| Description |
When it comes to talking about practical reasoning, "Humean" is a synonym for "instrumentalist." That is, a "Humean" view of practical reasoning is one on which only means-end reasoning directed toward satisfying antecedently given desires counts as practical reasoning at all. Witness, for instance, Michael Smith's fairly recent paper, "The Humean Theory of Motivation," which advances just this view; Smith, who does not discuss Hume himself, simply takes it for granted that the label "Humean" fits.1 It wasn't always this way: when Aurel Kolnai, some years back, wished to criticize instrumentalism, he described the view as Aristotle's, an attribution that would be unlikely now.2 |
