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Show Chapter V. How Reason Causes Action Having constructed the formal framework of transpersonal rationality established in Chapters II through IV, I begin in this Chapter to flesh it out with some of the richer psychological phenomena of rationality that accommodate its requirements. Specifically, I now offer an account of what Kant calls the causality of reason, i.e. the power of rational principles and considerations to motivate action in the ideal case. I shall say that principles and considerations are rational if they satisfy the constraints of the framework already established. If, as I have just argued in Chapter IV, McClennen's concept of resolute choice is materially equivalent to my concept of a genuine preference, and resolute choice provides an intrapersonal foundation for moral commitment, then it could be argued that the concept of a genuine preference in effect provides such a foundation, and therefore entails the relationships of trust and responsibility that a stable interpersonal morality must presuppose. However, I shall not attempt any such Deductivist argument here. My primary task is to show that rational principles, and in particular the rational principles constitutive of a genuine preference, can have the motivational efficacy that McClennen's idealized account takes for granted. I consider two ways in which reason can have motivational efficacy: first, as a necessary condition and contributing cause of action; and second, as sufficient condition and precipitating cause of action other things equal. The first accounts for reason as a necessary condition of what I call literal selfpreservation, i.e. the preservation of the internal unity and rational coherence of the self, according to the criteria of rationality proffered in Chapters II and III; and therefore as a necessary condition of action of any kind. This is the theme of Sections 1 and 2. Section 3 contrasts my account of reason as a necessary condition of action with Marcia Baron's analysis of duty as a secondary motive of action. Baron's analysis focuses on specifically moral motivation, whereas mine targets rational motivation in general, of which moral motivation is (at least for purposes of this project) merely an instance. But Baron's version of a Kantian account of motivation highlights some of the differences between a "New Kantian"1 approach to the issue and the UrKantian approach I take here. The term is Elijah Millgram's; see his "Does the Categorical Imperative Give Rise to a Contradiction in the Will?" The Philosophical Review 112, 4 (October 2003), 525 - 560. Millgram does not discuss Baron's analysis, because his target is recent Kantian accounts of rational deliberation, rather than of rational motivation. But the family resemblance of Baron's approach to the accounts he does discuss, as well as the explicit influences she cites, warrant the inclusion of her analysis under the same rubric. 1 |
