The Action as Conclusion

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

The Action as ConclusionAuthor(s): Philip ClarkSource: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 2001), pp. 481-505Published by: Canadian Journal of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40232130 .

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 481 Volume 31, Number 4, December 2001, pp. 481-506

The Action as Conclusion PHILIP CLARK Kansas State University Manhattan, KS 66506-1506 USA

On the question of the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning, few have been willing to follow Aristotle's lead. He said the conclusion was an action. These days, the conclusion is usually described either as a proposition about what one ought to do, or as a psychological state or event, such as a decision to do something, an intention to do something, or a belief about what one ought to do. Why favor these options over the action-as-conclusion view? By far the most oft-repeated answer is that these views, unlike Aristotle's, can accommodate the case in which a conclusion is drawn but not acted upon. The conclusion cannot be an action, it is said, because it is possible to reach a conclusion about what to do without doing the action. My thesis is that this objection fails, and that as a consequence no radical departure from Aristotle's proposal is warranted.1

In the first of three sections to follow, I argue that there is a version of the action-as-conclusion view that escapes the objection mentioned above. In the second I argue that we should read Aristotle as holding that version of the view. In the third I argue that the action-as-conclusion view, so construed, makes good philosophical sense quite apart from its glamorous pedigree. On the view proposed here, there are distinctively practical arguments whose conclusions are drawn by forming an intention to act, and the conclusions themselves are the contents of the intentions. Employing a distinction between two ways of talking about

1 This article completes a project I began in an earlier contribution to this journal. See 'Practical Steps and Reasons for Action/ Canadian journal of Philosophy 27 (1997) 17-46. The project is to lay out an account of the practical syllogism that can serve as the basis of a broadly eudaimonistic conception of rational motivation. The earlier

paper deals mainly with what lies behind the conclusion.



482 Philip Clark

actions, I argue that the content of an intention to act is an action, construed not as the concrete doing of something, but as the abstract thing done. This is how actions can be conclusions. I shall not contend, however, that every practical conclusion is an action. It is certainly possible to reach conclusions about what one ought to do, or what would be best. These conclusions have every right to be called practical. But they are not actions, on the view presented here. Rather, they are claims about where the weight of practical arguments lies. It is the arguments themselves that have actions as their conclusions.

The resulting view is much more than a claim about conclusions. Its implications extend to such topics as deliberation, weakness of will, and reasons for action. In particular, it provides a fresh perspective from which to assess traditional questions about the nature and subject matter of judgments about what we ought to do or what would be best. It is tempting to explain the distinctively practical quality of such judgments by identifying them with non-cognitive attitudes, or by adopting a psychologized conception of their subject matter, on which they are relativized to desires or other psychological states. The action-as-conclusion view suggests a different explanation, namely that 'ought' judgments are practical because they are beliefs about arguments of a special kind. They are beliefs about arguments whose conclusions are actions, as opposed to arguments that anything is true. Even a devout cognitivist with no stomach for psychologized analyses can pursue this explanation. Thus the action-as-conclusion view gives us a way of capturing the action-guidingness of 'ought' judgments without compromising the objectivity of their subject matter.

I The Standard Objection

To get a sense of how Aristotle's suggestion has usually been received, consider the following passages:

[The action-as-conclusion view] fails to accommodate cases in which the action that should be the concluding element does not occur.2

If the conclusion is an action then the inference can only be drawn at or just before the time of action.3

2 Robert Audi, Practical Reasoning (London: Routledge 1989), 94

3 Joseph Raz, in his introduction to Practical Reasoning (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1978), 6



The Action as Conclusion 483

... if there is hindrance or compulsion, [the] action will not follow, although the conclusion may be drawn (701al2). Hence the conclusion is not the action.4

Either the incontinent man reaches the conclusion of the better syllogism or he doesn't. If he does, then there can be no conditional necessity of the kind Aristotle

alleges that he act on the conclusion. For he doesn't act and he has reached it. Still less can the conclusion of the syllogism be action itself.5

I had come to realize that the state of intending ... can easily exist without a

corresponding action, and so should not be identified with an action even when the formation of the intention coincides with the initiation of the action. Thus I gave up what I had thought of as a version of Aristotle's dictum that the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning is the action ...6

Some of these authors are simply interpreting Aristotle, some are not doing history at all, and some have aims of both sorts. But there is a philosophical claim that runs through all these remarks. We can put the claim this way: if a conclusion is drawn but no action occurs, then the conclusion drawn is not an action. One might accept this and still hold the action-as-conclusion view. For one might hold that conclusive practical reasoning always culminates in action. But if one finds this move implausible, then one will see an objection.

While the objection never gets much space, Kenny gives it more than most.7 Suppose I think for a while about how to use some money I've inherited, and I decide to buy a piano as soon as the quarter is over. Sadly, I do not live to the end of the quarter, and consequently never buy the piano. Kenny notes that my failure to do the action I've decided to do hardly renders my reasoning inconclusive. I do reach a conclusion about how to use the money, and I reach it well before the scheduled time of action. The question is, what is that conclusion? Like the authors quoted above, Kenny thinks that in a case where no action ensues, the conclusion drawn cannot be an action. He thinks it must be something like a decision. In fact, not wanting to say Aristotle missed this point, Kenny

4 David Charles, Aristotle's Philosophy of Action (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1984), 91

5 David Wiggins, 'Weakness of Will, Commensurability, and the Objects of Delibera- tion and Desire/ reprinted with minor revisions in Needs, Values, Truth (Oxford: Blackwell 1987), 250

6 Donald Davidson, in Vermazen and Hintikka, Essays on Davidson (Oxford: Oxford

University Press 1985), 220

7 Anthony Kenny, Aristotle's Theory of the Will (New Haven: Yale University Press

1979), 142ff .



484 Philip Clark

reads Aristotle as holding the conclusion of the practical syllogism to be a decision and not an action.

One reply that might be made on behalf of the action-as-conclusion view is this: it simply begs the question to say one can reach a conclusion without acting. If we take seriously the idea that the conclusion is an action, one might say, then it just follows that one does not draw the conclusion unless one acts.8 So Kenny has no business saying any conclusion has been reached, in the case where a decision is made but no action ensues, unless he has already given up on the action-as-conclusion view. This reply shares an assumption with the objection that prompts it. Both assume that drawing a conclusion that was an action would require doing the action. One side uses this assumption to argue that the conclusion is not, or is not always, an action. The other side uses it to accuse the first of begging the question.

