Dr. Schueler - The Humean Theory of Motivation Rejected

Thanks again for sending me your paper. I found it to be very interesting. Nevertheless, I remain unconvinced and think that the sort of objections you (and McDowell) have raised for the Humean view have decent replies (though I may be wrong here and am very open to have my mind changed). That said, given that you already know the contents of your own paper, rather than summarizing it here I will just jump into questions I have about it and problems I see with it.

There are a few very important points in the paper on which, I think, the argument turns. Thus, it would be best to consider these points and whether or not they are true. As for practical reasoning, I am inclined to agree with you that reasoning is done over beliefs and thus it must be beliefs about desires rather than desires themselves that motivate action. (However I am not 100% sure about this. Does a baby cry because he first forms the belief that he desires his bottle and that crying will get him it? I don't know.) What I do not find plausible, however, is that one can believe that he wants X but not in fact want X. You made a comment to the effect that one might say "I am getting on the bus because I want to go to my sister's office and because this bus will take me there" yet that he might be wrong in thinking that the bus will so take him and that analogously he may be wrong about his wanting to go there. I doubt this, not because I am confused by Nagel's point but because I believe the two beliefs are disanalogous. One may indeed be wrong about his beliefs about the external world and this is the case because what makes his belief true or false is external to him making his grasping of the truth dependent on his perceptual capabilities. There is a mediating factor between the belief and its truth maker; thus, there is room for error. However, when we take the case of one's beliefs about his perceptions of the world the mediating factor is eliminated and with it the room for error. For example, If I believe that I am having the sensory experience of yellow I can not be wrong (for how could I be when the truth maker of my belief is internal to me?). Now in the case of desires I am inclined to suppose that they are analogous with the latter case rather than the former. My reasoning here is simply that what makes a belief about a desire true is internal and unmediated which, in my eyes, would seem to make such beliefs immune to error. (In your paper, however, you did mention that many philosophers think that we can be fallible with regard to our own mental states so maybe I am wrong in thinking as I do...)

If I am correct in my above thinking, then it would follow that whenever one had a belief that he desired something it would be true that he did in fact desire it. This seems quite intuitive as what else, save the desire itself, could be the cause of my believing that I desired something?

Next, I would like to discuss what I find to be an important terminological switch which I think is unjustified. The switch I am referring to is from "want" to "a good idea". This switch is made as a result of Nagel's point that whenever one acts on the basis of some motivation it follows that he wanted that which motivated him. Your thought is that Nagel's point deals with distinct sense of want which means the point or purpose of an action and not the sense of want which is what the Humean is after (i.e. desire). In all honesty, however, (though I admit that this may be a result of dimwittedness on my part rather than philosophical acumen) I do not think that there is any such sense of the word 'want'. The reason I find this other sense to be dubious is because I can not (though again this may be personal deficiency) can not think of any instance when 'want' is used in that way. There is, also, no dictionary (that I have found) which includes this second sense of the word and thus I am inclined to doubt that there is such a sense. Moreover, I think that Nagel's point just amounts to the fact that whatever it is that motivates you to act is the same as that which is your strongest want. Or, in other words, whatever is your strongest want will motivate you or that which motivates you is your strongest want. As a result of all this, I think that the switch from "want" to "a good idea" is unjustified. I object to this for two reasons: 1) because it would be very easy to misunderstand "a good idea" as being an idea that was good on the basis of some standard other than the agents wants and 2) because if "a good idea" is understood properly as being just a want, it can only be understood as an instrumental want. The second point is the more important of the two and I think that it is true because one can not call those things which are wanted for their own sakes "good ideas". For example, If I say "I want to survive this shipwreck so that I can achieve the goal of my life: painting a masterpiece", then in relation to my wanting to achieve my goal it would be a good idea for me to survive. However, if I want to survive the shipwreck just because I want to survive, then saying that surviving is a good idea does not make sense. In other words, saying that something is a good idea requires there to be a relation between the idea and that which makes it good, but for that which is wanted-for-its-own-sake there is no such relation.

However, in the example you gave, the "want" which was changed to "good idea" was an instrumental want; you wanted to go to your sister's office so that you could fulfill your greater want of getting to campus. Here is where I think another problem arises and is one that is tied to the concepts of putting together beliefs and wants and background wants. You say that given that there are better ways for you to get to campus, it is not a good idea to go to your sister's office and thus it is not what you wanted. And this, if it worked, would also be an example of believing that you wanted something while in fact you did not. The problem here is that what is being claimed to be wanted (i.e. to go to your sister's office) is an instrumental want which is only wanted insofar as it aids you in attaining some other, higher order want. These instrumental wants are therefore subject to scrutiny in a way that wants-for-their-own-sake are not. This is because instrumental wants are wanted only because they are believed to help achieve that which is wanted for its own sake. As a result, one's instrumental wants can be judged on the basis of how successful they are in having their achievement satisfy one's wants-for-their-own-sake. These higher order wants, however, can not be so criticized. One might say that your taking the bus to your sister's office is not what you wanted or not a good idea because it does not help you achieve some higher order, for-its-own-sake want (such as enlightening young minds for example). So, the point of all this is that one can not be wrong about his wants when they are wants-for-their-own-sake, but he can be wrong when it comes to instrumental wants because their ability to fulfill his higher order wants is subject to criticism. (I feel as though I have done a poor job explaining myself on this point, so here is a very simple example which should help: Imagine a man who wanted nothing more out of life than to fix and old car that he owned. Suppose that this was his one greatest want that was wanted entirely for its own sake. After examining the car he came to the false conclusion that the one thing he needed to fix the car was a new timing belt. Thus, he put all his efforts into the project of acquiring a timing belt. Clearly, the man wants a timing belt, but he only wants it as a means to something else. If it was pointed out to him that the problem was something else, and not a timing belt issue, then he would no longer want a new timing belt. But what is important here is that nothing at all could be pointed out to him which would change his wanting to fix that car. The reason is because instrumental wants are formed partly by beliefs about the world whereas wants-for-their-own-sake are not).

The reason that I think this is relevant to the "put together" "background" dilemma is because by understanding the difference between instrumental wants and for-their-own-sake-wants the dilemma can be dissolved. What needs to be present when things are being "put together" is an instrumental want while at the same time there is a for-their-own-sake-want in the "background". I think that understanding things this way can accommodate the example you gave and maintain the Humean theory.

One small point: At one point you identified a person as self-centered because he acts entirely out of his own desires. I disagree. I think that a self-centered person is one who only desires things for himself. Whereas the compassionate person is the one who desires things for others as well as for himself. But this is a small point.

Those are my thoughts. I am probably wrong in a lot of places but I thought that it would be best to put down exactly what I thought so that I could be corrected and learn from my mistakes. Anyway, it was a fun paper and I certainly do like this topic.