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Practical Induction
Practical reasoning is not just a matter of determining how to get what you want, but of working out what to want in the first place. In Practical Induction Elijah Millgram argues that experience plays a central role in this process of deciding what is or is not important or worth pursuing. He takes aim at instrumentalism, a view predominant among philosophers today, which holds that the goals of practical reasoning are basic in the sense that they are given by desires that are not themselves the product of practical reasoning. The view Millgram defends is "practical induction," a method of reasoning from experience similar to theoretical induction.
What are the practical observations that teach us what to want? Millgram suggests they are pleasant and unpleasant experiences on the basis of which we form practical judgments about particular cases. By generalizing from these judgments--that is, by practical induction--we rationally arrive at our views about what matters. Learning new priorities from experience is necessary if we are to function in a world of ever-changing circumstances. And we need to be able to learn both from our own and from others' experience. It is this, Millgram contends, that explains the cognitive importance of both our capacity for pain and pleasure and our capacity for love. Pleasure's role in cognition is not that of a goal but that of a guide. Love's role in cognition derives from its relation to our trusting the testimony of others about what does and does not matter and about what merits our desire.
Itself a pleasure to read, this book is full of inventive arguments and conveys Millgram's bold thesis with elegance and force. It will alter the direction of current debates on practical reasoning.
What are the practical observations that teach us what to want? Millgram suggests they are pleasant and unpleasant experiences on the basis of which we form practical judgments about particular cases. By generalizing from these judgments--that is, by practical induction--we rationally arrive at our views about what matters. Learning new priorities from experience is necessary if we are to function in a world of ever-changing circumstances. And we need to be able to learn both from our own and from others' experience. It is this, Millgram contends, that explains the cognitive importance of both our capacity for pain and pleasure and our capacity for love. Pleasure's role in cognition is not that of a goal but that of a guide. Love's role in cognition derives from its relation to our trusting the testimony of others about what does and does not matter and about what merits our desire.
Itself a pleasure to read, this book is full of inventive arguments and conveys Millgram's bold thesis with elegance and force. It will alter the direction of current debates on practical reasoning.
- GenresPhilosophyPsychology
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First published April 15, 1997
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January 7, 2019
In this brief text, Millgram offers an ingenious line of argumentation that convincingly challenges the hegemonic instrumentalist / belief-desire model of practical reasoning. The author begins by challenging the role of desire as an unexplained explainer (my term not his) of action. This is a point made most famously by GEM Anscombe, when she argued that the application of the notion of intentional action presupposes a desirability characteristic whereby the agent can offer some sort of explanation for why she is engaging in some action, for example filling saucers with mud.
Millgram links this with AN Prior's discussion of "tonk," an artificial concept created by arbitrarily linking introduction and elimination rules. For example: by linking introduction rules for disjunction and elimination rules for conjunction, one can derive any conclusion from any proposition. Millgram argues that something similar applies to desires. They must have the proper "upstream" inferential links otherwise things get "tonky," and one might face a situation where a desire was created artificially (by a desire pill: "desire at pill") and one has every reason to repudiate this desire.
Consider a situation where one's captor has given one pills that create an intense "desire" to support some sports team. Antecedently, one had no interest in watching professional sports, feeling that they are a waste of valuable time better spent in other ways. After taking the pill, one wants nothing more than to paint one's face and bare chest with the one's team's colors and spend all day singing fights songs and watching ESPN. After escaping from the captor how should one respond to this desire? In what sense could this "desire" give one a reason to engage in this behavior? ("Desire" is in italics because Millgram is arguing that the concept of desire should not be understood to apply insofar as the desirability characteristics are lacking, as is stipulated in this example.)
The upshot of this line of argument is to say that the absence of desirability characteristics undermines the inferential functionality of desires. The upshot of this claim is that the dominant conception of practical reasoning as instrumental is inadequate.
Having dispatched instrumentalism, Millgram moves into a constructive defense of practical induction. While nuanced and intricate, the core argument is straightforward: practical induction is presupposed by the unity of agency, which is itself a formal characteristic of agency. First, the unity of agency can be divided into synchronic and diachronic aspects. Concerning the synchronic aspect, Millgram argues (in an argument that recalls Strawson and ultimately Kant) that pursuit of an end is not sufficient to ascribe agency. Instead, to be an agent, one must be able, at any given time, to relate a given end to other ends and to specific conditions which might undermine the rationality of pursuing such an end. Diachronically, agents must be able to deal with novel situations that arise throughout the period of time required to execute intentions.
Practical induction is required to maintain the unity of agency because a) moral principles are typically not specific enough to adjudicate conflicts between aims without more concrete practical principles, and b) novel situations arise continuously so existing practical judgments are inadequate to guide action without augmentation. Millgram argues that agents appeal to practical induction to preserve their unity by appealing to previous experience to adjudicate conflict between conflicting aims and to adjust intentions or plans as novel situations arise.
