Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, throughreflection, the question of what one is to do. Deliberation of thiskind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical inits subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it isalso practical in its consequences or its issue, insofar as reflectionabout action itself directly moves people to act. Our capacity fordeliberative self-determination raises two sets of philosophicalproblems. For one thing, there are questions about how deliberationcan succeed in being practical in its issue. What do we need toassume—both about agents and about the processes of reasoningthey engage in—to make sense of the fact that deliberativereflection can directly give rise to action? Can we do justice to thisdimension of practical reason while preserving the idea that practicaldeliberation is genuinely a form of reasoning? For another, there arelarge issues concerning the content of the standards that are broughtto bear in practical reasoning. Which norms for the assessment ofaction are binding on us as deliberating agents? Do these normsprovide resources for critical reflection about our ends, or are theyexclusively instrumental? Under what conditions do moral norms yieldvalid standards for reasoning about action? The first set of issues isaddressed in sections §§1–3 of the present article,while sections §§4–6 cover the second set ofissues.

• 1. Practical and Theoretical Reason
• 2. Naturalism and Normativity
• 3. Reasons and Motivation
• 4. Instrumental and Structural Rationality
• 5. Maximizing Rationality
• 6. Value, Prudence, and Morality
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Practical and Theoretical Reason

Practical reason defines a distinctive standpoint of reflection. Whenagents deliberate about action, they think about themselves and theirsituation in characteristic ways. What are some of the salientfeatures of the practical point of view?

A natural way to interpret this point of view is to contrast it withthe standpoint of theoretical reason. The latter standpoint isoccupied when we engage in reasoning that is directed at theresolution of questions that are in some sense theoretical rather thanpractical; but how are we to understand this opposition between thetheoretical and the practical? One possibility is to understandtheoretical reflection as reasoning about questions of explanation andprediction. Looking backward to events that have already taken place,it asks why they have occurred; looking forward, it attempts todetermine what is going to happen in the future. Theoreticalreasoning, understood along these lines, finds paradigmatic expressionin the natural and social sciences. By extension, it also coversmatters of non-causal explanation, which are explored in thephilosophical disciplines that focus metaphysical, logical andconceptual questions. In these ways, theoretical reflection isconcerned with matters of fact and their explanation. Furthermore ittreats these issues in impersonal terms that are accessible (inprinciple) to anyone.

Practical reason, by contrast, takes a distinctively normativequestion as its starting point. It typically asks, of a set ofalternatives for action none of which has yet been performed, what oneought to do, or which option is best (or at least sufficiently)supported by reasons. It is thus concerned not with matters ofempirical, metaphysical, or logical fact and their explanation, butwith matters of value or, more generally, with the normativeevaluation of action. In practical reasoning agents attempt to assessand weigh their reasons for action, the considerations that speak forand against alternative courses of action that are open to them.Moreover they do this from a distinctively first-personal point ofview, one that is defined in terms of a practical predicament in whichthey find themselves (either individually or collectively—peoplesometimes reason jointly about what they should do together).

There is, however, a different and arguably better way ofunderstanding the contrast between practical and theoretical reason,stressing the parallels rather than the differences between the twoforms of reflection (see e.g. Berker 2013). According to thisinterpretation, theoretical reflection too is concerned with anormative rather than a merely descriptive question, namely with thequestion of what one ought, or is permitted, to believe. It attemptsto answer this normative question by assessing and weighing reasonsfor belief, the considerations that speak for and against theparticular conclusions one might draw about the way the world is.Furthermore, it does this from a standpoint of first-personalreflection: the stance of theoretical reasoning in this sense is thecommitted stance of the believer, not the stance of detachedcontemplation of one’s beliefs themselves (Moran 2001; Boyle2011). Seen in this way, the contrast between practical andtheoretical reason is essentially a contrast between two differentsystems of norms:practical norms for the regulation ofaction on the one hand, andepistemic norms for theregulation of belief on the other. (For recent discussion of therelations between these kinds of norms, see the contributions inMcHugh et al. 2018).

Theoretical reason, interpreted along these lines, addresses theconsiderations that recommend accepting particular claims as to whatis or is not the case. That is, it involves reflection with an eye tothe truth of propositions, and the reasons for belief in which itdeals are (at least paradigmatically) evidential considerations thatincrease the likelihood of propositions. Practical reason, bycontrast, is concerned not with the credibility of beliefs but withthe desirability or choiceworthiness of actions. The reasons in whichit deals are considerations that contribute to making it the case thatactions are worthy of performance in some way. This difference insubject matter corresponds to a further difference between the twoforms of reason, in respect of their consequences. Theoreticalreflection about what one ought to believe produces changes inone’s overall set of beliefs, whereas practical reason givesrise to action; as noted above, it is practical not only in itssubject matter, but also in its issue.

One way to develop this line of thought would be to treat reason inall its forms as oriented toward the questions that it aims to settle(Hieronymi 2005, 2021). There are questions that individuals faceabout what to think, but also about what to do. In reasoning aboutthese questions, we mobilize considerations that bear directly onthem, a process that is brought to a conclusion by our forming thebeliefs or taking the actions that constitutively settle the questionswe initially faced. Theoretical and practical reason are similar inthat they involve capacities to resolve questions through reflectionon reasons; they differ, however, in the kinds of question they aim tosettle.

Two observations should be made about the contrast between theoreticaland practical reason. First, one might be tempted to think that thereis a categorial difference in the consequences of theoretical andpractical reason, insofar as the former produces changes in our mentalstates, whereas the latter gives rise to bodily movements. But itwould be misleading to contrast the two kinds of rational capacity inthese terms. Practical reason gives rise not to bodily movements perse, but to intentional actions, which are processes with an essentialattitudinal component. It would thus be more accurate to characterizethe issue of both theoretical and practical reason asattitudes; the difference is that the exercise of theoreticalreason leads to modifications of our beliefs, whereas the exercise ofpracticalreason leads to modifications of our intentions(Harman 1986; Bratman 1987) —understanding intentions to includenot just plans for the future, but also intentions in action (cf. theentry onintention).

