Aristotle’s suggestion that we can equally reason from our current beliefs to action as we can to a new belief (EN 1147a26-31; DMA 701a18-23) finds support from a number of important philosophers during the second half of the twentieth century, most notably Anscombe (1965), Davidson (1970), and von Wright (1972). Their actionalist conceptions of practical reasoning have, more recently, been subjected to push-back in the form of cognitivist and intentionalist alternatives, according to which practical reasoning is respectively said to result in a belief about what one ought to do (Raz 2011, Ch.7), or an intention to act in a certain way (Broome 2013, Ch.14). In Practical Shape, Jonathan Dancy builds on some of his earlier work to mount an original and sophisticated defence of actionalism that is “sensitive to current debates but still Aristotelian in spirit”, as the blurb on the dust cover puts it. Nobody denies that we can reason about what to do just as easily as we can reason about what to think (perhaps even more so). One could nontheless allow that reasoning might be practical in its subject (action) while denying the actionalist claim that it is practical in its issue (belief), to use a distinction from Davidson to which I shall later return. On such a view, practical reasoning issues in beliefs about what one ought to do, and is thus no different to theoretical reasoning in terms of the kind of output it results in. A prima facie worry with this outlook is that it seems committed to holding that reasoning about what to believe is, by analogy, reasoning to a belief about what one ought to believe. Yet it is implausible to think that all theoretical reasoning results in such meta-belief. We would do better, I propose, to distinguish between what we are trying to figure out in reasoning (viz., what it is that we should think or do) from the end product of reasoning gone well (viz., our believing or acting accordingly). If these two things sound identical to you, read on. So far, I have managed to avoid using the term “conclusion”, even though the abovementioned debates are typically cast in terms of whether or not the conclusion of a practical syllogism is an action. Dancy argues, persuasively, that this is an unfortunate way of thinking about things, since conclusions are things that we can draw or infer, and it makes no sense to talk of drawing or inferring actions (34–5). What about belief? Dancy argues, inter alia, that when we reason to belief, our reasoning does not result in a thing believed (e.g. that your mother was a hamster) but, rather, in our believing it. We cannot draw or infer such believings any more than we can actions. If reasoning “concludes” in action, intention,

中文翻译：

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采取行动

亚里士多德（Aristotle）的建议是，我们可以从当前的信念到行动都可以同样合理地推论为新的信念（EN 1147a26-31; DMA 701a18-23）在二十世纪下半叶得到了许多重要哲学家的支持，尤其是Anscombe（1965），Davidson（1970）和von Wright（1972）。他们的行动主义实践推理概念最近受到了认知主义和意向主义替代形式的推,，据此，据称实践推理分别导致人们对应该做什么的看法（Raz 2011，Ch .7），或以某种方式行事的意图（Broome 2013，第14章）。以实用的形式 乔纳森·丹西（Jonathan Dancy）在他的一些早期工作的基础上，建立了行动主义的原始而复杂的辩护，“对当前的辩论敏感，但在精神上仍然是亚里士多德主义”，正如防尘罩上的说法所言。没有人否认我们可以像思考一样容易地思考做什么（也许更是如此）。但是，人们可以允许推理在其主题（行动）上是可行的，而否认行动主义者声称在其议题（信仰）上是可行的，我会使用一种与戴维森的区别，我将在后面再谈到。按照这种观点，实践推理在人们应该做什么方面的信念中产生问题，因此就其产生的输出种类而言，与理论推理没有什么不同。这种观点的初步表面上的担心是，它似乎致力于将类推论的推理推论为对一个人该相信的信念的推理。然而，以为所有理论推理都会导致这种元信念是不可思议的。我建议，我们会做得更好，以从推理的最终结果（即我们的信念或行动）中区分出我们要在推理中试图找出的内容（即，我们应该思考或做的事情）相应地）。如果这两件事听起来与您相同，请继续阅读。到目前为止，即使上述辩论通常是根据得出结论的三段论是否是一项行动来进行的，我还是设法避免使用“结论”一词。丹西（Dancy）有说服力地指出，这是思考事物的不幸方式，因为结论是我们可以得出或推论的东西，谈论提倡或推论的行动是没有意义的（34-5）。信仰呢？丹西（Dancy）尤其指出，当我们推理时，我们的推理不会导致某件事被相信（例如，您的母亲是仓鼠），而是我们相信它。我们不能采取行动就只能得出或推断出这种信念。如果推理在行动，意图中“得出结论”，