*
Prologue
Following on from the first part here we are going to look at some of the problems with the Humean account pointed out by Michael Smith. Smith's understanding of reason itself looks like an attempt to vindicate the metaphysical distinction of reason and the affects we considered in the first part. Our aim in this part will be to consider Smith's objections to Hume and in so doing point the way past them both towards the existential grounds of reason itself.
III
Desiring &
Valuing
I have shown that a consequence of
Hume’s analysis is that motivational and normative reasons for action are found
in the desires of the agent whose emotionally pre-evaluated situation calls
upon them to make a decision. What is therefore valuable and what is desirable is,
in the HTR, equivalent. The HTR is what is known as an internalist view regarding normative reasons for action.
Internalist views are characterised by their insistence that normative reasons
are related in some significant way to one’s own motivations.[1]
The HTR itself, as presented, is an actual
state internalist view, which means that it claims the source of our reasons
are to be found in some state the agent is presently in. In the case of the HTR
this source is the agent’s current desire(s) which relate to the motivational
facts by virtue of being the
motivational facts.
However, in The Moral Problem, Michael Smith draws an explicit distinction
between valuing and desiring in order to challenge the HTR on precisely this
point. Smith notes that we can explain action in one of two ways: intentional
or deliberative. On the intentional picture we explain an action teleologically
in terms of the psychological states which produced it. To give an example, we
could explain someone’s writing an essay for university in terms of their wanting to do well in their degree
scheme and believing that the only way
to do so is to write the essay (and write it well!). As such he equates the
intentional picture with our motivational
reasons.[2]
On the deliberative picture, however, we explain an action in terms of the
process of rational deliberation which either did or might have caused it.
Importantly he notes that it doesn’t matter if we didn’t actually follow a chain
of reasoning so long as we can give an after-the-fact reconstruction of what
could have been the chain of reasoning we acted upon. The deliberative picture
he equates with normative reasons
(what is valuable).[3]
In order to draw a distinction between
valuing and desiring Smith offers us some common sense examples of where the
two seem to have come apart. The first[4] is
from Harry Frankfurt, who invites us to imagine someone who is addicted to
heroin and who wishes they could stop taking it but simply cannot resist their
addiction. In this case the link between desiring and valuing is said to come
apart because they desire to take heroin despite knowing that the best thing to
do (what is valuable) is to get clean.
The second and third examples[5]
are from Gary Watson who invites us to imagine a frustrated mother who drowns
her crying child and a tennis player who, after losing a game, decides to hit
his opponent in the face with his racquet. Watson asserts that it is simply
false that the mother values the death of her child or that the tennis player
values the suffering of his opponent. They desire these things, he says, “in
spite of themselves.[6] As
Smith points out they do these things without thinking what they’re doing is
rationally justifiable. So what all of these examples show, for Smith, is that
we can desire something which we don’t value – especially, as he quotes from Michael
Stocker, when we’re in situations where we have difficulty concentrating, are
anxious, depressed, or tired.[7]
On the basis of these examples we’re led
to see that the HTR has perhaps not cast its net wide enough to account for all
possible instances of human action. Desiring to do something is, in these cases,
not the same as thinking that one’s actions are rationally justifiable. What
one presently desires might stand in stark contrast to what they really think
is best and this is a problem for an actual state account of reasons like the
HTR.
But remember that what was most
significant about our interpretation of Hume’s account is this notion that we
inherit the basis upon which we make rational decisions from the feelings
themselves. One’s passions are apprehended by reason which then leaves us to
choose an option based on which we feel
best about. However, Smith has argued that what we think is the best thing
to do and what we in fact desire can come apart. He sees normative reasons as
having a factual, propositional character over and against the psychological
quality of motivational reasons – separating them ontologically.[8] Having
a normative reason, for Smith, is when a ‘practically rational’ person believes
the proposition that they would perform an action X if they were practically
rational. But this belief and the intentional desire to do what is rational are
not necessarily always found together, and so what we value and what we desire
can come apart.[9]
What justifies you to do X might not necessarily motivate you to do X.[10]
The first thing to notice is the fact
that the addict, in expressing their wish
to give up taking heroin, lets us know that desire is a factor in both options.
Perhaps we can, in fact, sidestep Smith’s objection to the HTR by pursuing the
possibility that in the above cases one does not choose between their current desires and what they believe they would have a reason to do
if they were practically rational. It might turn out to be the case that it is
rather a clash of passions.