Second, it is important to be clear that in neither case do thecharacteristic modifications of attitude occur infallibly. There isroom for irrationality both in the theoretical and the practicaldomain, which in at least one prominent form involves a failure toform the attitudes that one acknowledges to be called for by theconsiderations one has reflected on (cf. Scanlon 2007). Thus a personmight end up reading a mystery novel for another hour, while at thesame time judging that they should go back to work on their paper forthe upcoming conference. Practical irrationality of this latter kindis known asakrasia, incontinence, or weakness of will, andits nature and even possibility are traditional subjects ofphilosophical speculation in their own right (see also the entry onweakness of will). If we assume that this strong kind of practical irrationality ispossible, however, then we must grant that practical reason, likeother capacities, is not necessarily successful. In other words,deliberation about action generates appropriate intentions onlyinsofar as an agent is rational (Korsgaard 1996).

Intentions and beliefs are not the only attitudes that are answerableto reasons; emotions too have their reasons, understood asconsiderations by reference to which they can be justified orcriticized. Thus it is appropriate or fitting for someone who is inthe presence of imminent danger to feel fear, and by the same tokenfear is inapt or irrational if it is felt about something that isknown to be harmless. Though emotions are responsive to reasons,however, we do not typically form or modify them through processes ofreflection or deliberation. Reflective modification of our beliefs andintentions, by contrast, is common, and commonly understood to involvean exercise of our capacities for theoretical and practicalreason.

Reasoning is commonly taken to be an inferential process that takes asinput some attitudes of a subject, and yields as output the formationor modification of other attitudes (Harman 1986). Inferentialprocesses of this kind are involved in the paradigmatic cases in whichwe exercise our capacities for both theoretical and practical reason.In the practical case, however, there is an interesting question abouthow exactly to understand the outputs of our reasoning. On a narrowconception, all reasoning is concerned with the formation ormodification of belief, and practical reasoning in particular isconcerned with the formation and modification of normative beliefsabout action. The adjustments in our intentions that result from suchreflection are not themselves conclusions of reasoning (Raz 2011: Ch.7, 2022: Ch. 3). Agents who have resolved the question of what theyought or have reason to do still have a question to settle, about whatthey are going to do. But proponents of the narrow conception wouldnote that this further question is not one that is to be resolvedthrough reasoning: once one has figured out what one ought to do,there is no practicalreasoning left to be done.

On a broader conception, practical reasoning concludes directly inintentions. According to this view, we resolve through reasoning thequestion of what we are going to do (Broome 2013: Ch. 14; McHugh andWay 2022: Ch. 2). This can also be said about a third and even broaderconception according to which practical reasoning can concludedirectly in action (Dancy 2018; Tenenbaum 2020). This view –which is often (though not uncontroversially, cf. Corcilius 2008)associated with Aristotle – arguably goes beyond the traditionalpicture of reasoning as inference, but recall that even those who takeactions to be conclusions of reasoning will think that they are suchconclusions only if and because they are intentional and thus have anessentially attitudinal component.

Proponents of each of these accounts of practical reasoning shouldagree, however, that practical reason involves some capacity to modifyour intentions. This is implicit in the idea that there are rationalconstraints on intentions to which we respond through our broadlyrational capacities, constraints that are violated (for instance) incases of akrasia. The question under dispute is whether we exercisethis capacity for the modification of our intentions throughreasoning, or in some other way.

We distinguished two ways of understanding the contrast betweentheoretical and practical reason. On the first, theoretical reason isconcerned with understanding descriptive facts and their explanation,while practical reason is concerned with the normative assessment ofaction and the generation of intentional action in light of it. Thisconception arguably neglects the normative dimension of theoreticalreason, which in turn is emphasized by the second understanding.According to it, while practical reason normatively assesses andgenerates actions or practical attitudes in light of this assessment,theoretical reason normatively assesses and generates beliefs ordoxastic attitudes in light of this assessment, where the norms incase of theoretical reason are distinctively epistemic norms.

Both of these understandings should be distinguished from a third one,according to which neither theoretical nor practical reason isparticularly concerned with normative assessment at all. According tothis coherentist or structuralist conception, theoretical reasonpertains to the coherence of a subject’s doxastic attitudes,while practical reason pertains to the coherence of a subject’spractical attitudes (see esp. Broome 2013, 2021; and the entry onstructural rationality). We come back to this position below in §4.

2. Naturalism and Normativity

The connection of practical reason with intentional action raiseslarge questions about its credentials as a capacity for genuinereasoning. As noted above, intentional action is not mere bodilymovement, but reflects a distinctive attitude of the agent’s,viz., intention. To be in this kind of mental state is tohave a conception of action that guides one’s bodily movementsas they unfold. Intention seems in this respect to be strikinglyunlike belief, which has a representational function. Beliefs aim tofit the way the world is, so that if one discovers that the world isnot how one previously took it to be, one will acknowledge pressure tomodify one’s belief in the relevant dimension (pressure to whichone will respond if one is not irrational). With intentions howeverthings seem crucially different in this respect (Smith 1987). Theintention to go shopping on Wednesday, for instance, is not a statethat would or should be abandoned upon ascertaining or confirming thatone has not (yet) gone shopping on Wednesday; rather a person withsuch an intention will ordinarily try to bring the world intoalignment with the intention, by going shopping when Wednesday comesaround. Intentions are in this way more like an architect’sblueprints than like sketches of an already-completed structure(Anscombe 1957; cf. Velleman 1989). Put in terms of an influential andcontroversially discussed metaphor first introduced by Searle (1983),beliefs have a “mind-to-world direction of fit”, whileintentions seem to have a “world-to-mind direction of fit”(see Frost 2014 for a critical overview of different accounts of thisdistinction).

Reflection on this contrast between belief and intention has led somephilosophers to ask whether practical reason might not be something ofa misnomer. The difficulty, in a nutshell, is to make sense of thesuggestion that a genuinely rational process could by itself generatestates with the peculiar function of intentions. Reason seems acapacity for cognitive operations, whereas intentions aredistinctively noncognitive states, insofar as they do not aim toreflect independent facts of the matter about the way things happen tobe in the world (cf. Hume 1739: Bk. 2, Sec. 3.3).

