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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 119 coherence set interpretations of (U) in Sections 2 and 3 above, I have deployed an uninterpreted concept of utility itself that is loosely interchangeable with commonsense concepts of happiness, desire-satisfaction, etc. It may seem that my arguments have depended on this uninterpreted concept of utility, such that they would collapse if this concept were specified to denote one particular set of intentional conditions rather than some other. But I now go on to reject the suggestion that the implied vacuity or inconsistency of (U) depends on such an uninterpreted concept of utility, and fails when some 23 particular interpretation is supplied. In this section I argue that it does not matter whether the concept of utility is interpreted phenomenologically, psychoanalytically, or behaviorally. The problem remains: If (U) describes an end that agents always have, i.e. a universal end, then it is vacuous. If the utility theorist tries to maintain universality while denying vacuity, then we may simply repeat the reasoning of Sections 2 and 3 and conclude to inconsistency. 4.1. The Phenomenological Interpretation The classical concept of utility was understood to refer to occurrent 24 happiness, pleasure, or the satisfaction of desire as a conscious mental state, 25 or disposition to have such states. Call this the phenomenological interpretation of the concept of utility. As we have already seen in Chapter II.2.1, happiness, pleasure and desire-satisfaction are notoriously nonequivalent. But for purposes of the present argument we lose nothing by regarding them as more 26 or less interchangeable. On the phenomenological interpretation, a fully 23 So far as I know, this suggestion first appears in Ward Edwards, op. cit. Note 2, 382. The traditional definition of utility as happiness or pleasure is to be found in Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (New York: Dover, 1966), Book I, Chapter IV; Book II, Chapters IIII; Book III, Chapter XIV; Book VI, Chapter I. Also see Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Ed. J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart (London: Athlone, l970), Chapter I, Sections 1.-2. Richard Brandt discusses the merits of the "happiness' versus the "desire" theory in his A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), Chapter XIII. Also see his "The Concept of Welfare" (unpublished paper, 1980). 24 25 Brandt's own definition is dispositional. See his A Theory of the Good and the Right, ibid. Chapters II.1 and XIII.2; and Richard Brandt and Jaegwon Kim, "Wants as Explanations of Actions," in N. C. Care and C. Landesman, Eds. Readings in the Theory of Action (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1969), 199-213. 26 But see Brandt's analysis of the different implications for utilitarianism of each in A Theory of the Good and the Right, ibid. Wayne Davis analyses occurrent happiness in terms of desire-satisfaction in "A Theory of Happiness," American Philosophical Quarterly 18, 2 (April 1981), 111-119; and identifies occurrent happiness with pleasure in "Pleasure and Happiness," Philosophical Studies 39 (1981), 305-317. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
