Dan Egonsson-Preference and Information (Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Philosophy-Lund Humphries Pub LTD (2007)

PREFERENCE AND INFORMATION
Is it important to our quality of life that the preferences we satisfy are rational and
well-informed? Standard preferentialist theories allege that a persons preferences
and the satisfaction of them are the correct measure of well-being. In preference-
sensitive theories, preferences are important but do not count for everything. This
raises the question of whether we ought to make demands on our preferences.
In this book, Egonsson presents a critical analysis of the Full Information Account
of the Good, which claims that only the satisfaction of rational and fully informed
preferences is of value for the individual. The problems he deals with include: how
is an information requirement to be formulated and shaped? Is it possible to design
a requirement that is both neutral to the agents epistemic situation and reasonable?
Does it make sense to claim that some are better off if we satisfy the preferences they
would have had in some merely hypothetical circumstances?
This is an important new book on preference rationality which will be of great
interest to academics and students of ethics, quality of life, and rationality.
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Preference and Information
DAN EGONSSON
Lund University, Sweden
Dan Egonsson 2007
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1988, to be identied as the author of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Egonsson, Dan
Preference and information. (Ashgate new critical thinking in philosophy)
1.Preferences (Philosophy) 2.Ethics
I.Title
170
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Egonsson, Dan.
Preference and information / Dan Egonsson.
p. cm. (Ashgate new critical thinking in philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7546-5725-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Preferences (Philosophy) 2. Practical reason. 3. Quality of life. I. Title. II. Series.
B105.P62E46 2007
171.2dc22
2006008836
ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-5725-5
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.
For Veronica
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface xi
Introduction 1
1 Analysing Disappointment 7
1.1 Sumners Example 7
1.2 Disappointment and the Vigorousness of a Preference 8
1.3 The Need for an Information Requirement 9
1.4 Two Understandings of Object 12
1.5 Fumertons Distinction 13
1.6 Fumertons Distinction and the Information Requirement 16
2 The Quantitative Element 19
2.1 Disappointment in the Intentional Understanding 19
2.2 Preference and Satisfaction Rationality 20
2.3 The Wittgenstein Case 21
2.4 Recapitulation 24
2.5 Buying a Pig in a Poke 25
3 The Qualitative Element 27
3.1 The Desire Satisfaction Theory 27
3.2 Feelings and Reactions to Feelings 29
3.3 Knowing and Having an Experience 31
3.4 Vividness and Possibility 33
3.5 The Time Aspect 33
3.6 Two Situations 35
3.7 Versions of the Information Requirement 38
3.8 A Problem of Possible Alternatives 39
3.9 A Comment on Metaphorical Language 42
4 The Qualitative Element Criticized 43
4.1 Maximization 44
4.2 The Hypnotist and Drug Examples 48
4.3 Gibbards First Example 49
4.4 Gibbards Second Example 51
4.5 Savulescu on Obstructive Desires 52
5 Comparing Examples 55
5.1 Producing a Neurosis 55
Preference and Information viii
5.2 Thanking Yourself Afterwards 57
5.3 A Standing Desire for Future Satisfaction 58
5.4 The Importance of the Future 59
5.5 Ought Future Wants to be Discounted? 62
5.6 Conclusion and Coda 64
6 Truth and Deliberation 71
6.1 The Truth Element and Epistemic Circumstances 71
6.2 The Availability Qualication 73
6.3 Two Models 74
6.4 Deliberative Correctness 75
6.5 Conclusion 76
7 Intrinsic and Final Preferences 79
7.1 Korsgaards Distinctions 79
7.2 Combinations 81
7.3 Applications of the Dependency Idea 82
7.4 Moore on Intrinsicality 85
7.5 Strong and Weak Dependency 86
7.6 Negative Conditionals 89
7.7 Moores Value as a Whole 90
7.8 Another Objection 92
7.9 The Model of Instrumental Preference Rationality 93
7.10 Returning to the Discussion of Preference Objects 94
7.11 Objects and Non-Instrumental Preferences 96
7.12 Concluding Remarks 97
8 Strongly Intrinsic Preferences 99
8.1 Consistency 99
8.2 An Example 104
8.3 Brandts Conception of Irrational Intrinsic Preferences 105
8.4 Kussers Argument against Brandt 109
8.5 Conclusion 110
9 A Problem of Hypothetical Approval 111
9.1 Traditional Formulations 111
9.2 The Punk Rock Example 113
9.3 Railtons Objectied Subjective Interests 116
9.4 The First Argument 117
9.5 The Second Argument 120
9.6 Rosatis Two-Tier Internalism 122
9.7 Conclusion 124
Contents ix
10 Hypothetical Approval in Medicine 127
10.1 Life-Sustaining Treatment 127
10.2 The Conscious-T Case 129
10.3 Consent 130
10.4 Psychiatric Care 136
10.5 Assessing the Best Interest Model 140
10.6 Assessing the Incompetency Model 141
10.7 Two Final Psychiatric Cases 144
10.8 Conclusion 144
11 Summary and Conclusions 147
11.1 Summary 147
11.2 Conclusions 152
Bibliography 157
Index 161
Preface
I have been thinking about preference rationality for years, and think I know why.
Psychologically it can be traced back to 1990, when I felt exhausted after having
completed my thesis. I thought I had nished my career as a philosopher too, and
therefore turned down an offer to take part in a conference on preferences, together
with many philosophers I had admired for a long time. Pretty soon I started to regret
this and also started to ponder over what subject I could have chosen. I believe that
this is the best explanation for the manuscript I then began and have completed with
this book. But it would probably not have happened without a grant funded by the
Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, which I have held for two years. I am
grateful for this help.
I am also deeply indebted to a number of people for helpful comments and criticism:
David Alm, who read and corrected the nal manuscript, sa Andersson, David
Bengtsson, Johan Brnnmark, Krister Bykvist, Alan Crozier, Roger Fjellstrm, Lena
Halldenius, Magnus Jiborn, Mats Johansson, Veronica Johansson, Jonas Josefsson,
Sigurdur Kristinsson, Andreas Lind, Jonas Olsson, Erik Persson, Ingmar Persson,
Bjrn Petersson, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Toni Rnnow-Rasmussen, Caj Strandberg,
Daniel Svensson, Anders Tolland, Annika Wallin and other participants at seminars
in Lund and Gothenburg. Many warm thanks, all of you!
D.E.
Lund, December 2005
Introduction
The concept of well-being is central in ethics and important in any plausible moral
theory. But how is it to be understood? In the history of ethics both perfectionist and
hedonist theories of welfare have had a prominent place. Perfectionists, ever since
Aristotle, focus on the ideal human life as a function of human nature and claim
that there is a prudential value in such things as accomplishments, understanding,
deep personal relations and so on, irrespective of whether these things are objects of
subjective valuation. So my well-being, in this theory, is objectively affected by the
extent to which these things (and other things on the perfectionist list) have a place
in my life.
Perfectionism has played an important role this discussion, but is only one
example among others of an objective theory of well-being.
1
Perfectionism is
ultimately built on an idea of what makes human beings so special, whereas other
forms of objective theories often concentrate on needs. A person might have met her
basic needs without having accomplished the items on a perfectionist list.
Subjective theories, on the other hand, claim that our well-being depends on our
attitudes. It does not matter what I have accomplished and whether I have what I
need to survive and so on, as long as I have no positive attitude to these things. For
a long time hedonism was the main alternative among subjective theories. But in
the latter part of the twentieth century the focus of interest for subjectivists changed
from hedonic attitudes to wants, desires and preferences.
You may have an interest in the concept of well-being for many reasons. One
is the purely existential reason of wanting to know what the difference is between
a prudentially good and bad life. This question concerns any person and any being
with a volitional life; a thinking being is hardly indifferent to the quality of her own
life. But you may also have an interest in these questions for altruistic or moral
reasons. Only under exceptional circumstances are thinking beings indifferent to the
quality of other persons lives.
Nevertheless, the concept of well-being has a more central place in some moral
theories than in others. In some theories well-being is all that counts; nothing but
well-being is valuable for its own sake. Utilitarianism is one example of such a
theory. In utilitarianism this view is combined with consequentialism and a view
concerning how to count the sum total of welfare. Traditionally, utilitarianism has
had a subjective view of welfare and, as I said, nowadays many utilitarians believe
that welfare consists in having ones preferences satised.
1
James Grifn states that objective accounts focus on an index of goods that are good
to everyone, regardless of the differences between them; perfectionist accounts focus on a
species ideal, Well-Being (Oxford, 1986), p. 56.
Preference and Information 2
If you are a utilitarian which I am not you may read this study as centred
on the following issue: If you take as your main ethical objective the satisfaction
of preferences, what kind of preferences are you to concentrate on? Are some
preferences more important than others and are in fact some preferences to be
disregarded altogether? And in particular, how are we to answer this question in
relation to the rational foundation of preferences?
If you are not a utilitarian and prefer another theory, I will assume that preferences
and their satisfaction may nevertheless have importance for how you handle the
question of the meaning of life. The meaning question has two parts, or can be treated
in two different ways. Partly as a question of purpose and impersonal value: Why
am I living, what is the use of my existence, and how do I answer this question?
And partly it can be treated as a question of personal value: Am I faring well, am
I ourishing, is my life valuable for me, and how do I answer such questions? In
this study I focus on the second question, and assume without much argument that
in whatever way you analyse the question of personal value you assign at least some
importance to the difference between leading a personally valuable life willingly or
unwillingly. To paraphrase Aristotle, a preference for the content of a life that is
valuable irrespective of whether you prefer to lead such a life or not may add to the
value of such a life. A theory afrming that it is better for you to have your preferences
satised than frustrated is what Krister Bykvist has called preference-sensitive.
2
I
assume that many ethical theories are in some sense preference-sensitive, although
some philosophers would deny that it is personally valuable in itself to have ones
preferences satised.
3
I will soon come back to them.
And if we as non-utilitarians are sensitive to preferences in meaning questions,
we will have to face the same question as the utilitarians: does the importance of
a preference depend on whether or not it has a rational foundation? If so, in what
way?
Some moral theories are, as I claimed, more than preference-sensitive; in
preferentialism preferences count for everything. In a similar vein some value theories
independently of what kind of moral theory they are combined with are also more
than preference-sensitive. I take Peter Railtons (and others) dispositional theory of
value to be of such a kind. When I discuss this theory I will forget about its general
claims (of analysing value generally) and will treat it as a theory concerning how to
understand preference value, that is, the kind of personal value that is generated or
constituted by preference satisfaction.
In other words, I take the following discussion to be relevant whether or not
your moral or value theory is founded on preferences. If you have a theory for either
rightness or value, it is enough that it is sensitive to preferences as far as personal
value is concerned. If you have no such theory, I assume the discussion will be
important nevertheless.
2
Krister Bykvist, What is Wrong with Past Preferences?, in Wlodek Rabinowicz
(ed.), Value and Choice (Lund, 2001), p. 18.
3
See, for instance, Torbjrn Tnnsj, Vrdetik (Stockholm, 1998), pp. 89 ff.
Introduction 3
*
There are many possible qualications on those preferences that form the basis of
personal value. For example, some philosophers argue that we are to count only
preferences that are self-regarding and not anti-social. I will concentrate on the
question of what importance the concepts of rationality and information have in
relation to preference value. How can we formulate a rationality requirement? Can
we do without it? Can we ever formulate it in an acceptable way?
The focus of attention will be on one traditional way of regarding preference
rationality, which is usually called the full information account of preference
rationality, claiming that a preference is rational or true only in relation to logic and
all relevant information. I will refer to this view as the information requirement.
Although I will assess this rationality concept and even as I said question the
need for it, I will not in this study discuss the radical claim that there is no such
notion as a rational and fully informed preference that can be made sense of.
4
I shall
assume there is and, so to speak, play the game of preference rationality.
*
My focus will be on the evaluative question whether the information requirement
gives a reasonable (partial) account of quality of life. In the study, however, this
question will, just as I said above, also lead to a question of what an agent or
benefactor has reason to do (for instance, what is in the agents rational interests).
I do not want to take a meta-ethical stand concerning the reducibility of values to
norms. I leave the question open as to the exact logical relation between the personal
value of having a rational preference satised and whether and to what extent an
agent or benefactor has reason to act on the basis of this value (preference). In the
arguments to come I lean on the assumption that the agent or benefactor has reason
to do what will promote the fullment of some desire which the agent has, provided
that this fullment is valuable for the agent.
This can also be seen as a distinction between personal value and choice-
worthiness, and generally I would say that, speaking about a persons life as a whole,
the personal value of her life is correlated with its choice-worthiness, that is to say,
there is a correlation between the quality of a persons life and the extent to which
she should choose it for personal reasons.