Another response would be to pare down the action-as-conclusion view. One might grant that the conclusion reached isn't always an action, but hold that it is an action in those cases where action ensues. The passage from Davidson alludes to a view of this sort, on which the conclusion would be identified with a state of intending, which would in turn be identified with an action in the case where 'the formation of the intention coincides with the initiation of the action.' But again, this response concedes that the conclusion cannot be an action in cases where the conclusion is drawn but no action ensues.

The topic of this section, by contrast, is whether we should concede this in the first place. The claim in question can be restated as follows:

(AC) If an agent A draws a conclusion in practical reasoning, and that conclusion is some action X, then A does X

If (AC) is false then both Kenny's objection and the charge that it is question-begging rest on a mistake. To my knowledge, however, (AC) has never been questioned.

The fate of (AC) will depend on how we describe conclusions more generally. On one view, a conclusion is that thing the production of which constitutes drawing the conclusion. For example, in the case of an ordinary theoretical inference from P to Q, drawing the conclusion is forming a belief that Q, where that belief is held on the basis of a belief that P. Thus, on the present view, the conclusion is the belief that Q. Suppose we say, in a similar spirit, that the conclusion of a piece of

8 On this response, see Norman Dahl, Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1984), 161.




practical reasoning is whatever is produced in drawing the conclusion. Then if someone draws a practical conclusion, and that conclusion is an action, it follows that the action is produced. On this view of what a conclusion is, (AC) comes out true.

There is another way of thinking about conclusions, however. On this view, the conclusion is not what is produced, but the content (some might prefer 'object') of what is produced. For instance, the conclusion of an inference from P to Q will be the content of the belief that Q. It will be what one believes, i.e. that Q. Suppose we say, in parallel, that the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning is the content of what is produced in drawing the conclusion. Then if someone draws a practical conclusion, and that conclusion is an action, it follows that the content of what is formed in drawing the conclusion is an action. It does not follow, however, that the action is performed. For it may be that what is formed in drawing the conclusion, the thing that has an action as its content, is something that can be produced without the action's being performed. Suppose, for instance, that what is formed in drawing the conclusion is an intention to buy a piano, and that the content of this intention is an action, namely the act of buying a piano. In that case, the action is the conclusion, since we identify the conclusion with the content of what is produced. But the conclusion can be drawn without the action's being performed, because the intention can be formed without the action's being performed. This can count as drawing a conclusion that is an action, provided only that the content of the intention - what one intends - is an action. Unlike the product view, then, the content view leaves it open that we sometimes draw conclusions that are actions without ever doing the actions.

This observation is going to help us work out a philosophically re- spectable way of identifying the conclusion with an action. In addition, it will help provide a coherent interpretation of Aristotle. While it is primarily the first of these advantages that I want to develop, I begin with a brief discussion of the second.

II An Exegetical Proposal

In the De Motu passage where Aristotle says the conclusion is an action, he says it three times:

But how does it happen that thinking is sometimes accompanied by action and sometimes not, sometimes by motion, and sometimes not? It looks as if almost the same thing happens as in the case of reasoning and making inferences about

unchanging objects. But in that case the end is a speculative proposition (for whenever one thinks the two premises, one thinks and puts together the conclu-

sion), whereas here the conclusion which results from the two propositions is the



486 Philip Clark

action. For example, whenever someone thinks that every man should take walks, and that he is a man, at once he takes a walk. Or if he thinks that no man should take a walk now, and that he is a man, at once he remains at rest. And he does both of these things, if nothing prevents or compels him. I should make something good; a house is something good. At once he makes a house. I need a covering; a cloak is a covering. I need a cloak. What I need, I have to make; I need a cloak. I have to make a cloak. And the conclusion, the "I have to make a cloak," is an action. And he acts from a starting point. If there is to be a cloak, there must necessarily be this first, and if this, this. And this he does at once. Now, that the action is the conclusion, is clear. (701a22)9

While insisting that the action is the conclusion, Aristotle allows for the case in which the action is not performed, due to 'prevention or compulsion.'10 There is no consensus about how to read Aristotle here. This is due in part to a shortage of outside text that might support one reading over another. Commentators have had to rely largely on their own philosophical judgment, and the present remarks are offered in that same spirit of charitable speculation.

There are three main strategies for interpreting the passage. One is to read Aristotle as holding the conclusion to be something other than an action, at least in the case where no action ensues.11 Kenny, for instance, takes Aristotle to hold that one can draw a practical conclusion without doing the action, and that in such a case the conclusion drawn is a 'decision to act.' This makes Aristotle out to be saying something fairly sensible, but at considerable cost to the text. Nowhere, not even when he speaks of prevention and compulsion, does Aristotle indicate that the conclusion is ever anything but an action. Moreover, he says 'the conclusion, the "I have to make a cloak," is an action.' On Kenny's reading, the conclusion 'I have to make a cloak' is a decision that can be reached by someone who does not go on to act. But according to Aristotle, in reaching this conclusion I have reached an action, for the conclusion reached is an action.12

9 Martha Nussbaum, Aristotle's 'De Motu Animalium': Text with Translation, Commen-

tary, and Interpretive Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978), 40

10 Aristotle issues a parallel caveat at NE 1147a27-31, where he says the agent will do the conclusion 'if he has the power and is not prevented.'

11 See Alfred Mele, 'The Practical Syllogism and Deliberation in Aristotle's Causal

Theory of Action/ New Scholasticism 55 (1981), 302.

12 Kenny tries to forestall this objection. True, he says, Aristotle does say the 'I have to make a cloak' is an action. But what this shows, according to Kenny, is that Aristotle is 'willing to call a decision to act "an action'" (Aristotle's Theory of the Will, 143). This will not do. Deciding to make a cloak cannot plausibly be identified with making




A second strategy is to read Aristotle as denying the conclusion has been drawn, in those cases where the action is not performed.13 On this view, the conclusion 'I have to make a cloak' is not drawn unless I actually make a cloak. This has the advantage of honoring Aristotle's explicit assertions that the conclusion is an action, but saddles him with the implausible view that conclusive practical reasoning always results in action. As Kenny points out, my being prevented from making the cloak, say by an untimely death, does not show my practical reasoning to have been inconclusive. In deciding to make a cloak I do reach a conclusion about what to do.

