

This helps to clarify the real upshot of Peacocke’s example. The example purports to evince a

case of judging-that-p without the corresponding belief that p. And we are encouraged to say that

the agent lacks the belief that p because the agent’s actions fail to accord with the judging. This

verdict is too hasty, though. It overlooks an important possibility: that the agent, in making

decisions about hiring or recommendations, falls short of her attitudinal commitments. Here we

have an agent whose attitudinal commitments stand in stark tension. To be sure, the reasons that

the administrator possesses certainly recommend resolving the conflict in the direction of

fairness in hiring and recommendations. But that is just to say that the administrator is

criticizably irrational, in that her behavior fails to live up to her epistemic commitments. (Or, to

say the same thing differently, the administrator fails to discharge her epistemic commitments in

action.) The superior pedigree that the administrator attaches to undergraduate degrees issued in

her own country may be upheld by dint of akrasia, self-deception, bad faith, or any number of

rational faults on the administrator’s part. But casting attitudes as commitments allows us an

important latitude in ascribing them to agents, since it belongs to the nature of a commitment that

an agent can be at fault by failing to live up to it. Failing to live up to one’s commitment does not

disparage the attribution of that commitment. Rather, what disparages the very attribution of a

commitment is the failure to take oneself to be at fault for failing to live up to it, as Bilgrami

argues (2006: 241–242). Our administrator—supposing with Peacocke that her judging is based

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on excellent ‘operative’ reasons—surely would take herself to be open to rational criticism on the

basis of her failure to live up to her epistemic commitments in action. Otherwise, we should

question whether we really have been given a case in which the agent’s judging accords with the

Taking Condition.

This theoretical alternative is afforded to us only by recognizing that our attitudes are

commitments, possessive of an imperatival dimension that one can fail to discharge in

subsequent behavior. Once we recognize the normative dimension of the attitudes, though, we

can diagnose Peacocke’s administrator as just such an agent. The administrator does have the

belief—the attitudinal commitment—that corresponds with her judging. It is just that the

administrator fails to live up to the commitment that is partly constitutive of that belief. To

challenge our claim that judging-that-p consists in the formation of the corresponding belief that

p, then, we require an agent who judges-that-p, and so satisfies the Taking Condition in doing so,

while nevertheless subsequently refusing to accept criticism (even self-criticism, issued ‘in

private’) for failing to discharge the commitment to p in further epistemic and practical dealings.

I claim that any such case will only dampen our conviction that the agent’s inferring really does

satisfy the Taking Condition.

By extension, since there is no worry about judging-that-p without the corresponding belief

that p, we may accept the dynamical solution to Boyle’s dilemma: judging-that-p consists in the

dynamic formation of the belief that p, and analogously deciding-to-φ and the intention to φ.

Desideratum 4: Non-instrumentalizing

Inferring is non-instrumentalizing. A thinker infers from p to q not for reasons that

recommend this inference, but because the thinker, in reasoning, takes p to bear positively on

whether q. As I discussed before, a thinker might induce the belief that q in some other way (by

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taking a drug, say). Along these lines, the thinker might induce the occurrence of an intentional

episode that represents that q every time the thinker enjoys an occurrent intentional episode

representing that p. But neither form of inducement counts as an inferring. This is because in

neither form of inducement is the ultimate explanation for the conclusion-episode sourced in the

thinker’s taking it that the episode is supported by a premise-episode. And so, the episodes in

question do not really make for a premise-conclusion unity, at all.

It might be thought that this line of thought breaks down for the case of practical reasoning,

reasoning that terminates in an intention to φ. Practical reasoning is terminated in an intention to

φ undertaken for reasons that recommend φ-ing by pointing up φ-ing as good, desirable,

valuable, and so on. Unless one is deliberating as to a final end, though, practical reasons that

count in favor of φ-ing will do so by showing ways that φ-ing will contribute to some further

aim. If I begin with the aim to ingest some caffeine, then the fact that I can attain caffeine at the

café will count as a consideration in favor of walking to the café. This consideration constitutes

for me an instrumental reason: a reason that counts in favor of walking to the café by pointing up

its positive instrumental contribution to some further aim, that of ingesting caffeine. Doesn’t this

render inferring to an intention instrumentalizing in the forbidden sense?

No. Inferring to the intention to φ for instrumental reasons for φ-ing is in perfect keeping

with what makes for a good inference. What Desideratum 4 rules out is inferring to the intention

to φ for reasons that instrumentally rationalize having the intention to φ, rather than φ-ing itself.

For as we have seen many times, there are instrumental reasons for having the intention to φ that

do not at all bear on whether to φ. But if I could infer to the intention to φ for these reasons of the

‘wrong kind,’ then inferring would be voluntary. Since inferring is non-voluntary, these are not

reasons-for-which I can infer to the intention to φ. Suitably understood, then, inferring to a

conclusion—even to a practical conclusion—is non-instrumentalizing.

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Desideratum 5: The Unity of Action

While inferring to a conclusion is productive, the fact that it is nonvoluntary and non-

instrumentalizing seems to mark it off from more familiar exercises of rational agency. This is

Pamela Hieronymi’s contention in “Two Kinds of Agency” (2009). There, Hieronymi argues that

the agency we exercise over our attitudes is a complex of two more basic kinds of agency (2009:

138). In this section, I want to set out Hieronymi’s arguments for this view, noting as I do many

deep points of agreement. Ultimately, I will argue that when we better understand each of these

putatively distinct kinds of agency, there are few grounds for distinguishing them after all. There

is but one kind of intentional rational agency, and its paradigmatic exercise is fully on display in

both inferring to a conclusion and executing an intention in bodily action.

Hieronymi endorses a normative conception of the attitudes of belief and intention. She

writes that beliefs and intentions are constituted by a thinker’s commitments, such as a

commitment to (the truth of) p or to (the goodness, desirability, value in) φ-ing. In “Two Kinds of

Agency,” Hieronymi works from an initial assumption about these attitudes: namely, that beliefs

and intentions “embody their subject’s answer to some question or set of questions” (2009: 138).

For instance, a thinker’s belief that p embodies his answer to the question whether p, whereas his

intention to φ embodies his answer to the question whether to φ. “Insofar as one intends to φ,”

Hieronymi goes on, “one is vulnerable to certain sorts of criticisms and open to certain sorts of

questions—in particular, one is open to questions and criticisms that would be satisfied by

reasons that (one takes to) bear positively on whether to φ”—and ditto for belief (2009: 138). For

Hieronymi, a thinker believes that p/intends to φ if and only if the thinker is committed to a

positive answer to the question that the attitude embodies (2009: 139).

One way to exercise control over what you believe or what you intend, then, is to change

your answer to the relevant questions. As Hieronymi puts it, “we control these aspects of our

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minds because, as we change our mind, our mind changes—as we form or revise our take on

things, we form or revise our attitudes” (2009: 140). Hieronymi calls this evaluative control. You

exercise evaluative control over your attitudes when you answer for yourself positively the

question whether p and therein believe that p, or when you answer for yourself positively the

question whether to φ and therein intend to φ. Evaluative control consists in settling questions for

oneself, which therein form attitudes, and which place a thinker ‘on the hook’ to answer

corresponding ‘Why?’-questions with respect to these very attitudes.

