Abstract
How does it happen that our beliefs about what we ought to do cause us to intend to do what we believe we ought to do? This is what John Broome calls the “motivation question.” Broome’s answer to the motivation question is that we can bring ourselves, by our own efforts, to intend to do what we believe we ought to do by exercising a special agential capacity: the capacity to engage in what he calls “enkratic reasoning.” My aim is to evaluate this answer. In doing so, I shall focus on three core aspects of Broome’s overall account: his account of ought, his account of enkratic rationality, and his account of enkratic reasoning in particular. In each case I suggest there are problems.
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Notes
Broome does not discuss the alternative idea that there is some kind of conceptual or constitutive connection between normative beliefs of a certain kind and intentions such that if we believe we ought to do something we will thereby (defeasibly) intend to do it (insofar as we are rational). See e.g. Smith (1994, esp. chs. 3, 5).
There are many things that we mean by “ought” such that our beliefs involving them do not raise, and hence cannot plausibly be at issue in, the motivation question. Take the so-called predictive ought, as when I say to a student: “I’m reading your paper now, and I ought to be finished by 2 o’clock.” Beliefs involving the predictive ought do not raise the motivation question. That’s because, in the typical case, believing that I ought in this merely predictive sense to be finished by 2 o’clock will not cause me now to intend to be finished by 2 o’clock; and insofar as my belief does not cause a corresponding intention, the motivation question simply does not arise. If, for some reason, my belief does happen now to cause me to form the corresponding intention, the explanation will presumably involve some psychological quirk that is relatively devoid of philosophical interest. (Indeed, in the typical case, the role of such a belief might even be said to be, in part, to foreclose the need to form an intention to be finished by 2 o’clock. The point is that I am sufficiently confident that I will be finished by 2 o’clock without having now to form an intention to be finished by 2 o’clock.)
For the purposes of evaluating Broome’s test it will be enough to deal with the rough formulation of Enkrasia given above. I feel at liberty to do so given that Broome also employs this formulation of Enkrasia in explicating the central ought. For Broome’s final and most precise formulation of Enkrasia, see RTR, p. 170.
Broome’s argument for its centrality rests on the idea that Enkrasia “constitutes one of the main bridges between theoretical and practical rationality” and that our beliefs involving the ought to which Enkrasia applies are special in that “they engage with practical rationality” (RTR, pp. 23–24).
It might be wondered why I don’t focus on Enkrasia proper. Broome’s elaboration and defense of Enkrasia is compelling and ingenious. But, so far as I can tell, Enkrasia plays no significant role in Broome’s answer to the motivation question beyond allegedly (though, to my mind, mistakenly) explaining the class of oughts that are at play in the motivation question.
Is this really true? First, it might be thought that Enkratic Permission is somehow validated or vindicated by Enkrasia, or vice versa. As a matter of fact, I believe that Enkratic Permission is not valid; I shall say why shortly. But even if it were valid, I see no reason to suppose that its validity is explained by the validity of Enkrasia, or vice versa. Unless I have misunderstood something in Broome’s account, nothing seems to rule out the possibility that Enkratic Permission could be true even though Enkrasia is false, or that Enkrasia could be true and yet Enkratic Permission false. That’s because Enkratic Permission is in one sense weaker and in another sense stronger than Enkrasia. It’s weaker than Enkrasia in the sense that whereas Enkrasia is a requirement, Enkratic Permission is a permission. So it seems at least possible that a skeptic about Enkrasia might allow that an agent is rationally permitted to form attitudes in accordance with Enkratic Permission while insisting that she would not necessarily exhibit any irrationality in violating Enkrasia. Enkratic Permission is stronger than Enkrasia in the sense that it involves the basing relation. So, again, it seems possible that a skeptic about Enkratic Permission might allow that an agent is necessarily irrational in violating Enkrasia while insisting that she is not rationally entitled to base an intention to act on a belief that she ought to perform that act.
