ABSTRACT
In politics procedures are introduced for reaching, if not agreement, at least decisions. So the conventional argument for the futility of looking for a method for resolving matters of taste does not get to the point. Thinking is the activity of organizing one's beliefs and putting them to service in the planning of actions. Actions, in turn, are motivated by the agent's desires and valuations. Beliefs, desires and valuations are intentional states, that is they are identified through sentences expressing what is believed or desired, or what value is attributed to something. A crucial aspect of the received view of thought and action is that there is a unique line separating the author's doings from what happens to the author, the author's 'conscious actions' from the author's 'blind reactions'. One way of clarifying the critique of that view is to take a closer look at the action-reaction dichotomy.
