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One Way to Be a Cognitivist about Instrumental Rationality1
Imagine I intend to carry out a project that I have no good reason whatsoever to carry out. Say
I plan to spend what’s left in my bank account to go on a lavish vacation to the south of France
on my birthday. I am well aware of the fact that airline ticket prices always jump several
hundred dollars once you are within 30 days of the trip date. I can only afford the ticket at the
current listed price and cannot afford to pay any more. Imagine there are 31 days until my
birthday and it is approaching midnight. Suppose I believe, quite justifiably, that in order to
carry out my plan to take the trip on my birthday I will need to book the flight right now. Now
suppose that despite my intention to take the trip on my birthday, I have absolutely no intention
to book the flight right now. Something seems to be going very wrong here, but note that this
cannot easily be explained by appeal to the fact that I ought to book a flight to the south of
France right now, since it seems it is not the case that I ought to be booking such a trip in the
first place at all.2 In fact it would be quite irresponsible of me to do so!
This tension might lead us to wonder if our intuitions in this case ought to be explained,
instead, by appeal to a special instrumental requirement of rationality. If there is such a principle
it seems natural to think that it would be a paradigm case of a requirement of practical
rationality. Principles of practical rationality are usually distinguished from principles of
theoretical rationality by the kinds of states over which they are thought to range. To be
theoretically rational, an agent must appropriately regulate her beliefs and other cognitive
states whereas requirements of practical rationality involve the appropriate regulation of
intentions, plans, or actions (perhaps sometimes in combination with cognitive states).3 If I
intend to fly to the south of France on my birthday, believe I need to book my flight now in
order to do so, and do not intend to book now, it seems, prima facie, like my irrationality is of the
practical kind since being rational in this case would involve appropriately regulating my
intentions.
In contrast, the thesis of cognitivism about instrumental rationality holds that
instrumental rationality is a special case of theoretical rationality. By arguing that there are
important relations that hold between intentions and certain beliefs, cognitivists hold that
rational requirements on beliefs can ground the requirements of instrumental rationality.4
When I say that I ought to book a flight to the south of France right now, cognitivists hold that
I am using the epistemic sense of “ought.” Arguably the most sophisticated defense of such an
account is given in Setiya [2007]. While much of the criticism of Setiya’s view has focused on
the controversial reduction of intention to a special kind of belief that plays a key role in his
account, I will be concerned here with two prior and more central issues with Setiya’s account.5
In this paper, my aim will be to defend cognitivism about instrumental rationality by showing
how Setiya’s account can be modified so as to be defended against these two serious objections.
I am grateful to Ralph Wedgwood, Jake Ross, and Mark Schroeder for their extremely helpful comments on earlier
versions of this paper.
2 But see Schroeder [2009], Finlay [2010], and Way [2012] for a discussion of accounts on which the simple
principle that “if you intend to E and believe that M-ing is necessary for E-ing, you ought to M” really is true on at
least one of “ought”’s senses.
3 For an example of the distinction being drawn in this way, see Svavarsdóttir [2006].
4 For example, Harman [1997], Wallace [2001], Setiya [2007].
5 For critiques of the tight relationship between an intention to φ and a belief that one will φ, see Bratman [1987] 3738, Davidson [2001] 91-96, and Holton [2008].
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Setiya’s Cognitivist Reduction
Setiya formulates his version of the Instrumental Rationality Principle as the following:
You should [if you intend to do E and believe that you will do E only if you do-Mbecause-you-now-intend-to-do-M, intend now to do M].6
So if I intend to fly to the south of France on my birthday and reach the moment where I realize
I must purchase the ticket right now, I must form the intention to purchase the ticket.
Setiya defends a strong proposal about the relationship between intentions and beliefs,
arguing that an intention just is a certain kind of motivating self-referential belief.7 On his
account, when I intend to φ I believe that I will φ on the basis of this very intention. Two
crucial theses are upshots of this account:
Strong Belief Thesis8: When I intend to φ, I believe I will φ.
Transparency Thesis: When I intend to φ, I believe I intend to φ.