T. M. Scanlon would not agree:
A person who abandons a valued ambition in order to help his family may have made
a net sacrice in the quality of his life, by giving up the accomplishments he would
have made, even if the experiential quality of the life he chooses is no lower than that of
the one he forgoes. It may, for example, involve more joy and less struggle, stress, and
4
See Derek Part, Rationality and Reasons, in Dan Egonsson, Jonas Josefsson, Bjrn
Petersson and Toni Rnnow-Rasmussen (eds), Exploring Practical Philosophy (Aldershot,
2001), p. 27.
frustration. The life he lives could therefore be more choiceworthy and involve no loss
in experiential quality while still being a worse life for him, in the sense with which I am
here concerned.
5
If we distinguish between personal and impersonal choice-worthiness, that is to say,
between what I ought to do from my personal perspective and out of care solely for
my own quality of life on the one hand, and what I ought to do from an impersonal
perspective and out of care for others on the other, I believe there is a correlation also
in Scanlons example. For impersonal reasons I ought to abandon my ambition and
help my family although I ought to do something else for personal reasons.
However, if we narrow the focus from our lives as wholes to the elements in
the make-up of our lives, then we get a slightly different picture. The fact that my
preference is rational and would, if satised, contribute to the value of my life
does not imply that it ought to be satised, not even in the personal sense. It may
well be that my quality of life on the whole will diminish if it is satised. In a
preference-sensitive theory this is so in a trivial sense, since the satisfaction of a
rational preference may render other accomplishments impossible. But it seems to
be so in preferentialism too, since the satisfaction of a particular rational preference
may interfere with other rational preferences of mine, for instance ones that I will
develop later in life.
*
Before I start, let me also comment on the concept of well-being. I think there is
an important difference between welfare (and similar notions) on the one hand and
well-being (and similar notions) on the other. In order to emphasize this difference
I prefer to describe it as a difference between welfare and quality of life. Welfare
is what it says; it is faring well and having a good time, whereas quality of life is
leading a life that is valuable for the agent.
6
An agent may lead a life that is valuable
for her without faring well her life may be full of suffering and sorrow but be
elevated. This, I take it, may be valuable for her and make her life into a life that is
better for her (than for instance a life with less suffering but also less elevation).
And so, when discussing the meaning of life in value terms, I prefer to distinguish
between welfare values and quality values. Often when philosophers question the
value of preference satisfaction per se I believe they have in mind welfare value.
And with this I may agree: if I am worried about whether or not my lost child is
faring well and if unknown to me he is faring well, this fact in itself (and so the fact
that my preference concerning his welfare is satised) would not affect my welfare
I am not faring better because of this fact. But I would say that my life is better if
5
T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), pp. 3856.
6
I believe that there is no way of dening a personal value other than in terms of
what increases the agents well-being: in order for something to be valuable for an agent its
existence will have to make her life into a better life than its non-existence. If autonomy and
living an autonomous life is valuable for her, then it makes her life better for herself.
Introduction 5
this important preference is satised. In a similar vein I would say that it adds to the
quality of someones life that he is buried near his beloved wife, although it would
be strange to say that he is faring well by such an arrangement.
So I believe that we may more easily see the rationale behind this study if we
think of the meaning questions and prudence in terms of the quality values.
Chapter 1
Analysing Disappointment
1.1 Sumners Example
Let us start the discussion by considering an example from L. W. Sumners book
Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics:
Suppose that I nd myself at a career crossroads when I am in college. On the one hand,
I am a star pitcher on the baseball team, courted by scouts who assure me that I have an
excellent chance of making it to the major leagues. On the other hand, I also have a brilliant
record in philosophy, with the prospect of a career in university teaching. Up to now these
two career paths have been compatible, but now the former would lead me to the minor
leagues while the latter would take me to graduate school. Because I realize that choosing
either option will effectively foreclose the other, I investigate both as thoroughly as I can
before deciding in favour of the long-range security of a teaching career. I go to graduate
school, earn my doctorate, and land a job in a good philosophy department. There I nd
the demands of teaching and writing to be pretty well as I anticipated. Indeed, as the years
pass everything goes more or less as expected, except for the growing realization that this
life is just not for me. My dissatisfaction at rst manifests itself only in a free-oating
irritability, but after a while it deepens into apathy and depression.
1
This seems to be an example of disappointment. I choose a kind of life which for
various reasons disappoints me. I choose an academic life but realize after a while
that I should not have chosen it.
But in the example didnt I get roughly what I expected to get? Will I be
disappointed if I get what I want, or at least more or less what I wanted? What is
there to be disappointed at?
I believe that this oddity has nothing to do with the concept of disappointment.
Instead it is a strangeness or paradox of life. People often express this feeling of
emptiness or disappointment after having obtained what they have dreamt of.
For instance, there is a quotation of the businessman Donald Trump where he
confesses:
Its a rare person who can achieve a major goal in life and not almost immediately start
feeling sad, empty, and a little lost. If you look at the record which in this case means
newspapers, magazines, and TV news youll see that an awful lot of people who achieve
success, from Elvis Presley to Ivan Boesky, lose their direction or their ethics. Actually, I
1
L. W. Sumner, Welfare, Happiness and Ethics (Oxford, 1996), p. 129.
dont have to look at anyone elses life to know thats true. Im as susceptible to that pitfall
as anyone else
2
This is also a theme that Schopenhauer developed out of inspiration from Indian
philosophy the melancholia of desire fullment. For Schopenhauer it is a general
and existential description of life. For us the important thing is that people actually
report that they have achieved what they have dreamt of and striven for without
feeling satised. And let us accept what they say.
1.2 Disappointment and the Vigorousness of a Preference
When we think of these experiences of disappointment, emptiness and melancholia in
connection with desire fullment, I think we make a presumption that these feelings
exist, in relation to a want or preference that is still vigorous: I feel disappointment
only as long as I either have the want (the fullment of which made me disappointed)
or am inuenced by it (even if it is fading away). I do not feel disappointed in relation
to a want that I no longer have.
It might be important for preferentialism (including a preference-sensitive theory)
to consider the difference between the following three cases. In case one you satisfy
a preference you still have. In case two you satisfy a preference you begin to lose. In
case three you satisfy a preference you no longer have. Case one is uncontroversial
there is at least a prima facie value in this activity. Case three is more controversial.
Is it valuable and even possible to satisfy a preference that does not exist?
We may distinguish between wants that are, what Derek Part famously has
called, implicitly conditional on their own persistence
3
and wants that are not
conditional in this way, and then claim that there is a case for satisfying wants in
the latter category even when they do not exist. You may claim there is a value in
satisfying a want that the agent would want to be satised even in a situation where
he no longer has the want.
I would say that the situation we are discussing, that is, disappointment, emptiness
and melancholia, is an example of case two above; it is a situation where you begin
to lose the preference that you feel disappointed in regard to. I even believe you
may lose the preference as a reaction to your disappointment. This means that,
in view of what I said about the third case, the value of satisfying such a want is
not uncontroversial. I would say that this value depends on whether the want is
conditional on its own persistence.
Realistically, are these wants (that is, those in Sumners example and Donald
Trumps case) conditional in this way? I believe they might be. And that might also
2
Quoted from Peter Singer, How are we to live (Oxford, 1997), p. 12.
3
Derek Part, Reasons and Persons (Oxford, 1984), p. 151. I believe that this kind
of preference is an instance of what Peter Railton has described as a goal-setting desire.
He writes: one embraces a desire, or accepts it as goal setting, when one desires that it be
effective in regulating ones life, Facts, Values, and Norms (Cambridge, 2003), p. 52.
Analysing Disappointment 9
be the explanation why I have these feelings of disappointment and emptiness I
expected not only to live the life of a philosopher (or capitalist), I also expected this
kind of life to satisfy me; I did not just want to teach philosophy, I wanted to have
the pleasures of teaching when doing so. I did not want to give my life to philosophy
whatever that would take me to. I was not intent on teaching philosophy under any
conditions. So my want was probably conditional.
In other words, if I believe there is a value in satisfying preferences, then I might
be disturbed by the fact that the ambition to be a teaching philosopher in Sumners
example probably was conditional on its own persistence. I wanted to be a teaching
philosopher but probably not in a situation where I had ceased to have such a want.
I believe this is a realistic understanding of Sumners example (as well as Donald
Trumps) in spite of the fact that Sumner talks about getting more or less what he
expected to get.
1.3 The Need for an Information Requirement
Do we need an information requirement in this type of example (Sumners and
Donald Trumps)? Do we need to ask whether a preference rests on all the correct
information before we satisfy it? Could we not just say that we should not satisfy
preferences that are conditional on their own persistence in a situation where they
no longer exist?
There is a need, you might claim, for the information requirement in the analysis
whatever we think about the nature of these wants:
Suppose rst that I am right when I claim that these wants are (at least implicitly)
conditional on their own existence. I want to be an academic only on condition that
I still want to be one when I am one. If so, it seems that it would be irrational for
me to choose an academic career, because I will actually not continue to enjoy being
or want to be an academic when I eventually am one. So in view of the fact that my
preference is conditional on its own existence and the fact that it will not persist
when it is satised, it is irrational to try to satisfy it.
I may admit that it would be irrational to try to satisfy my preference in this
situation. This does not show that the preference is irrational, supposing that we
understand the rationality of a preference in terms of completeness and accuracy of
its belief foundation.
For instance, consider the way J. C. Harsanyi formulates the information
requirement:
Any sensible ethical theory must make a distinction between rational wants and irrational
wants, or between rational preferences and irrational preferences. It would be absurd to
assert that we have the same moral obligation to help other people in satisfying their
utterly unreasonable wants as we have to help them in satisfying their very reasonable
desires a persons true preferences are the preferences he would have if he had all the
relevant factual information, always reasoned with the greatest possible care, and were in
a state of mind most conducive to rational choice.
4
In due course I will discuss whether particularly the last part of this quotation
provides a reasonable account of what it takes for a preference to be rational. But it
will do as a point of departure.
5
We may say that my want to be a teaching philosopher (assuming now that this
want is conditional on its own existence) as a matter of fact is rational, because I
continue to prefer being a philosopher on condition that I would enjoy it, even when
I know that I will not enjoy being a philosopher when I am one. In other words,
I may have all the relevant information and I might know full well that the day I
am a teacher at the philosophy department, I will lose my preference for that kind
of life. Still I might say to myself: yes, I know that as a matter of fact I will cease
to enjoy being a philosopher the day I become one, but that does not change my
attitude towards a situation in which I by hypothesis would prefer to continue to be
a philosopher after having become one. I still have a positive attitude to this object
even if I know that I could not obtain it if I tried. My attitude is therefore rational,
given the standard analysis (which I take the quotation from Harsanyis article to be
an expression of).
But then, is it rational to try to satisfy this attitude? The answer depends on what
we take to be its exact object. It would not be rational, as I have already asserted,
to help me to become a philosopher in this world, since then you would help me
to become a philosopher who could not enjoy that life. But the reason why this
is irrational is simply that it is irrational to try to satisfy a preference by realizing
something other than its actual object.
What do I want when I have a want to be a philosopher that is conditional on
its own existence? In this case (although, as I will argue later, this inference is not
generally valid) we may ascribe to me a want with a complex state of affairs as its
object: I want to be a philosopher together with enjoying leading such a life. I want
these things to come together and that is what the object of my want is about. And
I see no difculty in claiming that one part of this complex is implicit in my want
(since the want probably is implicitly conditional on its own existence). One part of
a complex object might in other words be at the centre of consciousness whereas the
other is in its periphery.
And it is obviously absurd to try to satisfy a want concerning a complex state of
affairs consisting of A and B by realizing only A. From the fact that I like to have salt
on my (free range) eggs, it obviously does not follow that I would also like to eat salt
4
J. C. Harsanyi, Morality and the theory of rational behaviour, in Amartya Sen and
Bernard Williams (eds), Utilitarianism and beyond (Cambridge, 1982), p. 55.
5
Here I let Harsanyi represent a tradition including Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of
Ethics (London, 1907), pp. 11011; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford, 1972), pp.
41617; R. B. Brandt, A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford, 1979), for instance Ch. 6
and p. 247. Further variants of our own days will be discussed in due time.
without an egg. In other words, its absurd to help someone become an uninspired
philosopher when he wants to be an inspired one.
So, as a consequence, it seems that there is no obvious need for the information
requirement when handling Sumners philosophy example, provided that we take
it to be about the distinction between rational and irrational preferences in the way
Harsanyi proposes. My preference to become a philosopher is, if conditional on
its own existence, rational. The problem is instead that it is irrational or absurd to
try to satisfy it by becoming a philosopher in this world, since that would be to
satisfy only one element in my want. I want to become an inspired philosopher and
will obviously not be satised with becoming an uninspired one. You realize this
independently of what you think of the information requirement.
