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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 85 Now assign to the concept of a belief the same degree of ubiquity that Humeans claim for the concept of a desire. That is, think of it as a dispositional or occurrent mental phenomenon that interprets our internal goings-on and thereby causes further ones. Such a phenomenon can take any propositional content whatever, e.g. perceptual (as in "I believe I am seeing a red patch"), emotional (as in "I believe I am angry at having missed the bus"), or intentional (as in "I believe I intend to keep my promise"). This illuminates the sense in which the Humean conception of the self promotes the thoroughgoing instrumentalization of all the constituents of the self. For all such beliefs, on this picture, are available for deployment in the service of the satisfaction of desire, including beliefs about the intentional object of that desire. Thus, for example, my desire for security and personal aggrandizement may motivate me more efficiently to surround myself with sycophants, and so to satisfy that desire, if I believe it instead to be a desire for peers who recognize true worth when they see it. Or my desire to inflict pain on a competitor may motivate me more efficiently to exploit his vulnerabilities if I believe it instead to be a desire for excellence in performance at any cost. Or my desire to appropriate ideas from a manuscript I have reviewed, rejected, and refused to return may motivate me more effectively to disregard professional ethics if I believe it instead to be a disinterested desire to improve on the performance of an intellectual inferior. In this way, thoroughgoing self-deception - about my perceptions, emotions, and intentions, as well as about my desires - is rationally justified by the imperative of efficiency inherent in the structure of the Humean self (much as free riding is by the same imperative in the structure of the corresponding Hobbesian society): The rationality of my beliefs, like that of my behavior, is a function of their instrumental efficacy in enabling me to satisfy my desires. No other criteria of rationality are independently relevant, and so no independent moral considerations are, either. Thus within the constraints of the Humean conception, beliefs may be rational in either of two ways. They may be rational in virtue of representing accurately what I need to do in order to get what I want; call these veridically rational beliefs. Or they may be rational in virtue of best enabling me to get what I want; call these efficaciously rational beliefs. Veridically rational beliefs are true beliefs about the most efficient strategies for me to adopt in order to satisfy my desires. Efficaciously rational beliefs, on this interpretation, are those which in fact bring about the satisfaction of my desires most efficiently. I may have veridically rational beliefs about what beliefs are efficaciously rational; and I may count veridically rational beliefs among those which are efficaciously rational for me to hold. Efficaciously rational beliefs may diverge from veridically rational ones because the most efficient action for me to perform in order to satisfy my desires may not be the most efficacious means to the satisfaction of my © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