The first of these two to factor into Setiya’s account is the Strong Belief Thesis. Any time I
intend an end, it follows that I believe I will carry out that end. So when I intend to fly to the
south of France on my birthday, it follows that I believe that I will fly to the south of France on
my birthday. Because of this connection Setiya is able to bring in a theoretical requirement of
rationality, Belief Closure, to help explain the Instrumental Principle. Belief Closure is the
following requirement:
You should [if you believe that p and believe that if p, q, believe that q].9
Since for Setiya the Strong Belief Thesis holds, we can derive the following requirement from
Belief Closure:
You should [if you believe that you will do E and you believe that you will do E only if
you do-M-because-you-now-intend-to-do-M, believe that you now intend to do M].
So if I believe that I will fly to the south of France on my birthday, and believe that if I do so I
will now have to purchase the ticket by forming an intention to do so, given Belief Closure I
ought to come to believe that I intend to purchase the ticket.
Belief Closure is not sufficient to explain the Instrumental Principle, though, because
whereas I might come to believe that I intend to purchase the ticket by way of the intention I
have to do so, I might instead come to believe that I intend it for some other reason.10 Setiya
There are several aspects of this formulation that are noteworthy, (for example: the fact that it is wide-scope, the
fact that it is restricted to a specific time, and the fact that it is formulated to avoid the problem of necessary sideeffects) but I will bracket these issues for now.
7 Setiya 664.
8 I follow Brunero [2009], Ross [2009], and Bratman [2009] in calling this the Strong Belief Thesis.
9 I continue to follow Setiya here in representing requirements of rationality in their wide-scope formulations.
10 This is now standardly accepted in the literature, for example see Brunero [2009] and Ross [2009]. Bratman
[1981] first poses this as a problem for earlier cognitivist views of the Instrumental Principle that attempt to base
the Instrumental Rationality Principle solely on Belief Closure: “Suppose I believe that I intend to [do M] but in fact
do not so intend…Still, my belief fills the gap in my beliefs which threatens [epistemic] incoherence…But though the
demand for [epistemic] coherence is met, the demands of means-end rationality are not. I intend some end, believe
that to achieve it I must decide on some means, and have in fact reached no such decision.”
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sees this as a challenge to explain why I could not come to believe that I will take the means to
my end without intending to take the means to my end without violating some other
requirement of theoretical rationality.
In other words, Setiya needs to prove that we have reason to accept something like the
following:
Principle X: You ought rationally never to believe that you intend to φ on the basis of
outside evidence.11
Principle X together with the Strong Belief Thesis and Belief Closure are sufficient to explain
Setiya’s version of the Instrumental Rationality Principle. But do we have any reason to accept
Principle X?
Setiya thinks we do, given the truth of the Transparency Thesis. The explanation relies
on the fact that there are only two ways in which I can come to believe that I intend to φ. One
way to come to believe that I intend to φ is via the fact that I actually do intend to φ. As long as
the Transparency Thesis is true, such an inference guarantees that my belief that I intend to φ
will be true, since if I have an intention to φ, I believe that I have an intention to φ. There is
another way, though, that I might come to believe that I intend to φ: by inferring from outside
evidence that I intend to φ. If I form my belief about what I intend on the basis of outside
evidence, there is a possibility that my belief might be false. This would result in my being able
to satisfy Belief Closure without forming the intention I need to form to be instrumentally
rational. However, Setiya argues that inferring what my intention is via this route is never
theoretically rational.
The reason I cannot rationally infer what my intention is on outside evidence, Setiya
argues, is because such an inference could never be both sound and ampliative. Call this
Principle Y.
Principle Y: You ought rationally never make an inference that could not be both sound
and ampliative.
Setiya justifies Principle Y by looking at the two possible outcomes of making such an inference:
If I infer that I intend to φ on the basis of some outside evidence and my conclusion is true, then
my inference is redundant, for on Setiya’s account, when I have an intention to φ, I believe I will
φ because of this very intention—the Transparency Thesis guarantees it. So my inference in
that case is not ampliative. If I infer that I intend to φ on the basis of some evidence but the
conclusion of my inference is false, then my inference in that case is guaranteed to be unsound,
again due to the Transparency Thesis. Setiya claims that since the exhaustive options for my
inference about my own intention on the basis of evidence are that it is unsound or not
ampliative, attempting to infer my own intention on the basis of evidence is rationally
incoherent.12 And so Principle X is upheld on the basis that coming to falsely believe that you
intend to φ could never be both sound and ampliative; Principle Y explains Principle X.