*
Then suppose I am wrong when I guess that my preference to become a philosopher
in Sumners example is conditional. Suppose I now prefer to be a philosopher in the
future even if I were to feel disappointed if I became one. So, I am not interested
primarily in the pleasures in this life but rather in this kind of life itself.
No doubt, some of our wants are like this: we now want them to be satised
irrespective of whether or not we want so at the time of fullment. For instance,
suppose you have a brain disease that gradually changes your personality in a
direction you now dislike. If you are a person with cultivated tastes and manners and
believe that the disease will gradually vulgarize you, then you may want to behave
in a polite way when the disease has developed, regardless of whether or not you
then have this want.
The same mechanisms may work when you decide what kind of life to live.
For instance, if you, as in Sumners example, decide to be a philosopher, part of
the reason may be that your teachers exhort you because of your brilliant record in
philosophy. But another reason may be that you are a devoted admirer of Wittgenstein
and would like to be the new Wittgenstein that the world has waited for ever since
the fties. You have read a lot about Wittgenstein and know that his feelings about
philosophizing were not free of problems. On the contrary, there is evidence that
Wittgenstein for various reasons disliked it and he did not think highly of philosophy.
So if you want to become a new Wittgenstein in as many respects as possible, you
would also like to be a philosopher who philosophizes with pain and does not think
highly of a philosophers life. So your preference to become a philosopher may be an
ideal preference, that is, a preference that is not conditional on its own existence.
If you choose a kind of life you know you will not nd rewarding, is it possible
for the preference that lies behind your choice to be irrational? Yes, I believe so.
1.4 Two Understandings of Object
Suppose I want an object I want to have a certain kind of life, for example, the life
of a philosopher. When is this object obtained? Under what circumstances can we
say that the object of my want obtains?
We may distinguish between two ways of understanding the object of a preference.
We may either say that such an object is determined by the preferrers ideas the
preference object consists of the preferrers conceptions of an object. The object
of my preference, and its properties, are determined by what is in my mind. The
object of my preference obtains when I live the kind of life I imagined to be the
life of a philosopher. This is the intentional or de dicto understanding. According to
the extensional or de re understanding, on the other hand, my mind only points out
the object which in reality may have properties that I have never thought of. In this
understanding the object obtains when I live the kind of life that as a matter of fact
is the life of a philosopher.
If we discuss an information requirement in connection with preferences and if the
rationale behind this requirement partly concerns the avoidance of disappointment,
then we may reect on whether we make any tacit assumption of either the intentional
or extensional understanding of the object of preference. Does the one understanding
t the requirement better than the other?
Suppose we choose the intentional understanding. Then disappointment might
be understood as getting what you chose when this does not answer to what you
preferred or wanted. Disappointment occurs when you choose a philosophers life
in this world and when this kind of life was not what you wanted to have from the
beginning. You have not got what you wanted, and that is what disappoints you.
I believe there is a place for an information requirement, as a demand on our
preferences to be realistic: do not prefer objects that cannot realistically ever
be obtained. In other words, adjust the objects of your preferences to reality.
Alternatively: dont choose objects that arent the objects of your preferences.
But, once again, this will be a rationality requirement in a wide sense: it will not
focus on the rationality of the preferences, but instead on the rationality of how we
handle them.
If we look at the extensional understanding, disappointment is easily understood
as a situation where you have realized the object of your want you have obtained
what you wanted to obtain and it does not answer to your conception of the object.
You are disappointed about being a philosopher in this world, since it is different
from what you thought it was going to be. You have, so to speak, got what you
wanted, but you do not like it; confronting the object of your preferences disappoints
you.
I believe the extensional understanding is the one we normally assume when we
discuss these matters and I also believe it is assumed when we discuss the information
requirement. Such a requirement tells us to rationalize our preferences in the sense
that we nd out what it would be like to have them satised in the actual world. A
preference of ours is irrational when its satisfaction is different in relevant respects
from what we thought.
In this sense the extensional understanding will t better into the normal discourse
of preference rationality. Furthermore, I believe this understanding is presupposed in
some of our discussions. Nevertheless, I also intend to show, when appropriate, how
the intentional understanding will handle the problems and solutions discussed.
Is there a place for disappointment and an information requirement also in a
case where you realize what you in fact thought was the object of your preference,
as in the Wittgenstein case? In other words, is there a kind of disappointment that
is neither a disappointment over not getting what you wanted nor a disappointment
over getting what you wanted but being negatively surprised by it? I think so, and
this is something that I want to develop later on. For now, I just want to indicate
that you may be disappointed over what getting what you wanted brings in its train.
Disappointment may also consist of getting exactly what you want in propositional
terms but not in phenomenological ones.
1.5 Fumertons Distinction
I have discussed different understandings of the object of a preference and their
relevance for the project of formulating a full information account of rationality.
Now I will discuss a distinction between two different ways of looking at wants and
valuing that appear even more fatal for the project.
The distinction is presented by Richard A. Fumerton in his Reason and
Morality:
The intrinsic wants, desires, or valuings we have considered so far might be called
contemplative wants, desires, and values. We have been talking about an intentional state
that characterizes a person when he is merely thinking about a given state of affairs. But
it seems possible that I might want something X for its own sake when imagining its
occurrence, even though I would feel quite differently were I to nd out that X has actually
occurred. It seems, in other words, possible simultaneously to exemplify two dispositional
properties: the disposition to value X on contemplation of it and the disposition to
disvalue it on the realization that it has occurred Let us call the attitude one has toward
a given state of affairs on awareness that it has occurred a cognitive valuing. Should we
identify the intrinsic values of an agent which dene the rationality of his actions as his
contemplative values or his cognitive values?
6
Fumerton tries to settle the issue by the following abstract thought experiment:
Suppose one knew that one had a contemplative intrinsic desire for Y but a dispositional
cognitive intrinsic disapproval of Y. One knew, in other words, that if one were to become
6
R. A. Fumerton, Reason and Morality (Ithaca and London, 1990), pp. 1389. A similar
distinction is discussed by Jon Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens (Cambridge, 1979), p. 148 and
Sour Grapes (Cambridge, 1983), p. 113.
aware of Ys occurrence, one would ultimately disvalue it. In deliberating on some course
of action X, should one take the fact that X will probably lead to Y as a reason for doing
X or a reason against doing X? It seems obvious to me that one should hold the latter
view, and thus it might seem that what one is really concerned with vis--vis producing
what one intrinsically values is producing what one would intrinsically value with full
awareness that is has occurred.
7
In this quotation Fumerton answers the substantive question: the intrinsic values
of an agent which dene the rationality of her actions should be identied as her
cognitive values. I will question this in a moment.
Let me say something about one of the assumptions in Fumertons thought
experiment. It seems that Fumerton in other passages hesitates about whether
or not his distinction between contemplative and cognitive valuing makes any
practical difference in a choice situation, that is to say for the agent who embraces
the contemplative preference. Maybe an agents contemplative attitudes, Fumerton
says, are the best indicators of his cognitive attitudes.
But in the thought experiment, Fumerton assumes that there does not always have
to be this kind of indicator relationship. I believe that this is a realistic assumption,
at least as long as we take a common-sense view of how to understand the fact
that one knows that one will disapprove of having ones contemplative preference
satised when it is actually satised. I believe one may in one sense know that one
will be disappointed when ones preference is satised or at least regret this fact at
the moment of satisfaction (and onwards) but nevertheless insist on wanting to have
the object of ones preference realized.
I believe this is a realistic description of what it is to be a human being from time
to time, and I also believe that Fumertons substantive answer might be questioned.
When we call it into question I suggest we use an example in which the contemplative
preference has a positive moral status.
I assume that most of us have some tendency to greediness and also that we
may have strategies for overcoming this tendency. In my experience, the following
example is therefore a realistic one:
Suppose that some weeks before Christmas I receive a paying-in form from
Oxfam or some other similar organization. I feel trust for the organization and
believe that the money I donate will go to the poor. However, I also know that if I
donate a substantial sum, which is what I spontaneously feel that I ought to do, then
I will have some pangs of regret afterwards. I will not be able to enjoy the fact that
I was doing the right thing; on the contrary I will question the idea of always trying
to be a minor moral hero and I will dwell on the things I might have done with the
money if I had kept it for instance, spent it on a trip abroad.
In other words, I have a contemplative preference for having a substantial sum of
money donated to the help organization instead of using it for my own less important
projects (which going abroad after all will be compared to the poor peoples project
of staying alive). At the same time I know (in one sense, at least) that my cognitive
7
Fumerton, pp. 13940.
valuing of the state of affairs that I have donated the substantial sum of money will
be negative I will regret it. Perhaps my regret is not deep and painful, but there may
be a discrepancy between my contemplative and cognitive preferences. And I may
be aware of this in my deliberations. However, since I know that morality in my own
life is a Kantian ght against such tendencies as greed and other desires, my moral
strategy is to try not to think twice about the problem but donate immediately as long
as the rst moral impulse is strong and fresh.
And observe once again that one of the assumptions is that I am in one sense
aware of what I am doing when I go for my future regret. We may also add that
this regret will not again change into thankfulness after some time. It is not the case
that one year from now I will thank myself for following the moral impulse and not
giving in to the greedy one. No, as a moral person (at least when I am such a person)
I concentrate on the moral tasks in the present and future and do not care much about
the past. At least, I am less inclined to concentrate on those of my actions which I
morally approve of than those which I disapprove of; I am more inclined to have a
guilty conscience than a clean one. And I believe I share this character trait with the
majority of people.
The normative question is which of my preferences I ought to satisfy which
preference is a foundation of personal value?
We already know Fumertons answer, and here is his main reason for it:
Although the issue is rather complicated, it seems to me that in the nal analysis a value
that would not be sustained through the realization that it has been satised is too ethereal
to give us a reason to act. In acting rationally, we are trying to produce a world in which
we can live. We are not just trying to produce a world we like to imagine. And if the two
diverge, it is only the stable values that would survive our knowledge of their satisfaction
which can give us reasons for acting.
8
If we follow Fumertons recommendation and disqualify the contemplative
preference whenever there is a discrepancy between it and the cognitive one, then we
also have to disqualify the unconditional preferences as a group. There is no reason
to listen to a preference that is unconditional on its own persistence; there is no
reason to pay regard to this kind of preference, unless we believe that it will persist.
Is this reasonable? I hesitate, since I believe that unconditional preferences are
such an important part of our moral life.
9
I believe in other words that many, not to
say most, of our moral ideals have this form: we do not want to do certain things in
the future in spite of the fact that we would then enjoy doing them; we morally wish
that we will be able to perform certain actions in the future although we are not sure
we will then have the motivation that is needed.
8
Ibid., p. 140.
9
According to Part our ideals can even be regarded as essential to us: If I lose these
ideals, I want you to think that I cease to exist, Later selves and moral principles, in Alan
Monteore (ed.), Philosophy and Personal Relations (London, 1973), p. 145.
I am well aware that Fumertons argument seems persuasive. Who wants to
claim that we ought to produce a world which we just like to imagine? But this is not
exactly what our question is about. Our question is rather about whether or not our
imaginations and ideals concerning a future world have any voice in the matter, not
whether their voices are all there is.
10
We could also paraphrase Fumertons suggestion and ask whether we should
(rationally) create a world we do not now look forward to living in although we
know that we will like it when it comes into being. To me it is not obvious that this is
the world a rational person would go for a world in which satisfaction felt always
has the last word. Especially not if we assume that the reason why a value would
not be sustained through the realization of its satisfaction is some change in the
evaluative outlook of the preferrer.
When producing a future world, we ought of course not to disregard possible
and foreseen future changes in our values. But at the same time a recommendation
to plan for the future exclusively from the perspective of what values one will then
embrace seems somewhat frivolous. Not all of our values will give up that easily in
the face of a foreseen evaluative change. Our perhaps most important and central
values will insist on inuencing our future world, perhaps not independently of our
future values, but surely in some way.
Therefore, just as much as we are not merely trying to create a world we like
to imagine, we try to create a world in which we can live and enjoy living without
deviating too much from our present opinion of what constitutes a life with dignity.
We will return to this discussion.
1.6 Fumertons Distinction and the Information Requirement
I will now consider the relevance of this discussion for the information
requirement.
Suppose that Fumertons recommendations are rejected, for instance because it
fails to do justice to the importance we normally attach to unconditional preferences.
In that case the information requirement will clearly be an alternative, at least if this
account did do justice to unconditional preferences.
But would it? We do not yet have all the tools needed to decide this question, but I
believe we can make some comments on the issue that will be of some importance.