So understood, inferring to a conclusion qualifies as a kind of evaluative control.3 A thinker

infers to a conclusion by recognizing the normative force of the reasons that bear positively on

the deliberative question that he has set himself to answer. This self-conscious recognition of the

premises is what constitutes the conclusion as what it is—an answer to one’s deliberative

question. On the account of inferring I have sketched over Chapters 3–4, it appears that inferring

to a conclusion is a paradigmatic type of exercise of evaluative control.

Hieronymi describes another form of control, managerial control, which is more readily

associated with intentional rational agency. In exercising managerial control, an agent does

things to bring the world into accord with the representations that he has of it. In exercises of

managerial control, we “take actions designed to affect [ordinary objects] according to our

purposes” (2009: 140). I exercise managerial control over the items on my desk, for instance, by

arranging them to accord with my intentions for how they ought to be arranged on the desk’s

surface. Managerial control has two features that evaluative control does not. First, managerial

control is voluntary in the reason-based sense. I can (say) take a sip from the coffee mug on my

desk for any reason that recommends doing so, including instrumental reasons that connect

3 Hieronymi thinks that there are forms of evaluative control that do not consist in inferring to a conclusion (2009:

143, note 5). It is difficult, though, to see what this could amount to, given that evaluative control involves one’s

self-conscious recognition of his take with respect to the question whether p or whether to φ. I argue for this below.

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coffee sipping to further aims I act in order to realize. Secondly, a kind of “reflective distance”

separates an agent from the objects of his exercise of managerial control (2009: 144). When I act

on an intention to drink from my coffee mug, the mug is the object of my awareness by dint of

figuring in the content of my intention to lift the mug to lips. Since, Hieronymi says, “we form

our intentions by settling for ourselves a question that represents our action under some

description, then it seems that our action is, in some sense, an object of our thought” (2009: 145).

Evaluative control lacks these two features. Evaluative control is nonvoluntary. And when I

settle for myself the question whether p or whether to φ, I do not have the (prospective) belief

that p or intention to φ ‘in mind’ as the object of my thought. When I settle for myself the

question whether p or whether to φ, my awareness is directed toward the (apparent) fact that p or

to the prospect of φ-ing, and not the generation of an attitude of belief or intention with respect to

these items. This contrasts with how the coffee mug before me figures in my awareness as I act

upon it. In light of this contrast, Hieronymi says that evaluative control is without the

“paradigmatic features” that mark intentional bodily actions.

Why, then, count evaluative control as a kind of agency at all? Hieronymi’s argument on this

score appeals to the formation of intention. According to her, “it seems that the forming of an

intention must be an exercise of agency, if anything is” (2009: 150). But forming an intention is

nonvoluntary and not itself the object of reflective awareness. Rather, forming an intention is

done paradigmatically by exercising evaluative control—by settling positively for oneself

whether to act. So, Hieronymi concludes, it turns out agency need not be voluntary and need not

be marked by a characteristic sort of reflective distance.

But why must intention-formation constitute an exercise of agency if anything is?

Presumably because intentions play a role in rendering a great many actions intentional. A great

many of our actions count as intentional because in φ-ing I am doing just what I have the

intention to do. This thought is natural enough, but it cannot be a sure ground for our conviction

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that the formation of intention is itself an exercise of intentional agency. Hobbes, for instance,

dismisses this very thought. Hobbes holds that active bodily performances are indeed rendered

active in virtue of their relation to prior intentions; but he also holds that these very active-

making intentions are formed passively. Hobbes writes, “I acknowledge this liberty, that I can do

if I will, but to say, I can will if I will, I take to be an absurd speech.”4 Prima facie, Hobbes’

position seems consistent: so far, we have no positive argument for the claim that the formation

of intention must itself be an exercise of rational agency. Call this Hobbes’ Demand: it is the

demand for an explanation why the formation of intention must itself be an exercise of agency.

To rectify this lacuna, we must better understand what is involved in the exercise of

evaluative control. Doing so will show that evaluative control is agentive when it consists in

inferring to a conclusion; inferring to a conclusion, in turn, is a manifestation of intentional

agency (as per the argument over Chapters 3–4). On the other hand, managerial control will be

explicated in the very same terms. The upshot will be that evaluative as well as managerial

control are sourced in the very same sort of inferential agency that is exercised most prominently

in a thinker’s inferring to a conclusion. In this way, the account presented here will preserve the

unity of action not by subsuming inferring to a conclusion to intention-executing bodily action,

but by subsuming intention-executing bodily action to the inferring to a conclusion. (This will

reinforce from another angle a conclusion from Chapter 4.)

To commence the first leg of this argument, let us return to evaluative control. As we have

seen, Hieronymi tells us that evaluative control is exercised in settling positively the question

whether p or the question whether to φ. (In what follows, to save space I will treat with the case

of intending, since the very same considerations apply also to forming the belief that p by

settling positively whether p.) But what is involved in settling positively the question whether to

4 See e.g. Chappell (1999: 16); quoted in Pink (2004: 61). Hobbes identifies action with voluntariness, thus ruling

out the possibility of intentional nonvoluntary action. See Pink (2007) for lucid discussion.

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φ? In the first case, settling positively the question whether to φ cannot consist merely in the

occurrent thought that one shall φ. One might enjoy an occurrent thought that one shall φ without

ever being committed to φ-ing (as when one merely supposes that one shall φ solely to reason

out the probable consequences supposing one were to φ). But the positive affirmation that that

one shall φ is not sufficient for settling for oneself positively the question whether to φ. This is

because one might affirm that I shall φ in recognition of the commitment to φ-ing while already

being settled on φ-ing. This occurs when one re-affirms one’s commitment to oneself (as I might

do in running through my plans for the day). This is the practical analog of enjoying an occurrent

thought that p when one already enjoys a standing commitment to a positive answer to the

question whether p (and therein believes that p). Settling positively the question embodied in an

attitude cannot simply consist in rehearsing to oneself a positive answer to that question.

Similarly, settling positively the question whether to φ cannot occur if one is already

committed to a positive answer to that question. Settling positively the question whether to φ is

to form the intention to φ. But I cannot form the intention to φ if I already intend to φ. This is

because one cannot possess two tokens of the very same attitude (cf. McCann 1998: 144–145). I

cannot enjoy two intentions to φ: if I already have an intention to φ, then I cannot form this

intention over again. The most I might do is reaffirm an intention that I already enjoy (say, in the

face of anticipated weakness of resolve to follow through with my plan to φ). If settling the

question whether to φ is a way of forming the intention to φ, then, there is no way to settle again

the question whether to φ if I have already positively settled this question.5

5 Of course, we sometimes reopen a question we have already settled. For instance, I might reopen the question

whether to φ even though I already possess a settled long-term intention to φ. It is rational to reopen the question

whether to φ when one encounters novel reasons counting against one’s settled plans. But if one closes such a

reopened inquiry by settling on the very same intention to φ, then I am inclined to say that the intention is abolished

and a new one with the same content as before reformed. If the intention to φ is never abolished, though, then one

never really abandons the intention; rather, one engages in practical reasoning under the supposition that one’s mind

is not really settled when in fact it is. Thanks to Carol Rovane for bringing this to my attention.

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If settling positively one’s answer to a question is to count at all as a way of controlling

one’s attitudes, then, it must be the case that settling positively an answer to a question works to

generate a novel attitude that was not already present at the time of settling.

