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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 493 them to accumulate more. Where utility-maximization is a zero-sum game, the desirability of a society based on the principle of reciprocity does not imply the desirability of a happiness-maximizing society to a self-interested chooser. But even if it did, Brandt also acknowledges that the choice would be inadvertent rather than intentional. If it is inadvertent then it has not taken the test of cognitive psychotherapy Brandt proposes as the criterion for the rationality of desire. If the inadvertent choice of an Ideal Code Utilitarian society does not qualify as rational, then it does not matter, for Brandt's metaethical purposes, whether a rational self-interested person would choose it or not. For it does not succeed in justifying that choice to a disinterested and uncommitted reader. We saw in Section 2 that Brandt invoked self-interest to defend rationality to us. We see now, however, that Brandt's appeal to selfinterest cannot rescue the rationality of his theory. So Brandt's metaethical Instrumentalist justification finally fails on four counts. First, we have seen in Section 3 that on Brandt's criterion, rational desires are not objectively justified in virtue of their rationality. Hence even if a benevolent desire for a welfare- or happiness-maximizing Ideal Code Utilitarian society is rational, this does not objectively justify it. But second, we have seen in Section 5 that on his account, benevolence is in any case not rational. Third, we have just seen that Brandt's "derivation" of the Ideal Code Utilitarian society is in any case a tautology that presupposes what it attempts to prove. Finally, it now appears that tinkering with the premises so as to mitigate their value-ladenness effectively subverts the derivation entirely: If the Ideal Code Utilitarian society is not even rational from a self-interested perspective, then it is not a serious candidate for rational justification at all. 8. Cognitive Psychotherapy Reconsidered We see, then, that the problem lies not with Brandt's conception of the Ideal Code Utilitarian society (at least not in any obvious way), but rather with his conceptions of rationality and justification. We have seen that his conception of rational desire purchases value-neutrality at the expense of viability, for it fails to identify any desire at all as clearly rational. Similarly, Brandt's Instrumentalist strategy of justification encounters the same problems as did Rawls's. The difficulties raised by Brandt's conceptions of rational desire and of justification are, for the most part, mutually independent. But both are supervenient on the Humean conception of the self. It is this, once again, that is the true culprit. Now I said in Section 4 above that there were two possible ways of understanding Brandt's cognitive psychotherapy criterion of rational desire; and that in choosing the democratic over the elite interpretation, Brandt made © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
