Abstract
This chapter interprets Kotarbiński’s conception of rationality with the aid of the conceptual tools of two theoretical perspectives: Herbert Simon’s account of rationality and the theory of the reasons for action. Its target is two-fold: firstly, it reconstructs Kotarbiński’s idea of rationality by comparing it with the well-known distinction of substantive and procedural rationality (Simon). Secondly, it strives to develop Kotarbiński’s ideas in the direction that allows to express his view in the language of the reasons for action. The goal of this somewhat experimental strategy is rather modest: to show how Kotarbiński’s thinking about rationality may be reconstructed with the use of distinctions from the theories of the reasons for action and, at the same time, to point to his original timbre.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, this issue refers to the presence of the Platonic-Aristotelian conception of the soul in contemporary thinking about an agent, causation and the relations between desires and beliefs. An excellent discussion of this question can be found in Bittner (2001, Chaps. 1–2).
- 2.
Translation slightly altered (proposition instead of statement).
- 3.
For more on this: see Chap. 5.
- 4.
However odd this may appear, irrational actions—the ones which are not relevantly adapted to the circumstances—still possess some minimal quantum of rationality (understood as a degree of the instantiation of the property). This would be a precise interpretation of Kotarbiński’s view (if we wanted it to be so).
- 5.
Translation altered (inter alia, Wojtasiewicz uses the term factual rationality instead of substantive rationality).
- 6.
Translation slightly altered.
- 7.
‘But [substantive rationality] is only feasible if the situation is sufficiently simple so that human decision makers can apprehend the objective solution. In more complicated situations (most situations of practical interest) human bounded rationality requires that we understand the decision procedures if we are to predict behaviour’ (Simon 1997: 19).
- 8.
In his minor essays Kotarbiński frequently applied his ideas to the variety of particular practical and scientific contexts. This strategy is roughly compatible with the idea of praxiology understood as a general science. The rejection of this idea (in Chap. 2) allows us to focus on the philosophical dimension of praxiology.
- 9.
Partially, this is what makes Simon a theorist of economy, and Kotarbiński—despite what happened to his work after the publication of the Treatise—a philosopher of action.
- 10.
I call it the concretistic thinking to highlight that this is not an orthodox account of concretism. I believe that it makes sense to connect such a view with the praxiological approach to rationality inasmuch as it makes sense to interpret praxiology as infiltrated by reism.
- 11.
Kotarbiński was fully aware of it and recalled Aristotle as the first proponent of this strategy in generalizations (Kotarbiński 1966).
- 12.
This expression is absent in Wojtasiewicz’s translation. Notice, by the way, that the idea of practical realism is a recurrent praxiological motive. (It will reappear in Chap. 5.)
- 13.
However bold this sounds, simplification seems to be the most ‘humanitarian’ attitude towards the idea of a ‘theory of reasons for action’. If we remain on the level of the semantics of different analogues of the term reason in different natural languages, some theoretical solutions (which are inherent to the idea of a theory) are blocked. For example, in the Polish language the term reason has two different analogues: racja and powód, the use of which is entirely contextual. Although they may mean roughly the same, being sometimes used interchangeably, they have different philosophical connotations, which are not innocent with respect to such issues as rationality or causation (in the case of racja, the context of rationality remains, but it is absent in the case of powód, which is rather related to causation). Similar remarks can be made for the semantics of German Grund. I only point out one of the many problems tied to natural languages in which we speak of our actions; these problems are frequently ignored by the English-speaking philosophers of action.
- 14.
For more on this, see an excellent discussion in John Broome’s recent book (Broome 2013, Chaps. 5 and 6).
- 15.
Parfit claims that apparent reasons do not have the normative force (only genuine reasons have it) (Parfit 2011: 35). This claim should occur as dubious. Apparent reasons may be seen as at least apparently normative (otherwise they could not play their role in the rational practice).
- 16.
The import of this combination is not, I think, affected by the doubtfulness of the assumption that rationality implies proper response to reasons.
- 17.
There is a very interesting discussion about the role of practical consistency which has been initiated by the work of Niko Kolodny (see e.g. Kolodny 2008). I cannot go into further details of it here, but let me stress that despite many important points that can be made against consistency as a norm of action, consistency seems to belong to our notion of methodological rationality. Broome (2013) shares this view. This issue will reappear in the next chapter during my investigation of the role of plans and future-directed intentions.
- 18.
Consider: ‘When we are ignorant, or have false beliefs, it may be rational for us to want or do what we have no reason to want or do. In such cases, we ought rationally to respond to our apparent reasons’ (Parfit 2011: 16).
It is plain that rationality only entails correct response to (apparent) reasons and it is not identical with it. See also Parfit (2011: 36).
- 19.
In fact, this is what people frequently do. However pragmatic this may appear in legal and criminal contexts, it is hard to accept as a rule on several levels. This issue is worth of a separate study.
- 20.
I also stipulate that the detection of explanatory reasons in the case of a vicious but rational action helps to better understand how it is possible in terms of consistency between intentions and beliefs, but this is a separate issue.
- 21.
- 22.
This idea is related to the widely discussed problem called by Bratman ‘bootstrapping’ (Bratman 1981). Since it is only marginally related to the topic of this book, I am not going into its details here.
- 23.
- 24.
If I am not mistaken, the term pro toto reason comes from John Broome (2013). His definition is different from the one proposed in this section, but there is no need to investigate this incongruence here.
- 25.
To remain in touch with the idea that normative reasons and substantial rationality are tied in several places I shall be trying to make reference to normative reasons, too.
- 26.
For a similar set of examples, see Bittner (2001: 4).
- 27.
Bittner, whose account is a paradigm reference here, claims that reasons are states of affairs, but not facts (Bittner 2001: 69). I do not see any reason to avoid this idea (pace here how facts should be defined).
- 28.
Once again, I do not mean to claim that literally interpreted reism supports this view. This is rather a desideratum of the concretistic approach I have introduced in this chapter.
- 29.
The quote from Gasparski (introduced in this section) may be interpreted along these lines.
- 30.
Of course, this is against the line of arguments of the proponents of the view that reasons are facts (Dancy) or states of affairs (Bittner). I shall not discuss counter-arguments which have been construed to avoid this conclusion.
- 31.
What I say here is to a significant extent in accordance with the view of Alvarez (2010, Chap. 5).
- 32.
- 33.
For more on the issue of evidentialism, see e.g. Conee and Feldman (2004).
- 34.
There is an analogy between Kotarbiński’s criticism of hypostases and the evidentialist claim that beliefs require evidence. Further, Kotarbiński would probably disagree with William James’ doctrine of will to believe, which is non-evidentialist by definition.
- 35.
Of course, this is a challenge for any proponent of the evidentialist approach to normative reasons.
- 36.
I briefly discuss Davidson’s account of reasons in Chap. 6.
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Makowski, P.T. (2017). Consequences of Concretism: Rationality and Reasons for Action. In: Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s Action Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40051-8_4
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