How can settling the question whether to φ work to generate a novel intention to φ? And

how can an intention to φ “embody” this positive appraisal of the case for φ-ing? We find a clue

in Hieronymi’s description of what this settling involves. She tells us that settling the question

positively whether to φ therein renders one “vulnerable to certain sorts of criticisms and open to

certain sorts of questions—in particular, one is open to questions and criticisms that would be

satisfied by reasons that (one takes to) bear positively on whether to φ” (2009: 138). Here,

Hieronymi indicates that settling on φ-ing—rather than being already settled on φ-ing—is a

transition that renders one answerable for φ-ing. Being answerable for φ-ing means that one is in

position to offer reasons that support φ-ing, reasons that bear positively on the course of action

one (now) intends to execute. For one to settle positively the question whether to φ, then, one

must do so in the acknowledgement of reasons that recommend φ-ing. At least, this must be so if

we are to preserve the close connection between becoming settled on φ-ing and being in position

to answer the ‘Why?’-question with respect to the intention that is therein formed. Call this the

answerability constraint on settling positively the question whether to φ: whatever else we want

to say about this transition, this transition must position the agent to answer the ‘Why?’-question

whose applicability marks a thinker’s answerability for the intention that results from this very

transition.

Notice, now, that the answerability constraint rules out the prospect of an agent’s settling

positively the question whether to φ in the absence of grasping grounds that count in favor of φ-

ing. In the absence of any such grasp of positive grounds for φ-ing, it is difficult to see just why

settling suffices to place one in position to answer the range of questions that Hieronymi

identifies. Surely part of the interest in Hieronymi’s notion of evaluative control is that settling

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positively the question whether to φ differs starkly, in its normative profile, from the onset of a

sneeze or the coming-to-mind of random thoughts that pass away just as soon one’s awareness

lights upon them. In contrast, we can readily satisfy the answerability constraint by making it

constitutive of settling positively the question whether to φ that an agent settles this question

positively in appreciating some range of positive grounds for that answer, and answering in

recognition of these very grounds. When I settle positively the question whether to walk to the

café, then, I do so in recognizing the normative force of reasons why I ought to walk there, given

my other aims (such as ingesting some caffeine and stretching my legs). But if the intention

comes over me without such a recognition—if I simply find myself with the intention to φ that

embodies a positive answer to the question whether to φ—it remains mysterious just why I am

rightly subject to the justificatory demands that give force to the answerability constraint. The

best way to meet this constraint, I submit, is to accept the present suggestion: an agent settles

positively the question whether to φ in the recognition of grounds that positively recommend φ-

ing.

Furthermore, it will not suffice for meeting the answerability constraint to say that an agent

settles positively the question whether to φ in recognition of grounds that positively recommend

φ-ing unless the agent’s intention to φ is formed because of that very recognition. If the

recognition of grounds is not the operative explanatory factor in the agent’s coming to settle the

question whether to φ, then we are no better off satisfying the answerability constraint than we

were before we took up the suggestion regarding an agent’s recognition of grounds.

At this point we have simply imposed the Taking Condition on settling positively the

question whether to φ. An agent cannot settle positively the question whether to φ unless (I) in

the recognition of grounds that positively recommend φ-ing and (II) the agent settles positively

the question whether to φ because of this very recognition. And this means that when an agent

settles positively the question whether to φ, the thinker transitions to the commitment to φ-ing

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because the intention to φ stands as the enduring conclusion to which the agent inferred from

premises that the agent took to support φ-ing. If this is right, then to settle just is to infer to a

conclusion And if to settle is to infer, then it must be that the exercise of evaluative control is to

infer to a conclusion in thought.

I have been arguing that in order for Hieronymi’s notion of evaluative control to do the work

that she enlists for it—in order for evaluative control to be a way of forming novel attitudes for

which one is subsequently answerable—evaluative control must consist in a thinker’s inferring to

a conclusion. Hieronymi explicitly rejects this result (cf. 2009: 143, n. 5). Nevertheless, it has the

advantage of answering Hobbes’ Demand. Recall, Hobbes’ Demand is a request for an

explanation why the formation of an intention must be agentive. Why can’t it be that our

intentions are both causes of bodily movements that render the latter actions and mere passive

effects? The answer to Hobbes’ Demand is that intentions are formed in a thinker’s exercise of

evaluative control, which in turn consists in the thinker’s inferring to a conclusion, which in turn

is an exercise of intentional rational agency (as I have argued over the last two chapters).6

But this still leaves us with Hieronymi’s view that there are two kinds of intentional agency,

which conflicts with our fifth desideratum. I now want to argue that even managerial control

consists essentially in the very same phenomenon of inferring to a conclusion. This is the second

leg of the argument-sketch I described above.

Managerial control, recall, is exercised when we “take actions designed to affect [ordinary

objects] according to our purposes” (2009: 140). Hieronymi construes managerial control as the

more familiar kind of agency, since it exhibits the two paradigmatic features that mark our

intentional doings. These are the features of voluntariness and reflective distance. I want to focus

6 Hieronymi reserves the term ‘action’ for exercises of managerial control. She allows that there are mental actions,

but these are voluntary actions which are undertaken in order to bring one’s own mind into accord with one’s

intentions, and so exercises of managerial control.

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on this second paradigmatic feature. In what respect does managerial control exhibit reflective

distance? Presumably, it is because managerial control is full-blooded intentional action, wherein

an agent φ’s out of an intention to φ. (Or the agent may φ out of a belief-desire complex that

represents φ-ing as conducive to some (further) end that the agent aims to achieve. Again, to save

space I will leave these belief-desire complexes to one side and speak more simply of intentions

to act.) The reflective distance that distinguishes managerial control can be put down to the fact

that when I take actions designed to affect objects according to my purposes, I act from an

intention; the content of this intention represents the purpose or state of affairs that I act on

objects in order to realize. Such intentions do not influence our behavior ‘behind our backs.’

Rather, it is by dint of acting from an intention that an agent knowingly and deliberately bringing

about some state of affairs in the world. In acting from intention, I act self-consciously from the

intention that represents the very action I endeavor to perform. (In addition, the intention from

which I self-consciously act represents this action under a distinctive practical modality, as

something that ought to be done.) This seems a fitting explanation of why managerial control is

marked by reflective distance. It is because I act self-consciously from an intention so to act that

I attain the reflective distance in virtue of which my φ-ing is an object of my awareness as I φ.

Managerial control, then, consists in the self-conscious execution of intention. But this only

brings us to the question of what it is to self-consciously execute an intention. Put another way:

What is the relationship between intention and intention-executing action? I want to motivate my

own reply to this question by examining cases in which an agent fails to execute an intention.7

Consider an agent who intends to (φ at t in circumstances C) but that at t the agent fails to φ even

7 The view I will develop over the next portion of the argument stands in stark contrast to the standard causalist

theory that is regnant in the theory of action. On this view, the intention to φ causes an occurrent φ-ing in the same

way as any other efficient cause gives rise to its effects. I will not argue at length against this causalist reply here,

since any such argument would amount to a reiteration of arguments that I have canvassed over Chapters 3 –4

against causalist and dispositionalist accounts of inferring.

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in the belief that C obtains. The agent has not forgotten the intention to φ, has not changed his

mind about whether to φ, and has not, at the moment of action, somehow lost the ability to φ.

Rather, the agent simply fails to φ. Following Samuel Asarnow (2019), call any such case one of

execution failure. Execution failures are commonplace. Such failures are vividly illustrated, for

instance, in the failure to get up and out of bed in the morning as one’s alarm clock drones on

and on (the example is Asarnow’s). The important thing to notice about execution failures is that

they do not show an agent to be broken or defective (cf. Finkelstein 2007). An execution failure

is not a malfunction in a causal mechanism. Execution failures are rational failings. By dint of

his execution failure, an agent is at odds with himself as to how he ought, by his own lights, to

act.