10
Compare this with Brandt, who is aware of both the distinction Fumerton discusses
and the importance of the contemplative preferences: Thus there are two different kinds of
preferences: one the liking of one experience more when it occurs or did occur, and the other
wanting an event more before it occurs. What are some things I might want ex ante? Well:
knowledge, achieving something, having friends, being wealthy, being happy. The degree of
my wanting these things may not correspond at all closely with my opinions about how well I
shall like them if they occur, or to how well I should in fact like them if they occurred, The
Rational Criticism of Preferences, in Christopher Fehige and Ulla Wessels (eds), Preferences
(Berlin, New York, 1998), p. 64.
For one thing, I do not have to decide the question on a general basis. It might
well be the case that in some situations and in relation to certain preferences the
process of rationalization will mean a weakening of the unconditional want, whereas
in some other situations and concerning other preferences this weakening does not
take place.
Suppose we have a case where a central and unconditional preference would be
affected by a process of rationalization. This would be a normative problem for the
information requirement, just as it would be a normative problem for Fumerton we
do not want to disqualify every preference of this type. But we might still ask: would
it be just as problematic for the full information account and Fumerton; would the
problem be as serious for both accounts?
Not necessarily.
Suppose that one has an unconditional preference one knows will disappear by
the time of its satisfaction. Returning to Fumertons example, suppose one knows that
one has a contemplative preference for Y but a dispositional cognitive disapproval
of Y. Suppose also one knows that if one were to reect on the situation in which
Y is the case and in which one disapproves of this fact, then that would affect ones
present unconditional preference.
Fumerton claims that in this situation ones contemplative preference ought to
be disregarded altogether in the sense that it ought to have no normative weight.
If, on the other hand, we look at the information requirement, the end-product of
the rationalization process given the above assumption will not necessarily be an
elimination of the contemplative preference. To be affected by the fact that one will
later on acquire an opposite preference will mean precisely that and not necessarily
that ones unconditional and contemplative preference is replaced by ones cognitive
preference.
If ones cognitive disapproval of Y is stronger than ones contemplative
preference for it, then one might well acquire a contemplative disapproval of Y.
But if it is weaker this will not necessarily be the case, since we may understand
the rationalization process as something that will weaken the original preference in
accordance with the comparable strength of the preference one gets knowledge of.
Imagine a person who wants to fast for a week but knows that she will lose her
preference for this after a couple of days when the pangs of hunger become intense
and when food fantasies ll her mind. This person may well stick to her determination
to get through the whole week of fasting and she may even take precautions against
giving in to these strong temptations after a few days. And she may do all these
things although she knows that if she were to reect on the feelings and thoughts
she will have after some days fasting, she would lose her determination to continue
the fast.
What the fasting person is afraid of most of all when she makes her decision out
of this preference might be to lose her present preference altogether, which would
also mean that her fasting project will come to nothing. But she might also be afraid
of having her present preference weakened, for the obvious reason that it will be
easier to get through the fast with a strong preference to start with.
In other words, whether or not my conditional preference is taken over by the
preference I receive knowledge of, it still has some inuence over my decision in this
description of the rationalization process. This is clear in the weakening case, since it
means that I will stick to my conditional preference after all, although in a weakened
form. But then it will also have some inuence when we have an overtaking,
since in that case it will be the preference I get knowledge of that is weakened by
the unconditional preference. At least this is the result we get on this model of a
matching of the original preference and the preference one receives knowledge of.
And until further notice I will assume this model.
This means that the information requirement will harmonize better with our
intuitions concerning the normative importance of the unconditional preferences,
since it will at least allow such preferences to have a say in these matters. This is
not the case with Fumertons distinction and suggestion he seems to disqualify the
contemplative preferences altogether when they come into conict with the cognitive
ones, and as far as I can see this is so irrespective of their relative strength.
Chapter 2
The Quantitative Element
In purely quantitative terms, my preference for a certain object is irrational if the
body of beliefs on which my preference is founded is smaller than is the body of
relevant true beliefs. Relevant might preliminarily be understood in terms of what
would have inuence on either the content or strength of my preference a belief is
relevant in so far as it is capable of exerting this kind of inuence.
It may seem that this purely quantitative requirement ts somewhat better
together with the extensional understanding of the object of a preference: your
preference is irrational if there are some facts about the object that would inuence
your preference if you knew about them. It seems that any disappointment in this
situation will be a result of the fact that the realization of the object in the actual world
would be the realization of a different object from the one you had in mind. And the
difference concerns what you have not thought of; the state of affairs consisting of
your preference actually being satised contains more elements than does the object
you have in mind.
And this, again, can easily be interpreted as a situation in which there is a
discrepancy between the intentional and extensional objects of your want. Your
disappointment is a result of the fact that the latter but not the former object has been
realized. Therefore, one might believe that the information requirement presupposes
an extensional understanding of the object of a preference.
2.1 Disappointment in the Intentional Understanding
I do not think this is a correct conclusion. Recall our problem: the state of affairs
consisting in the actual satisfaction of your preference contains more elements than
does the object you have in mind. In that case everything you have ever thought of
might indeed be the case. It is just that some other things you have not thought of
obtain as well. And so there is room for disappointment also if we understand the
concept of a preference object in the intentional sense you get disappointed insofar
as the realization of your intentional object brings with it something you have not
thought of.
And the extra facts that the actual realization has brought with it may be more
or less closely tied to the object itself. The object in the actual world has certain
intrinsic features. For instance, being an academic teacher in the actual world means
having a kind of responsibility for your students. You have a responsibility for their
studies and you have, to a certain extent at least, also a responsibility for their life
plans (to get them to choose a kind of life that is suitable for them; for instance, to
dissuade someone from choosing a career as a philosopher if you do not think he has
the qualications). But it might also be that the object in the actual world has certain
extrinsic features. For example, being an academic teacher will as a matter of fact
have certain causal effects that you have not thought of. You might nd the outer and
inner demands tiring. And this weariness is a causal effect of your career it is not
an intrinsic feature of it.
So, even if, by hypothesis, we go for an intentional understanding of the object of
a preference, it seems that there is room for disappointment, due to the fact that there
is a lack of information at the moment of preference formation.
2.2 Preference and Satisfaction Rationality
Is this problem solved by the information requirement? One can have doubts about
whether it is rational to satisfy a want to become a philosopher even if it is a want
that isnt conditional on its own persistence, if this means that one will have to lead
a troublesome life (depending on how things are in the actual world).
So we may see the situation more or less as an ordinary conict of wants; satisfying
my preference to become a philosopher means frustrating my preference not to feel
weary, etc. And the question of rationality then boils down to applying an ordinary
utility calculus. It might well be irrational to satisfy the preference to become a
philosopher in view of the fact that this will mean frustrating other preferences.
Is it possible to describe the present case as a case of conicting wants, if the
weariness and burdensome responsibility and so on that becoming a philosopher
brings with it, is something that is wanted according to the original conditional?
Suppose I want to be a new Wittgenstein. Then I actually want to nd the life of a
philosopher so burdensome and meaningless that my preference to continue to be
one disappears. I want to be a reluctant and tragic philosopher.
However, even in this description we have a conict. It is true that I want the
future weariness (at least derivatively) when I embrace the want to become a
philosopher. But since what I want is to become a tragic philosopher, I also want the
original want (that is unconditional on its own persistence) to become a philosopher
to disappear. I want it to be the case that I do not want to feel the weariness. I want,
so to speak, a future conict between the wants I then have on the one hand and my
present wants on the other. And if everything turns out the way I want it to turn out,
I have a conict between preferences embraced at different times. And, once again,
it doesnt seem to be an obviously rational thing to create this conict by satisfying
the original preference to become a philosopher.
Isnt there a status difference between the wants involved in the conict? The
preference to become a tragic philosopher is a preference concerning the kind of
life I want to live (which is also the explanation why it is unconditional on its own
existence). It is in other words a preference that is very central and important to me,
The Quantitative Element 21
and therefore it is not obvious that we have to weigh this ideal life preference against
any other preference that will show up in life.
Let us for the sake of argument accept the view that certain preferences, for
instance life preferences, have a special status. This will not automatically make it
rational to satisfy the preference to become a tragic philosopher (like Wittgenstein).
What do I want when I have this preference? I want to be someone who
philosophizes (or/and satises certain formal requirements of being a philosopher)
without thinking highly of philosophy. I may even want to be an active philosopher
who feels contempt for this kind of activity. In other words, I want there to be a
conict between different life interests: my present life preference in becoming a
philosopher and my future preference of not wanting to be the philosopher I then am;
or at least I want to be a philosopher who has ceased to see the value in that kind of
life. And if that is the way things are, there is a conict between preferences of equal
status; there is no obvious status difference between wanting to be a philosopher
and not wanting to be one both preferences concern the same object (what kind of
life to lead) and it will not matter that one preference is positive whereas the other
is negative.
In other words, as far as our discussion concerns the rationality of satisfying a life
interest to become a new Wittgenstein (in as many respects as possible), there is a
problem concerning rationality, which stems from the disappointment I feel the day I
have succeeded in becoming like Wittgenstein. For reasons of preference sensitivity,
it does not seem rational to create a situation in which some fundamental preferences
are frustrated, given, of course, that there are better alternatives available.
1
This is a matter of rationality as far as satisfying a preference is concerned. You
might claim that this is not what the information requirement is about for those who
have endorsed it. It concerns instead a requirement that the preference is rational.
2.3 The Wittgenstein Case
Is there a case for saying that my preference to become a tragic philosopher is irrational
in the sense that it is built on a body of beliefs and would change if confronted with
the body of all relevant and true beliefs (assuming now the intentional analysis of
preference objects)?
Yes, I think so. There is nothing mysterious about believing that I may cease to
embrace a preference (to become a reluctant philosopher as a result of wanting to
become a new Wittgenstein) when realizing that besides getting what I prefer to be
the case, as the world actually works, I will also get some other things. To become a
philosopher in this world will mean, besides what I think it means, inner and outer
1
I have assumed in my reasoning that a past and a present preference have the same
status. You might question this. But I believe you will get a similar conict even if you believe
there is a status difference between present and past preferences, unless you want to say
that a past preference (even when unconditional on its own existence) is altogether ethically
irrelevant.
demands that I will nd tiring, and pondering this might affect the existence (or at
least the strength) of my original want (to become a tragic philosopher).
But what is it that I cease to have a preference for in this situation? To realize
that becoming a philosopher in the actual world will also bring with it some things
I have not thought of, might well change my preferences, but not, one may argue,
my preference to become a philosopher per se only becoming a philosopher in the
world as it actually works. Again, my preference to become a philosopher may be
rational even if it turns out to be irrational to try to satisfy it in this world. We have
not established the irrationality of the preference itself, and consequently it is not
obvious that the information requirement will disqualify my preference.
*
Replies: First, suppose my preference will survive confrontation with the whole
body of beliefs mapping reality. Suppose I realize that I cannot satisfy my preference
for becoming a tragic philosopher in this world without also getting some other
things. If, in spite of this, I dream about becoming a tragic philosopher, one may
claim that there has been an important change in my attitudes towards the object.
I now have a positive attitude towards an object that I know cannot be realized,
whereas before (the confrontation with the whole body of beliefs) I had a positive
attitude towards an object I thought was realizable. This is the distinction between
wishes and idle dreams on the one hand and preferences and wants on the other,
and one might claim that there is a status difference between these two categories
and that a preference-sensitive theory ought to give the former category less weight
than the latter. This means that the information requirement might well be relevant
to our example, since it is a test not only of what attitude will survive confrontation
with the whole body of true beliefs but also a test of what kind of attitude it will
survive as. The information requirement will ensure that our theory is sensitive to
preferences, wants and desires.
Second, I assumed that someone might retain her general pro-attitude towards
an object (as such) even after having realized that it will inevitably come with other
objects that she has no pro-attitude towards. Applying the information requirement
might change not necessarily the charging, so to speak, of her attitude since it
might still be a pro-attitude but instead its value. But this is still something that
might happen and as far as I can see it might just as well not happen.
It is not unreasonable to assume that, in some cases, a person having a pro-
attitude towards the object A, after realizing that A in this world inevitably will
come with B, ceases to have a pro-attitude towards A altogether. Indeed this is not
what logic requires, but as far as I can see, the conative result after having made
the confrontation with the whole body of true and relevant beliefs is not dictated
by logic alone, but also by human psychology, which means that it is a contingent
question whether or not you will retain a pro-attitude towards A after having realized
its empirical ties to B.
2
Do we have any experiences of losing a pro-attitude towards A per se after having
seen its empirical connections with B (which we have no pro-attitude towards)?
If we look at our life in the rear-view mirror, no doubt we have had many plans
and dreams that we no longer have. And I guess one reason why is that experiences
we have had in this world have taught us not only lessons about the objects of
our pro-attitudes but also about what it would mean and bring in its train to have
them satised in our world. Confrontation with reality means that we lose not only
certain unrealizable preferences but also most of our wishes, even when there are no
compelling logical reasons for doing so. This is, I believe, a fact of life.
