Reasons and Rules

Abstract

What we do, how we act or behave in our lives with regard to ourselves or to others, is on one level certainly determined by our felt needs and wants, as instinct drives us, as inclination bids us do; but on another level is, or can be, influenced by reason or rational reflection, as when we consider what we should do, or why, or when we think about our choices as choices or about our actions in the light of their objectives or effects. Without this capacity to reason about, and in this way to direct or guide, our actions, we would have no sense of what it means to act, to act for a purpose, nor of the evidence upon which we act, nor of rules or principles that distinguish between right and wrong actions; we would only have feelings and desires, doing our things not as self-conscious or self-starting individuals but as animals or plants do. Human action would be scarcely distinguishable from bodily movements, from such things as falling down or falling sick which are physical events but are not actions; for human actions, precisely because they are guided or guidable by reasons, also offer themselves to being judged as to how well or wisely we act, or how ill or foolishly.