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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 471 disposition to act has not been activated. So thought is a necessary condition, and the precipitating cause, of action. Brandt believes that one performs that action which there is the "strongest net tendency to perform" (47). So he thinks that no intentional action directed toward a certain outcome will occur without a net tendency to act so as to bring about (or avert) that outcome; i.e. that intentional action directed toward a certain outcome requires a net tendency to act so as to bring about that outcome. This means that in order to perform an act at a certain time, the sum total of the agent's dispositions and traits of character must incline her to perform the act at that time. On the tautologous interpretation of this claim, Brandt is noting merely that an agent does what she is most strongly inclined to do. This is a variant on the Humean thesis discussed in Chapters II.1 and III, that an agent always does what she most wants to do, and that observation of what she does answers the question of what she most wanted to do. On a nontautologous interpretation, the claim denies that an agent can act against character, or can override her settled habits of mind or behavior in action through the force of some other motive, for example sheer impulse, or reason. On the nontautologous interpretation, observation of what an agent does reveals not 3 only her overriding desire, but thereby her settled traits of character. Having characterized desire in terms of a tendency (or disposition) to act, and action in terms of the strongest net tendency to act, Brandt then asserts that "no intentional action will occur without desire or aversion directed at it or its outcome..." (66). It may seem that Brandt is here making the same mistake as did Gewirth, by conflating desire and intention. But since Brandt has already defined a desire as a thought-activated tendency to act, this says merely - again - that no action will occur without a prior disposition to perform that action, i.e. that this disposition is a necessary condition - and a contributing cause - of action. On both the tautologous and the nontautologous interpretation of Brandt's thesis, however, the precipitating cause of action is not the desire for the end the action effects. It is a component of that desire, namely the occurrent thought that the action will effect this end. Thought, not desire, is what precipitates the performance of action, if anything does. Brandt's conception of occurrent thought as the precipitating cause of action makes his view a peculiar sort of Humeanism indeed. As we have seen with Nagel, Frankfurt, Williams, Gewirth, and Rawls, Humeans usually stipulate desire as the precipitating conative force in action, and assign 3 See Brandt's "Traits of Character: A Conceptual Analysis," American Philosophical Quarterly 7, 1 (January 1970). © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
