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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 49 importance for the Humean conception. We are moved to action, on this view, and to regard our internal and external resources instrumentally, not because of what we are and have, but because of what we conceive ourselves literally to want, i.e. lack. However, in Sections 2.3 through 3 I show that this more detailed account of the structure and dynamics of desire shapes a necessarily theory-laden and morally egocentric psychology. The moral psychology of desire casts human agents as driven by dissatisfaction, insecurity, and deep feelings of inferiority in all of their actions; as permanently trapped in unrealizable fantasies of future fulfillment; and as incapable of such basic human cognitive achievements as impersonality, impartiality, or self-reflection. Section 4 considers briefly the likelihood that the resulting profile will be familiar and depressing in several respects. Those who recognize themselves in it may be tempted to conclude to its practical accuracy, and therefore to the veracity of the Humean model of motivation. Those who do not, or who find it deficient or incomplete in its portrayal of the reality and potential of human motivation may rightly conclude that the belief-desire model of motivation is inadequate to the psychological facts, makes false predictions about human behavior, and hence is badly in need of repair. So there is some reason to doubt whether the Humean conception can be, not only adequate to the complexity of human behavior, but whether, indeed, it can function as an adequate explanatory paradigm at all. A terminological point (with a familiar Kantian ring): To describe the self as having desires may seem to suggest that desires relate to the self as properties of it. But this does not follow, since of course any such nominative can occupy the place of predicate or subject indifferently. In Volume II I defend the familiar first Critique view that locutions such as "I desire x," or "I have a desire for x" express a relation of the unexplicated concept of the self or "I" to the experience of desiring, or of having a desire that is essentially possessive: Any such experience - of desiring, having, believing, and so on - itself has the feature of being had by someone. That is, it is true by definition of the cover term "experience" that each experience belongs to some self. I defer further amplification of these points to Volume II, Chapter II. For now notice just that the possessive relation of the concept of the self to its experiences such as desirings does not imply that the relation of actual selves to their experiences is similarly and inevitably possessive. The Humean conception of the self implies, rather, that the relation of an actual self to its motivationally effective desires is one of identity; and its relation to its other experiences - the bundle of impressions, ideas and inferences of which Hume himself spoke - instrumental. The dispositional or occurrent experience of desiring defines the Humean self, in that it determines (1) the structural relations among these other internal components of the self, as nested instrumental resources for the satisfaction of desire arranged © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
