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Show Chapter VII. Pseudorationality 294 II.4.4 that this passage introduces into Western philosophy the possibility of an unconscious, in which representations may be deposited - and may have causal efficacy - even though they form no part of an agent's conscious experience and therefore remain unrecognized within the parameters of her perspective. I shall continue to describe as a conceptual anomaly an event, object or state of affairs that fails to satisfy the consistency conditions enumerated in Part I. Such an event, object or state of affairs can be third-personal, in case it issues from an external source, as in the quantum physics case; or firstpersonal, in case its source is internal to the agent. A sudden and overpowering mood change that is discontinuous with the agent's personality; or the spontaneous appearance of behavior, interests or tastes that are in discord with the agent's settled character; or the unexpected manifestation of a capacity or limitation might exemplify first-personal conceptual anomalies. In any such case, the event, object or state of affairs would count as anomalous even relative to the most comprehensive and cosmopolitan perspective; but less unfamiliar ones can also count as genuinely anomalous relative to more constricted and provincial perspectives. In all such cases, the pseudorational mechanisms of denial, dissociation and rationalization function to preserve at least the semblance of rational integrity in the self against the threat of disintegration such a phenomenon presents. I called attention to the second kind of pseudorationality in the passage from the Groundwork that opened Part II of this volume. This is the case in which a first-personal anomaly, a delinquent inclination within the agent that fails to cohere with his interior self-conception, gives rise to the pseudorational process of rationalization specifically. As explained in Chapter I, a self-conception is a theory that includes the properties an agent thinks accurately describe him psychologically, socially and morally, and the more complex principles he thinks govern his behavior and relations with others at a given moment: his attitudes, beliefs, emotions, actions, and consequent image in his own and others' eyes. An agent's desires are determined by his self-conception because they are determined by what he conceives himself as lacking. Here the agent butchers the requirements of particular rational and moral principles in such a way as to provide a justification for indulging those desires at their expense. This is Kant's definition of evil, in which we subordinate the requirements of principle to the demands of desiresatisfaction rather than the other way around (R, Ak. 36), then rationalize this by minimizing the authority of principle and magnifying the value of desire (R, Ak. 42). As Baron points out, this brand of rationalization naturally leads to externalism about moral motivation: [I]nsofar as I adopt a policy of seeking assistance from the inclinations, I in effect allow that moral considerations are not fully compelling, motivationally; but if they are not fully compelling motivationally, © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