In fact, this is just what Hieronymi’s commitment-constituted conception of the attitudes

helps us to understand. As Hieronymi has it, an intention embodies a positive answer whether to

φ; the failure to execute one’s intention, then, is a failure to do what one takes as what one ought

to do. This the very same sort of rational dissonance at issue in holding two beliefs in tension, or

failing to infer from p to q even while one takes it that p entails q, therein falling short of the

commitments that constitute what it is to believe that p. But as we saw in Chapter 3, falling short

of these commitments does nothing to undermine that one really does intend to φ or believe that

p. This is because the possibility of falling short of a commitment is worked into the very notion

of a normative commitment—and it is this possibility that marks normative commitments off

from efficient causes.8 We can understand execution failures as cases in which an agent falls

short of a normative commitment—in this case, a commitment to discharge a plan of action.

Intentions, no less than beliefs, are commitments—commitments to act that answer to an agent’s

8 It is this deep distinction between normative commitments and efficient causes that leads some to deny the

possibility of execution failures. But I am more confident in the existence of execution failures than I am in the

causalist/dispositionalist analysis of intention.

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sense of what he ought to do based on the reasons within his possession. So far, this seems very

much in line with what Hieronymi has to say about attitudes as commitment-constituted (cf.

Hieronymi 2006).

This way of understanding execution failures illuminates the relationship between intention

and intention-executing action in successful cases. We have already said that managerial control

is intention-executing action that possesses reflective distance in virtue of the fact that intentions

are executed self-consciously. We see now that intentions are commitments to act. Recalling an

important conclusion from Chapter 3, commitments possess an imperatival dimension:

commitments are directive and not merely descriptive. An intention to act, then, is not merely a

description of some possible state of affairs but in part an imperative or instruction directing an

agent to act so as to bring about that state of affairs.9 In sum, managerial control, since it

possesses reflective distance, involves an agent’s self-consciously acting from an instruction

embedded in his intention.

I have been tracing out the downstream consequences of accepting an irreducibly normative

commitment-theoretic conception of intention. Notice, now, that this conception raises anew the

very same rule-following perplexities that greeted us when we turned, in Chapter 3, to the nature

of inference. For it turns out that an intention, qua irreducibly normative instruction, constitutes a

rule for the agent to follow. To execute an intention is to follow a rule—namely, the rule

directing the agent to realize the state of affairs that his intention represents. Like any inference

rule, intentions lay down an evaluative standard for assessing the agent’s subsequent

performance. (We saw this same feature in Chapter 4 in connection with Anscombe’s shopping

list example.) For instance, my intention to walk to the café sets the standard for correct conduct

9 This imperatival dimension of intention does not mark intention off as distinct from belief. To reiterate a conclusion

from Chapter 3, beliefs also possess such an imperatival dimension, since the belief that p is a commitment to the

truth of p and so an imperative to accept p’s consequences and, in general, to do one’s epistemic duty in holding to p.

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on my part, so that my later performance will be mistaken should I fail to execute this intention

in action.

We can thus raise the very same considerations with respect to intention-executing action

that originally motivated the Taking Condition on inference. Without running through the

argument of the first part of Chapter 3 all over again, we summarize its main points: An agent

who self-consciously executes an intention to act must both (I) take it that his present action is

correct relative to the rule that is his intention and (II) perform his present action because of this

very appreciation. It turns out that the relationship between intention and intention-executing

action is, at bottom, an inferential one. That is why an agent is irrational, and not merely

defective, when he undergoes an execution failure. The failure to execute one’s intention in

action is akin to other rational failings, such as when a thinker falls short of his attitudinal

commitments to infer the conclusion mandated by the premises in his possession.

The upshot is that managerial control is sourced in the very same species of rational agency

we have been studying all along. Rational agency—both over our own attitudes and over our

own bodies and the objects in the surrounding environment—is constituted by a practical self-

consciousness. This self-consciousness is practical and agentive in that it works to constitute the

relevant performances—either transitions in thinking, or movements of the body, or even

changes in the extra-bodily environment—as what they are, namely intentional actions. So, there

are not two kinds of agency. Or at least, there are not two kinds of agency, one which

corresponds to our agency over our attitudes and one which is exercised over our bodies. In both

cases, the relevant responsibility-conferring performances are made what they are by an agent’s

self-conscious appreciation of the normative commitments within his repertoire. In the case of

attitude-formative mental agency, that awareness takes the form of an appreciation of what

follows from what; in the case of agency over one’s own body, that appreciation is given by a

sense of what I am doing and why. Put this way, it rather appears that intention-executing bodily

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agency is but an extension of the inferential agency that we exercise in the formation of our

attitudes of belief and intention.

True, intention-executing bodily action—Hieronymi’s ‘managerial control’—is marked by

two features that do not characterize our agency over the attitudes. Inferring to a conclusion in

thought to form a new belief or intention is neither voluntary nor possessed of the reflective

distance that renders intention-executing bodily action so familiar to us. What Hieronymi terms

evaluative and managerial control, though, are simply two species of the very same genus. In

fact, it is the inferential agency that we exercise over the attitudes which is primary, and the

agency we exercise over our bodies simply an extension of our agency over belief and intention.

Subsuming both evaluative control and managerial control to the sort of rule-following self-

governance I have described over Chapters 3–4 unifies our notion of intentional agency. There

are not two kinds of agency, but two species of the same kind.

Desideratum 1: Responsibility-grounding

The title of this chapter indicates that we attain moral responsibility for our attitudes of belief

and intention by dint of reasoning. (The title harkens to a recent work of John Broome’s,

Rationality Through Reasoning [2013]). I want to begin by recalling to the reader what I mean by

the term ‘reasoning’ and how inferring figures in reasoning. Reasoning is a conscious mental

activity that aims at the resolution of a deliberative question (such as ‘Whether p’ or ‘Whether to

φ’) in such a way as to mark overall rational unity among a thinker’s intentional episodes. This

aim distinguishes genuine reasoning (practical as well as epistemic) from idle mind-wandering,

brainstorming, or randomizing plays of association. Reasoning is thus oriented towards

conclusion in an inferring. So, while there may be some stretches of reasoning that do not

terminate successfully in the resolution of a thinker’s deliberative question, reasoning cannot be

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what it is if it does not aim towards inferring. On the other hand, inferring to a conclusion does

suffice for a stretch of conscious mental activity to count as reasoning.

I caution the reader against interpreting these provisional remarks in accord with a default

causalist theory of motivation and action. I do not claim that reasoning is an activity by dint of

the fact that it progresses in accord with and as the efficient causal effect of some intention on the

part of the agent to resolve the deliberative question at issue. My present point is a constitutive

one. It is about what makes some stretch of mental activity the kind of activity that it is.

Reasoning that is not oriented toward inferring cannot be reasoning at all.

So, to say that we attain responsibility through reasoning is to claim that we attain

responsibility for those attitudes—and only those attitudes—which emerge from reasoning. In

turn, this means we are responsible for all and only those attitudes that correspond to a

conclusion in thought.

INFERRING GROUNDS RESPONSIBILITY

The first task is to explain how inferring to a conclusion grounds answerability for that

conclusion. Here, Boghossian’s (2014: 4) Taking Condition bears much of the explanatory load.

