Suppose you believe you ought to complete your grading on time but don't intend to do so. Nearly everyone agrees this akratic combination of attitude-states involves irrationality. One plausible explanation of why you're irrational is that you violate a requirement of “structural” rationality that prohibits you from having this combination. In other words, the rational code requires, roughly, that you not both believe you ought to φ and fail to intend to φ. But what is the normative status of this rational requirement? Do we necessarily have reasons to conform to it? More generally, do we necessarily have reasons to conform to the requirements of rationality? This is the familiar question of the normativity of rationality—a question that famously received a negative answer in Niko Kolodny's landmark paper “Why Be Rational?” (Kolodny 2005), and that is the central topic of Benjamin Kiesewetter's book.
The Normativity of Rationality...