*
In saying this, I have assumed that the information requirement exhorts us to count
only those preferences that as a matter of fact will survive confrontation with
logic and true information, and the facts here I take to be an individuals particular
idiosyncrasies on the one hand and common human psychology on the other. An
alternative understanding of the requirement would insist that we count only those
preferences that an agent could reasonably retain after having been confronted with
logic and true information. In other words, what preferences to count should be
determined by the rational reaction to the confrontation. We ought to disregard those
preferences that exposure to logic and facts will put under rational pressure.
3
One might think that Harsanyis formulation our point of departure of the
requirement is more in line with the latter alternative: a persons true preferences
are the preferences he would have if he had all the relevant factual information,
always reasoned with the greatest possible care, and were in a state of mind most
conducive to rational choice.
4
At rst glance it seems that Harsanyi formulates a
logical version, but I dont think so.
Harsanyi asks what would happen if a person were to reason with greatest possible
care. As far as I can see, our personal idiosyncrasies and human psychological
peculiarities do not necessarily have anything to do with careless reasoning. I may
reason very carefully but nevertheless experience some changes in my preferences
that I am unable to give a rational explanation for. And the reason for this, in turn, is
simply that our volitional life has no robust rational foundation.
Harsanyi requires also that we ask how a person would react on condition that
she were in a state of mind most conducive to rational choice, and isnt this an
explicit demand for rationality how would a person react to the logic and facts of
the situation, given that she were rational? Her personal idiosyncrasies and irrational
2
Cf. Ingmar Persson, Hare on Universal Prescriptivism and Utilitarianism, Analysis,
43 (1983), pp. 439.
3
Cf. Scanlon, p. 114.
4
Harsanyi, Morality and the theory of rational behaviour, p. 55.
reactions are not what seem to interest Harsanyi. But again this question boils down
to a question concerning the foundation of our preferences. Suppose we accept that
our volitional life is not wholly subordinated to the laws of logic, then we also have
to accept that some changes in that life have nothing to do with logic.
More importantly, perhaps, in my reading of Harsanyi I have assumed that his
criterion describes a procedure in which we sort out a persons irrational preferences
by nding out which preferences a person would not retain after the exposure to
the facts and logic. This reading is inspired by Richard Brandts formulation of the
information requirement, which will be considered in due course. However, in letting
Harsanyi represent a tradition about how to deal with the information requirement I
have presupposed that my reading is not incompatible with Harsanyis view.
Until further notice, I will assume a psychological or naturalistic version of the
information requirement, even if one of the drawbacks is that you can then only
guess how a particular person would react after having been exposed to logic and
the facts, unless you make a normality assumption. Therefore, I will also make this
assumption unless otherwise stated. In later chapters I will return to the question of
the relation between rationality and personality or individuality.
2.4 Recapitulation
With reference to the Wittgenstein case, that is, a case where I knowingly choose a
life as a philosopher that I will not nd rewarding, I asked whether there is room for
disappointment when this kind of want is satised and consequently whether there is
room for assessing the rationality of this want.
Concerning the rst question, it seems that even when we accept the intentional
sense of the object of a want, we can talk of disappointment and emptiness when
this object obtains. This means that we have the problem of disappointment in
relation both to the extensional and intentional analysis of the object of a preference.
However, this is consistent with asserting that disappointment (or emptiness or lack
of satisfaction) is generally easier to t into an extensional object analysis, and I also
believe that many instances of disappointment should be analysed like this you
get disappointed when as a result of preferring an object you obtain something other
than what you expected to obtain.
Concerning the second question, I believe there is a case for saying that my want
in the Wittgenstein case can be irrational in the sense that further information about
reality can bring about a change in my preference even when it is unconditional on
its own persistence and when we choose an intentional analysis of the object of a
preference. That is to say, information about the actual life of a philosopher might
bring about a change in my preference to be a tragic philosopher, and in this chapter
we have considered cases in which the mechanism is quantitative changes in the
body of beliefs that a preference has as its foundation. You may cease to have a
preference for being a tragic philosopher not only in this world but in any possible
world after having been confronted with facts about what it would mean to be a
(tragic) philosopher in this world. I claimed that these facts would not only make it
irrational to satisfy your want in this world, they could well affect the rationality of
the want as well. In saying this I assumed that we may consider both rational and
irrational causes behind preference changes a question concerning the irrationality
of a preference at this stage is a question about whether a particular preference
of a particular person would survive confrontation with logic and facts. Having
no specic information about the person, however, we have to make a normality
assumption.
2.5 Buying a Pig in a Poke
I assume we are discussing the following situation. I have a preference for becoming
a tragic philosopher that is derived from my preference to be like Wittgenstein. This
preference (to be a tragic philosopher) is not necessarily irrational even if it turns out
that I will later on regret that I ever had such a preference. Instead my regret may be
a result of the fact that I have got what I wanted.
Let us instead for a moment consider my preference to be like Wittgenstein. What
about the rationality of this want?
I think there is an important difference between the two following possibilities.
One possibility is that I want to be like Wittgenstein in as many respects as possible
and that I have a fairly good picture of the kind of life Wittgenstein actually
led. The other possibility is that I have this preference but a rather poor picture
of Wittgensteins life. Let us then for a second return to the former quantitative
discussion and ask what will happen if in the second situation I realize that being a
philosopher is a boring and meaningless activity and as a consequence regret that I
ever tried to become like Wittgenstein.
Following the conception of rationality we have set out from, we would have
to ask whether I would change my mind about wanting to be like Wittgenstein if I
knew what kind of life he actually had. This means that even with this hypothetical
concept of rationality, a preference is more likely to be considered rational the more
informed it is.
But do we want to disregard all preferences that, so to speak, buy a pig in a poke?
Suppose I want to be like Wittgenstein wherever that will actually take me, and
suppose also that I am not at the present moment interested in hearing all the details
of Wittgensteins life, the reason being that I am afraid of losing my preference to
become a new Wittgenstein. Am I necessarily irrational; is this preference irrational (if
I would have changed my mind if I knew what it would be like to have it satised)?
I believe that some of our wants rational or not work exactly like this. I want
to do certain things that I dont want to know the details of, because Im afraid
of then losing my preference. Suppose someone wants me to be a member of a
mountaineering team that plans to climb Mount Everest. Suppose I am well-trained
and long for adventure, but also that I am aware of this: People who have actually
climbed this mountain often say they are glad to have fullled their dreams of
climbing Mount Everest. But they are also glad they did not know in advance all the
effort and suffering that was ahead of them, since they would never have started the
adventure with this knowledge.
I even think this way of reasoning in some cases is what makes you into an
adventurer: you want to have unexpected experiences and you want to take risks. If
we stick to the information requirement, we have to accept that there is something
inherently problematic about having these preferences and attitudes to life.
Let me explicate the last point. The case I have in mind when discussing the
adventure example is not a case where I know that in order to reach some very
positive and lasting experiences I have to submit to some very negative experiences
which do not last very long. We would normally call it irrational not to submit to the
negative experience if we assume that the total value of the positive experiences will
outweigh the value of the negative one. But in this case I have probably no reason to
fear knowing about the details of the negative experience, because having complete
factual information of all relevant facts will mean having information not only about
the details of the negative experiences but also of the positive ones.
Considering Harsanyis formulation of the requirement, there is one clause about
what will happen if you reasoned with greatest possible care and one about being
in a state of mind most conducive to rational choice. I suppose this means that I
would choose to submit to the negative experience and also retain my preference
for so doing. If I am a rational adventurer I will submit to the hardships even when I
know the details of them in order to reach my goal, if the value of the latter outweighs
the value of the former. Therefore, the problem we started out from will not come
up in this situation a complete understanding of the situation would not change my
attitudes anyway.
The situation I have in mind is instead a situation where I have reason to fear
knowing all the details of a certain project, for instance, an adventure, because
knowing them might affect negatively my willingness to carry it out. Suppose that
the total value of the hardships in fact will outweigh the total value of the positive
experiences. For instance, suppose I know that the sufferings and anguish I have to
endure when climbing Mount Everest will outweigh the feelings I get after having
succeeded. For instance, I might be the kind of restless person who does not think
much about those challenges I have managed as soon as I have succeeded with one
project I concentrate on the next one and do not think much about former projects.
So whatever idea we have about rational choices, it is not obviously rational for me
to choose an adventure after having been confronted with all the details the negative
experiences of which will outweigh the positive one.
In this situation, would we say that my preference for adventure is irrational?
5
5
Compare my example with the following somewhat odd but charming example from Mark
Johnston: Harmlessly frivolous activity, such as dressing up in unexpected costumes for a philosophical
seminar, is a value and so legitimately valued. However it is of the nature of the value in the frivolous that it
doesnt bear too much thinking upon, and certainly not very complete and vivid imagining Dispositional
Theories of Value III, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LXIII (1989): 152, 13974.
Chapter 3
The Qualitative Element
Our discussion has concerned what will happen to a preference if we add beliefs to
the body of beliefs founding a preference. In this chapter I shall ask instead whether
qualitative changes in the body of beliefs might bring about preference changes.
Suppose I found my preference on B
1
and B
2
. What would happen if it turned out
that the realization of B
2
was not exactly what I imagined it would be like? This is
another question than the one put in the previous chapter, and I will show why this
is so.
3.1 The Desire Satisfaction Theory
R. B. Brandt discusses a possible form of what he calls the desire satisfaction theory
about what is in itself good:
a restriction may be added: that the person know the concrete form the wanted event
will take (e.g., not just wanting, rather abstractly, to become a lawyer, but having the
experiences expectable in the life of a lawyer represented in foreseeable detail). Obviously,
a person needs as much of this information as she can get, for people want in advance
mostly abstractly dened events but are often not clear about what their concrete nature
will be and one is much more likely to continue to want, and/or like when it occurs,
what one initially wanted if one knows in advance what the target of wanting will be like
in concrete form.
1
There is an ambiguity in this quotation that needs to be discussed rst of all.
One might read this more or less as a description of the same distinction that we
have referred to before, namely a distinction between an intentional and extensional
understanding of the object of a preference. When Brandt talks about desires that
meet certain conditions, this may suggest that one possible restriction in the desire
theory (of what is intrinsically good) is to count as intrinsically good only the
obtaining of the object the wanter had in mind when she wanted it.
2
1
R. B. Brandt, Facts, Values, and Morality (Cambridge, 1996), p. 38.
2
When I discussed the distinction between an intentional and an extensional analysis
of the object of a preference I assumed that it was a distinction concerning the conditions
under which we may say that a preference is satised. In the extensional sense it is satised by
what in reality corresponds to the concept embraced by the agent. In the intentional sense it is
satised by the state of affairs that corresponds to the agents initial beliefs about this concept.
This is, so to speak, a formal condition on what it means to say that a preference is satised.
There is another interpretation of Brandt, however, in which he does not suggest
that additional information in quantitative terms can have ethical relevance, but
instead that we ought to have the actual experiences of what it would mean to
have ones preferences satised represented to ourselves in a certain way. Here the
problem is not a discrepancy between the intentional and extensional object of a
want; it emerges instead in a situation where you have failed to represent to yourself
in a vivid manner what it would be like in reality to have your preference satised.
3
The intentional object of your preference obtains, but even though you realize that
it so does, the experiences you get from actually having your preferences satised
surprise you.
Consider again the passage from L. W. Sumners example where I choose to be
a professional philosopher instead of becoming a baseball player:
I go to graduate school, earn my doctorate, and land a job in a good philosophy department.
There I nd the demands of teaching and writing to be pretty well as I anticipated. Indeed,
as the years pass everything goes more or less as expected, except for the growing
realization that this life is just not for me.
4
In order to illustrate the present point, I interpret this quotation in the following
way. My problem is not that I had an abstract idea of what it would be like to be a
philosopher whereas it turned out that the real philosophers life in its details meant
things that I had not thought of. My problem is not that the confrontation with reality
makes me realize that my body of beliefs when I wanted to become a professional
philosopher was too small. Instead my problem is that I had not realized what it
would be like experiencing the satisfaction of my want to become a professional
philosopher. I have more or less the experiences I thought I was going to have, but
having these experiences does not feel the way I thought it would.
Returning to the Wittgenstein example, we might analyse this in exactly the same
way: I wanted to become a philosopher who doesnt nd the life of a philosopher
satisfactory; I wanted to be like Wittgenstein in this respect. Therefore if reality
entails that I become a philosopher who does not like his way of living, I cannot
claim that it came as a surprise.