The third strategy is to suggest that Aristotle failed to distinguish the idea of a piece of practical reasoning from the idea of a teleological explanation of action.14 On this view, Aristotle is on firm ground in claiming that the 'conclusion,' that is, the explanandum of an action explanation, is always an action. There can be no explanation of action without an action to explain. But practical reasoning is thinking about what to do, and one can reach a conclusion about what to do without doing the action. Reaching a conclusion about what to do is arriving at a decision, choice or intention, not an action. Thus, on this interpretation, Aristotle mistakenly identified the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning with the explanandum of a teleological explanation of action, because he failed to distinguish the two phenomena. The drawback for this strategy is simply that it commits us to saying Aristotle was confused. We should prefer a more charitable reading if we can find one.

one, especially in the case where no cloak gets made. Kenny might reply that Aristotle has in mind the mental act of forming the decision. But this will not do either. Aristotle's aim in the passage is to contrast practical reasoning and theoretical

reasoning. He does this by saying the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning is an action, whereas the conclusion of, say, a geometric proof is not. But Aristotle holds that in drawing the conclusion of a piece of theoretical reasoning one performs the mental act of affirming the conclusion (NE 1147a27). If we take Aristotle to be

saying the conclusion 'I have to make a cloak' is the act of deciding, we lose the contrast that is the central point of the passage.

13 G.H. von Wright pursues such a view without directly attributing it to Aristotle. See his Explanation and Understanding (Ithaca, NY: Cornell 1971), ch. 3, and 'On So-called Practical Inference,' Acta Sociologica 15 (1972). See also G. Santas, 'Aristotle on Practical Inference, the Explanation of Action, and Akrasia,' Phronesis 14 (1969), 176.

14 See Santas, 'Aristotle on Practical Inference,' 175ff.; Nussbaum, De Motu, Essay 4, 186; and John R. Welch, 'Reconstructing Aristotle: The Practical Syllogism/ Philoso-

phia 21 (1991), 79-80.



488 Philip Clark

So each of the three strategies has its costs. The first recasts the text to say the conclusion is only sometimes an action. The second and third do better by the text, but make the doctrine look weak or confused.

We can avoid all of these costs, however, if we read Aristotle as holding a content view. Suppose the conclusion Aristotle has in mind, when he speaks of the T have to make a cloak/ is not the decision to make a cloak. Suppose instead that it is the content, or object, of that decision, namely what one decides to do. This avoids the cost of the first strategy, because we can read Aristotle as saying the conclusion, being the 'what' of the decision, is an action even in the case where the action is not performed. On this reading, the conclusion reached in forming the decision is the action one decides to do, just as the conclusion of a theoretical inference is what one believes, rather than the believing of it. This, then, is what Aristotle means when he says the conclusion T have to make a cloak' is an action. He means the conclusion reached in deciding to make a cloak is the action that forms the content of the decision. We also avoid the cost of the second strategy, because we don't have Aristotle claiming that conclusive practical reasoning always results in action. And we avoid the cost of the third as well. There is no need to say Aristotle fails to appreciate the difference between reasoning and explanation. On our reading, he agrees that drawing the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning is forming a decision. His claim is that even so the conclusion drawn is an action. In contrast with the others, this reading combines charity with faithfulness to the text. On the face of it, then, it should be preferred.15

15 This reading also allows us to make sense of Aristotle's emphasis on the immediacy of action, without taking him to mean that every practical conclusion is a conclusion about what to do now. We can read Aristotle as arguing for the action-as-conclusion view on the ground that it explains a certain observation. The observation is that some patterns of reasoning are such that anyone who draws the conclusion will

immediately act, barring prevention or compulsion. How is this possible? Aristotle's answer is that some patterns of reasoning are such that drawing the conclusion is

settling on a course of action. Thus if I draw a conclusion about what to do now, this will lead to action now, barring prevention or compulsion. But this explanation does not commit him to saying that all practical conclusions are conclusions about what to do now. I might reach a conclusion now about what to do tomorrow. See Santas, 'Aristotle on Practical Inference,' 176, and Mele, 'The Practical Syllogism and Deliberation,' 299-300. For the opposing view see John Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1975), 24-6.




III The Question of Philosophical Respectability

The foregoing discussion plays a subsidiary role in this essay. A nice reading of Aristotle's notoriously puzzling remarks is all to the good. But my main objective is to show that there is a form of the action-as- conclusion view that must be taken seriously as a philosophical idea, not just as an interpretation of Aristotle. From here on it is that task with which I am concerned.

We began by noting the failure of the standard objection. It is true that agents can draw practical conclusions without going on to act. But this defeats the action-as-conclusion view only if we take conclusions to be products. The view that survives can be put roughly as follows. First, the conclusion of any piece of reasoning, practical or otherwise, is the content of what is formed in drawing the conclusion. Second, what is formed in drawing the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning is an intention to act. And third, the content of an intention to act is an action. From these three claims, it follows that the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning is an action. In the coming pages, I defend a version of this view, taking each of the three claims in turn.

1. Categorizing Conclusions

Is the content view of conclusions viable? I say the action-as-conclusion view is consistent with the possibility of reaching a conclusion without acting. So far I have shown that an action-as-conclusion view is consistent with that possibility. But the importance of this result depends on how plausible it is to place conclusions in the category of contents.

One possible position on this is that the categorization of conclusions is a matter for stipulation. On this position, there is nothing to choose between treating conclusions as products and treating them as contents. It is simply up to each author to say how she is using 'conclusion/ and we take it from there. If this position is correct, then the problem with the standard objection is just that it presupposes one way of thinking about conclusions, when there is another way that is no less appropriate.

The suggestion that the choice is a matter for stipulation is not without merit. The notion of a conclusion is a quasi-technical one, less a term of art than say 'idea' as used by the modern philosophers; but more so than say 'cloud.' One can drop 'cloud' into a conversation without explaining what one means by it, and expect to be understood. With 'conclusion' it is more likely that some clarification will be necessary. And with 'idea,' in the hands of a Descartes or a Hume, it is still more likely.

Nevertheless there are reasons for thinking of conclusions as contents rather than as products. The main reason is that the content view fits better with what we say about arguments. It would be odd to describe



490 Philip Clark

the conclusion of a theoretical argument as a belief. The conclusion of the ontological argument, for example, is that God exists. It is what one is invited to believe on the basis of the premises, as opposed to the believing of it. This creates a problem for the product view. For on that view the conclusion one draws when one is convinced by the argument is a belief. Thus, the conclusion one draws will be a distinct thing from the conclusion of the argument. The former will be a mental state, whereas the latter will be something on the order of a proposition. This is an unattractive result from a theoretical point of view. The content view, on the other hand, allows the conclusion drawn to be the same thing as the conclusion of the argument. This ought to incline us to the content view.