Expressivism represents one line of response to this skeptical worryabout practical reason. Accounts of this kind offer interpretations ofthe normative language that figures prominently in practicalreflection. As was seen in section §1, such reflection addressesan agent’s reasons for acting in one way or another. Suchconclusions are sometimes expressed in evaluative terms, as claimsabout what it would be good to do (cf. Bittner 2023), or as deonticconclusions about the actions that one ought to (or may) perform (cf.Parfit 2011; Schmidt 2024); and they are, in any case, normativejudgements. According to the expressivist, however, normativeconclusions of these kinds do not represent genuine cognitiveachievements, judgments that are literally capable of being true orfalse. Rather they give expression to desires, sentiments, plans, andother pro-attitudes, the sorts of goal-directed noncognitive statethat move people to action. The expressivist contends that we can makesense of the capacity of practical reason to generate states with thepeculiar structure and function of intentions only if normativejudgements are understood along these lines.

Expressivism in this form suggests a naturalistic interpretation ofpractical reason, one that may seem appropriate to the enlightenedcommitments of the modern scientific world view. It is naturalisticmetaphysically, insofar as it makes no commitment to the objectiveexistence in the world of such allegedly questionable entities asvalues, norms, or reasons for action. If normative and evaluativeclaims do not represent genuine cognitive achievements, then theirlegitimacy does not depend on our postulating a realm of normativefacts to which those claims must be capable of corresponding. It isalso naturalistic psychologically, insofar as it yields explanationsof intentional human behavior that are basically continuous withexplanations of the behavior of non-rational animals. In both thehuman and the non-human case, behavior is understood as the causalproduct of noncognitive attitudes, operating in conjunction with acreature’s factual representation of how things are in itsenvironment. The special sophistication of human agency may be tracedto the fact that humans have much more sophisticated linguisticmethods for giving voice to their motivating noncognitive attitudes.Indeed, many contemporary expressivists would contend that theseexpressive resources are sufficiently powerful that we can explain bymeans of them the features of practical deliberation that initiallygive it the appearance of a genuine form of reasoning (Blackburn 1998;Gibbard 1990, 2003; Ridge 2014; see also the entry onmoral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism).

Other philosophers remain unimpressed with this naturalistic approachto practical reason. One ground for dissatisfaction with it is thefollowing. The expressivist strategy relies on an initial contrastbetween practical reflection on the one hand, and the genuine forms ofcognitive activity characteristic of theoretical reasoning on theother. There has to be some important sense in which practicaldiscourse does not satisfy the standards of rationality thatdistinguish authentic cognitive discourse in the literal sense;otherwise the contention that normative discourse is expressive ratherthan cognitive will lack any significant content. But the contrastbetween theoretical and practical reflection required for this purposeseems elusive. As we saw in section §1 above, theoreticalreasoning, like practical reasoning, is plausibly understood to be anormative enterprise. It traffics in epistemic reasons for belief,after all, and such reasons are arguably no less normative thanpractical reasons for action (Cuneo 2007; Kiesewetter 2022b). To theextent that this is the case, theoretical and practical reason wouldseem equally problematic from the naturalistic perspective. Toaccommodate these points, the expressivist program may have to beextended to theoretical reasoning, a project that encounterschallenges of its own (cf. Cuneo 2007; Schroeder 2008).

A different ground for concern about expressivism has to do with thedistinction between normative judgment and intention. Expressivismtraditionally makes sense of the fact that practical reason ispractical in its issue by collapsing this distinction. Normativereflection can bring about adjustments in our intentions because itjust is a set of operations on our intentions (or intention-likepractical states). Compliance with what we ordinarily think of as arational requirement, to bring our intentions into alignment with ournormative beliefs, is thus secured through a kind of conceptual fiat.The result is that there is no room, on this position, for theparadigmatic form of irrationality in practice represented byakrasia, whereby agents fail to intend what they themselvesbelieve they ought to do. Expressivists might try to leave room forthis possibility by distinguishing between intentions and thepractical attitudes that are mobilized in practical thought about whatto do. But this threatens to leave the approach without an account ofthe ability of normative thought to engage the will.

Many of those who reject expressivism would endorse some variety ofrealism about the subject matter of practical reason. The basiccommitment of realism in this domain is the idea that there are factsof the matter about what we have reason to do that are prior to andindependent of our deliberations, to which those deliberations areultimately answerable. Theorists of this stripe picture practicalreason as a capacity for reflection about an objective body ofnormative truths regarding action (Skorupski 2010; Parfit 2011;Scanlon 2014). While many realists take normative truths to beirreducibly normative, others hold that they can ultimately be reducedto truths that are at least in principle subject to the naturalsciences (e.g., Smith 1994; Jackson 1998; Schroeder 2007a; see alsothe entry onnormativity in metaethics).

Since realists maintain a cognitivist interpretation of normativejudgements, they have an easier time than expressivists to explain thepossibility of akrasia. By the same token, they have a harder timeexplaining how practical reason can issue in intentions (see section§3 for further discussion). An alternativeapproach—different both from realism and from the kind ofexpressivism sketched above—is Kantian constructivism (Korsgaard1996, 1997). This approach denies that practical reason is a capacityfor reflection about an objective domain of independent normativefacts; but it equally rejects the expressivist’s naturalisticsuspicion of normativity (but cf. Street 2008; Müller 2020 forversions of constructivism that are more favorable to naturalism).According to the Kantian constructivist, practical reason is governedby genuine normative constraints, which for Kant himself included thehypothetical and categorical imperatives (cf. Kant 1785). But whatmakes these constraints normative is precisely their relation to thewill of the agents whose decisions they govern. The principles ofpractical reason are constitutive principles of rational agency,binding on us insofar as we necessarily commit ourselves to complyingwith them in willing anything at all (Korsgaard 2009; cf. Enoch 2006).The realm of the normative, on this approach, is not pictured as abody of truths or facts that are prior to and independent of the will;rather, it is taken to be ‘constructed’ by agents throughtheir own volitional activity (see also the entry onconstructivism in metaethics).

3. Reasons and Motivation

The capacity of practical reason to give rise to intentional actiondivides even those philosophers who agree in rejecting theexpressivist strategy discussed above. Many such philosophers areprepared to grant that there are facts and truths about practicalreasons, and to accept the cognitive credentials of discourse aboutthis distinctive domain of facts and truths. But they differ in theiraccounts of the truth conditions of the normative claims that figurein such discourse. We may distinguish the following two approaches.The first of these, often referred to as internalism, holds thatreasons for action must be grounded in an agent’s priormotivations (Williams 1979; cf. Finlay 2009). According to thisinfluential position, a given agents can have reason to dox only ifx-ing would speak to or advance someelement ins’s ‘subjective motivationalset’. There must be some rational connection betweens’sx-ing and the subjective motivations towhichs is actually already subject; otherwise the claim thats has reason tox must be rejected, as false orincoherent. Behind this internalist position lies the idea thatpractical reason is practical in its issue. Internalists contend thatwe can make sense of the generation of new intentions throughreasoning only if we assume that such reasoning is conditioned bymotivational resources that are already to hand. Practical reason, onthe internalist account, is the capacity to work out the implicationsof the commitments contained in one’s existing subjectivemotivational set; the upshot is that motivation is prior to practicalreason, and constrains it.

