Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2005
Abstract
My main aim is to explain the normative character of the phenomena that are commonly discussed when theoretical writers discuss instrumental rationality and instrumental reasons. The discussion will assume that there are forms of practical normativity, of practical reasons, which are not instrumental in nature. The question central to the inquiry is what, if any, normative difference does adopting or having an end make? For example, are there instrumental reasons and, if there are, how do they relate to having ends? Are instrumental reasons distinctive kinds of reasons, whose normativity differs in its underlying rationale from that of, say, moral reasons, or of other kinds of reasons? Similarly, is instrumental rationality a distinct form of rationality?
Disciplines
Ethics and Political Philosophy | Law | Law and Philosophy
Recommended Citation
Joseph Raz,
The Myth of Instrumental Rationality,
1
J. Ethics & Soc. Phil.
1
(2005).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2252