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Show Chapter II. The Belief-Desire Model of Motivation 76 These observations underscore the intimacy of the relation between the self and agency, and so the necessity of identifying the self not just with a certain rational structure, but with a motivational capacity. If I were nothing more than a passively rational contemplator, I could have no self whatsoever. For if I necessarily failed to distinguish, among the ongoing panorama of events, some which I caused to occur, I would equally lack the means of identifying those among my experiences that were caused by something else; I could identify no subject to whom these events were happening. But if I were unable to distinguish myself from the events that happened to me, it is difficult to imagine how I might then distinguish my self at all. However, that the self must find definition and expression through action does not imply that the self must be future-oriented, heteronymous, and egocentric. Hence it does not follow from the intrinsic connection between selfhood and agency that the Humean conception of the self is necessarily the correct one. The hypothesis of a Humean conception of the self and its attendant funnel vision conjointly offer an explanation of why moral conduct as an object of desire has a peculiarly self-directed and narcissistic quality. This may manifest itself in the varieties of self-absorption or contextual insensitivity anatomized in Chapter VI; or in an unusual assertion of will and insistence on the conduct even when evidence of its artificiality, insensitivity or inappropriateness abounds; or in close and regular correspondence between the achievement of the goal of the conduct and feelings of satisfaction in the agent. In all such cases, and many others, we have good reason to speculate that the conduct is driven by desire-satisfaction rather than other moral motives such as duty, compassion, or indignation. I argue in Chapter VI that all desire-satisfaction is self-interested; and also in Chapter VIII.3.2.4 that narcissism directs the interests of the self toward its own self-image and image in the eyes of others. But we can already see that the self-image in which the Humean self necessarily takes an interest is the self envisioned as whole and sufficient, made so by the satisfaction of desire; that the performance of moral conduct as an object of desire is one among the array of such objects that instantiate that higher-order one; and that all opportunities for satisfying this desire are among those surveyed, ranked and graded by the Humean self. Finally, we can anticipate one of the conclusions of Chapter VIII, that narcissism is not, after all, merely a pathological condition of the psyche, as I have argued elsewhere.23 It is built into the desire-based motivation of the Humean self. The hypothesis of a Humean conception of the self conjoined with its attendant funnel vision also offer a partial explanation for the moral phenomenon of ignorance of oneself as a particular (I offer a fuller explanation in "Moral Theory and Moral Alienation," The Journal of Philosophy LXXXIV, 2 (February 1987), 102-118. 23 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
