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Show Chapter V. How Reason Causes Action 208 vertical consistency within most agent perspectives because, as we have already seen in Volume I, Chapter XII and in Chapter IV directly above, permanent conformity to a rule of promise-keeping notoriously conflicts with self-interest rather than instantiating it; this demonstrates one sense in which self-interest is the wrong kind of motive to be incorporated into a specifically moral maxim. (2) above, by contrast, fails horizontal consistency because it is internally self-contradictory regardless of its motive: it both verbally asserts and verbally denies my addiction to gumdrops. Hence both (1) and (2) exemplify maxims that are universalizable on the one hand, yet on the other, fail O'Neill's first part of the contradiction in conception test, that one "intend without contradiction to act on the maxim."10 Communities in which everyone attempts to promote but sometimes thwarts self-interest by always keeping their promises, or feeds an addiction to gumdrops by denying it are certainly possible. So if I can intend that any maxim of mine hold universally,11 I can certainly intend that (1) and (2) do. But a maxim that predicates self-interest of a permanent rule of promisekeeping is materially inconsistent, and a maxim that both asserts and denies the same state of affairs is logically inconsistent (other examples of the latter might be, "Out of an impulse to make mischief, I decline to state any of my maxims, in order to disturb the repose of my readers;" "From iconoclasm, I make it a rule to ignore rules, in order to supply the authorities with something to do;" and so forth). We can conceive without contradiction communities in which everyone acts on these maxims, yet we cannot conceive without contradiction the content of these maxims themselves. However, I make no claim that yet other, morally controversial kinds of maxim also must necessarily fail to satisfy some of the consistency constraints that define a genuine preference, because I do not concur with Kant's belief that a single, well-defined normative moral theory can be read off from rationality criteria more generally; more on this in Section 5 below. My purpose here is merely to suggest some ways in which reasons for actions can also be causes of action without being or including desires. An intellectually committed Egoist who must systematically override his own altruistic or generous desires in order to honor the maxims that express his considered Op. cit. Note 8, 77. Also see O'Neill's later account of conceptual inconsistency within a maxim in her "Consistency in Action" (Constructions of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 89). Both (1) and (2) could also be read as failing O'Neill's Fourth Principle of Rational Intending, that "the various specific intentions we actually adopt in acting on a given maxim in a certain context be mutually consistent" ("Consistency in Action," 92), if (1) and (2) are interpreted as implicitly containing multiple intentions that conflict. However, both are phrased as singular intentions. 11 I am not convinced that this is the kind of intentional object that can be ascribed to an intention of the ordinary kind, for the reasons discussed in Chapter II.2 above, but leave that aside for now. 10 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
