Talk (Work in Progress): Yingtong Ye (MCMP)

Title:

Formal Characterization of Consequences in Practical Reasoning

Abstract:

A lot of research has been conducted to evaluate theoretical reasoning, such asmathematical reasoning and philosophical arguments. It is easy to tell goodreasoning from bad reasoning according to these theories. However, much lessattention is paid to practical reasoning, which is even more common in dailylife, where by practical reasoning, I refer to reasoning that takes actions orintentions as conclusions. For instance, if my goal is to get a good grade andstudying hard is indispensable to achieve this goal, practical rationalityrequires that I will study hard. One of the reasons, in my opinion, is thatgood practical reasoning follows different criteria from the truth-preservingprinciples in theoretical reasoning, since it is hard to say an action orintention is true or false. In this paper, I developed a new framework tocharacterize the logical structure and consequence relation in practicalreasoning by the idea of ‘hypothetical necessity’, considered as practicalnecessity by Aristotle and Aquinas. This work aims to provide preciseformalization to previous philosophical discussions on this topic.