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Personal Ideals and Rationally Impotent Desires

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Personal Ideals and Rationally Impotent Desires PERSONAL IDEALS AND RATIONALLY IMPOTENT DESIRES DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Regan Lance Reitsma, B.A. ***** Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Donald Hubin, Advisor Professor Justin D’Arms __________________________ Advisor Professor Daniel Farrell Philosophy Graduate Program Copyright by Regan Lance Reitsma 2007 ABSTRACT A practical reason, in my terminology, is a consideration in favor of doing something, a normative entity that ought to be weighed in when deciding what to do. A neo-Humean subjectivist about practical reasons thinks that there is, in the very least, a standard connection between having a basic, unmotivated desire and having a practical reason to take the means to its satisfaction. Harry Frankfurt, a neo-Humean, believes that this standard connection is sometimes severed. In some instances, an agent has a basic desire, recognizes one or more adequate means, and yet has no practical reason whatsoever to take any of these means because the desire itself “does not deserve a voice” in practical deliberation. Call a desire that is not able to generate practical reasons a “rationally impotent desire.” Is Frankfurt correct? Are there rationally impotent basic desires? And is the neo-Humean able to explain how a basic desire is able to be rendered rationally impotent? I argue that there are rationally impotent basic desires; that the neo-Humean is able to account for them, by appealing to volitional norms contained in personal ideals; and that my subjectivist account of rationally impotent basic desires is stronger and more plausible than the proposals made by Kant and the neo-Kantian Christine Korsgaard. ii Dedicated to myn geweldich heit and mem , sportyf Duko, witkop Annemaaike, krollekop Amarinske, and myn geduldich wyfke . iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, Don Hubin, for his personal and intellectual support, his close reading of drafts, his wonderfully clever counterexamples and thought experiments, and for the many large and small ways that he made me a better thinker. I also thank Justin D’Arms and Dan Farrell for stimulating questions and intellectual challenges. I am grateful to Edwin England for his friendship and the many, many late-night philosophizings. My greatest debt is to my wife; without her patience, this project wouldn’t have been completed. iv VITA April 14, 1972 . Born – Sunnyside, Washington 1994 . B.A. Philosophy/Classics, Calvin College, Honors 1995 – 1999, 2001 – 2003 . Graduate Research and Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University 2003 – 2004 . Assistant Professor, Lynchburg College 2004 – present . Assistant Professor, King’s College PUBLICATIONS Research Publication 1. Reitsma, Regan. “God, Our Commodity in Heaven: Rational Choice Theory and Religion.” Christian Scholar’s Review . 33.2 (Winter 2004). 2. --- and Beth Admiraal. “Orthodox Behavior and Strategic Thinking: The Prospects for Democracy in Russia.” The Birth of Democracy and the Rebirth of Religion in Russia . Ed. David Hoekema. St. Andrew’s Press, 2001. 3. ---. “Rationally Impotent Desire.” Southwest Philosophy Review . 17.1 (January 2000): 207-214. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Philosophy v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract . ii Dedication . .iii Acknowledgments . iv Vita . v Chapters: 1. Introduction: A Perplexity and a Modest Proposal . 1 2. The Anti-Subjectivist Challenge . 31 3. Why It’s Better to Be a Discriminating Subjectivist . 77 4. Does a Kantian Theory Best Capture the Rational Impotence Thesis? . 136 5. Kant and the Categorical Rejection of Desire . .185 6. Korsgaard and Practical Identity . 264 7. Conclusion . 314 Bibliography . 316 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: A PERPLEXITY AND A MODEST PROPOSAL I desire and I find myself with a powerful impulse to act. But I back up and bring that impulse into view and then I have a certain distance. Now the impulse doesn’t dominate me and now I have a problem. Shall I act? Is this desire really a reason to act? (Korsgaard, Sources , 93) I don’t think odd whims—the passing urge to stick my finger into a gooey substance, or the vertiginous urge to fling myself from a balcony—are considerations in favor of doing those things at all. (Cohon, “Roots,” 63) A Perplexity There is a puzzle, as yet unresolved, within Harry Frankfurt’s subtle and otherwise significantly-developed theory of practical reasons. This puzzle has to do with long-standing disputes between the Humean subjectivist, Kantian constructivist, and (Aristotelian) realist traditions about the ultimate source of practical reasons and the rational criticism of desire. 