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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 121 assigns to (U) a universal and logically necessary status. And we have already 29 seen that this means it is either vacuous or inconsistent. 4.2. The Psychoanalytic Interpretation Utility theorists sometimes try to meet this charge by appending to (U) a theory of unconscious desires. They reason that actual agents do not invariably maximize utility merely by acting intentionally, because actions are sometimes motivated by unconscious, destructive desires that may cause one a great deal of conscious unhappiness or dissatisfaction. Hence though (U) is true for fully rational agents, it is not true for conflicted, ambivalent, selfdestructive, or self-deceived actual agents. Hence it cannot be vacuously true. Call this the psychoanalytic interpretation of the concept of utility. Let us grant, for the sake of argument, the distinction between fully rational and imperfectly rational agents that I claimed in the introduction to this chapter to be irrelevant to my argument in this section. Even if we do so, this interpretation does not have the implications its proponents claim. Stipulating the existence of unconscious desires whose satisfaction thwart conscious ends implies unconscious ends they do not thwart but rather achieve. Then conscious actions and the ends they promote become 30 instrumental means to the achievement of those unconscious ends. And the 29 In this respect, classical utility theory seems mistaken on purely common-sense psychological grounds. Happiness or pleasure may be merely a contingent consequence or side-effect of an end we deliberately adopt, rather than that to which all our ends are intentionally instrumental, as Bishop Butler argues (Fifteen Sermons, Sermon XI, 415; reprinted in The British Moralists 1650-1800, Volume I: Hobbes-Gay, Ed. D. D. Raphael (Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1969). For example, gratification may be a valuable sideeffect of personal integrity, but individuals may strive to achieve this end even when no such gratification is anticipated. Reliance upon common-sense distinctions among our mental states, and consequent application of the terms "utility," "happiness," or "desiresatisfaction" to some of them and not others, enables us to both retain the conceptual resources for distinguishing expected utility-maximization from other ends of action, and thus pick out the full range of mental phenomena a social theory is concerned to explain. (David Lewis makes much the same point in "Radical Interpretation," Philosophical Papers, Volume I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 110, when he remarks, "If our interest is in the philosophy of mind and of language, then the pursuit of ontological parsimony seems to me an unnecessary distraction" - without, I think, seeing the implications for his own use of the belief-desire model of action in that discussion.) In this case, (U) holds only under certain contingent circumstances that may or may not obtain for an agent. But she may act with full rationality nevertheless. 30 But see Peter Alexander, "Rational Behavior and Psychoanalytic Explanation," in Care and Landesman, for a different view. Theodore Mischel defends Freudian explanation against Alexander's criticism (misguidedly, I think) in "Concerning Rational Behavior and Psychoanalytic Explanation," Mind 74 (1965), 71-78. A more moderate defense is provided by Robert Audi, "Psychoanalytic Explanation and the Concept of Rational © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
