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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 247 as satisfying a lack, nothing about the object considered independently of its status as an object of desire might motivate the agent to realize it. At least not within the constraints of the belief-desire model of motivation strictly understood. A significant modification of this model is considered in Chapter XI. I have already pointed out that one can envision an object as satisfying without having the desire to achieve it. To this can be added that in fact, one can envision an object as satisfying although it is the intensional object of a completely different kind of motivation, such as an intention or resolution. For example, I might resolve to organize my time more efficiently, envision the resulting state of order and control as deeply satisfying, yet be motivated, not by the desire for that satisfying experience of order and control, but rather by that very resolve, which in turn is driven by the conviction that efficient time-management is a necessary condition of personal autonomy - which I experience, not as a source of satisfaction, but rather as a source of selfrealization (self-realization is not necessarily satisfying because the aspects of the self one realizes may be deeply troubling - or trouble-making). Of course the belief-desire model of motivation would deny the accuracy of this description, and claim instead that it denoted a desire for self-realization in disguise. The thesis that all desire is a species of self-interested motivation does not distinguish between the actual and ostensible content of a desire, as the Freudian variant on the belief-desire model would, because this distinction does not require any modification in the basic definition of a desire. The Freudian variant is thus merely a special case of the more general thesis. Nor does this thesis then go on to claim, as the Freudian variant would, that all actual desire is ultimately self-directed, for the Freudian variant is in fact merely a subvariant of the Hobbesian one, with all of its attendant problems. Instead, this thesis respects the distinction between self- and other-directed desires all the way down. The thesis is simply that if it is indeed a desire that motivates one, then regardless of the content of that desire, one anticipates personal satisfaction from obtaining its object. This is just a roundabout way of elaborating on the truism that we are motivated to satisfy our desires, and that we are motivated to satisfy our desires. 3.3. Criterion-Satisfaction Humeans who dislike the moral implications of this thesis may complain that I have phenomenalized to excess the concept of desire-satisfaction. Desire-satisfaction, they may argue, is less like the chops-licking, warm-glow phenomenal sense of satisfaction-as-fullness one experiences after a good meal, and more like the satisfaction of a criterion. That is, like criterionsatisfaction, desire-satisfaction merely supplies in reality a condition or state of affairs required by the desire itself. Understood in this sense, satisfaction © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
