Desire, judgment, and reason: Exploring the path not taken

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 11, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 437-463

  Hurley, Paul ^a  

^a CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

Belief desire theory; Desire; Ethical objectivity; Inconsistent triad; Internalism; Judgment sensitive attitudes; Propositional attitudes

Indexed keywords

EID: 34548556279     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10892-005-7978-8     Document Type: Article

References (97)

1. Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Princenton: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 4.
2. Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism, pp. 4-5.
3. Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism, p. 5.
4. It might be more accurate to characterize his view as adopting the first path, and some limited aspects of the second by way of the first. By contrast, the alternative that I am considering adopts the second path, and some limited aspects of the first path by way of the second. Nagel's rejections of subjectivist and externalist options can be found on pp. 6 and 8-9 respectively. His own solution abandoning the beliefdesire theory is mapped out in Chapter III.
5. W. Quinn's arguments appear in his essay "Putting Rationality in its Place." This essay is included as Chapter 12 of W. Quinn, Morality and Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1.993), pp. 228-255.
6. The relevant arguments from. J. Raz and T. Scanlon. are to be found in J. Raz, Engaging Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), Chapters 2 and 3;
7. and T. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), Chapter 1, respectively.
8. Nagel's own account of the challenges that stand in the way of any reconciliation of these three commitments appears in Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism, Chapter II. I have modified his characterization of the belief-desire theory slightly to allow for a distinction between explanatory and justificatory contexts. The relevance of this distinction will become apparent in Section III. For other recent attempts to capture the apparent irreconcilability of these three commitments,
9. see David McNaughton's discussion of the "Inconsistent Triad" in David McNaughton, Moral Vision (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), Chapter 2;
10. Michael Smith's discussion of "The Moral Problem" in Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), Chapters 1.-5;
11. and Geoffery Sayer-McCord, "The Metaethical Problem," Ethics 108 (1997), pp. 56-58. Each presents these commitments as generating a trilemma (although Nagel does not make this structure explicit): objectivity, internalism, and. the beliefdesire theory all appear to set adequacy constraints for any moral theory, but embracing any two appears to require the rejection of the third. Strategies for resolving the controversy often involve attempts to demonstrate that one or another of these apparent adequacy constraints is merely apparent.
12. Quinn, "Putting Rationality in Its Place," p. 242.
13. Quinn, "Putting Rationality in Its Place," p. 242.
14. Quinn, "Putting Rationality in Its Place," p. 246.
15. Quinn, "Putting Rationality in Its Place," p. 247.
16. Quinn, "Putting Rationality in Its Place," p. 252.
17. Quinn, "Putting Rationality in Its Place," p. 247.
18. Another way of reading Quinn's account may initially seem tempting. This is to interpret his claim, that the cognitive thought is an element of the desire as the suggestion that the cognitive thought is somehow logically implied by the desire. But logical implication seems far stronger than anything Quinn has in mind here, and hard to square with other aspects of his account. For example, Quinn is uncertain as to whether or not conative attitudes that do not contain cognitive thoughts are desires (Quinn, "Putting Rationality in Its Place," pp. 246-247), yet there would be no room, for such uncertainty on a logical, implication reading. Yet another strategy (suggested to me by Charles Young) is to interpret Quinn as maintaining not that desires are conative attitudes each of which, contains a cognitive element, but that they are some sort of umbrella attitudes that contain both cognitive and conative elements. The difficulty here is to present an account of these cognitive and conative elements of desire - the cognitive "thought" and the conative "attitude" - that avoids (on. pain of regress) characterizing these elements of desire as themselves beliefs and desires. Quinn does not give any indication of how this can be done, or even that this is a problem for his approach. I will argue in Section VII that a variation upon the account that I here attribute to Quinn, a variation found in Davidson, avoids the difficulties with Quinn's own version.
19. Raz, Engaging Reason, p. 54.
20. Raz, Engaging Reason, p. 56.
21. Raz, Engaging Reason, p. 5.
22. Raz, Engaging Reason, p. 62.
23. Raz, Engaging Reason, p. 53. On the same page Raz maintains that "We cannot want what we see no reason to want any more than we can believe what we think is untrue or contrary to the evidence."
24. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 32.
25. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 38.
26. This formulation borrows from. Jonathan Dancy, who labels such, reasons motivating reasons, since "when we think of reasons in this way, we think of them, as motivating" [Jonathan Dancy, Practical Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 1].
27. Some philosophers take the different rationalizing roles of explanatory and justificatory reasons to signal two very different categories of reasons at work. But it is crucial for Raz and Scanlon that they do not. Citing an agents' beliefs, for example, is not citing one kind of reason rather than another, explanatory as opposed to justificatory. There is only one kind of reason involved, and citing such. attitudes identifies which of these reasons are operative for the agent - the reasons that she takes to justify, ceteris paribus, her other beliefs. In justificatory contexts we cite the good reasons we have for believing or acting as we do. In explanatory contexts we cite what an agent takes (at least ceteris paribus) to be her good reasons for believing or acting as she does. In this respect, Raz's characterization of such, reasons as "explanatory reasons" can easily mislead. He is not invoking the distinction between justifying or normative reasons on the one hand and explanatory or motivating reasons on the other (Smith, The Moral Problem, Section 5.2;
28. Dancy, Practical Reality, Chapter 1, Sections 1-4).
29. Indeed, he denies that a coherent distinction of this sort can be drawn, arguing that any such attempt loses its grasp upon any sense in which, "explanatory reasons" are reasons properly understood (Raz, Engaging Reason, pp. 27-36).
30. Scanlon is cognizant that he too might be seen as begging the question in an argument with advocates of a sharp divide between normative and motivating reasons by assuming "that rational agents are capable of making and being moved by judgments about reasons" understood in a "fully normative sense" (Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 19).
31. But he too argues that the alternative view is ultimately not plausible (Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, pp. 19-20).
32. Raz, Engaging Reason, p. 60.
33. Dancy elaborates and advocates a version of this Raz argument in Dancy Practical Reality, pp. 35-39.
34. See Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 44: "The desire...provides no reason at all...suppose that I endorse the judgment to which the desire involves a tendency...Even in this case, the reason that I have for buying the computer is not that it will satisfy my desire, but rather that I will enjoy having it, or that it will help me with my work...or bring some other supposed benefit."
35. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 21.
36. Raz, Engaging Reason, pp. 53, 54, and 62.
37. Raz, Engaging Reason, p. 28.
38. Raz, Engaging Reason, p. 25. This account of explanatory reasons is closely paralleled by Scanlon's own account of "operative reasons"
39. (See, for example, Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 56).
40. Raz, Engaging Reason, p. 54.
41. There are a couple of features of Raz's account that may initially appear to justify treating these attitudes differently, but neither holds up under closer scrutiny. At one point, for example, Raz suggests that the relevant judgment concerns the object of the desire, while it concerns the belief itself (Raz, Engaging Reason, p. 54). Yet this simply does not appear to be the case. The relevant judgment in each, case concerns the object of the attitude: Whether the object of the belief is true, and whether the object of the desire is good or desirable. Moreover, each state, on this view, can be criticized as unreasonable or irrational if it persists in the face of reasons (There is an interesting disanalogy here - desires are not good or bad in the way beliefs are true or false, but this disanalogy seems beside the point in this context). Raz also emphasizes that evaluative beliefs can supply what the agent takes to be her justification in explanatory contexts in place of desires. But this of course does not demonstrate that desires cannot supply such reasons, only that evaluative beliefs may be able to supply them as well. Moreover, there is no argument that evaluative beliefs do a more perspicuous job of supplying such reasons.
42. Scanlon, discussion of such "operative reasons" appears in Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 56.
43. Scanlon makes these points at Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 45.
44. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 37.
45. Such a broad sense of desire is precisely the sort to which Raz, by contrast, appeals: "Whenever one acts intentionally, one acts because of a desire to do what one does" (Raz, Engaging Reason, p. 54).
46. He argues instead that "A substantial thesis claiming a special role for desires in moving us to act would have to be based, on some narrower class of desires" (Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 37).