Taking Condition: Inferring necessarily involves (I) the thinker taking his premises to

support his conclusion and (II) drawing his conclusion because of that fact.

Over Chapters 3–4, I presented an account of inferring that respects this condition. On this

view, the premises from which one infers figure, from the engaged stance of inquiry, as

normative commitments on one’s part. This is what the ‘taking’ that Boghossian alludes to in

sub-condition (I) amounts to. (Contra to many, this does not require positing ‘separate’ taking

beliefs about what follows from what; this is how the account proffered in Chapter 3 avoids the

Carroll-style regress argument that has preoccupied many recent writers on this topic.) And I

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argued that sub-condition (II) calls for a formal causal reading. A thinker’s self-conscious grasp

of his attitudinal commitments is the formal principle that renders the transition in thought an

inferring to a conclusion (rather than a non-inferential transition in thought).

Reasoning, I said earlier, begins when a thinker addresses himself to a live deliberative

question, such as Whether p or Whether to φ. When reasoning terminates in a thinker’s inferring

to a conclusion, the thinker answers one of these (or a related) deliberative questions.10

Terminating reasoning by inferring to a conclusion positions a thinker to reply in the right way to

the ‘Why?’-question that marks our answerability for the attitudes (cf. Hieronymi 2008). This is

due to the Taking Condition. To bring this out, consider a thinker who infers from p to q. On the

account of inferring I have offered, the thinker’s inferring from p to q entails that he regards his

premise, p, as an attitudinal commitment with a normative rather than merely descriptive profile.

From the engaged stance, to (occurrently) believe that p is to take oneself to be committed to

accepting p as well as p’s implications. In believing that p, I also come under the rational

obligation to accept that which follows from p. But I infer from p to q only if I self-consciously

appreciate that accepting q will constitute my discharging that very attitudinal commitment to p’s

consequences. This self-conscious appreciation of the relation between p and q is the formal

principle that unifies two intentional episodes, one representing p and the other q. It is this

unification that allows us to speak of a premise-conclusion relation in the stream of thought at

all. Therein, I adopt the attitudinal commitment to the truth of q and to its implications.

Suppose now that I am subjected to the justificatory demand of the ‘Why?’-question. Having

inferred q from p, I am now positioned to reply in way that grants the question application: “Why

do you believe that q?” “Because p.” Here, the ‘Why?’-question asks for the premise from which

10 Sometimes, reasoning concludes not in an inferring that answers the deliberative question, but in a meta -level

conclusion about the paucity of considerations currently available to one. This is an inferring that terminates

reasoning in a responsibility-grounding way. But for sake of clarity I will leave it to one side.

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I inferred that q; my reply merely recites this very premise. Because the relevant transition in

thought constitutively involves a self-conscious understanding of the premise-conclusion relation

between p and q, I am legitimately subject to justificatory demands with respect to conclusions

that terminate my reasoning. Reasoning guarantees responsibility.

Of course, it might be the case that p provides no support at all for q. In that case, my

reasoning is bad reasoning. But this does not render the justificatory demand inapplicable. Quite

to the contrary, it means that my response to the ‘Why?’-question is a poor one, which does

nothing to justify the conclusion I have purported to defend. Rather than rendering the ‘Why?’-

question inapplicable, then, a poor reply opens a thinker to attitudinal blame and the expectations

and practices that are of a piece with blame. This might encompass a range of blame-responses,

such as communicating to me a better case for p, or a counter argument that shows ¬p. It is no

part of the present account that an agent is morally responsible for his attitudes only if he can

answer the ‘Why?’-question in such a way as to provide a rationally compelling case for the

attitude in question. This consequence would simply rule out the appropriateness of attitudinal

blame at all. It is not good reasoning which makes an agent answerable for his attitudes,but

reasoning good or bad.

Why is this the case? Why is an agent responsible for good and bad reasoning alike? It is

because in inferring, an agent thereby demonstrates a capacity to recognize and respond to

reasons. An agent cannot infer to the conclusion that p without recognizing at least apparent

evidence for p; nor can he infer to the conclusion that is an intention to φ without recognizing at

least an apparent practical case for φ-ing. In responding to (apparent) reasons in the right way

the agent also demonstrates an ability to abide the constitutive norms that govern beliefs,

intentions, and complexes made up out of these attitude-types. If an agent can appreciate these

constitutive norms and act in accord with them, he is thereby ‘on the hook’—rationally liable—

to respect them in epistemic and practical dealings. If an agent reasons badly, then, the agent can

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be criticized according to rules that the agent recognizes as carrying prescriptive force. (Such

criticism might take the form of simple correction, or more forceful kinds of attitudinal blame.)

This explains why inferring to a conclusion satisfies the Demand Condition.

Inferring to a conclusion also satisfies the Activity Condition. As I have stressed, inferring to

a conclusion is a nonvoluntary type of occurrent intentional mental action. So, to infer to a

conclusion is to do something, therein placing an agent at fault when inferring incorrectly. And

since inferring is an action, there is indeed something the agent can do to avoid incurring

attitudinal blame. The agent can voluntarily commence a bout of reasoning that will conclude in

his reaching a better conclusion, one that better accords with the facts as he can discern them. So,

we can make good on Watson’s point that holding a person accountable for something can only

be fair when the person had the opportunity to avoid incurring the penalties involved in being

accountability for the trespass at issue.

RESPONSIBILITY WITHOUT INFERRING?

Being answerable for a belief that p or intention to φ also presupposes that the belief that p

or intention to φ is an attitude that corresponds to a conclusion to which the agent inferred. If an

agent has not inferred to the belief that p or intention to φ, then the agent has not arrived at the

belief or intention in a way that involves an appreciation of reasons that recommend the belief or

intention in question. Such an agent will not be positioned to give the ‘Why?’-question

application by citing a reason, or at least an apparently supportive consideration, for p or for φ-

ing. In turn, where the ‘Why?’-question is refused application, the agent is not answerable at all

for the belief or intention.

One might object to this line of thought by pointing to other ways in which an agent might

be able to answer the ‘Why?’-question without having inferred to a conclusion. Perhaps one

enjoys a more general basing-relation among the beliefs p and q, so that one believes q because

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p and can answer p in reply to the ‘Why?’-question. But, the objection continues, no conscious

occurrence in the thinker’s stream of thought needs to occur in order for this basing relation to

hold among the thinker’s beliefs that p and that q.11 This line may appear to grant everything

needed to explain an agent’s answerability for an attitude, without even attempting to satisfy the

Activity Condition that we have followed Angela Smith (2008) in placing on moral

responsibility.

In reply, we must question what is actually involved in the proposal. The lynchpin of the

suggestion is that a thinker’s belief that q might be based on his belief that p, without his ever

having inferred q from p. Suppose this agent is the target of the ‘Why?’-question: he is asked to

justify his belief that q in such a way that failure to do so adequately will open him to forceful

rational criticism. (After all, if this condition is not met then he is simply not responsible for his

belief in the relevant sense.) There are three relevant possibilities. At the time when the ‘Why?’-

question is communicated, either

a. the agent has considered the case in favor of q, appreciated that p sufficiently supports q,

but has so far failed to infer to q; or

b. the agent has considered the case in favor of q and concluded that q out of an

appreciation of his commitment to p; or

c. he believes both p and q but is, at the time of the question, ignorant as to the evidential

relation that p bears to q.