Externalists reject this picture, contending that one can have reasonsfor action that are independent of one’s prior motivations. Theytypically agree that practical reasoning is capable of generating newmotivations and actions. They agree, in other words, that if agents has reason to dox, it must be possible fors to acquire the motivation tox through reflectionon the relevant reasons. But they deny that such reasoning must in anysignificant way be constrained bys’s subjectivemotivations prior to the episode of reasoning. On this approach,practical reason is not conceived as a capacity for working out theimplications of one’s existing desires and commitments. Instead,reasons are taken to be features of an agent’s situation thatmake actions objectively choiceworthy, and reflection on such reasonscan open up new motivational possibilities (Parfit 1997; Dancy 2000).This disagreement is conventionally understood to be driven bydiverging approaches to the explanation of intentional action.Internalists are impressed by the differences between intentions andthe cognitive states that figure in paradigmatic examples oftheoretical reasoning. Pointing to these differences, they ask howpractical reason can succeed in producing new intentions if it is notbased in something of the same basic psychological type: a motivationor desire that is already part of the agent’s subjectivemotivational equipment. Many externalists find this contrast betweenintentions and cognitive states overdrawn. They hold that we need topostulate basic dispositions of normative responsiveness to accountfor the capacity of theoretical reflection about reasons to affect ourbeliefs, and question why these same dispositions cannot explain thefact that practical reasoning is practical in its consequences.Cognitive or not, intentions belong to the broad class of attitudesthat are sensitive to judgments, and this may account for the capacityof practical reflection to generate new intentions (Scanlon 1998: Ch.1). A third possibility is that intentions result from dispositions orcapacities distinct from the psychic mechanisms that rendertheoretical rationality possible. Depending on how it is developed,this approach may offer a different way of accounting for thepractical consequences of practical reflection, without assuming thatreasons for action are grounded in an agent’s subjectivemotivations (Velleman 2000: Ch. 8; Wallace 1999). (For more onpractical reasons and motivation, see also the entry onreasons for action: internal vs. external.)

The connection between practical reasoning and motivation is not theonly consideration that has led philosophers to adopt internalist ordesire-based theories of reasons for action. More recently, it hasbeen argued that such theories are in a better position to explain ournormative reasons themselves (Schroeder 2007a). There are cases inwhich features of a person’s psychology make an obviousdifference to what the person has reason to do. Some people like todance, others detest this activity, and this difference in their“desires” appears to determine a corresponding differencein their reasons. Even in cases of this kind, however, it is far fromobvious that differences in the agent’sdesires arewhat ultimately explain their differing reasons (Scanlon 2014).Moreover, the fact that psychological factors might sometimes berelevant to the explanation of a person’s reasons does notentail that they always have explanatory relevance.

4. Instrumental and Structural Rationality

Among the norms of practical reason, those of instrumental rationalityhave seemed least controversial to many philosophers. Instrumentalrationality, in its most basic form, instructs agents to take thosemeans that are necessary in relation to their given ends. In themodern era, this form of rationality has widely been viewed as thesingle unproblematic requirement of practical reason. The instrumentalprinciple makes no assumptions about the prospects for rationalscrutiny of peoples’ ends. Rational criticism of this kindapparently presupposes that there are objective values or norms,providing standards for assessment of ends that are independent frompsychological facts about what people happen to be motivated topursue. In line with the naturalistic attitude sketched in section§2, however, it may be doubted whether such independent standardscan be reconciled with the metaphysical commitments of contemporaryscientific practice. A world that is shorn of objective values ornorms leaves no room for rational criticism of peoples’ ends,but only for WeberianZweckrationalität: the rationaldetermination of means to the realization of ends that are taken to begiven, as a matter of human psychological fact (Weber 1978).

This line of thought can be traced back to the philosophy of DavidHume, who famously asserted that ‘Reason is, and ought only tobe the slave of the passions’ (Hume 1739: 415). Those attractedto the Humean approach should bear in mind, however, that theinstrumental principle is itself an objective norm. The principle saysthat we arerationally required to take the means that arenecessary to achieve our ends; if the principle represents a bindingnorm of practical reason, then we are open to rational criticism tothe extent we fail to exhibit this kind of instrumental consistency,regardless of whether we want to comply with the principle or not. Ifnaturalism really entails that there can be no objective norms orvalues, it may be wondered how an exception can possibly be made forthe instrumental requirement (Hampton 1998). A more consistentlynaturalistic position would be to reject evenZweckrationalität in favor of a skeptical attitudetowards practical reason in all its forms—an attitude that maywell correspond to the intentions of the historical Hume (cf. Dreier1997; Millgram 1995).

Further questions can be raised about the plausibility of thesuggestion that the instrumental norm exhausts the requirements ofpractical reason. The norm says that one should take the means thatare necessary relative to one’s psychologically-given ends. Buthow can the fact that a given means exhibits this kind of necessitygive a person reason to choose the means, if the end is not itselfsomething it would be valuable to achieve in some way? Theinstrumental principle seems to function as a binding norm ofpractical reason only if it is taken for granted that there areadditional, independent standards for the assessment of our ends(Quinn 1993; Korsgaard 1997). Otherwise, it would be possible for usto create normative reasons for action simply by adopting ends we haveno reason to adopt – a form of “bootstrapping” thatis widely regarded as implausible (Bratman 1981; Broome 2001).

