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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 277 motivating state, if the disposition to respond to that perceived intentional object in that way is deeply instilled, as when I respond to the perceived ringing of the telephone by picking it up and saying, "Hello?" Call these perceptually motivating states. In these cases, the mere perception of an object is motivationally effective in causing an overt behavioral response directed toward a different object. In a comparable manner, the cases discussed in Chapter V.4.4 - 4.5 above are examples of conceptually motivating states, in which the mere occurrent thought of an abstract object - a concept, principle, or declarative proposition - is motivationally effective in causing an overt behavioral response directed toward a different, perhaps equally abstract object as its purpose. Affectively, perceptually, and conceptually motivating states are all species of backward-looking motive. All are genuine motives with identifiable intentional objects, rather than mere whims, impulses or appetites that nonrationally assail us. So they do not fit Nagel's description, discussed in Volume I, Chapter VII.2.3, of unmotivated desire. Yet they are as familiar and plentiful in our experience as any of the various types of desire to which Humeans confine their attention. 7.2. Motives and Respect for Principle Now according to the prevailing Humean model of motivation, any such backward-looking motive must be followed by a forward-looking motive, namely a desire, if it is to cause action. Thus, for example, the Humean picture implies that my feeling of expansiveness, caused by my having just got a raise, can only indirectly cause me to scatter dollar bills in the street, by first engendering in me a desire to scatter dollar bills in the street. But no such desire, nontautologically construed, is necessary to explain action. I suggested in Volume I, Chapter VI.5 that it is often sufficient that deeply inculcated norms of social behavior simply dispose me to react or behave in certain ways in response to my perception of a situation as being of a certain kind. In the present example, my emotional reaction to getting a raise, i.e. my feeling of expansiveness, is direct in that it is unmediated by any conscious conception of how I ought to feel or behave under these circumstances. And this affective motivational state in turn causes me to perform a purposeful action, namely to scatter dollar bills in the street. But this action is equally unmediated by any desire or "pro-attitude" toward scattering dollar bills in the street, for I would feel no frustration or regret were I prevented from doing so. (But even if I did, it still would be a moot question whether it was my pro-attitude toward scattering dollar bills in the street, or my expansive feeling, that caused me to scatter them.) My motive for doing so is that I am feeling expansive. And I was caused to feel expansive by having just got a raise. Thus a backward-looking motive (my feeling of expansiveness) can cause purposeful action (scattering dollar bills in the street) without the intervention © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
