Future-Directed Intentions and the Theory of Instrumental Rationality

This chapter considers a major alternative to the extended theory of instrumental rationality (ETR): the view, pioneered by Michael Bratman, that future-directed intentions (FDIs) have a fundamental role to play in our understanding of the rationality of extended agency. FDIs come in many flavours; they can be specific intentions, plans, policies, or projects. I argue in this chapter that ETR naturally classifies some of these “flavours” as instances of extended actions, and therefore they are structurally identical and subject to the exact same basic instrumental requirements as other instances of extended actions. Once we see this point, it turns out that purported norms and principles governing FDIs are either superfluous or invalid.

The Interplay of Intention and Reason

In a series of essays—in particular, his 1994 essay “Assure and Threaten”—David Gauthier develops a two-tier pragmatic theory of practical rationality and argues, within that theory, for a distinctive account of the rationality of following through with prior assurances or threats. His discussion suggests that certain kinds of temporally extended agency play a special role in one’s temporally extended life going well. I argue that a related idea about diachronic self-governance helps explain a sense in which an accepted deliberative standard can be self-reinforcing. And this gives us resources to adjust Gauthier’s theory in response to a threat of what Kieran Setiya has called a “fragmentation of practical reason.”

Agency, Time, and Sociality

Our planning capacities are a fundamental ground of our capacities for temporally extended agency, shared intentional activity, and self-governance. This is the fecundity of planning agency. This essay explores relations between our planning capacities and this further trio of basic capacities. In particular, a defense of this connection to self-governance involves a development of a Frankfurtian model of self-governance, one that draws on resources from the planning theory of our agency. This connection with self-governance, both at a time and over time, helps explain the normative force of the rationality norms involved in our planning agency. This leads to a sketch of a defense of a norm of intention stability over time, a norm that involves a kind of practical conservatism.