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Show Chapter V. How Reason Causes Action 190 Nietzsche: the ideal of spontaneity versus the ideal of interiority. This contrast sheds light on how my account of a fully effective intellect could have application to some actual agents under certain conditions; how, that is, reason could override desire to precipitate action in an actual agent. It also explains in greater depth why such an agent is accurately described as transpersonally rational. I argue that the ideal of spontaneity makes the concept of a motivationally effective intellect inexplicable, whereas the ideal of interiority makes it unremarkable. 1. Rational Action Chapter III defined a genuine preference as one that satisfies not only the criteria of horizontal and vertical consistency introduced in Chapter II, but also additional consistency criteria most of which are familiar from classical logic: asymmetry, connectivity, irreflexivity, transitivity, and ordinality. We saw in Chapter II that the first two ensure that a genuine preference is rationally intelligible, i.e. it is recognizable as an instance of concepts that partially constitute an agent's perspective at a particular moment. We then saw in Chapter III that the additional five further ensure that a genuine preference preserves that logical consistency and conceptual coherence over its entire duration, however long or short that is. Conjointly, these criteria represent a genuine preference as rational in virtue of the theoretical rationality of the concepts by which the agent represents that preference to himself. In Volume I, Chapter II I defended a representational theory of desire. Genuine preferences, then, include desires the agent's representations of which satisfy the requirements of theoretical rationality. However, genuine preferences comprise more than desires in this modified Humean sense, for the reasons mentioned in Volume I, Chapter VI.4.2 and taken up in greater detail below: Agents can and do choose to pursue valued intentional objects, i.e. ends, which they nevertheless have no desire (in the nontrivial sense) to pursue. Any end an agent chooses that satisfies the above consistency criteria counts as a genuine preference, whether that end is the object of a desire - or, alternately, of a resolve or mere intention. I shall say that an agent acts rationally when all of the ends for which he acts satisfy these consistency criteria; and that a rational action is one whose particular ends do as well, regardless of the type of motive that moves him to act. 2. Literal Self-Preservation Now we saw in Chapter II above that all of the concepts constitutive of an agent's perspective at a particular moment must satisfy the minimal criteria of theoretical rationality expressed in the requirements of horizontal and vertical consistency, in order for her experiences to be rationally intelligible to her. This of course includes her ends: in order for an agent's ends to be rationally © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
