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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 479 to bring about O will be greater than the total motivation or actiontendency to do what is expected to bring about O', at the time? The answer must be affirmative (86; italics added). Brandt is arguing here, first, that the very fact that I now desire something implies that the idea of that thing motivates me "in a way in which" the idea of something I now know I will desire later does not; and second, that that special motivational oomph I obtain from desiring something now implies that I now desire what I desire more than I will desire the thing I know I will desire later. Both arguments are false. The only way in which my desiring now to go to bed at 9:00 PM need motivate me differently from my desiring at 9:00 PM to watch "Star Trek" is in motivating me now. And the special motivational oomph I receive from desiring now to go to bed at 9:00 PM carries no implication whatsoever that I desire this more than I will desire at 9:00 PM to watch "Star Trek." Brandt's arguments here are based on two unstated assumptions: first, that now desiring O is the same as desiring [that] O [occur] now, an assumption that is violated by any case in which my desire occurs now but the state of affairs I now desire is something I desire to occur later; for example, my present desire to wake up tomorrow morning feeling rested. Thus Brandt presupposes the pure time-preferential assumption he is trying to prove. Second, he assumes that the state of affairs I desire now is somehow sexier or more tempting than the state of affairs I now know I will desire later. But this assumption, too, is false - as shown by the example, in which the more tempting satisfaction is the one I now know I shall desire later. Making plans now to sate or frustrate this future desire, based on and motivated by the knowledge I have now, is what prudence is all about. No present desire is required to motivate me to do so. But Brandt's analysis of rational desire raises problems even for his official account of prudence as requiring a present desire. The problematic feature of this account is that it is inherently retrospective. That is, it focuses primarily on desires we are already presumed to have, and seeks to modify them in light of facts and reasoning about their origins. As such, it provides a criterion for the evaluation of the desires on which we have acted. In the case in which we subject our known present desires to cognitive psychotherapy, it also provides impetus for reforming those desires in the future. What it does not purport to do is supply an agent now with any information that might causally influence the desires she now first manifests precisely in acting as she does to ensure the satisfaction of her future desires. Recall that on the tautologous interpretation of the action-tendency account of desire, we perform that action there is the "strongest net tendency" to perform. The end of the action to which there is the strongest net tendency © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
