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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 279 in Chapter XI that this is precisely the status Richard Brandt assigns the concept of rational desire; and consider further the question whether this makes Brandt a Kantian or Nagel a Humean. The textual evidence for the ontological status of motivated desires is ambiguous. The above passage denies that motivating desires play a necessary role in causing action. But shortly thereafter Nagel remarks that "[o]ften the desires which an agent necessarily experiences in acting will be motivated exactly as the action is. If the act is motivated by reasons stemming from certain external factors, and the desire to perform it is motivated by those same reasons, the desire obviously cannot be among the conditions for the presence of those reasons" (30; italics added). From this latter passage we can infer that the agent necessarily experiences motivated desires that really are motivated by prior psychological events. This means that they cannot be merely conceptual truths; they are substantive experiences as well. And later, in discussing the motivational role of present-tensed practical judgments that one has reason to act, Nagel says, "This judgment possesses motivational content, for one then regards the undertaking as justified, and this is sufficient to explain one's wanting it to happen, be happening, or have happened. Such a desire will form even if one does not know what time it is" (70-71; italics added). Again the implication is that a practical judgment can cause a motivated desire, considered as an occurrent mental state, to exist. Similarly, when Nagel later discusses the implications of trying to apply a subjective principle from the impersonal perspective, he remarks that although one may then be able to identify those of the agent's acts justified by the subjective principle, "this is a mere classification without motivational content - without the acceptance of a justification for wanting anything" (122; italics added). Here Nagel equates motivational content with the acceptance of a justification for wanting something, from which we can infer that the justified want has motivational influence. This, too, makes it more than only a conceptual truth. From all four passages taken together, it would seem to follow that motivated desires do not necessarily play a causal role, but do necessarily play an experiential role. From this it would follow, in turn, that we necessarily experience certain mental events, namely motivated desires, that do not necessarily have causal impact on action. But how a consciously experienced mental event could fail to affect us causally in some way - if only to alter our brain chemistry slightly - remains obscure. Nagel has averred more recently that "sometimes a motivated desire is a conscious mental state or event, even though its motivational force depends on the reasons behind it." He also characterizes it as a "propositional attitude, and therefore an intentional state."7 These statements imply that a motivated desire can be (but is not necessarily) a mental event denoted by a sentence of Private communication of 20 September 1991. 7 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
