Audi on Substantive vs Instrumental Rationality

Abstract

The Architecture of Reason aims to develop a unified theory of theoretical and practical rationality along (moderate) foundationalist lines. The structure of practical reason, Audi argues, is closely parallel to that of theoretical reason: just as rationality of inferential beliefs ultimately rests on rationality of basic beliefs, so too rationality of instrumental and of corresponding actions ultimately rests on rationality of intrinsic desires. Intrinsic are (defeasibly) rational if they are well-grounded in certain objectively valuable features of experience, much as basic beliefs are (defeasibly) justified, and thus rational, if they are well-grounded in certain perceptual or intuitive features of experience. Though Audi's theory of prac tical rationality does not strictly require axiological experientialism (the view that only states of experience have intrinsic value), in point of fact it is the experientially grounded rationality of intrinsic desire that chiefly con cerns [him] in accounting for foundations of practical (100). This normative sort of foundationalism, Audi holds, is to be distinguished from merely motivational foundationalism; latter is compatible with certain instrumental accounts of rationality which view intrinsic as ultimate motivational states capable, via appropriate beliefs, of conferring rationality on actions they motivate without themselves being properly regarded as rational (though they may be regarded as natural). The normative founda tionalism that Audi proposes to defend in opposition to instrumentalism about practical reason holds not only that rational action must ultimately be well-grounded in rational intrinsic desires, but that there are substantive cri teria for rationality of intrinsic desires (81).l My aim in this discussion note is to raise some concerns about Audi's claim to have established a nor matively and substantively foundational alternative to instrumentalism, and thus to have provided a unified foundational account of rationality. In closing,