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Show Chapter IV. The Utility-Maximizing Model of Rationality: Formal Interpretations 178 hypothesis such formulations would be inaccurate, since they are not in fact 43 intended consequences of her physical actions. They are instead internalized dispositional constraints on her behavior that lead her to experience forbearing favorably an sich. Aside from wanting to behave with dignity, Ruby forbears because that is the most natural, comfortable, and acceptable way for her to act. Her physical actions are valuable to her as actions, aside from the consequences she intends to effect by performing them. This is the sort of person whose attitude toward action furnishes a counterexample to the utility-maximizing ideal. The utility-maximizing ideal implicitly denies the theoretical interest of such a case. It fails to find anything of theoretical significance in physical human action in itself, independently of its structurally instrumental relation to its intended consequences. Of course the utility-maximizer recognizes the inescapability of the effects of conditioning or habituation on an agent's attitude toward her own behavior - for example, as the swimmer comes to experience swimming as intrinsically valuable, aside from its intended health benefits or competitive goals. But from the utility-maximizing perspective, this value is not really intrinsic. Either it must be interpreted as a utility the swimmer attempts instrumentally to maximize by swimming, or else it is theoretically irrelevant. The concept of physical human action as itself a source of noninstrumental, rational value or interest is meaningless on this 44 view. Again it may seem that this is a merely logical consequence of an action's being described by its intended ends, whether it is physically basic (such as 45 raising one's arm) or complex (such as signaling a turn). But it does not follow from the fact that all actions are described in terms of their ends that the relation of the actual physical behavior to that end must be either 43 For the same reason, it would be conceptually incoherent to regard these ends as intentionally instrumental means to the final end of expected utility-maximization. If Clarissa does not forbear from reciprocating insults because it ultimately makes her happy (in a nonvacuous sense), then she does not intend to secure her happiness by doing so. 44 Richard Brandt states this view explicitly when he asserts that "in large part human behavior is an instrument, also. For we care about how people act mainly because of how their behavior affects other persons for good or ill, by disappointing their expectations, injuring them, and so on. For the most part, acts are important to us because of their consequences." (A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 196-7. 45 See Arthur Danto, "Basic Actions," in Care and Landesman. Also see J. L. Austin, "A Plea for Excuses," in Philosophical Papers, Ed. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 175-204. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
