I.I wish to examine a single thesis formulated in response to a single practical problem. The problem is to identify what competencies are required of a successful teacher in instruction. The thesis is that the competencies needed are simply those that, within moral restrictions, are required for a teacher to change the truth value of the premises of the practical argument in the mind of the child. This thesis is frought with difficulties. Clearly, it rests upon some conception of the inference of a practical argument. But it rests also on some view of the relation between practical reasoning and action. It requires furthermore that we clarify a large number of questions belonging to the theory of explanation. But the nature of practical inference, explanation, and action are perhaps the three most problematic areas of contemporary philosophical reflection. It seems then that my thesis must share in all the uncertainties of these other areas of thought.I remind you, however, that I propose this thesis in response to a practical problem. How can we identify the competencies needed by a successful teacher in instruction? It does not seem to me obvious that to answer this question I need a rationally satisfying, and complete theory of instruction. We do not need a thorough and consistent theory of action in order to develop a satisfactory plan of action. I do not need a satisfactory moral theory in order to decide that I ought to do x, or that I ought to forebear doing y. In fact we are presented with questions of moral theory precisely because the decisions that we ordinarily make independently of such a theory are inconsistent and sometimes do not fit our normal moral consciousness. We are then puzzled and look for some consistent standard or set of principles. Similarly, in the continuing debate about the nature of practical inference, no one doubts that there are such inferences. We can agree that we do not understand that kind of inference only if we already agree that there are some and that we can roughly identify them.

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A policy question is a request for a fairly stable, but modifiable authoritative line of action aimed at securing an optimal balance between different goods, all of which must be pursued, but cannot be jointly maximized. To such questions there are no purely technical solutions, a point that is revealed by the etiology of policy questions. They appear to arise from conflicts among humans over the distribution of goods, i.e., conflicts of interest. However, the deeper roots of such questions lie not in a conflict of human interests, but in the incompatibility of the actual goods that human beings seek. Policy questions ask how to allocate such goods. But this allocation is the business of politics. No policy without politics nor politics without polity.