To add support for Principle Y, Setiya shows how this same principle can be applied to
explain the irrationality of inferring p from the assumption that I believe p.13 Such an inference
11I
follow Ross [2009] here in calling this Principle X, though I formulate it slightly differently here for explanatory
purposes.
12 Setiya 670.
13 Some readers may wonder if this is even something that needs to be explained, since it may not even be possible for
a person to form a belief if she takes herself to already have that very belief. While I share this concern, I think
discussion of Setiya’s allusion to this case will be prove fruitful to the greater purposes of this paper nonetheless.
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could never be both sound and ampliative because either I form a belief in p that I already had,
in which case my inference is not ampliative, or I form a belief in p that is new. But in this case,
my inference cannot be sound because if it is ampliative, the premise of my inference must be
wrong—I do not in fact believe p, so I cannot soundly come to believe p by inferring p from the
assumption that I believe p.14 If this is right, we have some reason to believe that Principle Y is
viable and that it can in the same way explain Principle X, thus completing Setiya’s cognitivist
explanation of the Instrumental Rationality Principle.
There are, however, two powerful objections to Setiya’s account. First, we might worry
that neither Principle X nor Principle Y is really a requirement of theoretical rationality at all.
Second, we might worry that the two principles are implausibly strong. I will motivate both
objections in order to make the case that if Principle X could be replaced with a weaker principle
that could be explained by a clear principle of theoretical rationality, we would have strong
reason to prefer it.
Principle X and Principle Y are Not Theoretical Requirements of Rationality
As we have seen, if Principle Y is true, it explains Principle X, which fills the gap in the
cognitivist explanation of instrumental rationality between Belief Closure and Instrumental
Rationality. The goal of the cognitivist project, recall, is to try to explain the requirements of
practical rationality entirely in terms of requirements of theoretical rationality. We may
wonder, though, if Principle X and Principle Y are themselves really principles of theoretical
rationality. As Ross [2009] puts it, even when explained by Principle Y, “many would question
whether principle X is a genuine requirement of rationality, let alone a genuine requirement of
theoretical rationality.”15 At the very least, Principle X and Principle Y look very different in
kind from more familiar principles of theoretical rationality. The cognitivist about instrumental
rationality thinks that the Instrumental Rationality Principle itself is not the kind of thing that
could be a primitive requirement of rationality and that it requires further explanation in terms
of more fundamental requirements of rationality. Principles X and Y, it might be thought, seem
hardly more fundamental than the Instrumental Rationality Principle itself.
Brunero [2009] puts a slightly different spin on this objection. Being theoretically
rational, he argues, is a matter of whether or not my beliefs cohere with one another, not a
matter of whether or not they correspond to the world or are based on other beliefs which
correspond to the world.16 The fact that there is no sound ampliative inference available to me
seems to rely on the kind of facts about the world on which theoretical rationality ought not to
supervene. When I make an inference that has no chance of being both sound and ampliative,
there need be nothing incoherent about the relationship of my beliefs to one another. These
worries make Setiya’s purported cognitivist explanation of instrumental rationality suspect.
Principle X and Principle Y are Implausibly Strong
While the worry that Principle X and Y are not really requirements of theoretical rationality
makes their role in Setiya’s argument suspicious, the two principles also suffer from a bigger
problem. Principle X, as it stands, is an extremely strong principle. The Transparency Thesis,
which together with Principle Y explains Principle X, indicates that we are never wrong about
the content of a certain class of our mental states—our intentions. It seems as though we can
and often are wrong about the content of our own mental states, though. Many think that
Ibid.
Ross [2009] 259.
16 Brunero [2009] 322.
14
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recent empirical research showing that implicit and unconscious attitudes often diverge from
self-reported attitudes helps to validate this intuition.17 But, bracketing this concern for a
moment, it is helpful to notice that Principle Y also seems implausibly strong. Principle Y
states that there is something rationally criticizable about making an inference that cannot be
both sound and ampliative, but surely this is not the case universally.18 Suppose that many
years ago I came to believe some proposition in mathematics, R, and that I have continued to
believe in the truth of R ever since. Imagine I undertake that calculation again without
remembering that I will be reasoning to the truth of R. If I calculate correctly, I will infer the
truth of R at the end. To do so, according to Principle Y, would be irrational since I make an
inference that could not be ampliative, since I already know R. And yet it does not seem that I
have done anything particularly irrational. If we find this worry compelling, we might think
that what seemed right about Principle Y could be preserved by being restricted in such a way
that these cases would fall outside its scope.