Restricting the instrumental principle to reasonable ends raisesanother problem, however. Agents who fail to take the means tounreasonable ends and those failing to take the means toreasonable ends seem equally criticizable as instrumentally irrationalor means/end-incoherent. How could this be the case if theinstrumental principle applies only to reasonable ends? On a widelydiscussed approach, the instrumental principle has to be understood asa “wide-scope” normative requirement or reason, whichinstructs us to be means/end-coherent, but leaves open whether toachieve this by taking the means or by giving up the end (Broome 1999;Wallace 2001; Bratman 2009). Thus understood, the instrumentalprinciple applies equally to all ends (reasonable or not), but thedetachment of reasons to take means to unreasonable ends is avoidednevertheless. Similar proposals have been made about other kinds ofprinciples governing the coherence of our attitudes, includingconsistency requirements on beliefs (e.g., Dancy 1977). Moreover, inrecent years it has become standard to distinguish requirements ofstructural rationality, such as the instrumental principle, fromsubstantive normative requirements or reasons (Broome 2013; Brunero2020; Worsnip 2021). On this view, the detachment of reasons fortaking means to unreasonable ends can be avoidedeither byclaiming that structural requirements take “wide-scope”,or by claiming that we do not generally have reasons to bestructurally rational (Kolodny 2005).

Structural requirements of this kind have recently become a subject oflively philosophical debate. The idea that there are coherencerequirements on our attitudes appears to be common ground amongphilosophers who differ significantly in their views about the natureand scope of practical reason. It is accepted by most Humeans, forinstance, who believe that there is no scope for the rationalcriticism of individual ends, and also by Kantians, who think that therequirements of reason ultimately constrain us to choose in accordancewith the moral law. From the perspective of practical and theoreticaldeliberation, we commonly seem to grant the force of structuralrequirements, acknowledging a kind of rational pressure to bring ourbeliefs and intentions into compliance with the instrumental principleand other standards of consistency and coherence.

Many philosophers take such structural requirements at face value,granting that practical reason is governed by and responsive to them.Indeed, it has influentially been argued that standards of goodreasoning, in both the practical and the theoretical domain,derive exclusively from structural requirements of rationality (Broome2013). But questions arise about this approach. If structuralrequirements are independent of reasons, it is an open questionwhether we have any reason to comply with them, and the question hasforcefully been argued to receive a negative answer (Kolodny 2005).But then it becomes unclear why we should care about whether ourattitudes are structurally rational and why the charge ofirrationality is commonly taken to be a serious form of criticism(Kiesewetter 2017).

More generally, there is a question about how to conceive of therelation between structural requirements and normative reasons. Oneview, held in common by some Humeans and by some Kantianconstructivists (see sec. §2 above), is that reasons arefundamentally derivative from requirements of structural rationality.What one has reason to do, on this view, is what one would desire orintend to do if one was fully rational (i.e. fully in compliance withthe structural requirements that govern one’s attitudes) (cf.Smith 1994; Markovits 2014). It is unclear, however, how suchidealized attitude accounts can avoid revisionary normativeimplications without smuggling in substantive normative assumptionsinto the notion of an ideally coherent agent (Worsnip 2021).

For those who do not share this reductionist view, the status ofstructural requirements becomes more puzzling. One might hold thatpractical reason is ultimately answerable to two different kinds ofconstraints: to structural requirements on the one hand, and toindependent facts about what one has reason to do on the other hand(cf. Worsnip 2021). But this position is potentially unstable. Aspointed out already, once the independence of structural requirementsfrom normative reasons is made clear, it is no longer obvious why weshould care about whether our attitudes do or do not comply with thestructural requirements.

On an alternative view, it is a myth that rationality requiresmeans/end-coherence as such (Raz 2005; Kolodny 2008), or moregenerally that there are any structural requirements of rationality(Kiesewetter 2017; Lord 2018). According to this position, coherenceshould be seen as a side effect of responding correctly to reasonsrather than a rational requirement on its own, and the appearance ofstructural requirements can be explained by substantive features ofthe reasons to which both practical and theoretical reason areultimately and properly responsive. (For more on this, see also theentries oninstrumental rationality and onstructural rationality.)

5. Maximizing Rationality

Proponents of Humean approaches to practical reason have attempted toaccommodate the rational criticism of individual ends, withoutdeparting from the spirit ofZweckrationalität, byexpanding their view to encompass the totality of an agent’sends. Thus, even if there are no reasons or values that are ultimatelyindependent of an agent’s given ends, the possibility remainsthat we could criticize particular intrinsic desires by reference toothers in an agent’s subjective motivational set. Anagent’s desire for leisure, for instance, might be subordinatedinsofar as its satisfaction would frustrate the realization of othergoals that are subjectively more important to the agent, such asprofessional success. Practical reason, it might be suggested, is aholistic enterprise, properly concerned not merely with identifyingmeans to the realization of individual ends, but with the coordinatedachievement of the totality of an agent’s ends.

Many philosophers take this holistic approach to be the most promisingway of thinking about practical reason. It defines an important anddifficult problem for practical reason to address, without departingfrom the metaphysically modest assumption that there is no court ofappeal for the rational criticism of an agent’s ends that isindependent of those ends themselves. The holistic approach finds itsmost sophisticated and influential expression in the maximizingconception of practical rationality. According to the maximizingconception, the fundamental task of practical reason is to determinewhich course of action would optimally advance the agent’scomplete set of ends, which is typically identified with the actionwhose subjective expected utility—reflecting both the utilityand probability of possible outcomes from the agent’s point ofview (i.e. in terms of the agent’s preferences and credences orbeliefs)—is the highest.

The maximizing conception of practical rationality has beeninfluentially developed in decision theory and in the theory ofrational choice (as studied, for instance, in modern economics). Thesedisciplines articulate with mathematical precision the basic idea thatpractical rationality is a matter of consistency in action: people actrationally to the extent they do what is likely to bring about thebest state of affairs, given both their preferences and theircredences about the outcomes that may be brought about through theiragency. Proponents of these theories sometimes claim for them theadditional advantage of empirical adequacy, arguing that they areflexible enough to accommodate the full range of behaviors that humanagents engage in, both within the marketplace and outside of it.Especially if one operates with the notion of ‘revealedpreferences’—preferences, that is, that are ascribed toagents solely on the basis of actual behavior—then virtuallyanything an agent might choose to do could be interpreted as anattempt to maximize expected utility. Decision theory, on theresulting interpretation of it, becomes an all-encompassing frameworkfor understanding free human behavior, according to which all agentswho act freely are striving to produce outcomes that would be optimal,relative to their current preferences and beliefs.

