Figuring Out How to Proceed with Evaluation After Figuring Out What Matters

Abstract

I focus on David Gauthier’s intriguing suggestion that actions are not to be evaluated directly but via an evaluation of deliberative procedures. I argue that this suggestion is misleading, since even the most direct evaluation of (intentional) actions involves the evaluation of different ways of deliberating about what to do. Relatedly, a complete picture of what an agent is or might be (intentionally) doing cannot be disentangled from a complete picture of how s/he is or might be deliberating. A more viable contrast concerns whether actions and deliberative procedures are properly evaluated on the whole or, instead, through time.