Practical cognitivism is the view that practical reason is the self‐conscious will and that practical cognition is self‐conscious volition. This essay addresses two puzzles for practical cognitivism. In akratic action, I act as I understand is illegitimate and not as I understand is legitimate. In permissible action, I act as I understand is legitimate and also do not act as I understand is legitimate. In both types of action, practical cognition seems to come apart from volition. How, then, can practical reason be our will and practical cognition be volition? Practical cognitivists can solve these puzzles because the claims that practical reason is our will and that practical cognition is volition are about the nature of a capacity, and the nature of a capacity establishes standards of correctness for its exercises. Akratic action is a type of erroneous exercise of practical reason as tripping is an erroneous exercise our capacity to walk. Permissible action is a successful exercise of practical reason as stepping first with my right foot rather than my left is a successful exercise of my capacity to walk. The puzzles of akratic and permissible action do not refute practical cognitivism.
Practical cognitivism is the view that practical reason is the self‐conscious will and that practical cognition is self‐conscious volition. This essay addresses two puzzles for practical cognitivism. In akratic action, I act as I understand is illegitimate and not as I understand is legitimate. In permissible action, I act as I understand is legitimate and also do not act as I understand is legitimate. In both types of action, practical cognition seems to come apart from volition. How, then, can practical reason be our will and practical cognition be volition? Practical cognitivists can solve these puzzles because the claims that practical reason is our will and that practical cognition is volition are about the nature of a capacity, and the nature of a capacity establishes standards of correctness for its exercises. Akratic action is a type of erroneous exercise of practical reason as tripping is an erroneous exercise our capacity to walk. Permissible action is a successful exercise of practical reason as stepping first with my right foot rather than my left is a successful exercise of my capacity to walk. The puzzles of akratic and permissible action do not refute practical cognitivism.
“…Answering this question is not straightforward since, as theorists of practical knowledge are quick to admit, the notion itself is contested, as are interpretations of how Anscombe understood it. 21 Debates are live regarding the sense(s) in which this knowledge has been said to be non-observational (Schwenkler 2015), as well as noninferential (Setiya 2008), how this knowledge relates to perception (Pickard 2004;Grünbaum 2011), whether this knowledge should be construed as a judgment or not (Small 2012;Marcus 2018;Frost 2019;Stout 2019), how this knowledge relates to intention (Falvey 2000;Paul 2009), whether to understand this knowledge's causal role in terms of formal causation (see Moran 2004), or efficient causation, or both (see Schwenkler 2015), whether this knowledge could be understood as a form of knowledge-that, or knowledge-how, or whether it is sui generis (see Frost 2019). Answering this practical knowledge objection in a way that is comprehensive regarding all of these debates threatens to fracture along many of these points.…”
Section: Practical Knowledge and Intentional Actionmentioning
We argue that any strong version of a knowledge condition on intentional action, the practical knowledge principle, on which knowledge of what I am doing (under some description: call it A-ing) is necessary for that A-ing to qualify as an intentional action, is false. Our argument involves a new kind of case, one that centers the agent’s control appropriately and thus improves upon Davidson’s well-known carbon copier case. After discussing this case, offering an initial argument against the knowledge condition, and discussing recent treatments that cover nearby ground, we consider several objections. One we consider at some length maintains that although contemplative knowledge may be disconnected from intentional action, specifically practical knowledge of the sort Anscombe elucidated escapes our argument. We demonstrate that this is not so. Our argument illuminates an important truth, often overlooked in discussions of the knowledge-intentional action relationship: intentional action and knowledge have different levels of permissiveness regarding failure in similar circumstances.
“…If this distinction does not correspond neatly to the that between the human and the non-human, so be it. 14 Marcus 2012Marcus , 2018 capacity to make judgments about what is to-be-done and that this confers on human intentions a kind of independence from behavior. This assessment will dovetail with reflections to follow on the distinctive character of the togetherness of the states of a rational mind.…”
Section: Gustafsson Distinguishes Human and Animal Intentions As Followsmentioning
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