Millgram takes his arguments to provide a practical defense for the indispensability of practical induction. But what does induction work upon? First, according to Millgram practical induction works upon pleasurable experience. He attempts to distinguish his notion of pleasure from either a sensation or a judgement. This is a weak point of the text. Mllgram needs to say much more to be clear about what he means by pleasure. In all fairness, since the publication of this book there has been much interesting work developing this point (see, for example, Tenenbaum's Appearances of the Good, Jessica Moss's work on Aristotle's conception of pleasure, and Brewer's The Retrieval of Ethics).
What Millgram says, albeit briefly, is that pleasure is satisfying activity that is not hindered. This recalls Aristotle's notion of pleasure as unimpeded activity. Again, Millgram's account can be helpfully supplemented and clarified by more recent work. Second, practical induction draws upon the testimony of others. Millgram convincingly argues that testimony is basic, in the sense that it is not possible that all of our practical judgements could have been derived from experience without testimony. Here he makes an essentially Wittgensteinian point (see On Certainty) that our inferences, including our practically inductive inferences, involve various presuppositions and assumptions and that these must derive in large part from testimony. This account of testimony serves as a segue into a fascinating discussion of friendship.
Millgram has provided an tightly argued account of the limits of instrumental reasoning and the need for practical reasoning to be informed by experience. Although he doesn't say so explicitly, his account provides an insightful discussion of the indispensability of phronesis and it explains the mode of reasoning needed to go beyond abstract moral principles in order to grasp the concrete good embodied in practices and institutions characteristic of ordinary life.
Millgram links this with AN Prior's discussion of "tonk," an artificial concept created by arbitrarily linking introduction and elimination rules. For example: by linking introduction rules for disjunction and elimination rules for conjunction, one can derive any conclusion from any proposition. Millgram argues that something similar applies to desires. They must have the proper "upstream" inferential links otherwise things get "tonky," and one might face a situation where a desire was created artificially (by a desire pill: "desire at pill") and one has every reason to repudiate this desire.
Consider a situation where one's captor has given one pills that create an intense "desire" to support some sports team. Antecedently, one had no interest in watching professional sports, feeling that they are a waste of valuable time better spent in other ways. After taking the pill, one wants nothing more than to paint one's face and bare chest with the one's team's colors and spend all day singing fights songs and watching ESPN. After escaping from the captor how should one respond to this desire? In what sense could this "desire" give one a reason to engage in this behavior? ("Desire" is in italics because Millgram is arguing that the concept of desire should not be understood to apply insofar as the desirability characteristics are lacking, as is stipulated in this example.)
The upshot of this line of argument is to say that the absence of desirability characteristics undermines the inferential functionality of desires. The upshot of this claim is that the dominant conception of practical reasoning as instrumental is inadequate.
Having dispatched instrumentalism, Millgram moves into a constructive defense of practical induction. While nuanced and intricate, the core argument is straightforward: practical induction is presupposed by the unity of agency, which is itself a formal characteristic of agency. First, the unity of agency can be divided into synchronic and diachronic aspects. Concerning the synchronic aspect, Millgram argues (in an argument that recalls Strawson and ultimately Kant) that pursuit of an end is not sufficient to ascribe agency. Instead, to be an agent, one must be able, at any given time, to relate a given end to other ends and to specific conditions which might undermine the rationality of pursuing such an end. Diachronically, agents must be able to deal with novel situations that arise throughout the period of time required to execute intentions.
Practical induction is required to maintain the unity of agency because a) moral principles are typically not specific enough to adjudicate conflicts between aims without more concrete practical principles, and b) novel situations arise continuously so existing practical judgments are inadequate to guide action without augmentation. Millgram argues that agents appeal to practical induction to preserve their unity by appealing to previous experience to adjudicate conflict between conflicting aims and to adjust intentions or plans as novel situations arise.
Millgram takes his arguments to provide a practical defense for the indispensability of practical induction. But what does induction work upon? First, according to Millgram practical induction works upon pleasurable experience. He attempts to distinguish his notion of pleasure from either a sensation or a judgement. This is a weak point of the text. Mllgram needs to say much more to be clear about what he means by pleasure. In all fairness, since the publication of this book there has been much interesting work developing this point (see, for example, Tenenbaum's Appearances of the Good, Jessica Moss's work on Aristotle's conception of pleasure, and Brewer's The Retrieval of Ethics).
What Millgram says, albeit briefly, is that pleasure is satisfying activity that is not hindered. This recalls Aristotle's notion of pleasure as unimpeded activity. Again, Millgram's account can be helpfully supplemented and clarified by more recent work. Second, practical induction draws upon the testimony of others. Millgram convincingly argues that testimony is basic, in the sense that it is not possible that all of our practical judgements could have been derived from experience without testimony. Here he makes an essentially Wittgensteinian point (see On Certainty) that our inferences, including our practically inductive inferences, involve various presuppositions and assumptions and that these must derive in large part from testimony. This account of testimony serves as a segue into a fascinating discussion of friendship.
Millgram has provided an tightly argued account of the limits of instrumental reasoning and the need for practical reasoning to be informed by experience. Although he doesn't say so explicitly, his account provides an insightful discussion of the indispensability of phronesis and it explains the mode of reasoning needed to go beyond abstract moral principles in order to grasp the concrete good embodied in practices and institutions characteristic of ordinary life.
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