Eziologia dell'agire, ragionamento mezzo-fine e pianificazione

In this paper two theories of practical reasoning, or means-end reasoning, are discussed: the desire-belief model and the action planning model. The former is the minimal standard model of action explanation and aetiology of agency; the latter is a more sophisticated and comprehensive model of human means-end reasoning and purposive actions aetiology. Thomas Nagel was perhaps one of the earliest contemporary philosophers to point out the typical aspect of planning of human agency in his The Possibility of Altruism. However, the concept of actions planning was already emphasized by Aristotle in his theory of deliberation. From this wider historical perspective the paper analyzes the differences between Donald David - son’s theory of practical reasoning (based on the desire-belief model and decision theory) and Michael E. Bratman’s planning theory of intention, in an attempt to clarify the affinity of Bratman’s theory with the Aristotelian conception of the rational deliberation based on the analytic method in mathematical research.