Against instrumentalism
Date
Authors
Hogg, Jeremy
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Guelph
Abstract
Instrumenalism says: practical rationality is only about taking the appropriate means to your ends and that practical reasoning is only a matter of deliberating about the means to your ends. I say: (a) instrumentalism cannot account for the rationality of choosing a greater good (for oneself) over a smaller but more local (or present) good, (b) instrumentalist accounts of ends in terms of pleasure and desire- satisfaction (the default views) are problematic, and (c) cost-benefit analysis suggests that for both the purpose of describing deliberative behavior and evaluating it, it is more practical to treat ends as heterogeneous -- whereas instrumentalists traditionally commit to treating ends as homogeneous.
Description
Keywords
instrumenalism, practical rationality, practical reasoning