Still, defenders of the product view can achieve the desired unity by claiming that the conclusion of an argument is also a product. Perhaps it will not seem odd to them to describe the conclusion of the ontological argument as a mental state. This response, however, encounters a further difficulty, namely that the conclusion of an argument is what is presented as following from the premises. In making an argument, one cites premises from which the conclusion is supposed to follow. But a belief, being a mental state, is not the sort of thing that could follow from the premises. A mental state can no more follow from premises than can a short circuit or a state of rigor mortis. It can follow that one has a belief, just as it can follow that there is a short circuit; but no one would claim that the conclusion of every argument is that one believes something. The conclusion of the ontological argument is that theism is true, not that anyone is a theist. What defenders of the product view identify with the conclusion is not the fact of the belief's existence. It is the belief itself. But the belief itself just isn't the sort of thing that can follow from the premises of an argument. Therefore it is the wrong kind of thing to be the conclusion of an argument.

Of course beliefs are different from short circuits and states of rigor mortis in having contents. This might be thought to provide some sense in which beliefs themselves can follow. Speaking loosely, we might say a belief follows when its content does. And then, by the same courtesy, we could permit ourselves two ways of speaking about conclusions, referring to them sometimes as contents, sometimes as beliefs. Strictly speaking, however, it is only the content that can follow, and hence only the content that can be the conclusion of a theoretical argument.

Much more can be said on this topic; but I think we have said enough to show that the content view of conclusions is a viable option, and indeed to create a presumption in its favor.

Before we proceed to the second claim, there is another worry that has to be addressed. It may seem circular to describe the conclusion as the content of what is formed in drawing the conclusion. Without a prior




understanding of what a conclusion is, one might say, we can have no understanding of what it is to draw one. Therefore, we cannot define 'conclusion' in terms of the drawing of conclusions. This is true, but not to the point. The description of the conclusion as the content of what is formed in drawing it is not offered as a definition. It is not designed to convey the meaning of 'conclusion' to those not already familiar with the notion. Rather, it is a claim about how to categorize the conclusion. People who agree on what it is to draw a conclusion may still disagree about what sort of thing the conclusion is. We might agree, for instance, that drawing a theoretical conclusion is forming a belief, where that belief rests on other beliefs, but disagree about whether the conclusion is the belief itself. Thus, there is no circularity in using the general notion of drawing a conclusion to state a claim about what sort of thing a conclusion is.

2. What is it to Draw a Practical Conclusion?

Of course, the idea that conclusions are contents does not by itself entail that the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning is an action. We have to ask what is formed in drawing the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning. Put this way, the question invites us to find some one thing that we can call 'reaching a practical conclusion.' This way of conceiving the project puts us in a difficult spot. For there are two quite different phenomena that can reasonably be described as reaching a conclusion in practical reasoning.

On the one hand, there is having something as one's reason for action. Suppose, for instance, that I am making a cloak. And suppose that were someone to ask me why I am making a cloak I could correctly say 'Because I need a covering,' or 'So as to have a covering,' or something along those lines. In that case my reason for making the cloak is, roughly, that this way I will have a covering. To see how having something as your reason for acting can be viewed as drawing a conclusion, consider a parallel with the case of belief. If I believe that Q, and my reason is that P, then I can be said to draw the conclusion that Q from the premise that P. I make a step, or inference, of the form 'P, so Q.' Now suppose I make a cloak, and my reason is that I need a covering. Here the reasoning goes roughly like this: T need a covering, a cloak is a covering, so I'll make a cloak.'16 The

16 I follow the convention of representing reasoning with words the reasoner might use if she were 'thinking out loud' while doing the reasoning. I do not assume that being persuaded by an argument requires speech, internalized or otherwise.



492 Philip Clark

expression 'So I'll../ signals the formation of an intention. Thus, what is formed in drawing the conclusion is an intention.

On the other hand, there plainly is such a thing as reaching a conclusion about what one ought to do, or what would be best. In their reply to Davidson on weakness of will, Grice and Baker describe the phenomenon I have in mind. They consider the case of someone who

(1) is faced with a practical problem about what to do;

(2) envisages himself as settling the problem by settling what it is best for him to do (what he should do); and

(3) envisages himself as settling what it is best for him to do by deliberation.17

So construed, deliberation is reasoning to an evaluative conclusion. What is formed in reaching such a conclusion is a judgment about what one ought to do, or what is best. And given the content view of conclusions, the conclusion reached is the content of the judgment formed. But it is difficult to see how the content of an 'ought' judgment could be an action. More plausibly it is something like a claim, or a proposition, about what one ought to do.

So drawing a practical conclusion might be forming an intention to act, where the premises express one's reason for doing the action.18 Then again, it might be forming a judgment about what is best. If we go looking for the one thing that is to count as reaching a practical conclusion, then we must either identify these two phenomena or jettison at least one of them. The solution, as I see it, is to call off the search for any one thing. Within the phenomenon of reasoning about what to do there are two things that can rightly be called 'reaching a conclusion.' There is reaching a conclusion about what action is supported by the weight of the arguments, and there is drawing the conclusion of one of those arguments. On the view I want to defend, what is formed in reaching a

17 Paul Grice and Judith Baker, 'Davidson on " Weakness of the Will/" in Vermazen and Hintikka, Essays on Davidson: Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1985), 42

18 Some might deny that reasoning ending in 'So I'll do such and such' is reasoning to a conclusion. Perhaps the complaint will be that forming an intention is not

concluding that anything is the case. It is, rather, deciding to make something the case. But it is hard to see why every conclusion must be a conclusion about what is the case unless we are assuming that all arguments work by showing the truth of a conclusion. And that is just what the action-as-conclusion view denies.




conclusion of the first sort is a belief, and what is formed in drawing a conclusion of the second sort is an intention.

Put briefly, the idea is this. In reasoning about what to do, we weigh arguments for and against different courses of action. In this weighing activity, which I shall call deliberation, we reach conclusions about which arguments should convince or persuade us to act. To reach such a conclusion is to form a belief about where the weight of reasons lies, that is, about what one ought to do or what would be best.19 The question remains, however, what it is to draw the conclusion of an individual practical argument of the sort weighed in deliberation. This is where the action-as-conclusion view comes in. It is one thing to reach the conclusion that certain arguments against smoking, say, should be persuading me to quit, and another for those arguments actually to persuade me to quit. To be persuaded to act is to draw the conclusion of an individual practical argument, or practical syllogism. What is formed in drawing that conclusion is an intention.