47. Steven Arkonovich has recently criticized this aspect of Scanlon's account, and offered his own alternative account of a broader class of desires (Steven Arkonovich, ["Defending Desire: Scanlon's AntiHumeanism," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LXIII (2001), pp. 499519]). By contrast, I will tease out a broader account of desires to which I take Scanlon himself to be committed by his own broad account of beliefs together with his general account of judgment sensitive attitudes.
48. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 37.
49. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 36.
50. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 35.
51. Indeed, one could reject the claim in the theoretical sphere while maintaining it in the practical sphere.
52. Raz, Engaging Reason, p. 54,
53. E. Anscombe, Intention, Second Edition (Ithaca: Cornell, University Press, 1976), pp. 62-63;
54. Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford. University Press, 1.980), p. 6.
55. Of course wanting more is a consequence of judging better for rational agents on such, an account, just as believing is a consequence of judging true - the rational agent will want more and believe what she has reasons to want more and believe. But the appropriate attitude is a judgment augmented by the relevant dispositions - in the practical case by dispositions to form intentions and act in appropriate circumstances. On a consistent application of Scanlon's account the relevant distinction, when connections with such, dispositions are severed, is between judging on the one hand and believing or wanting (broadly construed) on the other. So although Scanlon rejects a substantial role for a broad class of desires paralleling that of beliefs, his own account seems to be committed, to recognizing such a role for just such a class of practical attitudes. Nor is this surprising, since Scanlon, by his own accounting (Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 377), adopts significant portions of Davidson's account of akrasia, and Davidson's account, as I will argue below (Section VI), is presented within the framework of an account of pro attitudes upon which beliefs and desires are similarly constituted (in part) by judgment.
56. Scanlon appeals to just such a broad class of wants in practice. To identify a person as wanting to go to Chicago, he is clear, is typically to have "identified a state whose occurrence can affect the reasons an agent has," a state that is constituted in part by her taking "herself to have good reason to make the trip" (Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 45). Such a state is constituted in part by a positive evaluation of its object, and involves connections with dispositions to deploy as a premise in further reasoning, form intentions in the relevant circumstances, etc. In short, it is a state that parallels in the practical sphere the role that he calls upon beliefs to play in the theoretical sphere. Moreover, he allows that we commonly invoke such states by appealing to the agent's wants and desires.
57. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 22.
58. See also p. 50: "One such attitude is wanting... These are attitudes that an ideally rational person would come to have whenever that person judged there to be sufficient reasons for them and that would, in an ideally rational person, "extinguish" when that person judged them not to be supported by reasons of the appropriate kind."
59. Raz, Engaging Reason, pp. 53, 54, and 62.
60. A "belief that we do not in this sense judge to be true, Raz argues, is not a belief. Without the relevant judgments these simply cease to be the relevant sorts of attitudes, or at least cease to be non-pathological instances of such attitudes, even if the other dispositional or phenomenal aspects characteristic of these attitudes continue to be present. Similarly, he maintains that an urge must be augmented by some sort of judgment of the value of its object in order to be a desire (See Raz, Engaging Reason, pp. 12 and 55).
61. These quotations are from Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, pp. 35 and 39, respectively.
62. David Velleman, "The Guise of the Good," Nous 26 (1992), p. 9.
63. Velleman takes there to be a lack of sufficient textual evidence to identify this as Davidson's view, but points out that his accepting it would explain crucial features of his view, for example "why he says both that desires are and that they are expressed by value judgment" (Velleman, "The Guise of the Good," p. 23). Although Velleman sketches the view, and certain grounds for attributing it to Davidson, he does not advocate the view that he sketches.
64. Velleman, "The Guise of the Good," p. 9.
65. See, for example, Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 161ff. Velleman's sketch also emphasizes the parallel treatment of belief and desire: "The desire that p... involves regarding p as to be brought about and hence...as good just as he belief that p involves regarding p as true."
66. Velleman, "The Guise of the Good," p. 9.
67. Velleman, "The Guise of the Good," p. 9. The potential for such, attitudes themselves to supply reasons is also emphasized by Velleman at this point.
