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Show Chapter IX. The Problem of Moral Justification 394 3.6. Generic Goods Gewirth believes that certain specific judgments are ascribable to agents in virtue of their acting, namely judgments about the goals they set themselves to realize: purposive action is conative and dynamic in that the agent tries by his action to bring about certain results or consummations that he wants ... to attain. ... He regards this goal as worth aiming at or pursuing; for if he did not so regard it he would not unforcedly choose to move from quiescence or nonaction to action with a view to achieving the goal (4849). Gewirth's argument here is that the very fact that an agent is motivated to pursue a goal demonstrates that he regards it as worthwhile, as valuable. But we have already seen in Chapter VIII. 3.2.2.2 that this demonstrates no such evaluation. An agent may have contempt or distaste for his goals, and for himself for pursuing them; or an agent may regard a goal neutrally, and find it of interest that he has and pursues this goal without finding the goal itself of interest in the least. Gewirth assumes that motivation implies positive evaluation because he accepts the Humean dictum that only objects of desire can motivate action. I argue in Volume II, Chapters II and V that this is not true. But even if the Humean model of motivation were the right one, it would not imply an equation of desiring something with evaluating it positively, because desiring is a psychophysical event whereas evaluating and judging is an intellectual one. Gewirth continues: This conception of worth constitutes a valuing on the part of the agent; he regards the object of his action as having at least sufficient value to merit his action to attain it .... The primary ... basis of judging something to be good is precisely its connection with one's pro-attitude or positive interest or desire whereby one regards the object as worthy of pursuit. And since it is admittedly some desire, at least in the intentional sense of wanting, that provides one's purpose in action, it follows that an agent acts for a purpose that constitutes his reason for acting and that seems to him to be good on some criterion he implicitly accepts insofar as he has that purpose (49-50). But desire, even in Gewirth's "intentional sense," is not the only source of purposes of action. Resolutions, choices, inferences, and external states of affairs such as events or other people are, in addition to intentions, further sources of goals an agent may adopt, none of which necessarily have even the most tenuous relation to desire. Since, as we have seen, an agent need not value her purpose, she need not regard it as good. Nor need such a purpose constitute her reason for acting (although of course it might still constitute the explanatory reason why she acts). Nor, therefore, does such an agent therefore value the generic conditions of action necessary for achieving such purposes, namely freedom and well© Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