If decision theory is interpreted in this way, however, then itsrelevance to the understanding of practical reason may appearcorrespondingly tenuous (cf. Pettit and Smith 1997). The maximizationof subjective utility is supposed to represent a normative ideal, oneby appeal to which we can assess critically the deliberations ofagents. In this guise, the attraction of the maximizing model lies inthe idea that there can be rational requirements on action, stemmingfrom the totality of an agent’s preferences and credences, evenif we do not assume that there are independent, substantive standardsfor the critical assessment of individual ends. But this normativeinterpretation of maximizing rationality is tenable only if it is atleast conceivable that individual agents might sometimes fail tosatisfy its requirements—an ‘ought’ that it is notso much as possible to flout is not really an ‘ought’ atall (Lavin 2004). Thus the axioms of decision theory includeconstraints on an agent’s overall preferences (such ascompleteness and transitivity) that might be violated even by agentswho are striving to satisfy their currently strongest desires. Suchagents will be criticizable by the lights of decision theory insofaras there is no consistent utility function that can be ascribed tothem on the basis of their actual choices and behavior. The normativecredentials of decision theory rest, then, on the plausibility of theaxioms that are taken to define an individual utilityfunction—axioms that may not be quite as innocent oruncontroversial as they initially appear (cf. Mandler 2001).

Further questions arise about the plausibility of the normativerequirement to maximize expected utility. Doubts have been expressed,for instance, in regard to the assumption that it is necessarilyirrational to fail to select that action that would be optimal,relative to one’s preferences and credences. Perfectly rationalagents often appear to be content with states of affairs that are‘good enough’, from the perspective of their aims anddesires, even when they know that alternatives are available thatpromise a higher return; they ‘satisfice’, rather thanseeking to maximize the value of the outcomes achievable through theiractions (Slote 1989). They also treat their past intentions and plansas defeasibly fixed constraints on deliberation, rather thanattempting to maximize subjective utility anew in every situation theyconfront (Bratman 1987). Finally, they can adopt different attitudestoward risk, attaching greater importance to avoiding bad outcomesthan to maximizing expected utility, as classically conceived (Buchak2013). Defenders of the maximizing model contend that it is flexibleenough to accommodate alleged counterexamples of these kinds (Pettit1984). If not, however, there may be grounds for doubting that itrepresents a basic norm or practical reason.

A different issue about maximizing rationality concerns the set ofdesires or aims that is taken as fixed for purposes of applying therequirement of maximization. We may distinguish two basic approaches.The first and perhaps most common of these takes the subjectiveutility of alternative actions to be determined by the agent’spreferences at the time of deliberation. According to thisinterpretation of the maximization model, we are rational to theextent we do that which best promotes the totality of our presentaims. A second and quite different interpretation results if we expandthe set of desires that determine the subjective utilities of outcomesto include the totality of the agent’s preferences over time.According to this model, rational agents aim to maximize thesatisfaction of all of their anticipated desires, acceptingfrustration of present preferences for the sake of greatersatisfaction at later times (Sidgwick 1907; Parfit 1984: Pt. 2; Pettitand Smith 1997). This interpretation of the maximizing model givesexpression to the common idea that a certain prudential regard forone’s own future well-being is a requirement of practical reason(Nagel 1978: Chs. 5–8). But if we take it to be a comprehensiveaccount of rationality in action, the prudential interpretation canalso appear to be an unstable compromise: if practical reason requiresus to factor in our future desires, should it not equally demand thatwe take into account the desires of other agents who may be affectedby what we do? Why should we take the distinction between persons tobe significant for the theory of practical reason, once we have deniedsuch significance to the distinction between different times in thelife of a single agent (Parfit 1984; cf. section §6 below)?

However we define the class of desires that is subject to therequirement of maximization, we do not need to take those desiresexactly as they are given. Many proponents of the maximizing approachsuggest that an agent’s actual desires should be launderedsomewhat before the demand to maximize is applied. For instance, if mydesire forX is contingent on a false factual belief aboutthe nature ofX, then it is questionable that practicalreason requires that the desire be taken into account in determiningwhat it is rational for me to do. A popular form of laundering wouldrule out desires of this kind, by subjecting to the requirement ofmaximization only those desires that would survive if the agent werefactually well-informed about the objects of desire and thecircumstances of action, and deliberating in a calm and focused frameof mind. Indeed, once we are in the business of laundering desires wecan go still further, excluding from consideration desires that aresubstantively objectionable, even if they would survive the filter ofcorrected factual belief. This would at least be a way to counterbootstrapping objections of the kind we discussed above in section§4. To move into this territory, however, would clearly be toabandon the Humean framework of the original maximizing approach,assuming resources for the rational criticism of ends that areindependent of the agent’s actual dispositions.

Some philosophers might respond to the cases that invitedesire-laundering by distinguishing between subjective and objectivedimensions of practical reason—between what one has reason todo, given all the facts about one’s situation, and what one hasreason to do given one’s beliefs about the situation or theevidence that is available to one. This is a distinction that can bebrought to bear on any conception of reasons and rationality, insofaras agents operate with epistemic limitations that deprive them ofaccess to facts that are potentially relevant. To borrow an examplefrom Judith Thomson (Thomson 1990: 229), it might seem obvious that itis rational to flip the light switch as you enter your office if it isdark outside and you are planning to do some reading. But suppose thatflipping the switch will, through a series of remarkable coincidencesthat nobody could have anticipated, cause a dangerous lighting flashin the house next door. We might want to say that objectively, you hadcompelling reason not to operate the switch, even if you wereperfectly rational to do so given the evidence available to you (cf.Parfit 2011: Chs. 5 and 7).

Applying this distinction to the maximizing approach, one mightmaintain that our corrected desires are relevant to determining whatwe objectively ought or have reason to do. But we are often not in aposition to know the facts that determine what we have objectivereason to do. When this is the case, we can hardly be faulted for afailure of rationality. Indeed, the potential inaccessibility ofobjective reasons raises larger questions about the standing of theobjectivist conception of practical reason, according to which thecentral ‘ought’ of practical deliberation corresponds towhat we have most objective reason to do. Perspectivists aboutpractical reason argue that the ‘ought’ of deliberationmust be understood in terms of an epistemically constrained notion ofa reason (Kiesewetter 2011, 2017: Ch. 8). Some degree of desirelaundering is defensible, according to this line of thought, but itshould be understood to involve correction of desires in the light offacts about the world that are accessible to the agent.