There are two main reasons for dividing the labor in this way. First, it allows us to meet certain fundamental objections to the action-as-conclusion view. But second, and more positively, our view has significant advantages over any attempt to understand practical reasoning wholly on the model of reasoning about what one ought to do, or what would be best. In particular, it gives us an elucidation of the content of judgments of 'ought' and 'best' that we can then use to explain how those judgments influence the will. I'll take these points in turn.

We have already noted one difficulty for the action-as-conclusion view. In ordinary cases of deliberation one is concerned with, and reasons about, what it would be best to do, or what one ought to do. But on the face of it, a conclusion about what is best, or what one ought to do, is a proposition, not an action. A second charge is that the action-as- conclusion view has no room for weakness of will. It seems that there are cases in which one reaches a conclusion about what to do, but fails to form the corresponding intention, and instead forms an intention that runs against one's better judgment. But if drawing the conclusion is forming the intention, this is not possible. Let us first see how we can accommodate the evaluative character of deliberation, and then see how we can accommodate weakness.

19 Michael Bratman also treats 'ought' judgments as beliefs about the weight of reasons for action, although the reasons he has in mind are relativized to desires of the reasoner. See his Intention, Plans, and Practical Reasoning (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press 1987), ch. 3.



494 Philip Clark

By distinguishing between the activity of deliberating and the individual arguments weighed in deliberation, we can make a place for conclusions about what is best.20 Deliberation, on this view, is an operation on practical syllogisms. In it one adjudicates among reasons for and against various possible courses of action. One might decide, for instance, that a particular action would be dishonest, and that this counts against the action, but also think it would spare someone's feelings, and that this counts in favor of it. The deliberator's task is to decide which reasons to act on - whether in this case to spare the person's feelings, and do the action, or to refrain in the interest of honesty. If she does the former, she performs one syllogism, e.g. 'I can spare Bob's feelings by saying I like his singing, so I will say that.' If she does the latter, she performs another, e.g. 'I can't honestly say I like Bob's singing, so I won't.' One thing we might call 'reaching a practical conclusion,' then, is performing one of these syllogisms, i.e. intending, on the basis of the reason given in the argument, to act or refrain. But another thing we might call reaching a practical conclusion is forming a judgment about which of the arguments should carry the day. I might reach the conclusion, for instance, that the argument from honesty should be persuading me to refrain from praising Bob's singing. Thus there are two sorts of conclusion in the picture, and one is a conclusion about what conclusion of the other sort to draw. On the view offered here, the first sort of conclusion is not an action and the second is.

The distinction between two types of conclusion will also allow us to square the action-as-conclusion view with the possibility of weakness. Weakness will be a failure to draw some conclusion of the form 'So I'll...' despite the conviction that it is the conclusion to draw.

Suppose, for example, that after giving the matter some thought, I conclude that in the circumstances it is best not to praise Bob's singing, despite the likelihood of hurting Bob's feelings. Call this my evaluative conclusion. Call the conclusion of an individual practical argument a syllogistic conclusion. Evaluative conclusions, I've suggested, are about what syllogistic conclusions one should be drawing. In thinking it best not to praise Bob's singing I am thinking the syllogistic conclusion to draw is 'So I won't praise Bob's singing.' But thinking this is the conclusion to draw is one thing and drawing it is another. Suppose I can't bring myself to risk hurting Bob's feelings, despite my judgment that the argument from honesty should be persuading me to do so. Instead of

20 The distinction between deliberation and the practical syllogism occupies a central place in Davidson's theory. See his Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980), 16.




performing the syllogism, 'I can't honestly say I like Bob's singing, so I won't/ I form the intention to praise Bob's singing. Insofar as this is possible, weakness is possible, on the action-as-conclusion view. More- over, the wayward intention can be grounded in a reason. If you ask me why I am going to praise Bob's singing, the correct answer will be To spare his feelings.' Thus I not only fail to perform the syllogism I take to be warranted, I actually perform a syllogism I take to be unwarranted, namely, 'I can spare Bob's feelings by praising his singing, so I'll do that.'

This way of describing weakness has obvious affinities with David- son's.21 On Davidson's view, what happens in weakness is that one fails to draw, or 'detach,' the conclusion one takes to be warranted by the available evidence. Instead, one detaches a different conclusion from some portion of the available evidence. Judgments about what conclusion is warranted in light of the evidence Davidson calls all-things-considered judgments. What is formed in detaching a conclusion he calls an unconditional judgment. Thus Davidson's all-things-considered judgments roughly parallel our evaluative conclusions, and his unconditional judgments roughly parallel our syllogistic conclusions. Nevertheless, Davidson's view differs from ours in at least two significant ways. First, he operates with the product view of conclusions. This explains why, despite a desire to retain the action-as-conclusion view in some form, he ultimately does not do so. Second, he views both sorts of conclusion, the sort contravened in weakness, and the sort followed in weakness, as judgments about what is best. This means his practical syllogism cannot be used, as ours can, to cash out what is meant by 'best.'

Thus far we've described a version of the action-as-conclusion view that makes a place for evaluative conclusions and leaves room for weakness of will. But now that we have evaluative conclusions in the picture, a new challenge arises. Why not treat the individual arguments weighed in deliberation as arguments for conclusions about what is best? One might say the deliberator weighs arguments for conclusions about what is best, forms a judgment about what conclusion is supported by the weight of the arguments, and insofar as she draws the conclusion of any of those arguments, draws a conclusion about what is best. There are still two kinds of conclusion in the picture. But neither is an action. One is the content of a judgment about the weight of the arguments, and the other is the content of the evaluative judgment formed in drawing the conclusion of one of those arguments. Call this the mince-pie view, after the following remark from Elizabeth Anscombe:

21 Essays on Actions and Events, 39ff .



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Contemplating accounts given by modern commentators, one might easily wonder

why no one has ever pointed out the mince pie syllogism: the peculiarity of this would be that it was about mince pies, and an example would be "All mince pies have suet in them - this is a mince pie - therefore etc. Certainly ethics is of

importance to human beings in a way that mince pies are not; but such importance cannot justify us in speaking of a special sort of reasoning/'22

Here Anscombe accuses commentators of saddling Aristotle with a picture of practical reasoning that is laughably ill-suited to his purposes. On the bad picture, the practical syllogism is just ordinary reasoning on a distinctively practical topic, namely what one ought to do, or what is best. Construed this way, Anscombe thinks, the practical syllogism could not possibly do the work Aristotle intended for it.

