| OCR Text |
Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 281 motivational influences which one cannot reject once one becomes aware of them" (8; italics added). Similarly, in his critique of G. E. Moore's internalism, he concluded that if one wishes to tie the requirement of motivation influence to the truthconditions of moral claims, with the consequence that if someone recognizes their grounds, he cannot but be affected accordingly, then a stricter motivational connection will be required (9; italics added). These are only a few of the many passages in which Nagel seems to acknowledge that conscious beliefs - or rather, believings - and recognizings may be occurrent psychological events that can motivate an agent to action, just as desires may, and even where no desires are present. This is enough to put a serious dent in the belief-desire model of motivation, despite Nagel's more modestly reformist intentions. Nagel will have vanquished premises 2.2.(2) and 2.2.(3). He will have shown that desires need not cause action, and that other kinds of things besides unmotivated desires can cause action in those cases where motivated desires do not. This is not, after all, merely to furnish a rationally critical ethical basis for such desires. It is potentially to eliminate them altogether from the causal account, and replace them - at least in some explanations - with states that are not desires at all. But what kinds of states? Other kinds of physical events? Or abstract objects of thought? The following passage does not resolve this question: If considerations of future happiness can motivate by themselves, then they can explain and render intelligible the desire for future happiness which is ascribable to anyone whom they do motivate (30). Are "considerations" identical to occurrences of "considerings"? If so, it is not farfetched to entertain them as identifiable motivational influences on action, and thereby to repudiate premise 2.2.(2). Or by "considerations" does Nagel mean "the propositions or principles considered"? In this case, we really do need to know how Nagel explicates the causal relations between the rational content of such abstract principles and the actions they are presumed to motivate. In order to see how Nagel resolves this question, we must find out more about what differentiates rational desires from nonrational ones. Identifying this criterion will enable us to decide whether it itself can be motivationally effective, or whether it merely enables us to cull the bases of altruistic action from those of self-interested action. Nagel seems to have the latter possibility in mind, when he draws an analogy between beliefs as the material for theoretical reasoning and reason itself as its inference structure, on the one hand, and desire as providing the material for practical reasoning and "something besides desire" that "explains how reasons function" on the other (31). He says, "This element accounts for many of the connections between reasons (including the reasons which stem from desires) and action. It also © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