What is important in order to test whether my preference (to become a tragic
philosopher) is rational, is not that I choose something that will actually make me
disappointed, since that is exactly what I want: I want to be a philosopher who
does not hold the life of a philosopher in great respect (because I want to be like
Wittgenstein). If my preference is irrational, then that is not because I will later on
What Brandt discusses, however, is a more substantial condition: he says nothing about
whether we may talk of satisfaction of a want when its object obtains only in an abstract form,
what he discusses is instead the ethical signicance of it. So Brandt talks about restricting
preferences whereas I was discussing the denition of a preference object.
3
A vividness requirement is explicitly articulated in Brandt, A Theory of the Good and
the Right, for example pp. 11112. See also note 5 below.
4
Sumner, p. 129, my emphasis.
The Qualitative Element 29
regret that I ever had the preference and took steps to satisfy it (since, once again,
this situation is included in the object of my preference). If there is a rationality
problem then thats because I had not imagined what it really would be like to have
the experiences of a tragic philosopher.
3.2 Feelings and Reactions to Feelings
Have a look at Sumners example again. What is the most reasonable interpretation
of the situation? When I judge that everything goes more or less as I expected, what
is included in everything?
Suppose I claim that the most realistic interpretation of the situation is that the
life of a philosopher feels more or less as I expected it to feel, that is to say, I have the
kind of feelings in my everyday life as a philosopher I thought I was going to have,
I am pretty satised when my students like my lectures and discontented when they
dislike them; I am glad when I am able to write and frustrated when I am not able to
do so, and the proportion between these positive and negative feelings is more or less
as I expected. So my experiential life at one level is what I expected it to be and these
experiences were also part of my reason for wanting to be a philosopher in the rst
place: I had a realistic picture of that life and did not think that a life with constant
pleasure and satisfaction was possible. Given this belief I found life as a philosopher,
with all these negative and positive experiences, to be an interesting kind of life.
However, what I did not take into account was my reactions to the prospect of
continuing to have these experiences every day, year after year. I did not count on my
growing tiredness of having the same kind of failures and successes year after year.
In Sumners example I am said to realize that the life of a philosopher is not for me,
but that might just mean that I realize that the life of a philosopher is not for me in
the long run. And observe once again that I am not supposing that there is a change
in my experiences of the everyday situation as the years pass it is not the case that I
feel less happy after a good lecture. On the contrary I may feel as happy as ever after
a good lecture, just as I have learnt to forget the bad lectures much faster. So on the
whole there is no change as far as these feelings are concerned the change instead
concerns the fact that I do not attribute to them the value I did in the beginning of my
career. I suddenly realize that I can see no value in repeating more or less the same
kind of feelings of joy and difculties year after year. My reaction and attitude to
the same kind of feelings are dramatically different after a couple of years. This is a
distinction between the feelings I have and the reactions I have to them.
Is it possible to regard some activity as more or less void of value without feeling
more or less bad about it? Is it realistically possible in Sumners example? Is it
possible to realize that a certain kind of life does not suit me without having any
feelings about this fact? Is it possible to realize that the life of a philosopher is not in
the long run for me without any feelings being involved in the process (cf. the free-
oating irritability and depression)?
Maybe there is another distinction we confuse with the abstract distinction
between feelings and reactions to feelings, namely a distinction between rst- and
second-order feelings vis--vis a life situation. First-order feelings are feelings about
concrete everyday situations, like the feelings you have when you give a satisfactory
lecture, or when you write two pages of a manuscript that contains some thoughts
that excite you. Second-order feelings are the feelings you have when you judge
these activities together with your emotional reactions to them from a distance, or at
least from a perspective where you are able to compare and reect on the rst-order
feelings without having them.
I assume that it is possible to have the rst-order feelings more or less intact even
if you experience a change in the second-order feelings. You might have the joys
and troubles of a philosopher as the years pass (just as you expected) but when they
repeat themselves you tend to feel that your life is empty and that you might have
had a more fullling life if you had chosen the life of a baseball player (or something
else). Your rst-order feelings are more or less what you expected them to be and
they do not change very much as the years pass, but your second-order feelings do
change. They change radically. From having felt your life as a philosopher to be
satisfactory you suddenly feel emptiness.
If we choose to interpret Sumners example as a discrepancy between rst-
and second-order feelings, we are probably back in the discussion concerning the
quantitative aspect of the information requirement. If I suddenly have second-order
feelings of emptiness, that is a relevant fact I should have known about when choosing
to become a philosopher. The problem, in other words, is a problem about not having
enough information at the moment of decision. There is a piece of knowledge that
would have affected my original want if I had had it.
And this analysis works independently of whether we choose an intentional or
extensional understanding of the object of a preference. Possibly I was considering
only the rst-order feelings when I chose to become a philosopher. I only thought
about the feelings I had when confronted directly with the everyday life of a
philosopher and I never considered the possibility of a discrepancy between rst- and
second-order feelings. Therefore, it does not seem correct to say that I was assuming
that there would not be such a discrepancy. These thoughts were not in my mind.
We seem to get the same result also with the distinction between feelings on the
one hand and reactions to feelings on the other. The possibility of reacting negatively
to positive or fairly neutral feelings is certainly relevant for me to consider in the
situation where I choose between becoming a philosopher and a baseball player.
In other words, if we interpret Sumners example either as an example in which
there is a discrepancy between rst- and second-order feelings (that is, roughly
feelings in ones life and feelings about ones life) or as an example of a discrepancy
between feelings and reactions to feelings (where the discrepancy means that there
might be different charges of the feelings and the reactions to them), we ought
to analyse the rationality problem involved in quantitative terms. I choose to live
the life of a philosopher on too small a body of beliefs, since the actual life of a
philosopher brings with it elements that would have affected my willingness to
become a philosopher in the rst place. So my preference to become a philosopher
in this world is irrational if the actual life of a philosopher includes experiences,
events and conditions that will come as a negative surprise to me. I have not founded
my preference on all relevant information.
The quantitative aspect demands that you know about those experiences that will
follow (intrinsically and extrinsically) from the fact that your preference is satised
in order for your preference to be rational a rational preference will resist exposure
to facts about what experiences you will come to have when it is satised. Sumners
example seems to be an example of the quantitative problem, in spite of the fact that
Sumner says that everything goes more or less as expected.
3.3 Knowing and Having an Experience
What, then, is the difference between the quantitative and qualitative aspect of the
information requirement? As I said in 3.1, I think there is a distinction between
different ways of having knowledge of or acquaintance with the object of a
preference, that roughly corresponds to the distinction between non-vivid and vivid
beliefs,
5
where the perfectly or ideally vivid belief about an experience is more or less
equivalent to the actual having of it.
6
Irrespective of what you know propositionally
(and in your imagination) of an experience, the actual having of it is a different thing
and may in a sense surprise you. Your problem does not have anything to do with
what you believe you believe (correctly) that you will be a dissatised philosopher
instead your problem lies in how you believe it, and how close you are, so to speak,
to what you believe. I believe that this is roughly what Connie S. Rosati has in mind
when she writes:
5
Cf. Brandt, who claims that rationality requires that we represent information about
our desires in an ideally vivid way, and by that he means that the person gets the information
at the focus of attention, with maximal vividness and detail, and with no hesitation or doubt
about its truth, A Theory of the Good and the Right, pp. 11112.
6
In saying this I take a stand for what David Sobel has called the experiential model
of full information accounts and against the report model: The crucial difference between
the two is that in the report model the idealized agent typically lacks rsthand experience with
the lives she is choosing between while in the experiential model the ultimate decision maker
is held to lack no such information, Full Information Accounts of Well-Being, Ethics, 104
(1994): 796. Sobel furthermore asserts that the latter model is suggested by the claim that full
appreciation of a possibly valuable aspect of ones life requires getting into the skin of the
part and is motivated by the thought that often one cannot fully appreciate, or be sure that one
does fully appreciate, the value of an experience to oneself without having that experience,
ibid., p. 797.
If an account of what it is to be fully informed is to have normative force, it must overcome
what I shall call the problem of appreciation: the problem of the gap between merely
having information and appreciating it.
7
There is an extensive literature on this subject dealing with the conditions of empathy
and similar phenomena. and I am well aware of the fact that the distinction at hand can
be denied.
8
But we seem to make a distinction, at least in folk psychology, between
what we have knowledge of and what this something that we have knowledge
of is really like, in sayings like I knew it intellectually, but it came as a surprise
nevertheless. A mother may claim that she knew intellectually that her only child
one day would move away from home. In spite of that she is surprised and shocked
when it actually happens.
And I believe we all have experiences of similar situations. For instance, suppose
you have abstained from smoking more than a year and suddenly at a party after a
delicious meal and a few glasses of ne wine get a strong preference for a cigar. You
know that the taste of a cigar at that moment would be lovely but you also know that
you will reproach yourself very much when you wake up in the morning after the
party if you give in to the temptation. You know both these things, but the beliefs
about how the cigar will taste are more vivid than the beliefs about how it will feel
when you wake up in the morning. This is because your neighbour at table just lit a
cigar and now he is offering one to you.
I would like to believe that in this situation, if you lean back and give the question
some thought, you may well make yourself aware of every relevant aspect of the
next days reproach. So it is not a question of incomplete belief you might have
had similar experiences at other times when you have stayed off smoking for some
time and you have no problem recalling these experiences. But you have difculties
recalling them with the same vividness as you recall the experience of having a cigar
after a delicious meal and some wine in the company of good friends. You have
difculties regarding the feelings of reproach from inside, whereas you have no such
7
C. S. Rosati, Persons, Perspectives, and Full Information Accounts of the Good,
Ethics, 105 (1995): 304.
8
We may also discuss whether or not we mix different questions, such as for instance
the questions about whether a propositional belief may ever be vivid; whether a vivid belief
may ever be compared with the actual experience; whether, in order for such a belief to be
comparable to the real thing, what Mats Johansson in Empatisk frstelse (Lund, 2004)
calls the matching criterion has to be fullled (which he himself claims to be inferior to
the simulation model, in which the manner of representation is not important as long as it
works). All these questions deserve separate treatment, but I do not believe this is the place
for it, as long as the ambition is merely to argue for an overall distinction between the quantity
and quality of the rationalization process. However, it may seem that in accepting Sobels
experiential model I will also have to accept the matching criterion. But I do not think
I am. I rather believe that personal experiences or perfect matching are the best guarantee
for knowing what it is like to have an experience, not that they are to be identied with this
knowledge. But to be honest, I am not sure about this.
difculties with the sensations of smoking, thanks to the help you get from the actual
sensations of smelling the smoke from your neighbours cigar.
So the vividness of a belief is important in a discussion about the rationality of
a preference in order for a preference to be rational it cannot be founded on non-
vivid beliefs. Or rather all the relevant factual information concerning the situation
has to be embraced with the highest possible degree of vividness. For example, in
order for the preference to start smoking again at a party to be rational you have to
found it on information (embraced by vivid beliefs) about all the experiences you
will have if you start to smoke again. You hold before your mind in a vivid manner
both what it will feel like to light the cigar and lean back and take the rst puffs and
what it will feel like to wake up with a rusty throat, deeply regretting that you have
thrown away several months of hard work. And then you form your preference. Or
if we regard the requirement of rationality only as a post-factum test and not as a
manual for and criterion of the procedure according to which a preference is formed,
it has to be the case that the preference, however it is actually formed, will withstand
exposure to vivid information about all relevant facts. We return to this distinction
in 3.7.
3.4 Vividness and Possibility
Is it possible to embrace every kind of experience with the same degree of
vividness?
For instance, suppose I try to compare the experience of lighting a cigar after a
delicious meal with the experience of being short of breath when walking up the stairs
at the philosophy department. The one experience is of course positive and the other
negative and there is a causal connection between them supposing inhalation.
But another very important difference is that the rst experience is strong and
inherently vivid whereas the second one is not so strong and lacks the inherent
vividness of the rst one. We would therefore have to make a comparison between
experiences that are not in themselves equally vivid and strong.
Our problem can seemingly be dissolved if we require that a preference is
founded on (or will withstand) information about what it will actually be like to
have the preference satised. So concerning experiential effects of satisfying a
certain preference, you have to imagine exactly what it feels like to actually have the
experience in order for the preference to be ideally vivid.
3.5 The Time Aspect
It does not seem to be an obviously irrational attitude to prefer a life with some very
intense positive feelings that you have to pay for by extensive periods of negative
feelings, to a life containing a larger total amount of positive feeling but in which
none of them are intense you prefer, so to speak, a life with ups and downs to a life
without ups and downs even if the latter kind of life as a whole contains a larger total
amount of positive than negative experiences.
There might be some good explanations for this. We often see an instrumental
value in intense feelings. For instance, it may be hard to identify with other people
if you have never had anything but lukewarm feelings in life. And the problem
concerns identication with both the happiness and the misery of other people how
can you possibly know what it is like to be very happy and very sad if you have no
experience of intense feelings in your own life? And that can be seen as a handicap
you want to be able to understand and communicate with people.
