In a theory of practical rationality, the coincidence between our goals should be accounted for. There are a lot of shared goals amongst society. Society looks upon some goals as being "good" goals. For example the goal of obtaining an education, having concrete family ties and maintaining sense of individuality. Lawrence Becker's theory does a good job of accounting for our practical rationality because he can account for the coincidence between our goals. Becker incorporates the coincidence into his account, by discussing norms. In this paper, I will present Becker on his account of norms and show three examples of when following the norms of society can benefit agency.
             Lawrence Becker wants to reinterpret stoic ethics in his book. Stoics believe that we get facts about our physical world and about personal situation from experience, a posteriori. Critics of stoic doctrines state that stoics believe they ought not to try to do things that are known to be impossible. And that by following stoic advice, "we would never extend ourselves to press beyond what we currently think we can achieve (Becker 44)". Stoics believe that normative propositions that are constructed from an agency in the form of doing something the agent believes impossible are unsound. For the stoics, it would be silly to understand the coherence of something that is known to the agent as impossible, yet something that the agent can imagine as possible. For the stoics, practical reasoning "aims to resolve such conflict and incoherence" (Becker, 45).
             What's the importance of norms and individuals? Becker answers this with a three step process. First we must realize that some norms come from endeavors. For example, you want to join a soccer league. This endeavor would be considered purposive, and there would be certain practices about who can participate. For example, you will most likely be required to kn...