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Practical Skepticism and the Reasons for Action
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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At least since Descartes's Meditations philosophers in the West have been concerned to defend the rationality of our beliefs from the threat of epistemological skepticism. The idea that there might be nothing which we know, or more radically, which we have even the slightest reason to believe, is one that many philosophers have thought to be deserving of serious attention. It seems somewhat odd, therefore, that there has not been similar attention given to what one might call practical skepticism. Is it not also possible that there is nothing which we have even the slightest reason to do? Of course, there is a sense in which epistemological skepticism might be thought to be the more basic problem. If there is nothing which we have any reason to believe, then it will follow that there is nothing which we have any reason to do. If some proposition is a reason that we have for doing something it must at least be the case that we have some reason to believe that proposition. But is practical skepticism merely a species of epistemological skepticism? I doubt it.
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References
1 For a recent defense of the more radical version see Unger, Peter “Two Types of Scepticism,” Philosophical Studies 25 (1974), 77–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Inconsistency here is a normative notion. As I have argued elsewhere the practical analogue to the inference to the best explanation is the inference to the best means. Thus, it is unreasonable to believe some proposition, to believe that some hypothesis is the best (and not merely best currently available) explanation of that proposition, and fail to believe the hypothesis. See my “The Inference to the Best Means,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 6 (1976), 49-58.
3 Note that some theorists characterize rationality in such a way that this question cannot be raised. Thus, Amartya Sen: “Rationality, as a concept, would seem to belong to the relationship between choices and preferences, and a typical question will take form: ‘Given your preferences, was it rational for you to choose the actions you have chosen?’ There is no immediate reason why it should discriminate between one type of preference and another.” Sen, “Choice, Orderings, and Morality,” in Practical Reason, ed. KÖrner, Stephen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 54–67.Google Scholar
4 On the more familiar “myth of the given” see Sellars, Wilfred “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” reprinted in Science, Perception, and Reality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), 127-96.Google Scholar For an examination of the views of a philosopher whose practical philosophy is committed to a basis of a practical given, viz., Sidgwick, Henry see my “Pleasure as Ultimate Good in Sidgwick's Ethics,” Monist 58 (1974), 475-89.Google Scholar
5 The distinction here is one between what Baier, Kurt has called explanatory and justifying reasons. See Baier, The Moral Point of View (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958), 148-56.Google Scholar The same distinction was made in the eighteenth century by Francis Hutcheson between what he calls “exciting” and “justifying” reasons: Hutcheson, , “On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections,” British Moralists, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), v.l., 64.Google Scholar See also Hempel, Carl Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York: The Free Press, 1965), 473f.Google Scholar
6 Kant, Immanuel Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Beck, L. W. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 17f;Google Scholar and Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), 17f.Google Scholar
7 ‘Wanting’ has a rather broader application in these discussions and in my argument than its ordinary use in English. It is meant to include ‘aiming at,’ ‘having as an end,’ and so on.
8 Brandt, Richard and Kim, Jaegwon “Wants as Explanations of Actions,” Journal of Philosophy 60 (1963), 425-35;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Carl Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, 473f; H. P. Grice, “Method in Philosophical Psychology,” 1975 Presidential Address to the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Society: Churchland, Paul “The Logical Character of Action Explanations,” Philosophical Review 79 (1970), 214-36;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Goldman, Alvin A Theory of Human ction (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 109f.Google Scholar For a similar view of belief see Ginsberg, Mitchell Mind and Belief (New York: Humanities Press, 1972).Google Scholar
9 Putnam, Hilary “The Analytic and Synthetic,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. III (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962), 358-97.Google Scholar
10 Unless ‘that-p’ is ‘that he wants to do A.’ In that case he will of course want to do A, but not necessarily for any further reason. Recall that ‘want’ is being used in a rather broad sense.
11 See Harman, Gilbert Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 11.Google Scholar
12 Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, 473f.
13 This is similar to a principle proposed by Paul Churchland in “The logical Character of Action Explanations,” 221f. I should note in passing that the ‘ceteris paribus’ clause does not trivialize the generalization, any more than saying that if salt is placed in water then, ceteris paribus, it will dissolve is saying something trivial. In both cases there is the background assumption that the theory utilizing the generalization can in principle be developed to explain why in particular cases the consequent is false in spite of the fact that the antecedent is true.
14 Note that the argument would perhaps have even more force were we to consider the facts that one would be displeased, suffer pain or injury, were one not to do A.
15 A similar generalization is proposed by Brandt and Kim, “Wants as Explanations of Actions,” 427.