But it might also be that you want to live an interesting life and nd the life with
the many ups and downs to be intrinsically more interesting than the alternative; it
interests you for what it is in itself and not for what it may lead to.
Whatever choice you want to make in these situations, I believe there are also
certain choices that most people would agree on. For instance, suppose I have to
pay for the rare intense pleasure of smoking my cigar with constant problems when
walking up stairs and walking fast, with a constant (but not too bad) cough, with
constant (but not too bad) insomnia and so on. In other words, suppose there was
a causal connection between my cigar smoking and these problems and that the
smoking meant some short but intense positive feelings whereas the problems meant
prolonged but not intense negative feelings.
What the information requirement says at least in our preliminary analysis is
that we should compare in our imagination as vividly as possible the two sets of
experiences described above. But is it possible to make this kind of comparison?
How can you possibly imagine what it is like to have some not very intense
experiences for a long time? If you have, say one minute at your disposal when you
ponder whether or not to light the cigar, how can you possibly imagine what it is like
to have a certain experience for years? To know from the inside what it is like to have
a certain experience seems to mean that you imagine from the inside what it is like to
have a certain experience at a certain moment. Or could it possibly be otherwise?
Is it possible to imagine for a minute what it is like to have an experience that
lasts one year? Of course I can know from the outside, that is to say, I can have a
correct belief at a certain moment what it is like in every relevant respect to have a
one-year-long experience, but the question now is whether I can put myself in that
situation in my imagination.
It would not work, I believe, to say that I may, so to speak, speed up the time in
my imagination, since that is precisely what I have to avoid. The experience of time
going fast is (qualitatively) different from the experience of time going at normal
speed. So it seems that it is physically and psychologically impossible to imagine
what it is like to have an experience for a year if you have only a minute at your
disposal.
We might say that if there is an experiential difference between having an
experience for a short time and having it for a long time, in the sense that the
experience changes as the time passes, then you might well imagine what it will be
like to have had the experience for some time. For instance, suppose you have had
a mild headache for some time. Having a mild headache for some hours (caused for
instance by too much cigar smoking and wine drinking) might be pretty endurable
(and a price worth paying). Having a mild headache for a somewhat longer time
might, on the other hand, get on your nerves.
But then, it is no problem to imagine at a certain moment what it is like to
have the experience at a certain moment of being tired of and affected by the fact
that you have had a headache for a long time. I may now put myself in the shoes of
someone who has had an experience for a long time, and if this has affected him in
some way I will come to know that in a vivid manner if I am good at performing this
kind of task.
However, compare this reasoning with our present example about a preference
about cigar smoking. As regards headaches, we all know that one that lasts for a
long time tends to get on our nerves. This is how such experiences work. But it is
not necessarily the way every kind of lengthy experience works. It is not necessarily
the case that the problems of walking up stairs and the (not too bad) cough will get
on your nerves after a while. It is perhaps more difcult to believe that the insomnia
will not affect your nerves, but it is not impossible.
In fact, I believe we have a problem imagining what it will be like to have a
not so very intense experience for a long time that is independent of whether or not
the experience, as a result of the fact that we have it for a long time, will change in
quality.
3.6 Two Situations
Let me describe what I have in mind more carefully. Suppose I am exposed to a
certain experience for a long time. For instance, as a result of my cigar smoking
I have to endure being in less good physical condition, some slight insomnia and
so on. There are different possible reactions to this fact (even if we exclude the
possibility that it gets on my nerves).
(1) One alternative is that there is no qualitative change in my experiences, which
means that my problems of walking up stairs, my cough and my insomnia are equally
irritating no more, no less after having had them for some years. The fact that my
experiences do not change might in a sense be a sign that I get used to them; at least
I learn to live with them.
In this case our problem is obvious. Suppose I am to imagine what it will be like
to have these experiences for, say, ten years. Unless we assume that it takes ten years
to imagine what it would be like to have an experience for ten years, we are led to
some idea of a concentration of these experiences.
This idea is problematic in two respects. First, one might question whether it
is at all possible to make such a concentration. Simply transporting oneself into
another situation means that at T
1
in situation S
1
I succeed in imagining what it would
be like at T
1
to be in S
2
. Here I substitute one situation for another and there is no
other substitution involved. Furthermore, it does not seem impossible to accomplish
this kind of imaginative task. I believe we have these experiences now and then,
although it might be difcult to have full power over the capacity. However, the
kind of transport we are discussing here is different, since it can be described as
imagining at T
1
in S
1
what it would be like to be in S
2
during T
1
, T
2
..., T
n
. And the
difculty originates of course because T
1
by denition is a shorter stretch of time
than T
1
, T
2
..., T
n
.
And even if the difculty might be less acute if we extend the time period during
which the imaginative task is to be accomplished, it will not wholly disappear until
the act of imagination takes as long as the period to imagine, since otherwise one has
to concentrate some stretch of time, and that is precisely what our problem is about:
how can such a concentration be possible?
What about lms and books then? Isnt it possible to read a biography during
one or two days and get the impression that you have been witness to a life lasting
many decades? Films, or TV series, seem even more obvious candidates for time
concentration.
The obvious problem with these examples is that, although we have a description
of an extensive stretch of time, it is hard to know for sure whether the description
is accurate. And the difculty is not merely that it is hard to check every detail in a
biographical lm, which is a fairly unproblematic difculty, but rather that it is in a
radical way hard to compare a description that takes two hours with what it describes
a life that perhaps takes 70 years. For instance, suppose you have two hours at
your disposal to describe Mandelas 27 years on Robben Island. Here you have to
use a technique of description that selects certain events during these 27 years and
put them together in a certain way. But is it possible to know in the sense discussed
what it is for a person to spend 27 years in prison after having watched a lm for
one or two hours?
Suppose I am wrong; suppose we have a technique to concentrate long stretches
of time in a way that is satisfactorily accurate. Then we have to discuss the second
aspect of the problem will a concentration ever have the same experiential qualities
as the original? Suppose one might concentrate a stretch of time in the sense that the
concentration contains everything of that which it concentrates. An accurate description
of Mandelas stay at Robben Island will then contain everything of importance that
actually took place during his stay. The important experiences are also described in
an accurate way. The problem is once again that, whereas a concentration may reach
accuracy on an intellectual level (all the events that actually occurred are represented
in the concentration) and also accuracy at a certain particularistic experiential level
(all the particular experiences are accurately described), the experience of having
these experiences one after another during 27 years cannot possibly be represented,
since it cannot, it seems, be directly transferred.
(2) The other situation is when, as a result of having a certain experience or set of
experiences during a long time, some qualitative changes of the experiences occur.
It is not the case that they get on your nerves, but you do not get used to them either
they are tiring.
We may then reason as follows. In this case the very fact that we have had a certain
experience for a long time has, so to speak, coloured the experience, which means
that when I imagine at T
1
what it would be like at T
10
to have had the experience from
T
1
to T
10
, I also get the time factor. My experience at T
10
looks the way it does in
virtue of the fact that I have had it for a long time. Given this, it may be tempting to
generalize in the following way: a short cut if at T
1
in S
1
you want to know what it is
like to be in situation S
2
from T
1
to T
10
given that S
2
undergoes qualitative changes
during T
1
to T
10
that are directly proportional to the time factor is to imagine what
it would be like to be in S
2
at T
10
, that is, the last point of time in the sequence.
But suppose I have been in jail for 27 years. At that point of time I am tired of
being in jail, but might also nally see the light at the end of the tunnel. This does not
mean that the imprisonment feels OK; on the contrary, it might be worse than ever to
be in jail. But it means that if I imagine what it will be like after 27 years to sit in jail
I will imagine what it will feel like to have spent 27 years in jail, and when I try to
imagine in advance what it will be like to spend 27 years of my life in jail, it will not
(or alternatively, it is possible that it will not) do justice to the totality of experiences
during these years to imagine what it will be like to have spent 27 years in jail.
Surely, if I want to do justice to what it actually will be like to spend 27 years in
jail I have to imagine what it will be like to have almost all the time in jail behind me,
but I cannot, if I want to do justice to the totality of experiences, imagine only this;
I have to imagine also what it is like to sit in jail at every other point of time, since
that is by hypothesis what I have to endure.
In other words, there is no short cut if I want to imagine what it will be like to
have a certain not too violent experience for a long time. Even in a case where the
experience undergoes some qualitative change as a result of its long-livedness, I
have to try to compress a longer time sequence into a smaller one. The question is
whether this really is possible and whether, if possible, we may trust the reactions
from having imagined a compressed time sequence no doubt a time sequence that is
compressed is in an important sense qualitatively different from a time sequence that
is not compressed, also when it contains every single element of the non-compressed
time sequence. One quality is missing: the quality that is a result of experiencing
every single element in the time sequence in a certain order and tempo.
*
Not all the problems discussed stem from a discrepancy between the duration of
what is to be imagined and the imagination:
Suppose that I try to imagine at T
1
T
10
what it is like to be in S
2
at T
11
T
20
, that
is to say, I try to imagine what it is like to be in a certain situation for some time and
let the act of imagination take as long as the imagined situation. In that case, when I
nally decide whether or not I want to realize S
2
in T
11
T
20
, I have to judge not from
the perspective of what it is like to be in S
2
at T
20
, since that means judging from
some point of time when I have left most of S
2
behind me. So when I am nished
with the act of imagination, I have, so to speak, to keep every particular point of
time in fresh memory and not let some of these moments cloud some others. Having
an ambition to imagine what it is like to be in S
2
at T
11
T
20
is trying to imagine the
totality or sum of S
2
in T
11
, S
2
in T
12
and so on.
In other words, we have two problems: one problem concerns the psychological
possibility of imagining a long sequence of time when you have at your disposal
only a shorter sequence, and the other problem concerns judging the sequence in
question not from any particular part of the sequence.
We have considered these problems in connection with not too violent experiences,
but I do not believe that our problems are conned to these experiences. It might be
easier to get an idea of what it will mean to be in a situation for such a long time that
it gets on your nerves, but I do not think you can escape completely the rst problem
in this situation either and you denitely cannot escape the second problem. So we
are discussing a general problem.
3.7 Versions of the Information Requirement
We may distinguish between two versions of the information requirement. The
quotations from Harsanyi and Brandt suggest a soft or criterial version of the
requirement, whereas other quotations suggest a stronger decision procedural
version.
9
According to the soft version we should care only about the informed
preferences, which means that we disqualify all other preferences. According to the
stronger version we use the information requirement when we form our preferences;
the information requirement is a requirement to base our preferences on as much
information as possible. The softer version may in turn come in two versions. One
version will exhort us to care only about those actual preferences that have either
actually withstood a rationalization process or would (counterfactually) withstand
the exposure of all relevant information.
10
Another version will tell us to care only
about those actual or hypothetical preferences that have survived the exposure of this
kind of information.
It may seem that some of the problems discussed will affect the information
requirement only in some of these versions. For instance, the physical and
psychological problem of imagining what it would be like to have an experience
for a long time does not seem to strike at the counterfactual version of the criterial
requirement, since this version will tell us to accept the preference that is such that
9
David Sobel claims that subjectivist accounts of well-being can be interpreted either
as decision procedures, that is to say as methods of discovery, or as truth-makers, Subjective
Accounts of Reasons for Action, Ethics, 111 (2001): 461 ff. I will discuss this distinction
again in Chapter 7. Above, my description of the distinction is inuenced by suggestions from
Johan Brnnmark and Wlodek Rabinowicz.
10
There are two sub-groups of this version: we may either demand that the actual
preference is actually based on all information or that it may hypothetically withstand the
exposure of it.
it would survive an appropriate act of imagination, physically and psychologically
possible or not.
However, I will argue that these versions are not so much optional and alternative
versions of the requirement; instead they are versions which can be justied from
different perspectives and which are logically connected. The criterial version is the
more natural option from the spectators and benefactors perspectives, whereas the
procedural version is natural when our perspective is the agents; if we want to make
the best of our life, then we ought to make sure that we form our preferences on as
much of the relevant information as possible. And as far as the two versions of the
criterial requirement are concerned, a similar thing can be said: if we want to avoid
a situation in which most of our actual preferences are disqualied, we have to bring
in the relevant information when forming our preferences; the procedural version is,
so to speak, normatively derived from the more criterial one.
3.8 A Problem of Possible Alternatives
One aspect of the problems discussed is that we cannot always make sure beforehand
that we understand what it will be like to have a preference satised under certain
circumstances. For physical and psychological reasons knowledge in these matters
is impossible. Is this a problem for the information requirement? That may depend
on how the requirement is understood (and used).
Take a look at the way Harsanyi formulates the requirement once again, when he
claims that a persons true preferences are the ones he would have if he had all the
relevant factual information, always reasoned with the greatest possible care.