The agent in case (a) is clearly irrational and responsibly so. It is legitimate to hold the agent

accountable for this irrationality by targeting him with forceful rational criticism. An agent who

understands that p implies q, who fails to undertake the commitment to the truth of q, and who is

impervious to criticism on this score cannot be said really to have the commitment to the truth of

11 One view in the literature that appears to make much of such static basing relations is that of Angela Smith

(2005), which I discussed back in Chapter 1.

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p at all (cf. Bilgrami 2006: 241–242). Here the agent is answerable, if not for the belief that q

then for falling short of other attitudinal commitments within his repertoire.

Moving to case (b): if the agent has acknowledged prior to the ‘Why?’-question the rational

relation between p and q, and answers the ‘Why?’-question by citing p as a reason to believe that

q, then the agent has already inferred to q from p. Recall: the thinker’s taking it that p establishes

q is the formal principle that constitutes a premise-conclusion relation between p and q,

respectively. If the agent acknowledges this relation, then he already has inferred that q; therein,

the agent is answerable for q along the lines I have just explained.

This brings us to case (c). We may envision the agent in this case giving one of two replies to

the question, “Why do you believe that p?” First, the agent might reply, “No reason.” What we

say about this case depends upon how we interpret this reply. Heard in one register, ‘No reason’

indicates that the agent does not at all appreciate that his beliefs are subject to constitutive norms,

such as the norm that one ought not to believe that p in the absence of sufficient evidence. If the

agent’s reply of ‘No reason’ indicates that he does not accept such a constitutive norm, it is hard

to fathom that the agent is the right sort of target at all. Such an agent cannot meet the Demand

Condition on moral responsibility.

Things are different with intentional action. Recall: Anscombe tells us that the ‘Why?’-

question is granted application even when an agent replies ‘No reason,’ as the question ‘How

much change do you have in your pocket?’ is granted, rather than refused, application when the

reply is ‘None.’ But this is not a difference in the kind of responsibility at issue—we are

answerable for our beliefs, our intentions, and our actions in the very same way. Rather, the

difference is traceable to the constitutive rational norms that govern beliefs and actions,

respectively. With the exception of special classes that do not admit of further justification—such

as perceptually-based beliefs or foundational beliefs at the ‘bedrock’ of one’s repertoire—it is

epistemically impermissible to believe that p for ‘No reason.’ The norms that constitutively

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govern action are less demanding: one is justified in φ-ing so long as it is not the case that one

ought not to φ (cf. Shah 2008). ‘No reason’ grants application to the questions ‘Why are you φ-

ing?’ and ‘Why do you intend to φ?’ since an agent needn’t possess a convincing case for φ-ing

to be justified in φ-ing; his warrant for φ-ing lapses only in the recognition of a compelling case

why he ought not to φ.

There are other ways to interpret an agent’s reply of ‘No reason’ to the question ‘Why do

you believe that p?’ If his persistence in believing p is put down to compulsion or other brute

psychological forces, then once more the agent fails to come under the Demand Condition. Our

responsibility-practices accommodate such cases by exempting or excusing the agent from the

burden to provision a justification for p.

Alternatively, ‘No reason’ might communicate a kind of epistemic confession (as it were).

Heard in this register, ‘No reason’ communicates that the agent recognizes that one ought not to

believe that p in the absence of sufficient evidence but confesses that, in his belief that p, he falls

short of that very norm. In this, the agent knowledgeably falls short of his own attitudinal

commitments. I do not think we can really make sense of this scenario unless we also suppose

that the agent experiences significant rational tension from within his own point of view, a

tension spurring him to achieving rational unity in the direction of fidelity to the facts (as far as

they can be discerned). For if the agent does not come under such a rational tension, then it is

questionable whether he really does take himself to fall short of the norm enjoining belief only in

the light of sufficient evidence. Such an agent is clearly answerable for his belief that p. Such an

agent is rationally liable to provision a justification for p, and in his failure to do so opens

himself to attitudinal blame.

Are such cases counterexamples to the view that we attain responsibility for the attitudes by

reasoning? No. To see why, consider analogous cases with respect to overt intentional action.

Suppose I have been designated to bring wine to the party tonight. I understand this commitment

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and I am concerned to discharge it by performing the relevant actions. But suppose further that I

fall short of these commitments by failing to come to the party with the wine. Just like the agent

in our example about belief, I have simply failed to discharge my commitments in action and, in

a confessional register, own up to that fact when I arrive to the party wineless. Such examples do

nothing to count against the idea that my responsibility for bringing the wine is grounded in

voluntary wine-acquisitive bodily actions. We only have to say that in the case in question I have

utterly omitted to employ this agency properly towards doing what I know I ought to have done.

In this example, my omission to discharge my commitment is blameworthy: not because of what

I have done, but because of what I have failed to do.

We may understand believers and intenders in strictly analogous terms—as agents who have

failed to discharge standing commitments by engaging their agency in the right ways. Such

omissions are failures to seek grounds for one’s attitudinal commitments to p or to φ-ing. They

are failures to subject one’s attitudinal commitments to the kind of inquiry that terminates in an

inferring that corresponds to the ungrounded commitment. We bear responsibility for these

omissions for the very same reasons we bear responsibility for omissions to perform other duties.

Understood in this way of reading case (b), attitudinal blame remains legitimate, since the agent

in our example falls under rational norms and attitudinal commitments, understands these norms

and commitments, and is able to discharge them in action. (This line regarding omissions may

also bear on what we say about an earlier case, case (a).)

There is a final way of reading case (c), wherein an agent believes both p and q but is

ignorant of the evidential relation that p bears to q. Upon being asked the ‘Why?’-question, the

agent may be prompted to reason (however briefly) and infer that q from p. Having inferred q

from p, the agent is properly responsible for q. In such a case, the occasion of the ‘Why?’-

question prompts the agent to engage in a bout of reasoning (however brief). Here, the ‘Why?’-

question works to bring the agent to question the grounds of some belief that he already holds,

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and in performing this reasoning and terminating it with a judging-that-q out of recognition of

the normative force of his commitment to p, he answers the ‘Why?’-question satisfactorily in a

way that licenses attitudinal praise. In this way, asking the ‘Why?’-question can occasion the

agent to discharge a commitment that he has, before being asked, omitted to discharge properly.

To this it will be asked what we are to say about the agent’s responsibility for the belief that

q at the moment the ‘Why?’-question is asked but before the agent has reasoned to the

conclusion that q from the premise that p. At this moment, the agent is responsible in the sense

indicated a paragraph back, in the sense that he attitudinally blameworthy on account of an

omission. But something else can be said: the ‘Why?’-question prompts the agent to take

responsibility for the belief that q by reasoning to it from grounds that constitute evidence for q.

In this way, posing the ‘Why?’-question to another—or even to oneself—can function in a

forward-looking manner, as a way of leading one to express one’s rational agency in assuming

ownership over an attitude. I take it that the same forward-looking dynamic operates in the

domain of overt intentional action, as when I am asked pointedly just what I plan to do with my

day. I may have no plans at all when the question is asked; but the question might be

communicated in such a way as to communicate that I really ought to have something productive

planned. (This occurs frequently in the domestic life of a dissertation writer.)

Upon consideration of these cases (a)–(c), we see that reasoning—or the agent’s illicit

omission from engaging in reasoning—undergirds responsibility for the attitudes. If the agent

cannot engage in reasoning, then the most we can do is to merely evaluate the overall network of

his attitudes as rationally suboptimal in holding to p and q but failing to grasp that p is grounds

for q. But the agent’s ability to reason from one attitudinal commitment to the generation of

novel commitments licenses deeper, forceful forms of appraisal: attitudinal praise and blame. For

it is only by engaging in reasoning that the agent can exercise his agency in discharging the

rational commitments constitutive of being a believer or intender at all. In this light, ‘mere

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basing’ in a network of evaluative commitments is not sufficient to legitimate attitudinal blame.