Recall that in the scholastic solution
to the problem of the weakness of will, reason pursues the ultimate good, but
as it is but one part of the soul it can nevertheless find itself overwhelmed
by the appetite or the spirit. Despite this, we recall that the source of
reason’s own power is in that very separation which enables it to act contrary
to the passions. Smith’s account, in distinguishing reason and the passions
ontologically, looks like an attempt to vindicate the role of reason as a sui generis in order to rescue it from
its supposed supervenience on the passions. Hume himself speaks of weakness of
will at the end of Treatise 2.3.3 where he notes that:
“Beside these calm passions,
which often determine the will, there are certain violent emotions of the same
kind, which have likewise a great influence on that faculty. When I receive any
injury from another, I often feel a violent passion of resentment, which makes
me desire his evil and punishment, independent of all considerations of
pleasure and advantage to myself.”[11]
So Hume is up to this point in agreement
with Smith, that our desires can lead us to act in ways which abandon any
concern for our own best interests. However, next Hume puts forward the view
that cases like those which Smith points out are not clashes between reason and the passions but are rather clashes of contrary passions:
“Men often counter-act a violent
passion in prosecution of their interests and designs: ‘Tis not therefore the
present uneasiness alone, which determines them […] What we call strength of mind, implies the prevalence of the calm
passions above the violent…”[12]
So there is a distinction which Hume
draws between the violent passions and the calm passions, and he uses this to
explain weakness of will without having to invoke the metaphysical or
ontological separateness of reason and the passions. We can certainly agree that
the passions sometimes lead us to perform actions which we would later come to
regret, but it’s important to remember that what is valued in the above
examples must be valued affectively. The notion that one ought not to hit their
opponent in the face following a defeat could not emerge from out of any instance
of pure reason. What such rational principles presuppose is the involvement of
concernful individuals who can be affected
by such violence. Providing we are also moved by preserving the feelings of
others, we have normative reasons not to want to harm them based on one’s calm passions, the habitual exercise of
which Hume feels we are prone to call reason.[13]
Similarly, with the heroin addict quitting
taking the drug means something –
getting clean means that one doesn’t have to search for money for a hit or
suffer terrible withdrawals. Most importantly, though, it can mean getting on
with the things one wants to do in life, things which heroin addiction can
prevent a person from doing. If none of these possibilities had the power to
move the addict it becomes difficult to imagine why they would value getting
off the drug. It simply makes no sense to imagine that something could be
valuable to an agent who had no interest which would be satisfied in attaining
it, even if their present affective state covers over that yearning. The
existence of contrary passions, violent
passions like cravings and impulses which eclipse everything else, is not evidence
of normative reasons and the passions coming apart but, on this account, simply
evidence of powerful passions overcoming weaker ones.
It seems, however, that Smith’s remarks
do disrupt the actual-state view outlined above. One’s violent passions can
dwarf the calm and so their actual desire leads them to do something for which
they don’t have a normative reason. While it might yet turn out to be true that
one cannot have a normative reason to do something if they do not have a
corresponding desire to do it, we cannot now say that just any desire will fit
the bill. Accordingly, it is not necessarily the case that one has a normative
reason to act when they presently have a desire which would be served by that
action. Violent passions often force our hand against our interests, and so, if we were to follow Hume, we should perhaps say
that we only have a normative reason to act when our desire is a calm one - but
this seems arbitrary. Can a violent passion never be a normative reason?
Perhaps anger can be called justified if it has risen to the fore in one’s best
interests? So Hume’s distinction can only get us as far as indicating the
affective import of options in all choices – it cannot, however, get us to the
source of normative reasons for action alone.
But if the passions are a component in
all normative reasons, what distinguishes evaluative passions from disruptive
or violent ones, if not the intensity of the feeling itself? Hume himself has
already given us the clue when he made mention of interests. What we must now
do is give positive, independent grounds for believing that evaluations are
affectively pre-appraised in terms of our interests. What the remainder of this paper will attempt to do is demonstrate how any normative fact or proposition
presupposes a concernful agent pursuing interests
pre-valued in terms of what we’ll call originary
affectivity.
[1] Finlay, S. &
Schroeder, M., ‘Reasons for Action: Internal vs. External’ in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasons-internal-external/,
(1.3), (cited henceforth as ‘RFA’)
[2]
Smith, M., ‘The Moral Problem’,
Blackwell Publishing, 1994, p. 131, (2008 edition) (cited henceforth as ‘TMP’)
[3]
Ibid. pp. 131-132
[4]
Ibid. p. 134
[5]
Ibid. p. 134
[6]
Ibid. p. 134
[7]
Ibid. p. 135
[8]
Finley, S. & Schroeder, M., ‘RFA’, (2.1)
[9] Copp,
D. ‘Belief, Reason, and Motivation:
Michael Smith’s The Moral Problem’, Ethics, Vol. 108, No. 1 The University
of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 36-37
[10]
Ibid. p. 34
[11]
Hume, D. ‘Treatise’, p. 268
[12]
Ibid. p. 268 (2.3.3) (emphasis added)
[13]
Ibid. p. 269 (2.3.4)
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