On the distinction between cognitive and practical decisions

Abstract

Is there any philosophically interesting difference between cognitive and practical decisions and, if so, what is it? This is the principal question that I address in this article. In the philosophical literature one can find at least four positive answers to the foregoing question. It has been claimed that (a) cognitive and practical decisions are based upon different types of reasoning or deliberation, (b) practical decisions do, while cognitive decisions do not, have the phenomenology of agency, (c) practical decisions are intentional actions while cognitive decisions are not actions at all, and (d) cognitive and practical decisions produce or result in different types of mental states: in making a cognitive decision one acquires a certain belief, whereas in making a practical decision one acquires or forms a certain intention. In what follows I will consider and reject each of the foregoing claims. Following that I will challenge the grammatical distinction that allegedly divides decisions into two types.