While Anscombe's remark is aimed at interpreters of Aristotle, it brings out a point that is important for our purposes. The point is simply that there is an alternative to thinking of the individual arguments weighed in deliberation as ordinary reasoning on a special subject matter. The appeal of the action-as-conclusion view rests largely on the appeal of this alternative. So we need to see what the alternative is and what it can do for us.

In ordinary reasoning, as I shall understand it, each of the arguments weighed is an argument that something is the case, and drawing the conclusion of one of those arguments is believing that something is the case, where the premises serve as one's reason for so believing. For instance, to believe that the suspect did the crime, on the ground that he confessed, is to make a step of ordinary reasoning from the premise that he confessed to the conclusion that he did it. As we've seen, however, there are steps to conclusions of the form 'So I'll...' in which drawing the conclusion is forming an intention to act, where the premises are one's reason for so acting. Thus, when Eleanor says, T can spare Bob's feelings by saying I like his singing, so I'll say it,' the drawing of the conclusion consists in her intending to say she likes Bob's singing, where the premise serves as her reason for saying it. The point of calling this a special kind of reasoning is to say that it is analogous to, but not an instance of, inferring that something is the case. Performing a practical syllogism, on this view, is not being persuaded that something is true of an action, by an argument that it is so. It is being persuaded to act, by an argument for the action. I'll refer to this view of the individual arguments weighed in deliberation as Aristotelian dualism. The contrasting monism is the view that every argument is a piece of ordinary reasoning.

22 Elizabeth Anscombe, Intention (Ithaca, NY: Cornell 1976), 58




Where truth is concerned, Aristotelian dualism embraces a part, but only a part, of the non-cognitivist line on practical thought. Suppose I offer safety, say, as a reason for you to wear glasses while driving. The non-cognitivist denies that this is an argument that anything is true. Practical argumentation, on that view, is not a way of arriving at truths about what should be done. Rather, it is a way of arriving at new non-cognitive attitudes, such as the endorsement of norms or the issuing of self-directed commands.23 On the present view we retain a part of what the non-cognitivist says. The individual arguments weighed in deliberation are not arguments that anything is true. But the non-cognitivist goes on to deny that 'ought' judgments can be true or false. The Aristotelian dualist need not go along with this. It does not follow, from the fact that the arguments weighed are not arguments that anything is the case, that judgments about those arguments cannot be true or false. It might be true that the arguments against smoking are the ones that should be persuading me, even if the arguments themselves are not pieces of ordinary reasoning. So the dualist can say 'ought' judgments, being judgments about what action is supported by the weight of the arguments, are cognitive states. In thinking about what would be best, on this view, one aims for true conclusions about the weight of arguments that are not arguments that anything is true. So the non-cognitivist has a point about the individual arguments weighed in deliberation but is wrong about 'ought' judgments. That is the position. Now let us consider its merits.

One point in our favor is that there just are steps to conclusions of the form 'So I'll....' Taken at face value, what is formed in drawing one of these conclusions is an intention and not a judgment about what is best. Of course it is open to claim that appearances are misleading. One might say this reasoning is really ordinary inference to a conclusion about what is best and that the intention is introduced by, or perhaps even consists in, the resulting belief.24 But there is a deeper point that affects any attempt to make do with ordinary reasoning on a special topic.

The chief advantage of Aristotelian dualism over the mince-pie view lies in what it tells us about the content of judgments of 'ought' and 'best.' Truths about what one ought to do in the circumstances, or what would be best, are truths about where the weight of the arguments lies, on this view. Thus the practical syllogism gives us something interesting to say about the subject matter of 'ought' judgments. We can say they are about

23 See e.g. Alan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- sity Press 1990).

24 See e.g. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, 99ff.



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where the weight of reasons lies. But notice that the mince-pie view renders the practical syllogism unfit for this role. If we are out to elucidate the content of judgments of 'ought' and Isest,' it will not do to appeal to arguments for conclusions with that very content.25 We can say, if we like, that truths about what is best are truths about what course of action is supported by the weight of arguments. But if we then analyze those arguments as offering reasons for belief about what is best, we leave unanalyzed the very notion we were trying to unpack. It is like explaining the thought that something is round as the thought that the weight of the evidence supports the conclusion that the thing is round. That tells us nothing about what it is to be round. Likewise, the mince-pie view cannot use the practical syllogism to explain the notion of 'ought' or 'best.' Dualism can do this, because on that view the notions of 'ought' and 'best' do not crop up in the conclusions of the arguments. Aristote- lian dualism gives us analytical leverage of a sort that the mince-pie view cannot provide.

This leverage is important because we can use it to explain the connection between evaluative conclusions and the will. For much of the past century, authors working in metaethics and moral psychology have struggled to explain how 'ought' judgments motivate. The struggle has been to explain the special practicality of these judgments without compromising the objectivity of their subject matter.26 Now I want to show how Aristotelian dualism avoids this problem.

Suppose that what Eleanor is thinking, in thinking it best not to say she likes Bob's singing, is that the weight of the arguments is against saying she likes Bob's singing. How would such a judgment influence Eleanor's will? The Aristotelian dualist has a ready answer. On this view, the tendency to be moved by 'ought' judgments is nothing more than the tendency to draw the conclusions one thinks are warranted. Given what evaluative beliefs are about, it is enough to say that in deliberating Eleanor aims to draw the conclusion that is supported by the weight of reasons.27 That is, she aims to give the various possible steps the weight

25 Compare Susan Hurley, Natural Reasons (New York: Oxford University Press 1989), 218.

26 For discussions of the problem of internalism, see David McNaughton, Moral Vision (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1988), 23, and Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1994).

27 On the idea that reasoning is an activity in which one aims to 'get it right/ see David Velleman, 'What Happens When Someone Acts?' Mind 101 (1992), Section XIII, and Gavin Lawrence, 'The Rationality of Morality/ in Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995).




they deserve, and ultimately to make the steps that deserve to win. Suppose Eleanor decides that in the circumstances the argument from honesty deserves to win. In that case, the goal of making the steps that deserve to win can explain why she goes 'I can't honestly say it, so I won't' instead of drawing the conclusion 'So I'll say it.' Because 'ought' beliefs are about what syllogistic conclusions are warranted, the goal of drawing the warranted conclusions can explain how the beliefs move us to action. So the dualist is in a position to explain the special practicality of 'ought' judgments by appeal to the nature of the arguments weighed in deliberation.28

Notice what happens, however, if we try to run this explanation on the mince-pie view. We can still suppose that in weighing the arguments, Eleanor aims to draw the conclusion that is supported by the weight of reasons. But now the conclusions in question are conclusions about what is best. So the goal of drawing the warranted conclusions will join with judgments about which conclusions are warranted to generate judgments about what it is best to do. This tells us nothing about how judgments about what is best would move an agent to act. The goal of drawing the warranted conclusions can only explain why one forms the judgments one does. It cannot join with those judgments to explain action. This means we need an independent account of how the judgments motivate. The explanation cannot be that in weighing arguments one aims to weigh them correctly. Something more must be said.