But even supposing that we were able to independently motivate the fact that Principle
Y ought to be restricted just in the case of making an inference about my own mental states, this
explanation still seems too strong. Brunero [2009] provides a counterexample to this reasoning
even when it is just applied narrowly to cases in which I form a belief about my own intention.
In his case I come to believe that I intend to leave my wife, although in reality (though I have
not realized it) I merely desire to and do not intend to leave her.19 I come to believe that I
intend to leave her, though, because my trusted psychiatrist tells me that this is what I intend to
do. I believe that my psychiatrist knows me better than I know myself and so I think that his
insight constitutes the best evidence of what my intentions are. It seems counterintuitive to
think there is something irrational about my reasoning in this sort of case. So even if there were
a way to independently motivate Principle Y to cases of inferring what my own intentions are,
this would still be too strong. If the Transparency Thesis is true, then it is the case that I
cannot soundly and ampliatively come to believe I intend to leave my wife because according to
the Transparency Thesis, if it is true that I intend to leave my wife, then I already believe that I
intend to leave my wife. Yet there seems to be nothing intuitively irrational about my
reasoning in the case in which I mistakenly believe I intend to leave my wife, since I very well
might not know that the Transparency Thesis is true. This gives us serious reason to worry
about Principle X.
If we do not want to accept Principle X when applied to the psychiatrist case, we should
wonder why we should accept it in in the birthday flight case. We might worry that there is
nothing special about the case in which I am making an inference about what my intention is on
the basis of outside information when I am engaged in means-end reasoning that makes such an
inference irrational in that case but not in the psychiatrist case. After all, it might seem that
nothing stops me from rationally complying with Belief Closure by believing my trustworthy
friend who tells me that I do now intend to book my ticket right now, even though in reality I
merely desire to book my ticket right now. I believe that in fact there is something special about
the case in which I make an inference about what my intention is on the basis of outside
information when I am engaged in means-end reasoning that makes such an inference irrational
in that case but not in the psychiatrist case, but in order to motivate that view it will be helpful
For a discussion of this empirical literature, see Schwitzgebel [2010].
We might be led to think that Principle Y is far too strong if we take Setiya to be using ‘ampliative’ in the sense in
which it is right to say that deductive inferences are never ampliative. Whenever I make a deductive inference, since
on this understanding it would always be non-ampliative, I seem to violate Principle Y. But it is certainly not the
case that I am irrational whenever I make a deductive inference. We should, instead, understand Setiya as using the
term ‘ampliative inference’ to mean an inference in which learn something new in a sense compatible with the fact
that when I make a deductive inference I learn something that I did not know before.
19 Brunero [2009] 322.
17
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to first reexamine Setiya’s argument for the irrationality of inferring p from the assumption that
one believes p.
The Missing Knowledge Component
Is it really true that in order to explain the irrationality of inferring p from the assumption that
one believes p we have to posit something as strong as Principle Y? I will argue that we have
good reason to believe that, in fact, a weaker principle, Principle Y, better explains this
irrationality. Furthermore Principle Y looks like a much more plausible candidate for a
principle of theoretical rationality than Principle Y. The only reason that Principle Y seems to
be a good explanation of the irrationality of inferring p from the assumption that one believes p,
I will argue, is because it smuggles in a hidden assumption about that person’s knowledge. I
will explain what this assumption is, and then show how a parallel assumption is smuggled in to
Setiya’s explanation for Principle X.
In the case of inferring p from the assumption that one believes p, the reason that it
seems that it is the fact that my inference can only be either non-ampliative or unsound that
explains the inference’s irrationality is that in the usual case I would know that inferring p from
the assumption that one takes oneself to believe p could never be a sound and ampliative
inference. This knowledge contradicts my goals in forming a belief in p. So while I know I
cannot possibly be forming a belief that is both sound and ampliative, I nevertheless endeavor to
form a belief under the assumption that one can form a belief that is sound and ampliative.