68. In what follows I suggest an interpretation of key remarks by Davidson concerning the rationalizing role of propositional attitudes. Davidson also provides an account of the causal role of such attitudes and takes this latter account to be compatible with his views concerning the rationalizing role of such attitudes. I will not here discuss either Davidson's account of the causal role of propositional attitudes, or his claims that this account can be reconciled with his account of the rationalizing role of such attitudes. For one recent attempt to establish the compatibility of these accounts of the causal and. rationalizing roles of such attitudes, see Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 51-59.
69. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, p. 161.
70. For his discussion of pro attitudes as holdings desirable, see Donald Davidson, "Expressing Evaluations," The Lindley Lecture (University of Kansas, 1982), p. 8.
71. Donald Davidson, "Rational Animals," in E. LePore and E. McLaughlin (eds.), Actions and Events (Oxford: Blackwell, 1.985), p. 473.
72. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, p. 159.
73. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, p. 157.
74. Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, p. 223.
75. W. Sellars proposes (at roughly the same time) a similar account of propositional attitudes. "Attitudes and the expression of attitudes belong to the rational order - which is not, of course, to say that there are no Irational, attitudes, but rather no Non-rational ones. It is as a rational being that a man has attitudes. All commitments... are attitudes, and in no case is an attitude a sensation or feeling which accompanies a 'pure thought'" ["W. Sellars, "Science and Ethics," in Philosophical Perspective (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, Publisher, 1967), p. 407].
76. See, for example, Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, pp. 33 and 476.
77. The arguments in this paragraph draw upon my essay "A Davidson Reconciliation of Intemalism, Objectivity and the Belief - Desire Theory", The Journal of Ethics 6, (2002), pp. 1-20.
78. From, R. Fara (prod.) "In Conversation With Donald Davidson: The McDowell Discussion" Rudolf Fara (Prod.) (London: Philosophy International, 1997).
79. Davidson, "Intending," p. 84.
80. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, p. 86.
81. See Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, p. 86.
82. Notice also that it does not follow that there is no independent role for beliefs, only that there is no independent role as premises in the justification of my other beliefs and actions.
83. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, p. 86.
84. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, p. 86. At times Davidson suggests that the assertion of the evaluative judgment "represents" the desire, while at other points he suggests that it "expresses" the attitude. I will adopt the first characterization in what follows, since this latter characterization of the relationship as one of expression is hard to reconcile with the standard use of this term in speech act theory. I am grateful to David Copp for clarification on this point.
85. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, p. 86.
86. Nor is this conceptual connection between the claim, and the desire, hence between the belief expressed by the claim and the desire, a collapse of one of these attitudes into the other. They are different attitudes constituted by different commitments to different contents. Moreover, one can occur without the other. The conceptual, connection between the belief and the desire is defeasible: In cases of perversity or certain forms of practical irrationality the agent will not want more to do, hence will not do, what he claims - and. believes - it is best to do. See my "A Davidson Reconciliation of Internalism, Objectivity and the Belief- Desire Theory", pp. 15-19, for further development of these aspects of such a view.
87. Velleman, for example, cites the occurrence of perverse desires for the undesirable as grounds for rejecting a conceptual connection between judgments of desirability and motivation [See David Velleman, The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000, pp. 117-120.]
88. See, for example, Raz, Engaging Reason, pp. 24-36, 53-56,
89. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, pp. 42.
90. This is the line of argument that appears to be undertaken in Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events,
91. But see Tyler Burge, "Perceptual Entitlement," and "Social Anti-Individualism, Objective Reference," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXVII (2003), pp. 503-548 and 682-690, for a sustained criticism of this aspect of Davidson's account.
92. Scanlon's arguments that cats and dogs cannot have judgment sensitive attitudes can be found in Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, pp. 22-24.
93. Velleman, The Possibility of Practical Reason, p. 15.
94. Velleman, The Possibility of Practical Reason, p. 15.
95. See Stephen Darwall, "Because I Want It," Social Philosophy and Policy, 18 (2001), pp. 129-153.
96. This is a recurrent metaphor in John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), Chapter 1.
97. Davidson helps himself to this second connection at various points, but in the absence of persuasive arguments for doing so.