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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 319 If his expectation concerning this is unqualified, his commitment also need not be equivocal or at all reserved. ... The possibility that one's expectations are wrong means only that there is a risk in basing a wholehearted commitment on them. It does not imply that taking the risk is either impossible or unjustified (180). But first, it is not obvious how a Utilitarian could ever come to have such specific values and desires in the first place, unless as mere vestigial remnants of a pre-enlightened moral attitude. How would such values and desires ever get a grip, given the constant reminder that they were to be regarded as conditional on their maximization of utility? Second, even if they could find a stable place in my overall scheme of values, they would be, in fact, unjustified. If my expectation that I will never have to revise my central desires is unqualified by the acknowledgment that I risk being mistaken in my estimate of the relevant probabilities, then surely I have failed to consider adequately the risk involved in wholeheartedly committing myself to them. And then my wholehearted commitment surely is unjustified, for I have failed adequately to anticipate the likelihood of having to modify it. In Frankfurt's earlier attempt to solve the problem, the vehement emphasis on the decisiveness of one's commitment to one's higher-order desires was insufficient to carry the weight of the argument he gave it. In this more recent attempt, his emphasis on the wholeheartedness of one's commitment suffers the same defect. Frankfurt offers the concept of unthinkability as a way of understanding what wholeheartedness (or decisiveness) of commitment involves. His argument is that if an agent finds that she cannot bring herself to perform some action that she is in a good position to perform, has reason to perform, and has a desire to perform, then that action violates a wholehearted commitment to some end or value (181). He analyzes this as a case in which the agent cannot will to perform the action in question; and later explains this inability as an unwillingness to will performance of the action, and, in the same paragraph, as the agent's not really wanting to perform it (184). The inability to "go through with" the action thus stems from value commitments that are so deep and centrally formative of the self that their violation is effectively outside the agent's physical capacity. In this case, the readiness required of the Utilitarian to abandon any such values or ends contingent on their maximization of utility must remain entirely a theoretical matter, even when she justifiably believes that utility-maximization in this instance requires it. Frankfurt seems to think this kind of case demonstrates that even committed Utilitarians may have personal integrity, for there are circumstances in which they seemingly cannot abdicate their most essential commitments even if they want to. But such a case does not demonstrate this. It demonstrates that one may falsely believe she is prepared to do anything for the sake of utility© Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
