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The Varieties of Instrumental Rationality
Author(s) -
Ellis Stephen
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the southern journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.281
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 2041-6962
pISSN - 0038-4283
DOI - 10.1111/j.2041-6962.2008.tb00076.x
Subject(s) - rationality , mistake , appeal , core (optical fiber) , action (physics) , epistemology , ecological rationality , psychology , philosophy , computer science , political science , law , telecommunications , physics , quantum mechanics
It is a mistake to think that instrumental rationality fixes a single standard for judging or describing actions. While there is a core conception of instrumental rationality, we appeal to different elaborations of that conception for different purposes. An action can be instrumentally rational in some sense(s) but not in others. As we learn more about behavior, it is possible to add useful elaborations of the core conception of instrumental rationality. In this paper, I propose a new elaboration based on Frederic Schick's work on understandings.