It is in telling this further story that one faces the infamous problem of internalism. To explain how 'ought' judgments grip the will, one is tempted to build motivation into the judgments themselves, either by viewing them as non-cognitive attitudes, or by relativizing them to the reasoner's desires. The objectivity of the subject matter appears to be at risk because it is difficult to see how a genuine belief, that wasn't about the reasoner's psychology, could be 'intrinsically motivating.'29 But the Aristotelian dualist does not need a further story, and consequently has no need to invest evaluative judgments with a mysterious motive force

28 This explanation of the motivational magnetism of 'ought' judgments does not commit us to the idea that such judgments are ever true. Nevertheless, we do need some account of what would qualify a step as deserving weight. My own view, which I defend elsewhere, is that steps deserve weight in deliberation in virtue of their connection with things it makes sense to want in one's life, that is, with goods of a certain kind. I defend this view against David Velleman's autonomist alternative in 'Velleman's Autonomism/ Ethics 111 (2001) 580-93.

29 See J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977), ch.l.



500 Philip Clark

of their own. She appeals instead to a goal that the reasoner brings to the judgment in the activity of reasoning about what to do. It does not matter how objective the subject matter of 'ought' judgments is. This goal can join with those judgments to explain action. Thus, for instance, Eleanor's thought that the argument from honesty deserves to win can be a genuine belief, and need not be relativized to her psychology. No com- promises are required, in order to explain how that thought would join with the goal of giving the arguments the weight they deserve. Ironically, it is a basic insight of non-cognitivism that rescues the objectivist from the problem of internalism. In their zeal to keep truth in the picture, cognitivists have taken their cognitivism one bridge too far. To avoid making a mystery of rational motivation, they should confine their cognitivism to judgments about arguments. They should not treat the arguments themselves as pieces of ordinary reasoning.

We should favor a view that avoids puzzles over one that creates them. So we have reason to favor Aristotelian dualism over the mince-pie view. This leaves us just one step away from the action-as-conclusion view. For the dualist views steps to conclusions of the form 'So I'll...' as steps whose conclusions are drawn by forming intentions to act, and rejects any attempt to assimilate them to ordinary arguments about what is best. Given the content view of conclusions, the conclusions of the steps will be the contents of the intentions. It remains only to consider whether those contents are actions.

3. The 'What' of an Intention to Act

On the view as we have it so far, there are pieces of practical reasoning whose conclusions are drawn by forming intentions to act, and the conclusions themselves are the contents of those intentions. To arrive at a version of the action-as-conclusion view, we need only add that the content of an intention to act is an action. In support of this final premise I shall urge that what we intend, when we intend to act, is the sort of thing that could be done. If we use that idea to guide our understanding of the relevant notion of action, we can complete the case for the action- as-conclusion view.

It is worth noting that we have already ruled out quite a lot. Whatever the content of an intention turns out to be, it won't be a proposition about what one ought to do, or what is best. One might entertain the idea that what I intend when I intend to make a cloak is the proposition that I make a cloak. But it isn't even remotely plausible that what I intend is that I ought to make a cloak. Moreover, no plausible view will identify the content with a mental state, such as a decision or an intention. The content of a decision or intention is distinct from the mental




state itself.30 So we've already ruled out both the 'ought' proposition view and the mental state view as views of the conclusion of the practical syllogism.

Nevertheless, there are reasons for thinking that what I intend when I intend to act is an action. On the face of it, what I intend when I intend to make a cloak is an action, namely the act of making a cloak. But there is an important theoretical desideratum at stake here as well. On balance, we should prefer an account on which people sometimes do what they intend. We don't want to make it a philosophical truth that people are always intending one thing and doing another. But what I do when I do what I intend is an action. So to preserve a unified account of doing what we intend, we should say that what we intend is an action.

This argument supports the common-sense idea that what one intends, when one intends to act, is an action. But it also provides a way of understanding what is at issue. To say that the 'what' of an intention is an action, as I shall mean this, is to say it is the sort of thing that could be done. Thus the 'what' of an intention to make a cloak will not be the cloak itself, since a cloak, being a physical object, is not the sort of thing one could do. For the same reason, the 'what' of the intention will not be the proposition 'I make a cloak.' Propositions are not things that we do. One thing we can do, however, is make a proposition true. So the act of making a proposition true is not ruled out by the claim that what we intend is an action.31

It might be objected, however, that what we intend cannot be an action, because actions are always more specific than what we intend. Suppose I intend to write a letter to a friend. At first that is my whole plan: I have no idea what I will write. Then, after a period of procrasti- nation, I sit down and write, deciding as I go what to say. Can we say that what I intended was this action, the one I have now done? It seems not. Had I written something different, that would have been a different

30 Harman holds that what one intends, when one intends to make a cloak, is to make a cloak as a result of this very intention. But this is compatible with the idea that what one intends is the act of making a cloak as a result of this very intention, as

opposed to the intention itself. See Gilbert Harman, 'Practical Reasoning/ Review of Metaphysics 79 (1976) 431-63, and Change in View (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

1986), 85-6.

31 The same test should guide our thinking about negative and conditional conclusions, like 'So I won't tell anyone/ or 'So I'll call the doctor if the rash persists/ On the face of it, keeping a secret and calling the doctor if the rash persists are the sorts of things one can do. So they are not ruled out by the claim that what one intends is an action, as I am understanding it.



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action, and yet it would still have been a case of doing what I had intended. At the time before I decided what to write, there were many things I could do, each of which would have been a case of writing a letter to my friend. If any one of them is the thing that I intended, then none of the others would have fulfilled my intention. But any of them would have fulfilled my intention. Therefore, what I intended is not an action. Moreover, it might be added, the argument is perfectly general, since what one intends is always less specific than any action that would count as doing what one intends.

