| OCR Text |
Show Chapter III. The Utility-Maximizing Model of Rationality: Informal Interpretations 114 overriding importance. So he is conforming to his coherence set, and his pursuit of this seemingly delinquent end promotes all of his ends after all. This answer saves the special, universal status of the utility-maximizing criterion. But it also implies that any end one pursues in action retrospectively satisfies the constraints of one's coherence set by reorganizing its priorities accordingly. This makes the coherence set vacuous, for any action one takes can be made to satisfy its requirements. A third answer might be to concede that the delinquent end the agent pursues is an end, deny that it is his end, and deny also that pursuit of it counts as a genuine action. Here the thought would be that although he behaves intentionally in virtue of aiming at an end, the end he aims at is not an end he desires to obtain; so he merely "goes through the motions" of acting, without being motivated by the conative resolve that desire ignites. But this third answer would also underwrite the conclusion that his coherence set is vacuous. For it implies that any action that does not conform to it is not really an action at all. This means, in turn, that an agent cannot rationally regard any end he pursues as thwarting its constraints, consistently with regarding it as his end. He must discount any action he performs that appears to thwart its constraints either as third-personal, behavioral evidence that he has altered his coherence set to accommodate it; or else as mere physical behavior that is not, in fact, a genuine action. But this just seems mistaken. Suppose, for example, that Sylvester must order the object-ends of being a dentist, being a poet, and making lots of money, and invokes the meta-end of utility-maximization to do so. Having decided that being a poet is incompatible with making lots of money whereas as being a dentist promotes it; and, moreover, that being a rich dentist would make him happier overall than being a poet, Sylvester then finds himself writing poetry, attending readings, publishing a little magazine, and neglecting his dental practice. He is deeply troubled about this behavior, and regrets in advance the many cavities he will not fill, dollars he will not make, and cruises he therefore will have to forego. Obviously such cases of internal conflict require their own complex analysis. But there are two claims we probably ought not to include in such an analysis. First of all, it is not open to us to conclude that Sylvester's pursuit of poetry is not a genuine action at all. Writing poetry, attending readings, and publishing a little magazine are definitely actions, if any behavior is. Second, if he clearly recognizes that he is sacrificing happiness for the sake of his poetry (perhaps he even hopes that his suffering will improve it), it is not open to us to conclude that Sylvester's coherence set has changed to accommodate his poetry-seeking behavior - at least not without inviting the threat of vacuity. For recall that Sylvester organized that set according to the meta-end of utility-maximization. By sacrificing his happiness in order to write poetry, © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
