How Practical Reasoning Is Possible

This chapter asks whether action can stand in much the same relation (or relations) to the considerations adduced in reasoning as can belief, and suggests that the answer is going to be yes. It considers the nature of the favouring relation, which will be central to the book’s overall approach. The relation is a tripartite one with three places in it, one for that which favours, one for the agent, and one for the response that is favoured. It argues that only matters of fact can favour anything; propositions are incapable of this feat. But it allows, or rather insists, that no particular action or belief can be favoured either by reasons or by reasoning. Practical reasoning can only take us to acting in a certain way, never to the particular action that we perform in the light of that reasoning