This objection relies on a particular way of thinking about what an action is. We refer to actions in two ways, both as what one does and as one's doing of it.32 The objection works only if we think of actions as doings. One's doing of an action is not something that can be done by more than one person, or more than once by the same person. If I learn to swim, and you learn to swim, this makes two distinct doings. These doings are fully specified in a way that what one intends is not. What one does, by contrast, is the sort of thing that can in principle be done by others, or more than once by one person. To say 'Do that again' is not always to ask the impossible, and those who think no one will ever do what they did, e.g. hit safely in fifty-six consecutive games, are not banking on any theorem of philosophy.

Notice that die distinction between what is done and the doing of it is not confined to actions. The sun's flaring up and incinerating its planets is a concrete (happily far future) event. The sun does not do the event. What it does is flare up and incinerate its planets, something other stars have done before. The event is its doing of that. Nevertheless, neither the event nor what the sun does is an action. Thus some but not all doings are actions, and some but not all things done are actions.

If we think of an action as what is done, rather than as the doing of it, then the specificity objection gets no foothold. There will be an action, writing a letter to so and so, of which various writings of letters to so and so will all be doings. Because this action is not identified with any of these events, it will be no more specific than what one intends. In fact, it will be precisely what one intends to do. What one intends to do is write so and so, and what one does is write so and so. So the 'what' of intending to do something and the 'what' of doing it are the same. On this way of

32 See Ian Rumfit, 'Frege's Theory of Predication: An Elaboration and Defense, with Some New Applications/ The Philosophical Review 103 (1994), 619. Rumfit develops a view on which the content of an order or intention is a thing done as opposed to a doing.




thinking about actions, the content of an intention just is that action one's doing of which would constitute carrying out the intention. So we can agree that doings are more specific than what we intend, and still hold that what we intend is an action.33

The distinction between doings and things done will also allow us to answer a more sophisticated version of the objection. The version we just considered relies on the assumption that actions are concrete events. But even if one permitted talk of abstract actions, one might insist that the actions we intend must be distinct from the actions we do. Bruce Ver- mazen, for one, urges us to consider 'how different actions as objects of intention would have to be from actions done':

Actions done, for one thing, seem to be dated particulars, while "actions" as objects of intention need not be dated and seem not to be particulars.34

Vermazen sees no hope for a unified account of doing what one intends: actions done are just the wrong kinds of things to be objects of intention. Instead, he favors the view that intentions to act are 'directed at propositions.'35

33 A different reply to the specificity objection would be to let the intended action be whatever concrete action lies down the causal stream from the intention. Thus what I intend, when I intend to write a letter to my friend, is whatever event of writing a letter to my friend actually transpires as a result of the intention. This is not a

promising strategy. One problem is that if no action lies downstream, nothing will have been intended. Another is that as we learn more about the action that materi- alizes, on this view, we learn more about what we intended. And this just isn't right. The details of what I actually write are precisely what is missing from what I intended yesterday, when I only intended to write.

34 Bruce Vermazen, 'Objects of Intention/ Philosophical Studies 71 (1993), 224

35 Another defense of propositions as objects of intentions would rest on an analysis of intentions as beliefs. For instance, David Velleman in Practical Reflection (Prince- ton: Princeton University Press 1989) analyzes intentions as special kinds of expec- tations that one will act. Perhaps it will seem that if Velleman is right, then the 'what' of an intention to act is the proposition that forms the content of the belief. But in fact this does not follow. An analysis of what it is to be in a state with a certain object can leave the object untouched. For instance, some philosophers analyze states of

valuing as beliefs. To value learning, on such a view, is to believe that learning is

good. It does not follow, though, that what one values is the proposition that

learning is good. The object of the valuing is still learning, even though the valuing itself is analyzed as a belief. Similarly, the object of an intention can be an action, even if we analyze the intention itself as a belief.



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But the unified account is not in trouble here. What Vermazen says about actions done is true of doings but false of things done. What I do, e.g. make a cloak, is something that could be done more than once and at different times. Any doing of it will be a particular dated event; but what is done is not a dated particular. So Vermazen has given us no reason to suppose that actions done must be different from actions as objects of intention.

The specificity objection, and Vermazen's variation on it, threatened to force a split between what we intend and the action we do in carrying out the intention. Our response is to identify the 'what' of the intention with the thing done, the abstract action, as opposed to the doing of it, the concrete action. To be sure, this leaves more to be said about the nature of things done. But whatever their metaphysical description, the fact that we do them provides us with a robust sense in which to call them actions. This should calm any fears that what one intends cannot be the action one does in carrying out the intention.

The 'what' of an intention to act, I've argued, is the action one intends to do. Adding that to the claims defended earlier in section III, we get a version of the action-as-conclusion view. When one reaches a conclusion of the form 'So I'll...' the conclusion reached is the 'what' of the intention formed. The 'what' of the intention, we now add, is the action one intends to do. So the conclusion reached is the action one intends to do. And since we embrace a unified account of doing what one intends, the conclusion is the thing one does, insofar as one does what one intends. In keeping with the point of section I, this view allows the conclusion drawn to be an action even in cases where that action is never done.

IV Conclusion

Aristotle's odd-sounding doctrine is ready for prime time. The action- as-conclusion view can accommodate the case where the conclusion is drawn but no action ensues. But the moral is not merely that Aristotle's idea is routinely dismissed for a bad reason. Whereas even a crazy view can be dismissed for a bad reason, this view is not crazy. On the contrary, it is the view to beat. One ought, in the absence of genuine philosophical obstacles, to think that conclusions are contents, that drawing a conclusion of the form 'So I'll...' is forming an intention to act, and that the content of an intention to act is an action. One ought, therefore, to think that conclusions of the form 'So I'll...' are actions. This is good news for objectivists in ethics because it spares us the problem of internalism. Those who think there is a domain of truths that serves as the subject matter for deliberation, and who do not want to relativize those truths to desires or other psychological states of the reasoner, need a lucid




account of rational motivation. That is why we need the practical syllogism, and why we need to think of it in the way Aristotle did.36

Received: February, 2001 Revised: July, 2001

36 For helpful comments I thank Eugene Bales, Michael Bratman, David Copp, Jimmy Doyle, Kai Draper, Fred Dretsky, Sean Foran, Jim Hamilton, Ariela Lazar, Laurie

Pieper, Betsy Postow, Marleen Rozemond, Chris Shields, Houston Smit, Janet Stemwedel, Sergio Tenenbaum, Michael Wedin, Gideon Yaffe, and several anony- mous referees.



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The Action as Conclusion