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Show Chapter VIII. The Problem of Rational Final Ends 318 10 as a distinct and particular individual. In this kind of case, no "decisive" identification with some set of higher-order desires or ends is possible. To anticipate Bernard Williams' locution (see below, Section 3.2), such an individual lacks personal integrity (178-9). Because any such identification must be conditional on the requirement that the ends in question serve the further end of maximizing utility, no such identification can be unconditional; and therefore no commitment to such ends can centrally define her. Such a person can be said to be alienated from her most centrally definitive ends and values, in the sense that her commitment to them is mediated and vitiated by the necessity of subjecting them to the further requirement of utilitymaximization. It is this requirement that provides the terminating criterion of self-evaluation for the utilitarian. But this is no criterion at all. Any substantive end whatsoever - including substantive final ends such as knowledge, happiness, or friendship - can be evaluated by the further criterion of whether or not it maximizes utility in particular circumstances to achieve it. And we have already seen in Chapters III and IV that the concept of utility is either vacuous or inconsistent regardless of how it is interpreted. So Utilitarianism in effect generates the same infinite regress as does Frankfurt's original conception of second-order desires. This means that there are no ends and values that stabilize such a self in a state of rational equilibrium. The subject fluidly adapts his desires and value commitments to the requirements of maximizing utility under the circumstances in which he finds himself, and changes them as those circumstances do. In the limiting case, such a subject may lack even the minimal psychological consistency that we saw in Chapter IV.3.1 was essential for preserving a sense of moment-to-moment personal continuity. Without independent terminating criteria of rational final ends that determine at what it is rational for that agent to aim, any and all actions and ends can be justified as potential candidates for the maximization of utility. Now Frankfurt thinks Rawls - and, by extension, Williams, and I - are wrong to draw such a conclusion. He thinks that if a Utilitarian with a specific set of personal values realistically estimates the likelihood of having to revise or adjust certain central desires and capacities as being extremely small, [t]here is no reason why [he] should not make to them a commitment that is just as wholehearted as his expectation that he will never encounter circumstances in which maintaining those values would require him to sacrifice well-being (180). And how wholehearted is this? 10 See John Rawls, "Social Unity and Primary Goods," in Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, Eds., Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 180. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