1 A reader who first confronts the puzzle in Frankfurt’s writing might express it in the following (accurate but sketchy) way: Frankfurt is a subjectivist about practical reasons, in the Humean tradition, who says some very un-Humean- sounding things, a boisterously polemical anti-Kantian and anti-realist who says some very Kantian- and realist-sounding things. 1 Garrett Cullity and Beris Gaut provide a helpful discussion of these “three poles” in contemporary theorizing about practical reasons ( Ethics , 1-27). 1 Let’s understand a practical reason 2 to be a consideration in favor of doing something.3 It is a proper input into practical deliberation, a normative entity that ought to be counted in the process of deciding what to do. I will regard a practical reason as a “ pro tanto ” consideration: it does supply a positive consideration in favor of doing something, one that ought to be weighed against whatever other practical reasons an agent happens to have, though it could conceivably be outweighed by one or more of them. 4 For example, you might have a practical reason to take the afternoon off, but a weightier practical reason to put your nose to the grindstone. Subjectivism is, among other things, a theory about the ultimate source of practical reasons. It claims that an agent’s practical reasons—all of them—ultimately derive from among the “elements” of “his subjective motivational set, S” 5—or, put more commonsensically, from among his own desires. To give a stock subjectivist example, your thirst—your basic, unmotivated desire 6 for something to drink—gives you a practical reason to take the means to 2 Cullity and Gaut use the term ‘normative reason’ instead of ‘practical reason’ (Ethics ). On another note, I agree with Cullity and Gaut that the concept of a practical reason is a fundamental and indispensable aspect of a normative theory of practical reasoning. Any plausible theory will include the concept of a normative consideration in favor of doing something. 3 I don’t mean to deny that there are also considerations in favor of desiring, feeling, or being a certain way. I think there are. I will regard practical reasons, though, as considerations for acting. 4 In my terminology, a practical reason that ought to be acted upon, all relevant considerations weighed in, is a ‘final’ practical reason. One way of making sense of the claim that a pro tanto consideration does have normative authority even though it might be outweighed is to recognize that if it were the only consideration relevant to a particular instance of practical deliberation, it would be a final practical reason. 5 The phrasing is Bernard Williams’ ( Moral Luck ). 6 A motivated desire, following Donald Hubin’s terminology, is a desire that is generated by another desire, along with beliefs. For instance, if you desire health, come to believe that drinking water is healthy, and subsequently come to desire to drink water as a means, your desire to drink water is a motivated desire. A basic, unmotivated desire is a desire that is not generated from another desire in this way. It is, in this sense, an “original existence” (“Irrational Desires”). 2 satisfy it, walking to the drinking fountain or to the soda machine, say. 7 We might put the subjectivist’s defining idea in this way. (From this point, I often will.) In the stock example, your thirst is “rationally potent”: it generates practical reasons. The desire, along with facts relevant to its satisfaction, is the source of practical reasons for you. 8 Frankfurt is a subjectivist. He thinks there are rationally potent basic desires, such as your thirst; he never deviates from the theory-defining thesis about the ultimate source of practical reasons: all of your practical reasons derive, ultimately, from among your own subjective, contingent desires; and he thinks that there is, in the very least, a standard connection between having a basic desire and having a practical reason to take the means to satisfy it. 9 He also explicitly rejects the central tenets of both Kantianism and realism. (Evidence: Frankfurt calls the realist and Kantian programs, each of them, a “will o’ the wisp,” motivated by a “pan- rationalist fantasy” [Reasons of Love , 28].10 Them’s fightin’ words, meant to accuse these giants in the history of philosophical reflection of having feet made of clay.) Even more to the heart of 7 To clarify, I am thinking of thirst, in this example, as an appetite, a species of desire, not as a phenomenological state—a feeling of dryness in the throat and on the tongue—or a physiological state— the body’s biological need for replenishing liquid. 8 To be clear, the term ‘satisfaction’ is not a psychological notion. A desire’s satisfaction does not entail that the agent’s consciousness has been affected thereby. If a person wants his family to visit his grave once a year after he is dead, and his family does, his desire has been satisfied in the relevant sense. A desire’s satisfaction entails only that what the agent wished for has come to be the case. 9 Frankfurt describes this connection as the “default” condition (“Taking Ourselves Seriously,” 8).
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