In most cases a person does know that inferring p from the assumption that she believes
p could never be a sound and ampliative inference as this is implicit in an understanding of what
beliefs are. This does not mean, of course, that she is familiar with the philosophical concepts of
“ampliative inferences” and “soundness.” Rather, she knows that inferring the truth of
something from the fact that she takes herself to believe it can’t possibly tell her something she
didn’t know before. If it does tell her something she didn’t know before, then “inferring the
truth of something from the fact that she takes herself to believe it” doesn’t accurately describe
what transpired. Anyone who knows what a belief is knows that this is the case.
When this implicit belief is not present, however, it becomes significantly less intuitive
that such a person is irrational to infer p from the assumption that she believes p, or at the very
least it becomes significantly less intuitive that making this inference is the source of her
irrationality.20 It is difficult to imagine even a single case of someone who does not know that it
is irrational to infer p from her own assumption that she believes p. The only imaginable case is
a case in which the person has some sort of fundamental misunderstanding about what beliefs
are. Such a person fails to be rational in a more serious way than by making an inference that
could be neither sound nor ampliative, but it is not at all intuitively clear that she also breaks a
rational rule to not make an inference that could never be both sound and ampliative. This
gives us reason to abandon Principle Y in favor of something like Principle Y.
Principle Y: You ought rationally never make an inference that you know could not be
both sound and ampliative.
Setiya’s explanation of the Instrumental Rationality Principle requires a parallel kind of
knowledge component. This point is actually nicely illustrated by Brunero’s example. Recall
that in this case I come to believe that I intend to leave my wife due to my psychiatrist’s
20
I am grateful to Jake Ross for pressing me on this point.
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diagnosis, although in reality (though I have not realized it) I merely desire to and do not intend
to leave my wife.
Principle Y fails here as an explanation of Principle X because even if it really is the case
that my belief is guaranteed to be either unsound or irrational given the truth of the
Transparency Thesis, if I do not know that the Transparency Thesis is true I may believe that it
is possible to infer what my intention is on the basis of outside evidence without it being either
unsound or non-ampliative. If it seems plausible to me that I might be able to infer my
intention on the basis of my psychiatrist’s insight, then it is clear that I do not know that the
Transparency Thesis is true. In this way, Brunero’s case helps illuminate the point that it is the
fact that I do not know that the Transparency Thesis is true that makes it highly implausible
that my reasoning is irrational. It suggests that the real explanation doing the work in the
Instrumental Rationality Principle might be a more restricted explanation.
In the case of inferring p from the assumption that one believes p we saw that the
explanation of its irrationality is restricted only to people who know what beliefs are. This
seemed like a reasonable group of people for such a requirement to be restricted to, and so
Principle Y was a plausible candidate for explaining why such an inference is universally
irrational. In the case of inferring one’s own intention on the basis of outside evidence, though,
the explanation of its irrationality seems to be restricted only to people who know that the
Transparency Thesis is true. If we abandon Principle Y in favor of Principle Y here, this seems
to give us the view that only those who know the Transparency Thesis is true ought to be such
that they never form a belief about their own intentions on the basis of outside evidence.
Interestingly, this seems to make it the case that Setiya himself would be irrational not
to intend to book the birthday flight, but Brunero would be off the hook for such apparent
irrationality. If faced with the original situation, Setiya could not rationally satisfy Belief
Closure by coming to merely believe that he intends to book a flight now since he believes that
the Transparency Thesis will apply to any intention to take the means that he could have. So if
it is the case that if he really intends to book the flight now, then he also believes that he intends
to book the flight now on the basis of this intention. He violates Principle Y by knowing he
cannot form a belief that he intends to book the flight now that is both sound and ampliative but
attempting to anyway. The only way he could rationally satisfy Belief Closure would be to
come to form the intention to buy the ticket now. So if Setiya fails to meet the Instrumental
Rationality condition, we can explain his irrationality in terms of principles of theoretical reason
alone.
But the same explanation does not work to describe the irrationality of someone who
does not think the Transparency Thesis is true. In similar circumstances Brunero could ask a
trusted advisor whether or not he (Brunero) intends to purchase the ticket right now and if he
accepts that he does have such an intention on the basis of evidence provided to him by the
advisor, he may satisfy Belief Closure without satisfying the Instrumental Rationality principle.