6. Value, Prudence, and Morality

If maximizing rationality is not the unproblematic requirement ofpractical reason that it initially seemed to be, what are thealternatives to it? Let us begin with the assumption that criticalassessment of an agent’s individual ends is off-limits. Thisidea has been questioned by many philosophers, who point out that ourbasic aims in life are often rather inchoate; people want, forinstance, to be successful in their careers, and loyal to theirfriends, without being clear about what exactly these ends require ofthem. To the extent one’s ends are indeterminate in this way,they will not provide effective starting points for instrumental,maximizing, or even satisficing reflection. We need to specify suchends more precisely before we can begin to think about which meansthey require us to pursue, or to generate from them a rank-ordering ofpossible outcomes. Here is a possible task for practical reason thatdoes not fit neatly into the categories of instrumental or maximizingreflection, however broadly construed (Kolnai 1962; Wiggins 1975;Richardson 1994).

Reflection about the nature of our given ends is not an easy orwell-defined activity. There are no straightforward criteria forsuccess in this kind of enterprise, and it is often unclear when ithas been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. These considerationsencourage the Humean assumption—especially widespread in thesocial sciences—that there is no reasoning about final ends. Onthe other hand, how is one supposed to clarify one’s largest andmost important ends, if not by reasoning about them in some way?Rather than exclude such reflection because it does not conform to anarrowly scientific paradigm of reason, perhaps we should expand ourconception of practical reason to make room for interpretativereflection about the ends of action. To do so would be to acknowledgethat practical reason has an essentially heuristic dimension, one thatis connected to the project of self-understanding (Williams 1979). Byworking out the meaning and implications of such antecedentcommitments as loyalty or success, for instance, we also help to getclear the values that define who we really are (Taylor 1985).

Instrumental models of practical reason are sometimes thought to reston a basically consequentialist account of the relation of action tovalue (Anderson 1993). According to this account, value inheresultimately in states of affairs, insofar as it is these that are theobjects of subjective preference rankings. Actions are then judgedrational to the extent they bring about states of affairs that arevaluable in this way. It is a matter of controversy, however, whetherthis is the most plausible way of thinking about the rationality ofaction. Defenders of satisficing models, for example, think that agiven action can be rational even when it is acknowledged by the agentthat a different action would bring about a more valuable state ofaffairs. Alternatively, it might be maintained that we can judge anaction rational without being able to arrive at any clear independentranking of the state of affairs produced by it, as better or worsethan the alternatives. Perhaps our judgments of the value of actionsare ultimately parasitic on our convictions about what there is reasonto do or to admire; in that case, we will not be able to deriveconclusions about reasons from antecedent premises in the theory ofvalue (Scanlon 1998: Ch. 2). Related questions have been raised aboutthe basic consequentialist assumption that value attaches in the firstinstance to states of affairs. Thus it may seem to distort ourunderstanding of friendship, for instance, to maintain that whatfriends value fundamentally are states of affairs (involving, say,joint activities with the friend); what people value as friends arerather concrete particulars or relations, such as the persons withwhom they are befriended or their relationships with those persons.Building on this idea in the theory of value, it has been proposedthat actions are rational insofar as they succeed in expressing theattitudes that it is rational to adopt toward the true bearers ofintrinsic value: people, animals, and things (Anderson 1993).

A supposed advantage of this expressive approach is its ability toexplain the rationality of behaviors that seem intuitively sensible,but that are hard to fit into the consequentialist scheme (such ascommitments deriving from one’s past involvement in an activityor project, which can look like an irrational weighting of ‘sunkcosts’ to the consequentialist; cf. Nozick 1993). But somedefenders of the consequentialist model contend that it can accountfor such phenomena. For instance, if friends have special,‘agent-relative’ reasons to attend to the interests ofeach other—and not merely reasons to promote the neutral valueof friendship wherever it may be instantiated—this can beexpressed in consequentialist terms by introducing person-indexedvalue functions, which rank possible states of affairs in terms oftheir desirability from the agent’s point of view (Portmore2011; Sen 2000; for criticism, see Schroeder 2007b; Wallace 2010; formore on this, see also the entry onvalue theory).

Whether or not we accept a consequentialist framework, questions inthe theory of value would seem to be an important focus for practicalreflection. Many philosophers are attracted to the idea that reasonsfor action are ultimately provided by the values that can be realizedthrough action (Raz 1999). If this is right, and if we assume as wella realist or at least non-subjectivist conception of value, then adifferent way of conceptualizing the task of practical reason comesinto view. This may be thought of not as a matter of maximizing thesatisfaction of the agent’s given ends, nor of specifying endsthat are still inchoate, but rather as the task of understanding andresponding appropriately to the values that bear on action. This taskin turn admits of a number of different interpretations. In the spiritof G. E. Moore (1903), we might interpret the evaluative reflectionrelevant to deliberation in consequentialist terms, as reflectionabout a property of goodness that is instantiated by states of theworld (cf. Maguire 2016). An influential alternative to it, inspiredby Aristotle, holds that the proper focus of practical reflection isnot the production of good outcomes, but the goal of acting well as aperson. According to this approach, the values that are relevant todetermining what an agent ought to do are those that are specificallyconnected to human virtue; one acts well, on this view, to the extentone does what a good or virtuous person would do (Lawrence 1995; Foot2001; Thompson 2008; Thomson 2008). A somewhat different viewdispenses with the reference to the ideal of the virtuous person,appealing directly to the plurality of specific values that may berealized intrinsically through action. The result is an expansiveconception of practical reason, according to which any concretedimension of value that might be instantiated through our agency fallswithin the purview of practical deliberation (Raz 1999, 2011).

While such a value-based conception of practical reasons has become anincreasingly influential alternative to the Humean, desire-basedconception, the thesis that all practical reasons can be explained interms of the value of actions has not gone unchallenged. Cases ofincommensurable values or other kinds of value indeterminacy have been brought forward infavor of a hybrid view, which incorporates desire- or will-basedreasons alongside value-based reasons (Chang 2013). On another kind ofview, there are certain moral reasons – such as, for example,the reason involved in the obligation to keep one’s promise– that have to be explained in terms of the voluntary exerciseof a normative power to create a reason rather than in terms of thevalue of the action (Owens 2012; Kiesewetter 2022a).