The agent must recognize these relations in such a way that, in this very recognition, the agent

exercises intentional agency in the formation of novel attitudes—or at least have the standing

ability to do so.

Conclusion

I began this dissertation by arguing that we bear responsibility for the attitudes of belief and

intention. But this raised a question about the legitimacy of attitudinal blame. Given that we do

not hold our attitudes voluntarily, what makes it legitimate to hold one accountable to the rational

norms constitutive of belief and intention?

In effect, the argument of this dissertation is that this question carries only an apparent force.

Attitudinal blame is legitimated by a species of intentional action that agents exercise over their

own attitudes. This very sort of intentional action is also fundamental to the agency we exercise

over our bodies in executing long-term intentions. Responsibility for the attitudes is grounded in

a thinker’s inferring to a conclusion. Inferring is a fully intentional yet nonvoluntary exercise of

rational agency. We are responsible for inferring, ultimately, in virtue of its normative grounding

in our commitments and values—and by the way that, in inferring, an agent attains self-

knowledge of discharging these commitments and values in the attitudes and deeds that they

require. By working out our responsibility with regard to inferential transitions in the mind, we

come to understand a prior dimension of our responsibility for our intentional bodily actions.

270

Appendix: Intention, Constitutive Norms, and the Toxin Puzzle

I have been arguing that Kavka’s puzzle lends support for the claim that beliefs and

intentions are involuntary. And I have been pressing this claim by putting forward a specific

interpretation of Kavka’s puzzle—an explanation for why a rational agent cannot win the

eccentric billionaire’s prize. With others, I have claimed that this explanation comes down to a

close relationship between believing that p and reasons that bear on p’s truth, and between

intending to φ and reasons that bear on the goodness, value, or desirability of φ-ing. This close

link, I claim, frustrates a rational agent’s attempt to win the prize. The reason why you cannot

win the prize—and the reason why the attitudes are involuntary—is because you cannot come to

believe that Dukakis won the presidency in 1988 absent evidence that this is so, and nor can you

intend now to (drink a toxin two days from now) that you will not have reason, then, to drink.

Alfred Mele (1992b) disputes this putative explanation of the involuntariness of the

attitudes.1 Mele argues that it is possible to win the eccentric billionaire’s prize money, and that

this possibility counts against the purported close link between reasons and intentions. To show

this, Mele asks us to imagine an agent named Ted. An evil genius has conditioned Ted to drink

any nearby toxin. Ted’s conditioning runs so deep that he is sure to drink any nearby toxin

whether he intends to do so or not. That is, the evil genius has not conditioned Ted to like

drinking toxin. Ted has not been conditioned to see something good or valuable in drinking

toxin. Rather, Ted is reliably conditioned to drink toxin irrespective of his own will. What is

more, Ted knows this about himself. He knows that he will drink any nearby toxin whether he

wants to drink it or not, and whether he intends to drink it or not. For Ted, the prediction ‘I am

sure to drink any nearby toxin’ is as good as certain.

1 I thank Professor Mele for bringing this article to my attention in private correspondence.

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Now imagine that the eccentric billionaire offers Ted the chance to win the prize. To win $1

million, Ted only needs to intend now (Monday) to drink the toxin on Wednesday. Ted

deliberates roughly as follows (cf. Mele 1992b: 177–179). Ted knows that he will drink the toxin

on Wednesday. The only thing that is up to him is whether he drinks it intentionally. But on this

question Ted is indifferent. He has no preference at all that might lead him to choose to drink the

toxin intentionally over drinking it unintentionally, and vice versa. So, while Ted recognizes that

he has no reason to drink the toxin intentionally, he also believes that he has no reason not to

drink the toxin intentionally (that is, no reason to choose what will ultimately amount to his

drinking it unintentionally). This means that Ted is in a ‘Buridan’s ass’-type situation in respect

of his prospective intentional toxin-drinking. He must choose between two incompatible

alternative courses of action that are equally worthy of choice. He must choose, but he cannot

choose for a reason that favors one course of action over the other.

This makes Ted quite different from you or me. You haven’t been conditioned to drink any

nearby toxin. So, you are not confident that you will drink the toxin unintentionally even if you

decide not to drink it. Unlike the case with Ted, whether you drink the toxin is up to you. So, you

are not in a Buridan-type scenario. Your choice is not between two equally preferred alternatives.

To win the prize, you must decide to do something that, after your deciding, you will both have

no reason to do and have the power not to do. That is what makes the toxin puzzle puzzling for

you and for me.

These peculiarities position Ted to reap the reward. Ted is in a Buridan-type scenario. In

such scenarios we can settle on an alternative even in the absence of grounds that favor that one

over another. Indeed, we can typically settle on one such alternative in the light of incentives that

attach to making up one’s mind, rather than those pertaining just to the course of action we

decide upon. Suppose you are indifferent about whether to work this afternoon in the library or

the café. However, your friend would like to meet you wherever you choose to go and is also

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indifferent as to whether to meet at the library or the café. Though there is no reason to settle on

working at the library over working at the café (and vice versa), there is a reason to settle one

way or the other. The reason to settle on one alternative over the other is to realize another goal

of yours: having a settled mind will allow you to coordinate with your friend about where to

meet later today. Ted’s situation is similar in relevant respects. While he has no reason to decide

to drink the toxin intentionally and no reason to drink the toxin unintentionally, he does have a

reason to decide to drink the toxin intentionally, since making this decision will net him the

reward.

But if this is right, then Ted wins the reward—even in the recognition that he has no reason

to drink the toxin intentionally, no reason to decide to drink the toxin intentionally, and no reason

to persist in the intention to drink the toxin intentionally after deciding to do so. This appears to

count against the explanation that I have offered in terms of a close connection between reasons

for intending to φ and reasons for φ-ing. Mele explains the toxin puzzle not in terms of any such

link between reasons and intentions, but between intentions and associated beliefs about whether

one will act as intended. There is controversy in the literature about the strength of this condition.

Mele operates with a relatively weak version according to which “an agent who intends to φ does

not believe that he (probably) will not φ” (1992b: 177).2 This condition only rules out my

intending to φ in the belief that I am more likely not to φ than I am to φ. Crucially, Mele

continues, this condition “leaves it open whether the agent believes that he will not intentionally

φ” (1992b: 177). Of course, you and I typically assume that if we intend to φ then we will φ

intentionally, because we typically deliberate only about courses of action that will come about

only if we bring them about intentionally. But Ted’s situation is different. He knows that he will

drink the toxin whether or not he does so intentionally. Ted is like us in deliberating only

2 I substitute ‘φ’ for Mele’s ‘A” in quotations.

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between the options that are genuinely open to him, but he is unlike us in that it is not open to

him whether he drinks the toxin. Since this is so, the belief condition on intending that prevents

us from winning the reward does not apply to Ted. I cannot win the reward because I have no

reason to drink the toxin. When I have no reason to drink the toxin, I believe I will not attempt to

drink it. Since Ted knows he will drink the toxin whether or not he attempts to do so—and

because he registers no reason that favors intentionally drinking it over drinking it

unintentionally—the belief condition that prevents you and me from winning the reward does not

prevent Ted from doing so. Mele concludes:

Thus, even if our convictions about what we will not even try to do are typically products

of our convictions about our reasons, we need not suppose that intending to φ is

conceptually more tightly tied to having reasons for φ-ing than to the absence of a

conviction that one will not even attempt to φ. (1992b: 184–185)

The upshot is that we can account for the inability to win the toxin by way of the relationship

between intentions and (the absence of) beliefs about what therein intends to do—not by positing

any sort of deep connection between reasons to φ and intentions to φ.