Setiya seems to be left without an explanation as to why Brunero is still means-ends incoherent.
While we saw that both Principle Y and Principle Y yielded the same results in the case of a
person inferring p from the assumption that she believes p, they diverge in terms of whether or
not they predict Principle X to be true. Whereas Principle Y can explain Principle X, Principle
Y only supports the principle that some people ought never to believe that they intend to φ on
the basis of outside evidence. But, as we have seen, there are compelling reasons to prefer
Principle Y to Principle Y. This presents a problem for Setiya’s view. I will show, though, that
there is a viable account of the Instrumental Rationality Principle, a modification of Setiya’s
account, which relies on Principle Y instead of Principle Y.
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A New Account
It is false that everyone knows that the Transparency Thesis is true, as evidenced by the fact
that people like Brunero argue against it. If our account of the Instrumental Rationality
Principle exempts people like Brunero from being subject to it, it looks like we have a reductio of
our view.
But this is too fast. We saw how restricting Principle X only to the people who know
the Transparency Thesis is true gives us counterintuitive results, but we might try restricting
Principle X in a different way. We might instead restrict Principle X to apply to a certain
subset of intentions such that it is true that each person knows that the Transparency Thesis is
true of the relevant intention, since it is true of the set. Let’s see how this line of argumentation
might work. Given the airline ticket scenario, recall that what was needed is some way to
guarantee that the way I go about forming that belief that I intend to buy the ticket now is by
means of forming the intention to buy the ticket now. We need to rule out cases in which I
form the belief about my intention to buy the ticket via inference from outside evidence. Notice
we need not rule out being able to rationally form beliefs about my intention on the basis of
outside evidence across the board, but rather just for the cases in which I am forming a belief
about an intention that I now need to form in order to carry out my means. If we rule in these
cases and rule out others we can perhaps explain why in the therapist example my inference is
not theoretically irrational, but when I attempt to satisfy the Instrumental Rationality Principle
by merely forming a belief about what my intention is without so intending I am theoretically
irrational.
What we need to make this work is something like the following:
Principle X: You ought rationally never to believe that you intend to φ on the basis of
outside evidence when φ-ing is the means in a piece of means-ends reasoning.
We want to be able to say that Principle X is true because Principle Y is relevant to
attempting to form a belief that one intends to φ when φ-ing is the means in a piece of meansends reasoning. Principle Y tells us that a person ought rationally to never make an inference
that one knows could not be both sound and ampliative. In order for Principle Y to explain
Principle X, we need it to be the case that there could be no sound and ampliative inference a
person could make to a belief in her own intention to φ, when φ-ing is some means, on the basis
of outside information and that the person always knows this. In other words we need a more
restricted Transparency Thesis that is not only true of any intention that factors as a means in
means-end reasoning, but also one that is known by each person to be true of her meansintentions.
If there is such a Transparency Thesis, we can explain Principle X in terms of a clear
theoretical principle of irrationality. By invoking Principle Y, we could point to the
irrationality of one knowing some particular p (the fact that a belief about what one’s intention
is on the basis of outside evidence in cases such as this one could not be both sound and
ampliative) but nevertheless forming a such a belief, which requires, and one knows requires,
one to not know the truth of that particular p for it to be worth forming such a belief at all.21
This goes a long way towards satisfying the concern that the cognitivist explanation fails to
One way to think of such a requirement of theoretical rationality is as a variation on Belief Consistency, the
principle that one rationally ought never believe both p and ~p. Whether or not failing to meet Belief Consistency is
always a requirement for being theoretically rational is a matter up for debate. However, one need not believe that
Belief Consistency is a requirement of theoretical rationality in order to find the conjunction of knowing p and doing
something that requires not knowing p to be theoretically irrational.
21
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actually reduce to principles of theoretical rationality. The worry was that the unavailability of
a sound ampliative inference was not relevant to theoretical rationality, but the act of doing
something that requires the availability of a sound ampliative inference when one knows that no
such sound ampliative inference seems much more clearly relevant to theoretical rationality. If
all of this is right then we have a cognitivist explanation for the Instrumental Rationality
Principle that avoids the two serious objections we’ve discussed.
