It might be thought that being disposed to be instrumentally coherent will make one more likely to conform to reason over the long run.
By separating religion and philosophy, faith and reason, Spinoza distances himself both from those who like Maimonides and Spinoza's friend Ludwig Meyer contort Scripture to make it conform to reason and those who claim that where Scripture conflicts with reason it is reason that we must renounce (TTP, Ch. 15).
For Raz, legal institutions claim to express binding and authoritative judgements regarding what ought to be done which are designed to allow people to better conform to reason if they follow the decisions of the authority than if they try to follow those other reasons which apply to them directly (see Raz 1994, ch.10).10
He would instead divide and rotate the prerogative, giving "either men or women the casting vote for matters in which one or the other is more likely to express a will which conforms to reason.
Finally, these considerations leave open the question of what moral conditions must be met for the institutions to have legitimate authority, which is the business of theories of justification of authority, such as theories that appeal to consent, political association, democracy, or the ability of legal authority to secure cooperation or help subjects better conform to right reason.
Perhaps a perfectly free being will conform to the reasons that are relevant in the situation of choice; but is it compatible with perfect freedom to hold that God must act in a certain way, even though there are (ex hypothesi) entirely adequate reasons to act some other, incompatible way?
By contrast, one usually needs to have or lack a particular attitude in order to conform to one's reason to have a certain pattern of intentions.
I thought life could, should and must conform to the mold of reason, period.
States constitute the virtues [arete] or vices of the non-rational part of the soul, which can, however, either conform to or violate right reason.
Since bringing it about that P will bring it about that one conforms to the reason one has to bring it about that either P or Q, one has a reason to bring it about that P. And, by the same reasoning, one has a reason to bring it about that Q.
That some convention demands something seems to provide reason to conform to the demand only when the convention is, itself, just or reasonable, or in some other way good.
