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Show Chapter VII. Nagel's Internalism 296 3. Altruism 3.1. Motivational Action at a Distance Our task now is to determine whether Nagel's analogous argument for the possibility of altruism offers any remaining considerations that might support the extraordinary interpretation, i.e. that argue persuasively in favor of the rejection of premise (2.2.1) of the belief-desire model of motivation; or whether, on the other hand, Nagel's account of how another's interests can motivate us to act on her behalf relies crucially - albeit implicitly - on mental events of the sort already examined. Nagel defines pure altruism as the direct influence of one person's interest on the actions of another, simply because in itself the interest of the former provides the latter with a reason to act. If any further internal factor can be said to interact with the external circumstances in such a case, it will be not a desire or an inclination but the structure presented by such a system of reasons. (80) As it stands, this definition implies either externalism or motivation at a distance as per the implausible scenario and the extraordinary interpretation, since it permits a person's interest to provide me with a reason to act on her behalf without my being aware of it. Externalism would mean that I might have reason to act but not know it and therefore not act; motivation at a distance would mean that the other's interest might motivate me to act without the intervention of the mental event of my recognizing or acknowledging the other's interest as a reason. Nagel is committed on principle to rejecting externalism and advocating motivation at a distance, so we must suppose him to mean the latter. Nagel reiterates his rejection of premise 2.2.(1) again for emphasis in the discussion immediately following. He represents the Humean view as asserting that "[w]ith regard to altruism, the corresponding intuition is that since it is I who am acting, even when I act in the interests of another, it must be an interest of mine which provides the impulse," and refutes it as follows: The same prejudices are in operation here which have been observed to influence discussions of prudence: the conviction that every motivation must conform to the model of an inner force; the view that behind every motivated action lies a desire which provides the active energy for it; the assumption that to provide a justification capable also of explaining action, an appropriate motivation, usually a desire, must be among the conditions of the justification (81). Clearly, then, Nagel wishes not only to reject the assumption that there must be a desire behind every motivated action, but the further assumption that there must be any sort of "appropriate motivation," considered as an "inner force," that "provides the active energy for it." In this passage he explicitly disavows the existence of any such causally efficacious mental event of any kind. As in the case of prudence, he replaces this with a motivated desire © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