But so far we only have a stipulative restricted Transparency Thesis: one that is weaker
than Setiya’s but strong enough to account for each intention that might factor as a means in
means-end reasoning. Our view will gain more traction if we can instead find a plausible
transparency principle to independently motivate Principle X.
A Plausible Transparency Thesis
Is there any independent reason to think such a restricted Transparency Thesis is true?
Remember, we need it to be the case that certain of our intentions we know are transparent
whereas it can at least appear to us that we have others that we do not know are transparent.
We need it to be the case that the intentions that factor as a means in our means-end reasoning
are always ones we know are transparent. One way this might be the case is if only some of our
intentions are transparent to us. The ones that factor as means in means-end reasoning are only
ever the transparent kind and each of us knows this.22
In order to independently motivate the kind of transparency principle we need, we will
have to say something about what makes it the case that we are sometimes able to access our
own mental states in a distinctly first-personal way. It has long been noted by philosophers that
we seem to have privileged perception-like access to some of our own mental states, but the
extent to which this observation is true is controversial. Few currently defend the view that all
of our mental states are self-intimating or that we are infallible in regards to all of our mental
states. Various restrictions have been proposed about when it might be the case that we do in
fact have infallible access to our mental states, and when we do not. Certain of these restricted
positions could be used by the cognitivist to lobby for the plausibility of explaining Principle X
in terms of Principle Y.
For example, Gertler [2012] defends the view that phenomenal states are selfintimating but only when they are currently being experienced by the thinker. The cognitivist
could argue that the same is true of intention; an intention is experienced by an agent when it
functions in the current execution of a plan, and as such is always transparent to the agent at
this time. This explains why my intention to leave my wife might be opaque, since it does not
function in the execution of a plan right now. It also explains how, on the other hand, my
intention to buy the ticket to the south of France, if I have it at all, would be transparent to me.
If I know that intentions are transparent whenever they are currently experienced by me, then
by Principle Y I would be irrational to try to form the mere belief that I now intend to buy my
plane ticket. No such irrationality would attach to my forming a mere belief that I intend to
leave my wife since I might have such an intention but not currently be experiencing it since I
Another way this might be the case, which certain cognitivists might find more palatable, as it more naturally pairs
with the Strong Belief Thesis is the following: all of our intentions are transparent to us, and we all know this is true
for each intention we have. If we are confused about whether or not we have a particular intention or feel that we
need outside evidence to verify it, then this particular state is not actually an intention, though we might misidentify
it as one. Only unmistakable intentions ever factor as means in means-end reasoning. Either option is in theory open
to the cognitivist. In fact, the difference between the two ways of conceiving of this might turn on mere differences in
the way we think it best to carve up mental space. I will argue for the plausibility of a restricted transparency thesis
using the language of the first kind of explanation, but if one likes one may substitute “intention” with “intention-like
state” for the states that we often take to be intentions but which are not transparent to us.
22
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am not acting on it immediately.
Another kind of account could be used by the cognitivist who is concerned with positing
minimal conceptual apparatus to explain transparency. Many think the fact that there is still no
empirical evidence of a dedicated mechanism of inner sense gives us a strong reason to explore
theories by which our self-knowledge comes from our other capacities to which we are already
committed.23 Paul [2012] and Paul [2014] take up the issue of how this method of drawing on
less mysterious capacities can be applied to understand the transparency of intention
specifically. Paul argues that while we do not have direct or perceptual access to our intentions,
we do have direct access to our conscious decisions through the inner speech and imagery we
use to arrive at them. While intentions might merely be persisting functional states attributable
to an agent regardless of her recognition of them, decisions are discrete mental events by which
a person settles a question of what to do by committing to initiating some action. According to
Paul,
it follows from the understanding of decision as self-conscious mental act that the
content of the decision will be known to the thinker at the time of deciding. We cannot
make sense of someone who claims at t to have decided what to do but does not know at
t what he had decided on.24
Given that coming to a decision is sufficient for intending, Paul concludes that whenever our
intentions are transparent to us it is via their being an outcome of our conscious decisionmaking. The cognitivist could argue that intentions that factor as means in means-end
reasoning are always of the kind that must be settled by making a decision. Though it is
possible for a person to have an intention that became settled for her by habit or strong
persuasion without her having had to make a decision, these intentions never take the role of
being means in means-end reasoning. The cognitivist could argue that not only is this is the
case, but that we know it is the case. Whereas I might be such that I just happen to have
formed the intention to leave my wife without officially deciding to, I wouldn’t have just
happened to intend to buy a ticket to the south of France—I would have to have made a decision
to buy it. If I know that this is always true, then by Principle Y I would be irrational to try to
form the mere belief that I now intend to buy my plane ticket.
