Razionalità pratica: modello classico e prospettive contemporanee

This paper critically and historically discusses some of the most important views of practical rationality in contemporary philosophy. John Searle criticized the classical model of practical rationality (instrumental rationality) based on the means-end reasoning ‒ a model dating back to Aristotle. Focusing on the Donald Davidson’s influential version based on the so-called desire-belief model, Searle considered the classical model an inadequate account of the etiology and explanation of many (mostly institutional and deontic) human actions. After advancing arguments against Searle’s theses, the paper devote particular attention to naturalistic-evolutionary perspectives on the means-end reasoning (from K. Popper to H.A. Simon and D. Papineau), which show how this kind of reasoning is the biologically and linguistically based way through which human beings select their actions.