Abstract
According to the Desire-Based Reasons Model reasons for action are provided by desires. Many, however, are critical about the Model holding an alternative view of practical reason, which is often called valued-based. In this paper I consider one particular attempt to refute the Model, which advocates of the valued-based view often appeal to: the idea of reason-based desires. The argument is built up from two premises. The first claims that desires are states that we have reason to have. The second argues that desires do not add to the stock of reasons the agent has for having them. Together the two theses entail that desires are based on reasons, which they transmit but to which they cannot add. In the paper I deal with a counterexample to the second premise: tie-breaking desires. I first distinguish two interesting cases and argue that only the second challenges the premise. Then I move onto analyze this challenge by focusing on Ruth Chang’s recent employment of it. I show that contrary to its counterintuitive appearance, the challenge can be sustained. However, I also argue that Chang overlooks the full potential of one particular response to the challenge: the introduction of higher-order reasons determining the normative significance of these desires. At the same time, I show that this response has a problem that Chang does not consider. As a result, the response can only partially disarm the challenge of tie-breaking desires; or not at all, depending on what significance we attribute to the counterexamples.
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Notes
There are other versions of the Model, depending on e.g. whether all desires are admitted, or only those that pass a certain test, or whether only actual desires of the agent matter. See Brandt (1979), Williams (1981, 1995a, b, 2001), Hubin (1996, 1999, 2001, 2003), Noggle (1999), Murphy (1999), Sobel (2001a, b). Since the argument I deal with is designed to tackle all of them, details do not matter.
I use the label ‘value-based’ only for lack of a better term: I will use the terms ‘reason’ and ‘value’ interchangeably in the text. It is not my intention to take side in the debate, which is the primitive: reason or value. Accordingly, although the view is often put in evaluative terms, in what follows I will assume that those who talk about goodness would also endorse the normative version insofar as they want to make claims about reasons for action by employing the present argument.
I disregard the distinction between normative judgment and normative appearance, although the latter is also used to formulate the premise. See Scanlon (1998, pp. 39–44), Hurley (2001), Tenenbaum (2007). Given the nature of the discussion to come, this and other refinements do not matter for the purposes of this paper.
Admittedly, I work with fairly brush strokes here. The relation between desire and the agent’s normative judgment is a controversial issue. In particular, it is not clear whether the premise understands desire as necessarily related to normative judgment, or takes desire to have some kind of normative content. It is also not clear whether the relation in the first case is biconditional or only runs from desire to judgment, nor is it obvious what the nature of the content referred to in the second case is. See Hurley (2007), Tenenbaum (2007), Hawkins (2008) for further discussion along these lines.
However, as we know from the toxin puzzle and recent discussions on Scanlon’s buck-passing account of value, reasons for having desires may not be the same as reasons for action. In particular, if there are reasons provided by the state of desiring, it might be the case that one has reasons to desire something, but no reasons to act on this desire. See Scanlon (1998, p. 97), Parfit (2001, pp. 21–24), Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2004) for influential discussions.
For discussion of incomparability (or incommensurability) see Chang (1997) and Baumann and Betzler (2004). According to some reasons can also be on a par. This happens when neither of them is stronger than the other while being comparable and unequal. See Chang (2002, 2005), Gert (2004b) and Rabinowicz (2008).
One might find it awkward that I refer to Scanlon and Raz at this point. Are they not committed to holding that these desires are urges and do not provide reasons? I don’t think so; I say more about this later. It is also possible, as I explain later, that they think they can accommodate these desires. What I should emphasize though, is that what matters are the examples, not where they come from. Whether Raz, Scanlon and other advocates of reason-based desires can consistently make this exception to their account is not my concern in this paper.
I owe this example to János Kis and Greg Bognár.
I am not claiming that this is a worked out proposal. For instance, for desires to serve as motivational conditions, we must assume the truth of what Stephen Darwall (1997, pp. 308–309) calls existence internalism as well as the truth of the Humean theory of motivation (Smith 1994, Chap. 4). And, certainly, these theories must be worked out and justified. My aim here is only to show that given the existence of these theories, those who want to give a reason-grounding role to desire should rather avoid relying on the first interpretation since this would require confronting all these theories. Advocates of the second premise are not defenseless in this case, so to speak; attacking them via the second interpretation is therefore a much more fruitful strategy.
We need not assume this, in fact, we need not assume that Chang is right even concerning the first interpretation. After all, both interpretations trade on the strength of desire, and unless one is holding a phenomenological account of desire, the force of a desire need not be cast in terms of a force that is felt by the agent. I remain non-committal on this issue.
I believe that this is the interpretation Raz had in mind. It makes sense of his repeated remarks that in tie-breaking situations to explain the agent’s choice we need to invoke, in addition to the agent’s rationality, considerations such as taste, predilections, “and much else besides”. See Raz (1999, p. 117). In my interpretation this means that we need to invoke these factors because they explain the force of the agent’s desire. As Raz remarks elsewhere, “[o]ur chemistry rather than our rationality explain why we want one thing rather than another” (See Raz 1999, p. 66).
Not everyone accepts that this is all there is to rationality. See Broome (2007) for a comprehensive criticism of the view. Here we should also note that Broome (2001), and more recently Brunero (2007) argue that desires—they prefer to speak of intentions—do not provide reasons even in tie-breaking situations. However, they see the Model as articulating a consistency requirement between the agent’s desires and action/intention. And their claim centers on what is called the bootstrapping objection and relates to the ongoing debate on reasons and rationality. But not everyone is happy with this view of the Model and/or with the bootstrapping objection. See Schroeder (2007), Chaps. 5 and 7 for a defense of the Model against the objection, and Kolodny (2005), Scanlon (2007) for an argument that rational requirements are reducible to responsiveness to (conceived) reasons.
The fact that higher-order reasons can conflict has another consequence: that it can happen that the balance of these reasons is such that the agent should not employ affective desires in breaking ties, but should instead choose the less desired alternative. One might think that this is a problem since we are supposed to capture the intuition that in tie-breaking cases one should do what one feels like to do. However, this was true only when we had at our disposal first-order reasons only; now that we can wheel in higher-order reasons, there is no longer any such—rational or intentional—need.
The other ground forms Chang’s negative argument against the first premise: affective desires that are not tie-breaking, but nevertheless are not reason-based. See Chang (2004, pp. 66–68). For similar examples see Copp and Sobel (2002, pp. 258, 267) and Setiya (2007, p. 38). I discuss these examples in my manuscript “Reasons and Desires: The Case of Affective Desires”.
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Acknowledgments
I thank the examiners of my doctoral thesis in Budapest: János Kis, Ferenc Huoranszki and Krister Bykvist. I also thank Ruth Chang for corresponding with me about her views: this has helped to clarify matters a lot. Comments by an anonymous referee for this journal were also very useful; the paper in its present form is to a large extent a result of these comments and suggestions. The paper has also benefited from discussions in the “Acting for a Reason: Normativity and Mentality in a World of Causality” workshop at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, Sweden. I particularly thank my commentator Kent Hurtig for his constructive remarks. Comments from the audience of a talk I gave at the Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association in Aberdeen, Scotland were also helpful. Research on the paper was funded by a Guest Scholarship from the Swedish Institute, by a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Swedish Research Council (Grant number: 435-2007-7830), and by the Hungarian State Eötvös Fellowship.
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Tanyi, A. Desires as additional reasons? The case of tie-breaking. Philos Stud 152, 209–227 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9475-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9475-6