Main authors discussed:  John Broome

This article takes up an interesting issue at the intersection of philosophy of action and ethics. The issue takes the form of two related questions: (1) What difference do our decisions make to our reasons for action, and (2) What difference do our decisions make to the rationality of our actions? Before delving into Cullity’s arguments, it is worth pointing out two assumptions that he admittedly makes. He operates with an objective view of reasons, and with a view that “decisions” are things that are made consciously.

On to the arguments we go.

First, focusing on question one, Cullity outlines three ways (cases) in which our decisions make a difference to our reasons for action. The first case is one where my decision causes me to do something that puts me in a new situation  and provides me with new reasons to do something. The second case is one where I make a decision between two equal options, X and Y. The fact that I have made a decision to X, now gives me a reason to pursue X and not Y. The third case is one where I am part of a group that engages in a fair process and reaches a decision. I now have a normative reason (because of the decision and because of fairness) to follow the course of action that the group decided on.

Cullity then moves to, and spends the majority of the article on, question two. He begins by reviewing John Broome’s position on the question. Broome’s position, as characterized by Cullity, is that if you intend E and believe that M is the necessary means to E, but do not intend M, then you are not as you ought to be; you are not rational. Cullity criticizes Broome’s position as not fully capturing the relationship between our decisions and the rationality of our actions because it misses two important cases of instrumental irrationality: (1) the procrastinator who never gets around to intending any means to his end, and (2) the person who intends a very poor or inefficient means to his end. Cullity works to expand Broome’s position to envelop these two criteria.

Formally, Cullity’s position of instrumental rationality comes in two parts:

“Rationality requires of you that (if, during a period through which you have an orderly succession of temporal beliefs,

i) you intend E throughout that period,

ii) you believe throughout that period that E will only suitably be achieved if, by t, you intend some particular means to E, and

iii) at the end of that period you believe that it is t, then at the end of that period you intend what you believe to be suitable means to E),” (p. 72)

and “Rationality requires of you that (if, during a period through which you have an orderly succession of temporal beliefs,

i) you intend E throughout that period,

ii) you believe throughout that period that E will only suitably be achieved by your taking M at or before t, and

iii) at the end of that period you believe that it is t and that you have not taken M, then you believe that you are taking or trying to take M” (p. 74).

Cullity admits that there are additional general requirements of rationality as well. He develops what he calls a “standard-fixing account of rationality,” where if an agent violates things that reinforce “important dispositions” (things that are usually important to our practical and theoretical functioning), then she is irrational. Some examples of these important dispositions include not being weak-willed, gullible, a procrastinator, or impulsive. Cullity closes by noting that there is a cognitivist explanation of the application of [the second part/conjunction of] his standard-fixing account to what are called “from-intentions” (planning from E using the assumption that E will occur), since from-intentions are states whose rationality depends on supplying us with beliefs.

Cullity admits that he does not in this paper attempt to defend the “standard fixing account of rationality” against objections, as he says that doing so will require developing a particular version of the account and adding further detail. He aims for this paper to be an introduction to this theory of rationality.

Reviewed by J. S. Swindell
Baylor College of Medicine

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1. Philosopher’s Digest » Symposium: John Broome on Reasons and Rationality — April 22, 2009 @ 7:44 am

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