Abstract

Practical reasoning is an agent's capacity to determine her course of behavior on the base of some evaluation of available alternatives. Reasoning is instrumental insofar as an agent decides over available alternatives by aiming to choose the best means to realize her own goals. Reasoning is strategic if the agent assumes that what the best means to realize her own goals is depends on what other agents will do. Strategic reasoning still plays a central role in influential accounts of social action. This paper first argues for the view that purely strategic reasoners are unable to achieve even the most basic and unproblematic forms of mutually beneficent coordination, and then gathers some elements of a richer account of relevant forms of practical reasoning