| OCR Text |
Show Chapter II. The Belief-Desire Model of Motivation 68 This analysis implies that we perceive the external world as inherently superior to ourselves; as not only malleable through action in the service of our wants, but thereby as a source of gratification of them; as a set of resources for reinstating the wholeness or sufficiency of the self, in which a condition of abundance is transferred from the external world to oneself through one's action. So on the Humean conception of the self, our relation to the external world is one of felt privation. We are motivated to perform some particular action by the promise of restoring the self to wholeness in a certain respect - the respect defined by the desired object we represent to ourselves as lacking. To say, then, that the Humean conception of the self defines and identifies the self by its desires is to conceive of the self as defined and constituted by its self-perceived deficiencies, and its desired objects as external sources of replenishment of these deficiencies. This analysis also implies that we perceive the external world through the lens of our wants, i.e. as a source of respects in which we are lacking, wanting, or insufficient. All external states of affairs are implicitly evaluated and graded with regard to their suitability as instruments, resources, or approximations of objects of desire, such that the higher the desire-satisfaction rating of a particular state of affairs, the greater its perceptual salience for the subject. This is the essence of egocentrism. Since every state of affairs is assessed according to this criterion, no state of affairs is neutral with respect to it. Different desires may give different colorations and ratings to the same state of affairs at different times, depending on whether it is perceived as an opportunity or a setback relative to one's desires at that time. To the extent that a state of affairs is gradable neither as opportunity nor as setback, neither as attraction nor aversion, it effectively fails to exist for the Humean self. A state of affairs that bears no relation to the defining evaluative function of the self, i.e. desire, bears no relation to an egocentric self at all. So to perceive the external world through the lens of one's wants is to perceive a world considerably constricted by them. Perceptual salience does not, of course, imply perceptual veracity; precisely the opposite in this case. The primacy of desire-satisfaction as a criterion for evaluating states of affairs as enhancements of, obstacles to, or approximations or embodiments of objects of desire distorts perception of those states of affairs, by magnifying those properties that satisfy or violate the criterion and miniaturizing those which are irrelevant to it. The overriding desire for sufficiency and wholeness leads the Humean self to perceive the external world as a box of tools, instruments, and missing parts; and to ignore or devalue whatever lies outside it. The representational analysis of desire generates a terminating criterion of rationality for proliferating orders of desires in the Humean conception that, as we see in Chapter VIII.2 below, Frankfurt's concept of second-order desires as regulative of first-order ones is unable to provide. This criterion is © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