Second, some of Broome’s remarks might be thought to suggest that he takes the fact that we are disposed to comply with Enkrasia to provide an answer to the motivation question—just not the right kind of agency-manifesting answer. For example, he writes: “We can call in rationality to help answer the motivation question. We can say that rationality requires people to intend to do what they believe they ought to do, and that it requires them to be disposed to do so—to have the enkratic disposition.” (RTR, p. 2). But, as Broome would readily concede, unlike the disposition to form intentions in accordance with Enkratic Permission, the disposition to comply with Enkrasia is simply the wrong kind of disposition for the purposes of answering the motivation question. It can explain why there is often a match between our intentions and our normative beliefs. But, of course, there are a number of different ways in which we might achieve such a match without our beliefs about what we ought to do causing us to intend to do what we believe we ought to do. First, it might be that where we believe we ought to X and yet don’t yet intend to X, our enkratic disposition means that we lose the belief that we ought to X. (Suppose that it causes us to revisit the issue of whether we ought to X and to interrogate relentlessly our reasons for believing that we ought to X—to the point where we lose the belief that we ought to X.) Second, it might be that where we believe we ought to X, our enkratic disposition means that we intend to X, but not because of our belief that we ought to X, but because of something else: say, a belief that our Xing has some non-normative property F (in virtue of which we take it to be the case that we ought to X). Third, it might be that where we believe we ought to X, our enkratic disposition means that we intend to X, that this is because of our belief that we ought to X, but that the “because” is a constitutive rather than a causal because. (One might think this if one thinks that intentions (or at least certain kinds of intentions) just are (special kinds of) beliefs about what we ought to do (see Schroeder 2009, p. 237; cf Scanlon 2007).
The amendments are friendly in two ways. First, the ensuing principle—Enkratic Permission***—represents an improvement on Enkratic Permission. It suggests a less restrictive answer to the motivation question; it can readily accommodates cases like the case where I intend to buy an anniversary present for Marie-Charlotte on the basis of believing that I ought to. Second, Enkratic Permission*** remains the right kind of principle for the purposes of offering the kind of answer to the motivation question that Broome is looking for: one that involves our bringing ourselves to intend to do what we believe we ought to do by engaging in correct reasoning.
One might deny this if one holds that moral requirements are “verdictive” (see Dancy 2000).
A marked content is a proposition with a “marker” to indicate the kind of attitude you have towards the proposition. For example, a very simple kind of modus ponens rule tells you to derive the marked content <q; belief> from the marked contents <p; belief> and <if p then q; belief>. Consider one of Broome’s examples. Suppose that you wake up and hear that it is raining, so you form the belief that it is raining. Suppose, moreover, that you also believe that if it is raining, the snow will melt. And suppose that you derive <the snow will melt; belief> from <it is raining; belief> and <if it is raining, then the snow will melt; belief> by correctly following the aforementioned modus ponens rule.
Full disclosure: This makes me skeptical that Broome has succeeded in identifying sufficient conditions for reasoning. But I won’t insist on that point here. My interest is primarily in evaluating Broome’s answer to the motivation question. What I do want to insist upon, then, is simply that the conditions that Broome takes to be sufficient for reasoning are not sufficient to explain how we might come to form certain intentions on the basis of our normative beliefs in the special agency-involving way that Broome takes it to be incumbent on any satisfactory answer to the motivation question to explain.
This reasoning test is clearly related to but also distinct from the rational basing test we offered above. The most important difference is that the reasoning test involves considering whether, in fact, the agent is disposed to adduce certain considerations in response to a “why?” question, not whether it is apt to do so.
I take the idea of “holding the contents of an attitude in mind” from Broome (RTR, p. 231). However, unlike Broome, I am assuming that reasoning can involve holding the contents of your attitudes in mind without operating on those particular contents. You are holding them in mind in the background while operating on the contents of other attitudes.
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Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this article was presented at a workshop on Rationality Through Reasoning at the Australian National University in May 2015. I am grateful to Geoff Brennan, John Broome, Rachael Briggs, Garrett Cullity, R. J. Leland, Philip Pettit, and Kai Spiekermann for helpful feedback. I am especially grateful to John Broome, not only for his typically insightful remarks on that occasion, but for numerous highly profitable and enjoyable conversations about normativity, rationality and reasoning over the past 8 years. Research for the article was supported by DP120101507 and DP140102468.
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Southwood, N. The motivation question. Philos Stud 173, 3413–3430 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0719-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0719-y