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Show Chapter XI. Brandt's Instrumentalism 478 themselves contain no hidden, value-laden assumptions. They do, of course. They contain assumptions about the value of the cognitive over the intuitive or emotional; and of self-scrutiny, analysis, and reflection over spontaneous self-expression. Brandt valorizes these skills by assigning them roles as constituents in an ideal of rational deliberation that in turn functions normatively and prescriptively. Still, we have seen in the General Introduction to this project that this degree of value-ladenness is a necessary condition of rational dialogue. Thus Brandt's reductive translation of morally value-laden terms such as "best" and "good" into terms describing the character dispositions of rationality are unobjectionable. He proposes that we understand "the best thing to do" as "the rational thing to do," where "rational" is to be understood in the terms already explained (12, 126-7). Similarly, Brandt maintains, when we say an action is "rational" or "justified," we both describe and recommend it. Brandt's strategy for protecting the value-neutrality of his metaethical program is to defend a type of equivalence relation between normative moral terms and normative psychological terms. This protects the universality of his criterion of rational desires, but it does not increase the objective validity of those desires themselves. 5. Prudence Should Brandt in fact rule out the possibility that an agent might be motivated to act by beliefs or knowledge alone? Consider, as he does, the case of prudence. Brandt means to locate his view of prudence in direct opposition to that which he takes Thomas Nagel to hold (83-4). On Brandt's official view, I must have a present desire to ensure the satisfaction of what I know my future desires will be in order to ensure it; merely the belief that I will have those future desires is insufficient to motivate me to act. However, in discussing the rationality of pure time preference, Brandt often slips into the language of belief-motivation. He considers the case in which I now have a desire for a particular satisfaction at a future time t, and also the knowledge that at t I will also have another, equally strong desire for a second satisfaction at t. For example, suppose I now desire to get to bed at 9:00 PM this evening, and also know that at 9:00 PM I will desire equally to watch "Star Trek." About this kind of case Brandt remarks that [s]o far my desire now for O [i.e. to get to bed at 9:00 PM], and my future desire for O' [i.e. to watch "Star Trek" at 9:00 PM], appear to come out equally; at least, let us suppose this. But it is also true that the idea of O now motivates me in a way in which the idea of O' does not. That it does is implied by the fact that I do desire it now. In view of this fact, does it not seem plausible to say that the total motivation or action-tendency to do what is expected © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
