Michael Bratman’s planning, time, and self-governance (original) (raw)

Inquiry

Abstract

Michael’s Planning, Time, and Self-Governance collects his most recent contributions to the philosophy of action, further developing his agendasetting theory of agency. Michael calls it a planning theory, because it treats the mental state of intention as the basic unit in the infrastructure of rational agency, and it treats future-directed plans as the paradigm for all intentions, including intentions directed at present or immediately forthcoming actions (4). Future-directed plans serve two practical purposes, according to Michael. First, they facilitate scheduling of deliberative effort, by enabling us to deliberate in advance, when time and materials for deliberation are plentiful, and then to store the results until the occasion for action arrives, when resources for deliberation may be scarce. Second, plans facilitate coordination of actions, by committing us to future actions whose performance we and others can count on in our broader decision-making. Plans can serve these purposes because they embody commitments that are, in Michael’s terminology, both volitional and reasoning-centered. In their volitional aspect, plans determine our behavior: unless we change our minds, we will do what we plan, when the time arrives. In their reasoning-centered aspect, plans set the agenda for, and constrain the scope of, further deliberation. Michael analyzes the latter, reasoning-centered aspect of plans in terms of norms and corresponding dispositions of practical reason. First, a plan is rationally required to resist reconsideration, so as to constitute a stable making-up of our minds. Second, a plan is rationally required to be means-end coherent – that is, to be filled in with the necessary instrumental details in time for its execution. Third, plans are rationally required to be

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