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Article
In the Beginning Was the Doing: The Premises of the Practical Syllogism
Canadian Journal of Philosophy (2013)
  • Eric Wiland, University of Missouri
Abstract
If practical reasoning deserves its name, its form must be different from that of ordinary (theoretical) reasoning. A few have thought that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action, rather than a mental state. I argue here that if the conclusion is an action, then so too is one of the premises. You might reason your way from doing one thing to doing another: from browsing journal abstracts to reading a particular journal article. I motivate this by sympathetically re-examining Hume's claim that a conclusion about what ought to be done follows only from an argument one of whose premises is likewise about what ought to be done.
Disciplines
Publication Date
May 4, 2013
DOI
10.1080/00455091.2013.857139
Citation Information
Eric Wiland. "In the Beginning Was the Doing: The Premises of the Practical Syllogism" Canadian Journal of Philosophy Vol. 43 Iss. 3 (2013) p. 303 - 321
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/eric-wiland/3/