Abstract
This paper argues that there are cases, which various guise of the good-theses concerning desires, intentions and actions would not allow. In these cases the agent acts for considerations that the agent does not regard as good reasons. The considerations render the actions intelligible but not desirable (where desirability and intelligibility can be objective or subjective). These cases are atypical, but nonetheless show that those guise of the good-theses which do not allow them, should be revised. In typical cases the intelligibility of desires, intentions and actions co-varies with their desirability: there are both unintelligible cases without suitable desirability characteristics and cases where desirability characteristics make the desire, intention and action intelligible. The claim here is that there are further more atypical and puzzling, but equally possible cases, where intelligibility and desirability come apart. The paper first introduces the Guise of the Good - debates about desires, intentions, and actions, and suggests distinguishing the category of “acting for a reason” from “acting for a consideration not taken to be a reason”. It then argues that while desirability entails intelligibility, and lack of intelligibility entails lack of desirability, these two cases leave conceptual room for a third category, which is that of intelligibility without desirability. This is so, whether we examine objective or subjective intelligibility and desirability. The claim is meant to apply mutatis mutandis to characteristics of desires, intentions and actions. The paper then provides possible cases of intelligibility without desirability, and defends the view against some objections.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
E.g. Anscombe (1963).
Gary Watson (1975) presents a case in which a squash player feels the urge to smash his racket against his winning opponent. One might have this kind of urge even if one does not believe there is any value to smashing an opponent with a racket.
Velleman (1992 pp. 3–26).
Hawkins (2008, pp. 244–64).
Boyle and Lavin (2010).
Gendler (2008).
Including discussions on expressive action, e.g. Hursthouse (1991).
Note that Anscombe’s version of (1) was slightly broader, stating that the question about reasons always applies to actions, sometimes the answer being “for no reason”.
A rival view concerning (2) is that intention specifies the end or goal of the action, and thus the satisfaction conditions of the action, and thus are needed in telling which attempts have been satisfactory and which not. Yet, the rival view continues, the action so specified can be done for rival reasons. Say, one can save a person from drowning for selfish or unselfish motivations. (The debate on this then turns on rival action-descriptions. See Anscombe 1963; Davidson 1980.
Of these, (3) divides theorists roughly into those who hold that desires are or provide reasons (which are desire-belief-pairs as with Davidson), and those who hold that it is not desires, but desirability or value that is relevant.
Raz adds: “Another example: that one has a duty to perform an action is a reason to perform it, which also shows it to be good, at least in some respect. But that an action will violate one’s duty, or that it will break all the norms, also makes it an intelligible object of choice.” (ibid.). “people do what they do precisely because it is the wrong thing to do, because it is the anomic choice.”
See Dancy (2000).
Anscombe’s view (1963, §38) is that concerning desires, “the question ‘What do you want that for?’ arises—until at last we reach the desirability characterization, about which ‘What do you want that for?’ does not arise, or if it is asked has not the same point.”
The rival Humean view (that Anscombe argues against) is that desiring is not responsive to any features, but rather the starting point: anything can equally well be desired, and what is de facto desired provides (with suitable beliefs) reasons for intentions and actions.
“But is not anything wantable …? It will be instructive to anyone who thinks this to approach someone and say: ‘I want a saucer of mud’ … He is likely to be asked what for; to which let him reply that he does not want it for anything, he just wants it …Would he [the other man] not try to find out in what aspect the object desired is desirable? … Now if the reply is: ‘Philosophers have taught us that anything can be the object of desire; … it merely so happens that I want [it],’ then this is fair nonsense.” (Anscombe 2000, pp. 70–1)
See e.g. Dancy 2004.
Bratman 1987
One usual case of someone desiring, intending, or acting in a way we can “understand” while not regard “justified” is that of normative disagreement, where the agent desires, intends or acts in accordance with her judgements about what is justified. As a bystander, I can often regard that agent as not desiring, intending or doing what is justified (as I think there is some mistake in her judgement), and nonetheless understandable (after all, she desired, intended and did what she thought best – what could be more understandable?). Such cases of normative disagreement will be put to one side for the rest of this essay.
The case comes from Kieran Setiya (2010, p. 90) who writes that “the danger is not a reason for me to flee”, but it is nonetheless a consideration “for which I am doing so”. Setiya uses the phrase “the reason for which I flee”. As I explain below, I would prefer “the motivating consideration for which I flee”, as the agent does not consider the consideration to be a reason for fleeing.
Another usual case of someone (desiring, intending or) acting in a way we can “understand” while not regard “justified” – even in the absence of normative disagreement – is that of non-radical akrasia. That is the case where the agent has some genuine reasons (that render the desire, intention or action understandable) which do not suffice to justify overall the action (or desire or intention) because they are, in the situation, overridden. That case is no great puzzle for understanding, and does not threaten the “Guise of the Good” – thesis: what the agent acts on (desires, intends) is regarded by the agent as a good reason, although somewhat akratically she violates her overall judgement what to do (or desire or intend). Such cases will not be central for this paper.
The agent’s attitude is rather that “I did not have any reason to do it; that I did get some benefit was a silenced consideration. A virtuous agent would not have acted on such a consideration.”
See McDowell 1979.
