Practical reasoning and enkrasia

Akrasia has been traditionally defined as a failure to do what one has most reasons to do, or what one judges that one ought to do (McIntyre 2006; Wedgwood 2007). Traditional conceptions on akrasia take it as a violation of a commitment of the agent: “[for traditional conceptions] an agent who decisively judges it best to A is thereby rationally committed to A-ing, in the sense that (as long as the judgment is retained) the uncompelled, intentional performance of any action that he believes to be incompatible with his A-ing would open him to the charge of irrationality”. This conception of akrasia is based on what Wedgwood calls Normative Judgement Internalism (NJI): necessarily, if one is rational, then, if one judges ‘I ought to ’, one also intends to . The φ φ irrationality of akrasia can be seen as a violation of the NJI maxim, which has been recently labelled enkrasia (Broome 2007). Thus, NJI claims that there is an internal connection between an agent's normative judgements and her disposition to act. This view relies on the assumption that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an intention (Stroud 2003). My aim in this paper is to argue that NJI is false, and that the formulation of the enkratic requirement entailed by this view is too demanding. In the first part of this paper, I will present two arguments against the claim that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an intention. My aim is to show that a complete and correct process of practical reasoning does not necessarily ends up in the formation of an intention. Practical reasoning is frequently, but not necessarily, prompted by a situation in which the agent has to choose a path of action, and thus it is able to guide intentions; however, advice as second-person practical reasoning, and cases in which the conclusion of the reasoning process is negative, do not lead to intention formation. In the second part of the paper I will suggest that enkrasia is better understood as a restriction, and provide an alternative formulation of this rational constraint. I. The conclusion of practical reasoning Practical reasoning contrasts with theoretical reasoning: while the former is directed towards action, the latter aims to elucidate how the facts stand. This starting point has led the majority of philosophers to claim that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an intention (Brandom 1998; Broome 2002; Stroud 2003), or an action (Dancy 2004; Tenenbaum 2007), or any of them— decisions or actions (Alvarez 2010). Following Audi (2006), I believe that the conclusion of