Von Wright and the Practical Syllogism as a Method of Action Comprehension

Abstract

The paper presents a reconstructed version of von Wright’s theory of practical inference, which is the basis for his work on understanding human action. We claim that the practical syllogism is deductively valid only if we face it as evaluating conditions of understanding, not of truth, of propositions describing human action. We indicate that von Wright’s final construction of the syllogism, together with the notion of better-understanding, leads him to the neighborhood of abductive logics.