Another one of Mele’s aims is to challenge the following traditional action-theoretic thesis:

PA. An agent intentionally φ’s only if he φ’s for a reason.3

Ted’s case also casts (PA) into doubt, since Ted decides to drink the toxin intentionally

without a reason for doing so (over drinking the toxin unintentionally), therein intends to

3 Mele (1992: 193, n. 2) lists the following proponents of (PA): Goldman (1970: 76); Davidson (2011: 264), and

Anscombe (1957: 9). However, including Anscombe as a proponent of (PA) might be too quick. Anscombe holds

that intentional actions are events for which a certain sense of the question ‘Why?’ finds application; later in

Intention, Anscombe grants that the answer “No reason” grants the ‘Why?’-question application (2011: 25). See

Chapters 1 and 4 of this dissertation for additional discussion.

274

intentionally drink the toxin without a reason, and, eventually, even drinks the toxin intentionally

for no reason.

If Mele is right, then we cannot appeal to any such connection between reasons, intentions,

and intentional actions in our explanation of the involuntariness of the attitudes. It is the

connection between intentions to act and beliefs about one’s own future actions which explains

why we cannot reap the eccentric billionaire’s rewards.

I grant to Mele that (PA) is too strong. Not every intentional action is done for a reason for

that action. But this need not count against the traditional view linking reasons with intentions.

We only need to heed better just what this connection does and does not rule out.

To sort these matters, recall that Ted can only win the reward because Ted (unlike us) faces a

Buridan-type situation when deliberating about whether to drink the toxin intentionally. Mele is

correct to say that we can settle these scenarios by ‘plunking’ for one alternative over another

and do so in the direct of reaping certain extrinsic incentives attaching to having one’s mind

made up. But it was precisely in recognition of these scenarios that I follow Shah (2008) in

placing the following constitutive norm (CN) on deciding and intending:

CN: An agent’s belief or intention to φ is correct if and only if it is not the case that the agent

ought not to φ.4

(CN) places a standard of correctness on deciding-to-φ and intending to φ. A deciding-to-φ

or intention to φ is incorrect qua deciding or intention if it fails to abide this standard. I will be

irrational should I persist in an intention to do something that I know I ought not do.

Notice that there is a much stronger thesis in the vicinity. This would be the claim that the

constitutive norm regulating deciding and intending is as follows:

4 Given that Shah also takes (CN) as the constitutive aim of intending, I take it his reply to Mele’s case of Ted would

run along similar lines. But since he does not discuss Mele’s argument, it is worth elaborating the reply.

275

R: An agent’s belief or intention to φ is correct if and only if the agent ought to φ.

(R) is stronger than (CN) because the deliberative ‘ought’ is fixed by the preponderance of

reasons within an agent’s possession. If (R) were the constitutive norm regulating our decisions

and intentions, then (PA) really would be a condition on intentional action (at least, on rational

action). (CN) is weaker than this, though. (CN) allows agents to decide between two

incompatible courses of action that are equally worthy of choice. Indeed, (CN) even allows an

agent to decide-to-φ for no reason. All that (CN) rules out is the prospect of an agent’s deciding-

to-φ in the knowledge that the preponderance of reasons counts against φ-ing.

Notice, also, that (CN) will prevent most of us from winning the prize. When you consider

the eccentric billionaire’s offer, you understand (however tacitly) that (CN): any intention to φ

that emerges from deliberation will be correct if and only if it is not the case that you ought not

to φ. But you also know that you ought not to drink the toxin since the preponderance of reasons

counts against doing so. You cannot form an intention that you know will be defective qua

intention. (CN) guarantees the following Preservation Principle:

Preservation Principle: If an agent S is warranted at t1 to decide to (φ at t2) then S is

warranted to φ at t2 out of this very decision, provided there are no relevant changes in S’s

deliberative circumstances in the period between t1–t2.5

This Preservation Principle insures that no agent who is warranted to decide to φ will end up

being less warranted in φ-ing out of that very decision at a later time (so long as relevant

deliberative circumstances remain fixed). The Preservation Principle is itself guaranteed by the

fact that deliberation, deciding, and intending are all constitutively regulated by the standard of

5 I defend the Preservation Principle in the course of my treatment of diachronic autonomy in Heeney (2020: §4).

My thinking on these matters owes much to Pink’s (1996: 153) Reason-Apply principle and Bratman’s (1987: 55)

‘intention-action’ principle.

276

correctness articulated in (CN). This is because (CN) ties the correctness of deciding-to-φ and

intending to φ to the absence of preponderant reasons against φ-ing.

However, (CN) does permit ‘brute selection’ in a Buridan-type situation. Faced with two

incompatible alternatives that are equally worth pursuing, (CN) allows that an agent can correctly

decide on one alternative over the other. Such an agent needn’t do so for some specific reason

that favors his chosen alternative. The agent may elect to choose either alternative so long as

neither one runs against the preponderance of reasons within his possession.

This means that Ted’s prizewinning decision to intentionally drink the toxin satisfies (CN).

Since there is no reason not to drink the toxin intentionally and no reason not to drink the toxin

unintentionally, Ted can correctly decide to drink the toxin intentionally or correctly decide to

drink it unintentionally. We might wonder whether Ted has a reason not to drink the toxin. But

remember that this is not something that is up to Ted at all. Because of his peculiar situation, he

is tasked with deciding whether to drink it intentionally—not whether to drink it. It is Ted’s

deciding to drink the toxin intentionally that accords with (CN). So, too, does Ted’s enduring

intention to intentionally drink the toxin. Even though Ted has won the reward upon deciding to

drink the toxin intentionally, it remains the case after his deciding to act that he has just as much

reason to drink the toxin intentionally as he has to abandon his intention post-decision. This is the

case because, recall, Ted registers no preference at all between intentional and unintentional

toxin drinking. (See Mele 1992b: 185–189 for supporting argument.) The sequence taking Ted

from deliberating to deciding and eventually acting, because it is constitutively regulated by the

norm (CN), also accords with the Preservation Principle.

However, as I have already intimated, (CN) and the Preservation Principle cannot be

respected in a toxin scenario that features agents like you or me—agents who have not been

conditioned to drink any nearby toxin whether intentionally or not. Should you or I decide to

277

drink the toxin, we will be left unwarranted to drink the toxin after having decided. This

circumstance violates (CN) and the Preservation Principle.

The upshot is that we can preserve a version of our original view, the one that links

intentions to reasons perform the intended action. Of course, in the light of Mele’s case we

cannot hold (PA). Nor can we hold that an agent intends to φ only if the agent has preponderant

reason to φ. But we can repair to weaker versions of these claims by recognizing (CN) as the

constitutive standard of correctness that normatively regulates decision and intention. This

constitutive standard legislates a permission to intend actions that one is not rationally barred

from performing. This weaker claim can explain why you and I cannot win the reward but Ted

can do so. This is because Ted faces a Buridan-type scenario that licenses his intending to drink

the toxin, whereas you and I do not.

278

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