ABSTRACT
Until very recently, investigations of the practical reasoning by which inchoate intentions are transformed into choices to act here and now were largely confined to tidying up the work of Aristotle and his medieval followers, and putting it into acceptable semantic form. It had come to be acknowledged, largely because of Anscombe’s work, that practical reasoning seldom justifies the conclusion that an action of a certain kind must be done: essentially it is of the form that, given that you have elected to gratify a certain wish, you can gratify it in such and such a way; and that if you do not wish to inquire whether there is a better way, your practical question is answered.
