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Show Chapter III. The Utility-Maximizing Model of Rationality: Informal Interpretations 106 rationality principle in order to choose between the two. In Volume II, Chapter III I articulate one at length. In addition to adverbial parity, there is also an intentional parity between the concepts of efficiency and the alternatives just mentioned. Achieving my end efficiently is not only a manner or style of achieving my end. Like other manners or styles, it is itself an end at which I may or may not aim - as is 15 achieving my end tastefully, honestly, etc. Let a meta-end be an end or goal regarding the style or manner in which I aim to achieve my ordinary ends, or object-ends. Meta-ends, on this account, are adverbial descriptions of action, of the sort just mentioned, that I aim to realize in acting to achieve my objectends. Orders of meta-ends may ramify as one considers in greater detail the style in which one wants to achieve some object-end. For example, Gladys may achieve her object-end of getting an education efficiently by going to college, and she may achieve this instrumental object-end in a way that tends to preserve her personal integrity by choosing among colleges with a socially progressive reputation. In this example, efficiency and the preservation of one's personal integrity are meta-ends. Note also that the distinction between meta-ends and object-ends cuts across that between instrumental and final ends. A question as to the style in which one wants to achieve either instrumental or final ends may appropriately arise. And like object-ends, meta-ends, too, may be either instrumental or final in nature. Object-ends are, however, always instrumental to the achievement of meta-ends, whether these latter are instrumental or final in nature. Living the good life, for example, may be instrumental to the final meta-end of living in a graceful and aesthetically pleasing manner. To say that I intend to achieve my end efficiently, or, alternatively, gracefully, does not imply that I must have such meta-ends consciously in mind when I act - anymore than I must my object-end. Let us say that I minimally intend to achieve some such end if, were I to discover that a particular action hindered this end, other things equal, this discovery would motivate me to refrain from performing it. Conversely, I do not minimally intend to achieve this end, if such a discovery would not motivate me to thus refrain from it. From now on, I shall use the word "intend" in this minimal sense. My main point is that achieving my end efficiently is itself a meta-end such that, if I were to discover that a particular action hindered it, it is an open question, dependent on context, whether this discovery would motivate me to refrain from performing it or not. So achieving my end efficiently is not a 15 This distinction between adverbial and intentional parity corresponds to Jeremy Rifkind's distinction between efficiency as a method and efficiency as a value in his Time Wars (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1987), Chapter 8. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
