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After distinguishing the broad domains of epistemic and practical reasoning, we can now look more closely into their basic structures.

In the previous chapters, we have viewed practical reasoning as being a procedure for acquiring (or abandoning) conative states: While theoretical reasoning consists in moving from one’s current beliefs and perceptual states into new beliefs, practical reasoning consists in moving from one’s beliefs and conative states into new conative states. We have also seen that practical reasoning can be as rational as theoretical reasoning can be.

Doxified practical reasoning, as we have seen in Chapter 3, is a reproduction of practical reasoning through epistemic reasoning: It leads to justified conclusions exactly when such conclusions would also be obtainable through direct practical cognition. However, it has some interesting advantages, which allow for significant enhancements in practical rationality. In particular, it facilitates practical reasoning to move in an upward direction, according to the idea of rationalisation, and to focus on itself, according to the idea of reflexivity.

Our idea that normative states of affairs supervene upon optimal (though possibly relativised) practical cognition needs to stand a further challenge. This is provided by the idea of , namely, the idea that human rationality is a limited faculty, for which optimal cognition is often out of reach.

In Section 5.3 on page 161 we considered how we can sometimes unburden ourselves from the fatigue of reasoning—and particularly of teleological reasoning—by delegating it to others. However, this is not always possible, nor always advisable, since others may not be available or may not be sufficiently honest or competent, and relying too much on them would compromise our individual autonomy. Fortunately, when teleological reasoning is not practicable or opportune, a viable shortcut may still be available to a bounded cogniser, as we shall see in the next sections: This consists in relying on what we shall call , the cognitive attitudes which can be doxified in the form of .

In Chapters 7 and 8 we shall examine an aspect of legal cognition that integrates the main forms of reasoning we have so far considered: rule-based defeasible reasoning, teleological reasoning, and factor-based reasoning. This is , by which we mean addressing conflicts of reasons by taking into account the relative importance of such reasons, on the basis of the weight of the elements they include: rules, values, and factors. We have already considered how to take into account the relative importance of values in Section 5.2 on page 150. Therefore, we shall now focus on rules, and address factors in the next chapter.

After applying preference-based reasoning to rules (in Chapter 7), we shall bring it to bear on . This will allow us to address some important patterns of normative reasoning, and in particular, to analyse reasoning. Finally, we shall consider how preferential reasoning approaches combinations of reasons, rejecting the idea that reasons having the same conclusions accrue, that is, add their preferential strengths.

We shall now consider how a practical reasoner can rationally approach situations where other similar reasoners are involved. After examining what different concerns and points of view an agent may adopt, we shall analyse the ways in which the actions of different agents may interfere, focusing in particular in the dilemmas that characterise strategic interactions.

In Chapter 9 we have seen how agents may fail to participate in action profiles that would be advantageous to themselves and their collectives, due to their inability to cooperate with their fellows. In this chapter we shall see how this inability may be overcome by engaging in what we shall call .

In Chapter 3, we concluded that the cognitive bindingness of a normative proposition—and, consequently, the proposition’s practical truth and the existence of a corresponding normative state of affairs—depends on the fact that belief in this proposition would result from an ideal inquiry, performed by an unbounded cogniser. Consequently, we have denied that (dialectical) interaction procedures can be constitutive of cognitive optimality: For characterising optimality we need to appeal to ideal cognition, which cannot be viewed as consisting in the maximisation of interactions between bounded cognisers. However, this does not exclude the importance of dialectical interactions, as a way of (partially) overcoming the limitations of individual cognition.