This book, based on Grice's 1979 Locke Lectures at Oxford and published posthumously, elaborates the notions of reasons, reasoning, and rationality, with particular emphasis on the unity of practical and non‐practical (‘alethic’) reasoning. It begins with a look at the nature of ordinary reasoning and distinguishes between ‘flat rationality’, the formal capacity to apply inferential rules, and ‘variable rationality’, the excellence or competence of good reasoning (Ch. 1). Grice then proposes an ‘Equivocality Thesis’, arguing that a structural representation can be given for justificatory (normative) reasons that allows for modals (ought, must, etc.) to be used univocally across the alethic/practical divide in terms of general acceptability statements (Chs. 2–3). In addition, he shows that valid inferences can be drawn from alethic to practical acceptability statements (Ch. 4). Finally, Grice provides a characterization of happiness as it features in practical thinking, and suggests it to be an ‘inclusive end’, consisting of the realization of other ends that are desirable for their own sake as well as for the sake of happiness (Ch. 5). An extensive introduction by Richard Warner provides a helpful summary and explanation of key aspects of the book.

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My enterprise, in this paper, is to explore some of the questions which arise out of a fairly well-known cluster of Aristotelian theses. In Categories, I Aristotle distinguishes two sorts of case'of the application of a word or phrase to a range of situations; one in which both the word and a single definition (account, logos) apply throughout that range, the other in which the word but no single definition applies throughout the range. In the first sort of case, he says, the word is applied synonymously, or (more strictly) to things which are sunonuma in the second it is applied homonymously, to things which are merely homonuma. Provision is also made for an intermediate class of cases, or (if you prefer it) for a subdivision of homonymous applications of a word into (a) cases of "chance homonymy" and (b) cases of "other-than-chance homonymy", or as Aristotle calls them, cases of "paronymy". I shall label the second of these subdivisions cases of ''Unified Semantic Multiplicity'' (USM). Prominent among examples of USM is the application of the word 'be'; according to Aristotle, "being is said in many ways"; and among further important examples of USM we find the word ¿igathon ("good") which according to Aristotle exhibits a multiplicity seemingly related to, and perhaps even dependent upon, that displayed by the word 'being'; for in Nicomachean Ethics I, vi Aristotle remarks that "good is said in as many ways as being".