My thoughts for this book began with a straight piece of philosophical problem-solving...: what the term "rational" means" (p. vii). The terrain here is familiar in memory, mapped by Ethics and Language, and The Language of Morals, before we tired of meanings and analyses of our moral terms and sought something more substantive, A Theory of Justice. Allan Gibbard offers us a return to non-cognitivism, but his mapping is more ambitious, not limited to ethics or morality but covering the entire normative expanse of rationality: "[T]o call something rational is [as a first approximation] to express one's acceptance of norms that permit it" (p. 7).
Gibbard proposes a theory of what 'rational' means. He does not propose a theory of rationality. The reader who comes to Wise Choices, Apt Feelings in search of a substantive account of what is rational will find little directly to satisfy her. Gibbard would, I think, hope that she will learn how better to direct her search, especially in the area of morality. As he says at the end:
I have tried chiefly in this book to join two ways of seeing normative life: as a part of nature, and as part of a world of norms -a world where it does make sense to do, think, and feel some things and not others. In addition, I hoped this would help with normative inquiry itself, and especially with morals. (p. 326)
To appreciate this conclusion we need to sketch some of the salient features of Gibbard's account. And I shall begin with one feature to which I shall not do justice. Gibbard notes that:
As I developed my t h e o r y . . . I found I was glimpsing far more than the meaning of a term, however crucial . . . . How can we understand ourselves as members of an evolved species, we humans who can think about rationality and justification and morality? I