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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 203 meantime that occurrent thoughts and beliefs are psychological and neural events that take their places in the causal network of events just like any others. I take my task here to be to propose an account of how the causality of a certain kind of occurrent thought or belief might operate. 4.2. Baron on Primary Motives My conception of an occurrent thought or belief would conform to Baron's definition, above, of a primary motive as "the main impetus, the thing that moves me to act" (113). Baron has two objections to a Kantian account of moral motivation that situates primary motives at the center of such an account. First, she argues that the very idea of a primary motive belongs to an empiricist - i.e. a Humean - sensibility, and so fits poorly with Kant's conception of moral motivation. Second, she argues that Kant does not really need primary motives to explain how duty works. I disagree on both counts. Since moral motivation is the important instance of rational motivation that I ultimately aim to address, it will be convenient to dispose of these objections to the notion of an occurrent thought or belief as the key to moral motivation, before proceeding to explain the sense in which it is the key. First let us clarify further what a primary motive is and how it functions. Baron says, "[M]y sense of duty may prompt me to refrain from doing something that I recognize to be wrong but am tempted to do, for example, to lie to save face" (129). In this case my sense of duty is a felt, consciously occurring psychological event that thwarts and overrides my temptation to lie to save face. It conforms to the model of "a force within us that causes us to act accordingly" (189), in this case to refrain from lying. However, the notion of acting according to a force deserves further scrutiny. The wind is a force that may push me across the street whether or not I am ready to cross it. But I do not act according to this force, for two reasons. First, I do not act at all; I am rather swept across the street. But suppose this were describable as an action, such that I intended to cross the street anyway and construed the force of the wind as helping me do so. It still would be peculiar to claim that I acted according to this force, as though the force issued directives to which my behavior conformed. I can act according to or in conformity only with something I interpret as providing a model I may or may not emulate, a template I may or may not fit, or directive that I may or may not follow. That is, I must ascribe to such a force some intentional content that is capable of guiding the behavior I undertake to perform. The wind has no such intentional content; one's sense of duty clearly does. The primary motive that prompts me to refrain from lying to save face, then, is an occurrent psychological event whose intentional content prohibits me from lying to save face. I would identify this event as an occurrent belief that I am not to lie in order to save face. I would claim that this occurrent belief is causally © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
