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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 485 We learn to stop desiring something through deconditioning of three types. First there is counterconditioning, a foil to classical conditioning, in which we replace the originally pleasant stimulus with an unpleasant one, and thereby engender the opposite response to the neutral stimulus. Then there is inhibition, in which we stop pairing the pleasant stimulus with the neutral experience, until the neutral experience alone eventually stops eliciting the attraction-response. Finally - and most importantly for Brandt's argument, there is discrimination, the foil to direct conditioning and stimulus generalization. Here we remind ourselves of the differences between the particular thing we like and other things that are similar but not identical to it (108). So Brandt's basic idea is that a desire is rational if reflecting on its origins, and carefully discriminating it from other similar desires does not destroy it. There are many particular facts we may reflect on that may change our desires. For one thing, they may be based on false beliefs: for example, suppose I desire to become a stockbroker because I think it will satisfy my parents' wish for my lifelong financial security. I may then discover that they care more about whether I am happy than whether I am financially set for life, and do not think the former requires the latter. Or desires may be the result of misleading or fallacious advertising or cultural bias, i.e. not engendered by actually experiencing the desired or non-desired situation (117). An example would be disliking a low-prestige occupation that may be actually quite satisfying in practice. Or, third, desires may be the result of generalizing from untypical examples, such as assuming, because one was once bitten by a dog, that all dogs are apt to bite. Or they may have been produced by severe early deprivation, as for example the drive to accumulate power may have been caused by childhood experiences of powerlessness; to accumulate wealth by childhood experiences of poverty; or to acquire recognition and visibility by childhood experiences of neglect or marginalization. Of course it is questionable whether such desires would, in fact, extinguish through reflection on their origins. Does one's desire for a wealthy lifestyle necessarily disappear through reflection on one's early poverty? On the contrary, it may be reinforced by it, as reason for self-congratulation; or be so deeply embedded in one's character that it is for all intents and purposes uneliminable. Brandt's interesting conception of reflection - i.e. of "verbal selfstimulation" - is not sufficiently developed to make this case convincingly. In order to do so, he would need to add some provisos concerning the integration of verbal information with emotion, desire, and memory - perhaps something along the lines of Aristotle's requirement that one have knowledge of both the particular and the universal - in order to ensure the epistemic depth that enables knowledge to actually affect behavior. But even © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
