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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 305 resources to preserve his distinctions between objective reasons, subjective reasons, and desires that are not reasons at all. And he needs these distinctions in order to explain why practical solipsism is a real condition to be avoided, and not just a linguistic practice that can be evaded through reformulations of principle. So in order fully to assess Nagel's claim that only impersonal judgments about objective reasons have motivational content, we need to re-examine his claim that such judgments include acceptance of a justification for acting. If I accept a justification for acting every time and only when I judge that I have objective reason for action, then it is hard to see how such an objective reason might ever be outweighed by countervailing subjective ones in fact, and therefore how I might ever justify refraining from altruistic action when an objective reason for such action can be given. Since it always can, it would seem that altruism is not only possible, or even rationally inescapable, but rationally required in all cases. This is far too strong. 3.4. Accepting a Justification Earlier Nagel argued that first-person present-tense practical judgments that one has reason to act possessed motivational content, understood as "the acceptance of a justification for doing or wanting something" (109), such that that this content is sufficient to explain the corresponding action or desire when it occurs; and that it must be present in first-person practical judgments, made from the standpoint of temporal neutrality, and hence also in judgments employing tenses other than the present. I shall now attempt to show by a similar argument that it must be present in impersonal practical judgments as well, and hence in judgments about what others should do (109). Thus the trajectory of Nagel's argument has been to begin with present-tense judgments made from the personal perspective, then proceed to temporally neutral judgments made from the personal perspective, and finally now to temporally neutral judgments made from the impersonal perspective. His aim has been to show that if the first-mentioned type of judgment can be motivationally effective, then the second can, too, and so, too, the third. From this it follows, according to Nagel, that the third-personal judgments about what others should do that characterize altruistic deliberation can be motivationally effective as well. He says, [W]hat my argument is intended to settle, is whether any motivational content attaches to the impersonal judgment that T. N. has a reason to remove his foot [from under the heel of the man who is about to step on T. N.'s gouty toes], or whether it enters only with the addition of the basic personal premise, 'I am T. N.' (112). © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
