The requirements of instrumental rationality are often thought to be normative conditions on choice or intention, but this is a mistake. Instrumental rationality is best understood as a requirement of coherence on an agent's non-instrumental desires and means-end beliefs. Since only a subset of an agent's means-end beliefs concern possible actions, the connection with intention is thus more obl...

After an introduction which addresses some basic questions, this article is organized around three points: The theoretical framework of the so-called « instrumental approach » which has been a theme in the last