While either of these kinds of accounts of self-knowledge of intentions is open to the
cognitivist, this certainly does not exhaust her options. I only mean to show how a weaker
transparency thesis of the kind needed to motivate the explanation of Principle X in terms of
Principle Y is far from implausible given the kinds of views about the transparency of intention
that we have reason to take seriously.
Conclusion
To sum up, here is how the new cognitivist account of the Instrumental Rationality
Principle works when applied to our original case: I intend to fly to the south of France on my
birthday. I believe that in order to fly to the south of France on my birthday, I must book the
flight now via an intention to so. Given the Strong Belief Thesis, we know that since I intend to
fly to the south of France on my birthday, it must be the case that I also believe that I will fly to
the south of France on my birthday. This belief of mine, combined with my belief that in order
to fly to the south of France I must book the flight now via an intention to do so means that I
must come to believe that I intend to book the flight now in order to satisfy Belief Closure. I
23
24
Paul [2014] 2.
Paul [2012] 339.
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cannot come to believe that I intend to book the flight now by means of forming such a belief
about my intention because I must satisfy Principle X. Principle X is justified on the basis of
1) a plausible restricted transparency principle that makes it the case that I know my intention
to now take the means, if I do in fact have such an intention, would be transparent to me, and
2) Principle Y’, which is, as I have argued, either a principle of theoretical rationality or justified
via a principle of theoretical rationality.
While I have offered a new version of a cognitivist account of instrumental rationality, I
do not claim to have shown that we have decisive reason to accept this account of cognitivism
over others, nor do I claim to have shown that we have decisive reason to accept cognitivism
over other sorts of accounts of instrumental rationality. What I have shown is how to refine
one promising route to the thesis of cognitivism about instrumental rationality so as to make it
immune to a couple of deep issues that its earlier defense by Setiya suffered from. There do
remain several questions about the view that would need to be answered before the view should
be accepted.
For example, we might worry about the extension of the principle to taking means to an
end that are not necessary but which are part of a set of potential means, the disjunction of
which is necessary to carrying out the end. Wedgwood [2011] provides several reasons for
worrying about any approach that explains instrumental rationality in a way that is restricted to
necessary means. Simply modifying our case a bit shows just how severe the restriction to
necessary means is. Imagine that in order to fly to the south of France on my birthday I now
have to either buy the ticket or call my travel agent. Neither means is strictly speaking
necessary, and yet it would be strange if this tweak made it so that I were no longer subject to a
requirement of instrumental rationality. As Wedgwood notes, this gives us strong reason to
suspect that the case of necessary means is merely a special case of a broader principle.25 Setiya
is aware of this problem and gestures towards a probabilistic generalization of the Instrumental
Rationality Principle, but the details of such a generalized principle have yet to be worked out.26
Furthermore, the kind of cognitivist who favors the kind of view I have described would
still need to be able to defend the Strong Belief Thesis against several counterexamples that
have been proposed.27 In order to defend the kind of cognitivism about instrumental rationality
I have sketched here the cognitivist would have to argue either that the intentions described in
counterexamples to the thesis, despite appearances, should not count as intentions after all or
that despite appearances such intentions are not subject to the requirements of instrumental
rationality.
Insofar as what I have argued for here constitutes a defense of cognitivism about
instrumental rationality, it is a qualified one. Nevertheless I hope to have made the case that
these secondary issues are well worth exploring since there is at least a feasible route from
requirements of theoretical rationality to an explanation of the Instrumental Rationality
Principle.
Wedgwood [2011]16.
Setiya [2007] 651.
27 See, for example, Bratman [1987] 37-38, Davidson [2001] 91-96, Holton [2008], and Ross [2009].
25
26
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