Quinn (1993) in the same vain contrasted between what it is like to act because one sees something good about the action, and simply finding oneself with an unintelligible urge. The latter type of action is mechanical and alien (See Quinn 1993; Hawkins 2008). As Hawkins (2008, p. 247) explains: “In virtue of the particular way a desired object enters awareness, action based on desire makes sense, in a way in which action based on the urges Quinn describes does not. This all too familiar feature of mental life needs to be accounted for. Describing desire as an evaluative state, one in which the desired object appears good, seems to offer the right kind of explanation. After all, pursuing something that strikes one as good has a kind of internal intelligibility.” (italics added).
Unintelligible desires and pursuits: The agent acts for what he or she finds an unintelligible motivation, which he or she does not regard as a normative reason; the action strikes him or her as worthless.
Alternatively, one may acknowledge that such a commitment is at place, while thinking that one did not meet the commitment (that is, acknowledging that one acted akratically or for a consideration that was no reason).
Humeans of course would say that there are no reasons for intrinsic desires, but the more Aristotelean view we operate with here would say that there are reasons for appropriate desires, and that unintelligible desires are unsupported by reasons. And this paper adds that the Aristotelean view should have conceptual room for cases of intelligible motivation while reasons (or desirability characterizations) are silenced.
Cf. Hawkins’s primitive ‘evaluative impressions’ on what makes sense.
“Defenders of the classical theory are committed to supposing that the end sought—hurting others, or drawing the attention of others—is conceived as being in some way good or at least as a means to some good. So far as I can see, nothing in logic, or experience of human conduct and feeling, requires this to be so. If the agent in some sense places a value on such ends, this amounts to no more than being drawn towards them. That the agent is thus drawn is compatible with his not being at that point in any way guided by considerations counting for and against the desirability of the ends.”(Millar 2004, p. 66). “A natural suggestion, then, is that the constitutive aim of intentional action is that the intended action should in one way or another have a point.”(Millar 2004, p. 67)
“My overall aim here will be to show that what makes for intelligibility in action is being able to answer Anscombe’s question, ‘What do you want that for?’ in a certain way. Raz holds that this way is, or includes, that, according to the agent’s lights, it is good. I will argue that although sometimes that does provide a satisfactory answer, often it does not. I will also argue that citing what is bad or is seen as bad can sometimes suffice.”(Stocker 2004, p. 313). “So, I do not agree that all reasons, including reasonsbad, must have normative force in the sense of being aimed at the good. None the less, I think they can have normative force in other ways. Here are some of these ways. The person with that reasonbad may regret, and think he deserves being chided or mocked for, not having the courage of his convictions when he acts against it or when he simply fails to act on it. Similarly, he may congratulate himself when, despite pressure to the contrary, he acts on it. He may, in this sense, show that he thinks the reasonbad is to be acted on.”(Stocker 2004, p. 313)
I thank an anonymous referee for pressing this point.
References
Anscombe GEM (2000 [1963]) Intention, 2nd edn. Blackwell, Oxford
Boyle M, Lavin D (2010) Goodness and desire. In: Tenenbaum S (ed) Desire, practical reason, and the good. Oxford University Press, New York
Bratman M (1987) Intention, plans, and practical reason. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass
Dancy J (2000) Practical reality. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Dancy J (2004) Ethics without principles. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Davidson D (1980) Essays on actions and events. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Gendler TS (2008) Alief and belief. J Philos 105(10):634–663
Hawkins J (2008) Desiring the bad under the guise of the good. Philos Q 58(231):244–264
Hursthouse R (1991) Arational actions. J Philos 88(2):57–68
McDowell J (1979) Virtue and reason. The Monist 62(3):331–350
Millar A (2004) Understanding people: normativity and rationalizing explanation. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Oddie G (2005) Value, reality, and desire. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Quinn W (1993) Morality and action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Raz J (1999) Engaging reason: on the theory of value and action. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Raz J (2010) On the guise of the good. In: Tenenbaum S (ed) Desire, practical reason, and the good. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 111–137
Setiya K (2010) Sympathy for the devil. In: Tenenbaum S (ed) Desire, practical reason, and the good. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 82–110
Stampe DW (1987) The authority of desire. Philos Rev 96:335–381
Stocker M (1979) Desiring the bad: an essay in moral psychology. J Philos 76:738–753
Stocker M (2004) Raz on the Intelligibility of bad acts. In: Pettit P, Scheffler S, Smith M and Wallace RJ (eds) (2004) Reason and value. Themes from the moral philosophy of Joseph Raz. Claredon Press: Oxford. pp. 303–332
Tenenbaum S (2007) Appearances of the good. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Tenenbaum S (2013) Guise of the good. In: La Follette H (ed.) The international encyclopedia of ethics. Blackwell, pp. 2262–2271
Velleman D (1992) The guise of the good. Noûs 26:3–26
Watson G (1975) Free agency. J Philos 72:205–220
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the organizers and participants of the conference “Acting under ‘the guise of bad’: practical rationality and evil actions”, at University of Vienna, as well Constantine Sandis and participants of the course “Philosophy of Action” at University of Tampere, as well as two anonymous referees, for valuable comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Laitinen, A. On Some Counter-Examples to the Guise of the Good-Thesis: Intelligibility without Desirability. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 21, 21–36 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-017-9850-x
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-017-9850-x