Morality has provided an especially fertile source of examples andproblems for the theory of practical reason. A defining question ofmoral philosophy is the question of the rational authority of moralnorms: to what extent, and under what conditions, do people havecompelling reasons to comply with the demands of morality?(Alternatively: to what extent, and under what conditions, are peoplerationally required to comply with those demands?) Reflection on thisquestion has produced some of the most significant and illuminatingphilosophical work in the theory of practical reason. One tendencywithin this body of work is skeptical about the rational authority ofmoral norms, precisely because they are at odds with the standards towhich practical reason is ultimately answerable. A certain kind ofHumean, for instance, might question the idea that morality is asource of inescapable or categorical reasons or requirements, arguingthat all normative considerations are contingent on the subjectivemotivations of individual agents, some of whom might just not careabout whether their conduct is morally objectionable (Williams 1985,1989).

Another kind of skepticism is based on the natural idea that practicalreason is primarily answerable to norms of prudence, i.e. norms thatrequire agents to be responsive to evaluative facts about what is goodfor them or what promotes their own well-being (see Fletcher 2021 fordiscussion of such norms). Thus, on a widely shared picture, moraldemands are strictly impartial and often call for significant personalsacrifices, leading to a fundamental conflict between morality andprudential reason (Singer 1972).

Some take this conflict to call into question the rational credentialsof moral requirements, precisely because compliance with them is atodds with the agent’s own good (Dorsey 2016). Alternatively, wemight follow Sidgwick in postulating a “dualism of practicalreason”; this affirms the rational credentials of both prudenceand impartial morality, and concedes, pessimistically, that they oftenpull in different directions (Sidgwick 1907: Bk. 4, Ch. 6; cf. Parfit2011: Ch. 6). A still different response to this apparent tension isto maintain that it rests on a misinterpretation of the requirementsof prudence. Thus it has been argued that, though morality imposesconstraints on the direct pursuit of individual utility, theseconstraints can be justified in the terms of prudential rationality;the strategy of morally-constrained maximization is recommended ongrounds of enlightened self-interest, and this in turn accounts forthe authority of moral considerations to govern the practicalreflection of individuals (Gauthier 1986).

Discussions of the rational credentials of morality are bound up withsubstantive accounts of the content of moral requirements. Considerutilitarianism and other consequentialist approaches to the normativestructure of morality, which interpret moral rightness in terms of thevalue of the consequences (of actions, policies, institutions, orother objects of moral assessment). On the one hand, many versions ofconsequentialism exacerbate the apparent conflict between morality andprudence—as Sidgwick saw, the individualized demand to maximizethe impartial good seems fundamentally at odds with the prudentialimperative to promote one’s own well-being. At the same time, asSidgwick also discerned, consequentialist interpretations of moralityderive at least some of their appeal from the fact that they apply tothe moral domain the maximizing model of rationality that seems bothfamiliar and appealing outside of moral contexts (cf. Scheffler 1988).Thus one way to argue for ethical consequentialism is to observe thatit is the theory that results when we combine the requirement ofmaximization with a distinctively moral constraint of impartiality,applying the requirement to a set of preferences that includes thoseof all the persons (or other sentient creatures) potentially affectedby our actions (Harsanyi 1982).

Those who wish to vindicate the rational credentials of morality inthe face of skeptical challenges have often taken issue withconsequentialist conceptions of the moral (or at least theirtraditional interpretations). Such views ascribe to us very demandingrequirements of impartial benevolence, which leave little scope forthe independent significance of the agent’s own projects andinterests (Williams 1973). But a more reasonable interpretation ofmorality might be one that accommodates the independence of thepersonal point of view (Scheffler 1982), by allowing that moralrequirements are sensitive to both moral and prudential considerations(Stroud 1998; Portmore 2011: Ch. 5; Schmidt 2023).

Non-consequentialists typically think of morality as a source ofdeontological requirements—such as prohibitions on murder anddeception—that place constraints on the pursuit of the good,including both the good of the agent and the impartial good. If wewish to vindicate the rational credentials of morality, on thisinterpretation of it, then we will need to expand our conception ofpractical reason to include rational requirements very different fromthe ones that are salient in other domains.

There are two connected features of moral norms that seem particularlysignificant in this connection. First, they are intuitively understoodto include agent-relative reasons for action (Nagel 1978). Thus, if Ihave promised that I will take you to the airport tomorrow afternoon,this consideration has a significance for me that it does notnecessarily have for other agents. In particular, the importance to meof keeping my promise seems to be independent from the impersonal endof promissory fidelity. This shows itself in the fact that my reasonto keep the promise I have made would be unaffected if I found myselfin a scenario in which breaking my promise would lead five otheragents to keep promises they would otherwise have flouted. Second,these agent-relative considerations have a distinctive function withinpractical deliberation. They are not merely considerations that speakin favor of the actions they recommend, but operate rather aspractical requirements that presumptively constrain the agent’sactivities. The fact that I have promised to take you to the airporttomorrow, for instance, is ordinarily a decisive basis for concludingthat that is to be done. I do not need to weigh this considerationagainst other values that might be pursued under the circumstances;rather, the promissory commitment enters the deliberative field fromthe start in the deontic guise of an obligation or a“pre-emptive” or “exclusionary reason” (Raz1986, 1990; Wallace 2019).

There are divergent approaches that have been taken within ethicaltheory for making sense of these salient features of moral reasons.Kantians for instance, take rational agents to impose the moral law onthemselves when they act, where the law in question functions as alimiting condition on the pursuit of their ends (O’Neill 1989;Korsgaard 1996). Proponents of virtue theory take it that compliancewith some agent-centered requirements is partly constitutive of beinga good human being (Foot 2001). A still different class of approachesunderstands moral norms in essentially interpersonal terms: either asdemands that are (at least hypothetically) imposed by agents on eachother (Darwall 2009), or as relational requirements that define whatwe oweto each other, and that make possible relations ofmutual recognition or regard (Scanlon 1998; Wallace 2019). These arevery disparate ways of conceptualizing morality as a sui genesisdomain of agent-centered obligations. They have in common, however, acommitment to the idea that reflection on the nature of morality canbring to light structures of practical reason that would not otherwisebe salient.

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Acknowledgments

Benjamin Kiesewetter gratefully acknowledges funding by the EuropeanUnion (ERC Grant 101040439, REASONS F1RST). Views and opinionsexpressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarilyreflect those of the European Union or the European Research CouncilExecutive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the grantingauthority can be held responsible for them.