Change in View [antikvár]

Chapter 1 A Plea for the Study of Reasoning Reasoning as Reasoned Change in View Intending to have Cheerios for breakfast, Mary goes to the cupboard. But she can't find any Cheerios. She decides that Elizabeth must have finished off the Cheerios the day before. So, she settles for Rice Krispies. In the process, Mary has modified her original intentions and beliefs. This is a very simple case of reasoned change in view, an elementary example of reasoning. It has the following two features. First, not only does Mary's reasoning lead her to add new beliefs to her view, so that she comes to believe that there are no more Cheerios and that Elizabeth ate the last Cheerios yesterday, it also leads her to give up things she had been believing, so that she stops believing that there are Cheerios in the cupboard and that she will have some Cheerios for breakfast. Second, Mary's reasoning changes not only her beliefs but also her plans and intentions. Her reasoning leads her to abandon her intention to have Cheerios and to adopt the new plan of having Rice Krispies. In other words, her reasoning is not only "theoretical," affecting her beliefs, but also "practical," affecting her intentions and plans. In saying this, I assume that Mary's reasoning can be separated into distinct segments of practical and theoretical reasoning. I make this assumption even though any given segment of reasoning is likely to affect both her beliefs and her intentions, since changes in her beliefs can affect her plans, and changes in her plans can affect her beliefs. When Mary stops believing there are any Cheerios left, she also stops intending to have Cheerios for breakfast. When she forms her intention to have Rice Krispies instead, she also comes to believe that she will be having Rice Krispies for breakfast. But I assume there is a difference between immediate changes that are "part of" a given segment of her reasoning and less immediate changes that are merely further effects of that segment of reasoning. True, it is not easy to say when a change is "part of" a given segment of reasoning and when it is merely the result of reasoning. For example, it is not immediately obvious whether changes in desires are ever part