Introduction

Anselm Winfried Muller is one of the most profound and most original thinkers of his generation. Paradigmatic cases of mental teleology are the orientation of practical thought toward realizing a given aim and the orientation of judgments and beliefs toward being true and being knowledge. Muller argues that this appearance is misleading and that educating morally and bringing up a child are activities of acting and indeed bringing up a child well consists in acting well. For Muller, the primary role of reasons is that of right-makers: good reasons make what they favor right. Backward-looking reasons are aspects of a situation from which one derives a practical response—that is, an action according to a pattern of practical inference. Muller calls this the “gradient of certainty”. This means that, in chains of justification, justifiers must become increasingly certain along the chain. Reason-giving and argument are important in a child’s upbringing because a child must learn to be guided by reasons.