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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 49 simpler, prettier, and explanatorily more powerful than the prevailing Humean paradigm. Since this single, unified account of transpersonal rationality is merely an elaboration of the weak, canonical conception of theoretical reason as defined and governed by the norms of deductive and inductive logic, it is also more deeply entrenched in our thinking than the Humean model that it is claimed instrumentally to serve. That model puts this one at the disposal of the unlimited range of contingent and variable ends particular agents adopt. Whereas none of those ends are necessary or indispensable, the canons of theoretical reason that enable their realization are both. This conception is therefore metaphysically and conceptually primary even within the Humean conception. Whereas Hume regarded the canons of theoretical reason as mere propositional objects of calculation and computation for maximizing the satisfaction of desire, Kant maintained that the principles of theoretical reason structure the self by supplying necessary conditions for its unity. Kant thought that these principles set certain minimal requirements of logical consistency and coherence that all conscious experience must meet; and therefore that unified subjects and objects of experience must meet as well. Kant contended that any possible experience that failed to meet these requirements would be "nothing but a blind play of representations, that is, less even than a dream"(1C, A 112). Consider the implications. In Volume I, Chapter II, I argued that the revisionist, tautological conception of a desire was not robust enough to do the needed explanatory work, and therefore was no proper desire at all. I also offered a representational analysis of desire according to which some intentional state of the agent is a desire if it includes certain sorts of conscious experience of its intentional object. A desire, on this analysis, is a certain kind of complex experience. If conformity to the minimal consistency requirements of theoretical reason is a necessary condition for integration into a unified self, and if no possible experience that fails these requirements can form part of a unified self, then in particular no possible desire that fails to conform to them can form part of a unified self. On Kant's analysis, a desire that fails the minimal consistency requirements of theoretical reason is "nothing but a blind play of representations, that is, less even than a dream." Hence no object of desire that fails these requirements can precipitate action, because no such desire can be experienced (I discuss behavior precipitated by unconscious desires in Part II, Chapters VII and VIII). To have a desire and pursue its satisfaction in action both presuppose the existence of a unified subject whose desire and action they are. In order to have and act on a desire of any kind, then, fulfillment of the necessary conditions for unified subjecthood must be presupposed. If Kant is right in maintaining that minimal consistency requirements of theoretical reason are among these necessary conditions, then no desire that fails those requirements © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
