0415364620.Routledge.Practical.Reasoning.Dec.2005.pdf

Practical Reasoning and Ethical

Decision

What role does reason play in our actions? How do we know whether what we do is

right? Can practical reasoning guide ethical judgment?

Practical Reasoning and Ethical Decision presents an account of practical reasoning as

a process that can explain action, connect reasoning with intention, justify practical

judgments, and provide a basis for ethical decisions.

The first part of the book is a detailed critical overview of the influential theories of

practical reasoning found in Aristotle, Hume, and Kant. The second part examines

practical reasoning in the light of important topics in moral psychology—weakness of

will, self-deception, rationalization, and others. The third part describes the role of moral

principles in practical reasoning and clarifies the way practical reasoning underlies

ethical decisions. Audi formulates a comprehensive set of concrete ethical principles,

explains how they apply to reasoning about what to do, and shows how practical

reasoning guides moral conduct.

Practical Reasoning and Ethical Decision provides the most comprehensive account of

the topic in the current literature and is essential reading for anyone interested in the role

of reason in ethics or the nature of human action.

Robert Audi is the David E.Gallo Chair in Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at the

University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character

(1997), The Architecture of Reason (2001), Epistemology (Routledge, 2003), The Good

in the Right (2004), and many papers in ethics, moral psychology, and the philosophy of

action.

Robert Audi

Practical Reasoning and Ethical

Decision

LONDON AND NEW YORK