ABSTRACT
IT has been a common conviction among philosophers, and still is, that there is an important difference between practical matters and theoretical matters; between answers to such practical questions as 'What is to be done?' and answers to such theoretical questions as 'What is the case?' This distinction has sometimes been thought to be such that though reason can be theoretical there is an important sense in which it cannot be practical. One influential idea might be put vaguely like this: reason is non-substantive in such a way that unlike theories, actions, being events, are not accessible to it. It is this idea, and the view of the practical-theoretical distinction it is based on, that I want to consider. A recent short way with this idea and its associated view of the practical-theoretical distinction has been to object that it neglects the pervasiveness of the notion of rules, and thus fails to appreciate that theoretical reasoning is governed by rules of inference which, being rules, are themselves practical. I shall take it that this objection, implying that theoretical matters are a species of practical matters, has been adequately criticized by, e.g. D.G.Brown in 'Some misconceptions of inference' (Analysis, June 1955). My argument will nevertheless have this in common with the objection, that it will contend that the view being considered exaggerates the practical-theoretical distinction and thus misconceives the idea of reason, practical and theoretical.