11
Harsanyi seems to require all the information there is, but only that one reasons with
the greatest possible care. These are two different things and we may ask whether
our true preferences are founded on the objective truth about the preference object or
on what it is possible to nd out about this truth. What is possible to nd out about
the preference object might then, in turn, be given either an objective or subjective
interpretation, depending on whether we have in mind what is possible for the agent
in his present circumstances or what the natural laws and laws of psychology will
set bounds to.
I will discuss this question in more detail in Chapter 6, that is, whether the
information requirement is relativized to ones epistemic circumstances or not. For
now, I just note that even if the requirement were about gaining the best possible
knowledge and so concerned optimization, the difculties considered in this chapter
would also, I believe, show up in the framing of a criterion of what is optimal in this
respect.
For instance, consider Rosatis denition of the notion of full vividness:
11
Let us say that a person has received information in a maximally vivid way when no more
detailed representations of it and no representations of it in yet different media or modes
of representation would further alter her reactions.
12
What we have discussed in this chapter is that our reactions to the prospect of, for
instance, spending several years in jail may vary in a systematic way depending on
how we try to imagine what it will be like. And one of the conclusions was that we
have no good idea even of what the optimal approach would be like. For various
reasons there is no way of representing a longer sequence of points of time that is
such that further modes of representations of this sequence would not run the risk of
altering our reactions.
The logical problem or metaphysical problem lay in the fact that of necessity
we experience and judge a space of time from a point in time. It seems that our
judgement concerning the space of time is insufciently justied at each point of
time, and that there is no obvious method of putting these perspectives together in
a way that will overcome our problem. Suppose you have a preference to engage
in a political activity which means a risk of being kept in custody for 27 years. In
order to make sure that your preference is rational you have to consider what it will
be like to spend 27 years in prison. But whom are you going to ask if you want to
know what this is like? Should you ask the person that is just about to begin his
imprisonment, the one who has spent 10 years or the one who has spent 20 years
or perhaps the one who has his 27 years in prison behind him? They will probably
for various reasons judge the imprisonment differently and we cannot therefore take
each of these perspectives in isolation as our rational guide. And we lack an additive
or democratic method of adjusting contradictory perspectives.
And I believe that this problem is even bigger than what emerges from this
chapter so far. We have considered the problem of the time aspect and some related
problems but there is also a problem about possible alternative experiences. There is
no time for imagining a longer sequence of experiences under normal circumstances
when a decision is to be made. But observe that this is a problem concerning just
one alternative; normally we have to decide whether or not to go for one possible
experience, sequence of experiences or even life among innumerable others.
The hero in Sumners example chooses between being a philosopher and a
basketball player, but his alternatives are countless when viewed realistically. And in
order to know that his preference is rational he would have to consider in a maximally
vivid way what it would be like to choose these alternatives as well. We realize that
this is physically impossible, just as it is physically impossible to compress a longer
time sequence into a shorter one.
But we also have the logical problem. Just as we do not know what would count
as the optimal way of handling the time problem in our imagination, I gure that it
12
Rosati, Persons, Perspectives, and Full Information Accounts of the Good, p. 306.
is difcult to say what would count as uniting the experience of all lives one could
lead into a single consciousness.
13
This does not exclude that we may have some clue as to what would count as
a criterion of optimality. One such very general criterion (mentioned in 3.4) is that
imagining being in a situation S at least has to be as phenomenologically similar as
possible to actually being in S. When David Sobel discusses a conceivable distinction
within the experiential model which is roughly our qualitative element between
a serial and an amnesia version, my immediate reaction is that the former version
will not full this criterion. Sobel explains the distinction in the following way:
In the serial version, our idealized self is expected to achieve full information by acquiring
rsthand knowledge of what one of the lives we could live would be like, retaining this
knowledge, and moving on to experience the next life we could lead.
14
Sobel nds this version problematic, particularly because a precondition for being
able to appreciate the value of certain kinds of lives is that you are unaware of the
alternatives. I agree with that, but would like to describe the problem in more general
terms: To bring along the collected experiences of all the different lives you have
hitherto imagined in the imagination of every new alternative would render rsthand
phenomenological knowledge of the alternative impossible you would have in
your imagination an experience of the alternative that would not answer to the actual
experience of it.
It is indeed true that whatever alternative way of life you choose after the
rationalization process, you will have lost your innocence. After such a process you
cannot choose the alternative of living the life of someone who is ignorant of the
alternatives, since in the serial version you may have difculties forgetting what
you experienced in the rationalization process. This means that in order for you to
be able to imagine what it will be like to live the alternative lives without innocence,
you have rst to pass through all the alternatives once. This will not be enough,
though, since concerning every single alternative you imagine for the second time,
you will have an experience of what this alternative will be like when you have
passed through the alternative ways of living once and then lost your innocence, but
you do not know how it will feel when you have passed through all the alternatives
a second time (which is what you have done if, after the rationalization process, you
choose one of the alternatives). You are caught in an innite regress.
Therefore I assume that the adherent of the information requirement must choose
the amnesia version:
13
Sobel, Full Information Accounts of Well-Being, p. 794. Cf. Also David Lewis,
Dispositional Theories of Value II, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LXIII (1989):
126.
14
Sobel, Full Information Accounts of Well-Being, p. 801.
Here the hope of being able to experience adequately what it would be like to lead all the
different lives we could lead and unify that knowledge within a single consciousness rests
on being able to hide experiential knowledge from consciousness while storing it.
15
And I would add: It rests as well on the ability to forget about the rationalization
process, and so to speak empty the experiential stock, after you have made your
choice, in order to make sure that you avoid the disturbing effects in the serial version.
If this is a justied but unrealistic demand, then the amnesia version probably will
not work together with a procedural version of the information requirement. This
will also be a problem.
3.9 A Comment on Metaphorical Language
In this chapter I have presented some evidence that there is a genuine distinction
between quantity and quality as far as a belief or a body of beliefs are concerned.
One difculty in my presentation is that the points I make and illustrate seem to
be most accurately expressed in a metaphorical language. For instance, I claim that
the difference between a vivid and non-vivid belief (which in itself is a metaphorical
distinction) is that the former, so to speak, is felt from the inside. Another picture
that I believe is useful is that a vivid belief lies closer to you than a non-vivid one
you do not see more of a vivid belief but you have it closer to your eyes, which
also means that you are liable to take it seriously. (I believe there is an intimate
connection between the vividness of a belief and our reactions to it, but that the
former are not to be dened in terms of the latter on the contrary, the reaction is to
be explained by the vividness.)
But I believe that this metaphorical language follows as a matter of course and is
unavoidable in questions about propositionality and phenomenology.
15
Ibid., p. 805.
Chapter 4
The Qualitative Element Criticized
Leaving aside less important wants, for instance concerning choosing one kind of
dish in a dinner restaurant or choosing a particular pen on your desk in order to write
in your diary, there seems to be a case for the information requirement.
We normally do not want to be disappointed. There is a difference between
founding ones preference on all the relevant information and founding it on all
relevant information represented in a vivid manner. There is a difference between the
quantity of beliefs and their quality. Vividness is a relevant dimension in the sense
that the difference between what we believe in a vivid and in a non-vivid way can
make a difference as to whether we want to realize the content of the preference.
So I believe the demand of vividness accords with a fundamental intuition.
And it is not only a matter of making sure that one avoids disappointment. There is
something unreasonable in itself about a preference that would change as a result of
a change in the vividness of the information that it rests on.
On the other hand, I have also discussed an opposing intuition. We have considered
my preferences as an adventurer not to look too closely at the experiences I will face
if I want to climb Mount Everest; I want to climb Mount Everest even if this will not
give me any long-lasting satisfaction. In quantitative terms we have a case in which
the positive experiences do not outweigh the negative ones. I just want to have the
adventure. I would say that it is still reasonable not to represent the experiences of
the climb as vividly as possible.
What, then, about a case in which there is a choice between a smaller good for
oneself and a greater good for some other person? In this case: what is rational
to prefer? According to a fairly common understanding of rationality, this concept
concerns only the agents weal and woe. In one sense the self-centredness in this
concept may well t in with our discussion so far, since what we have discussed is
particularly rationality problems concerning prudence, and not so much morality.
In other words, there is no pressing need for us at the moment to reject the element
of self-centredness or self-interest as a common understanding of rationality.
1
1
Cf., however, Amartya Sen, who claims that the exclusion of any consideration other
than self-interest seems to impose a wholly arbitrary limitation on the notion of rationality,
Choice, Welfare and Measurement (Oxford, 1982), p. 104. Cf. also Jon Elsters distinction
between rational man and economic man: The rst involves in the thin sense which we are
discussing now nothing but consistent preferences and (to anticipate) consistent plans. The
second is a much better-endowed creature, with preferences that are not only consistent, but
also complete, continuous and selsh, Sour Grapes, p. 10.
This does not, however, get in the way of questioning the element of
maximization.
4.1 Maximization
It does not seem obviously irrational to prefer a smaller amount of a good thing to a
larger amount. It does not seem irrational to prefer to climb Mount Everest even if
the negative experiences involved in this project will in total outweigh the positive
ones.
I believe that maximization has a special position in questions of rationality
nevertheless, whether it be rationality in action, decision or preference. It might
be that maximization affects the rationality question generally, since it is always a
factor you have to take into account.
Consider the following idea described and criticized by Henry S. Richardson:
If values are all commensurable in the right way, then deliberation may take on a
well-understood and much studied form, that of maximization ... If values are not so
commensurable, then prospects for coping rationally with decisions in which they clash
may seem correspondingly dim.
2
In the light of a question about commensurability the suggestion is that maximization
is relevant in so far as there is commensurability of the values involved. We might
well admit that some values are not commensurable. For instance, I believe that it
is hard or impossible to compare the moral values of fullling ones duty as a friend
and fullling ones duty as a fellow human being. If I have to choose between saving
my friend from a burning house and saving some strangers, I believe there is a value
in saving my friend, and I believe as well that there is a value in saving the strangers,
but I nd it hard to compare these values. They seem in this case incommensurable
or incomparable.
The idea seems to be that maximization is a relevant factor in deliberation and
rationality when there is commensurability of the values involved, whereas it does
not have any role to play when there is no commensurability.
But it is harder to justify saving one friend instead of a hundred strangers compared
to saving the friend instead of a few strangers. This seems to imply that maximization
is a relevant factor even in the comparison of incommensurable values. And I cannot
see that it will make any difference if we discuss moral or other values.
I agree with Richardson that value comparisons may be incomplete. Therefore, it
is not the case that if we have two incommensurably valuable items and it turns out
that one of them is better than the other in at least one respect, then this item ought
to have a higher overall ranking than the other. Richardson says:
2
H. S. Richardson, Practical Reasoning about Final Ends (Cambridge, 1997), p. 89.
The Qualitative Element Criticized 45
even if it were true that Descartess Meditations were worse than Wittgensteins
Tractatus in no respect and better than it in at least one respect, it is not clear that we
would translate this partial superiority into an overall judgment that the former is the
better book.
3
However, I believe that maximization is always relevant in the sense that if we
increase the size or quantity of some valuable dimension, then sooner or later that
will have an impact on our judgement concerning the overall value of the items.
There is a difference between two cases. In one case we try to compare the
Meditations with Tractatus and nd that they are in principle incomparable except
for the fact that the Meditations has one quality that Tractatus lacks. This quality,
however, is hard to quantify. So it is not the case that one of the works has this
quality to a greater extent than the other. Here I agree with Richardson. It is possible
to claim that even though one of the works is better in one respect than the other and
worse in no respect, this work is not necessarily better overall than the other work.
In the other case everything is just like in the rst case. The difference is that
the unique quality of the one work is quantiable. I would say that we might reach
the same conclusion here it is not necessarily the case that the work that contains
the unique quality is better overall than the other work. But if we could increase the
extent to which the one work contained the unique quality, then we would sooner
or later come to a point of intersection beyond which the correct thing would be to
judge one of the works as the better one overall.
This means that if the unique quality is quantiable then it is always possible at
least to imagine what it would take for one of the items to be better overall than the
other an increase in the quantity. And that is what I have in mind when I claim that
maximization is always relevant in deliberation and rationality.
4
Translated to our
example about whom to save from the burning house the friend or the one hundred
strangers we may say that if we increase the number of strangers that would be
saved if we chose that alternative, then we will sooner or later come to a point where
we may claim that the value of choosing this alternative outweighs the value of
choosing to save the friend.
You might have some doubts as to whether my claim is true whatever quality is
maximized (supposing that we are talking about some unique property). For instance,
suppose that the unique property of the one work is that it is accessible and readable
also for a non-professional philosopher. This is no doubt a quantiable property or
quality a work may be more or less accessible. Nevertheless, it does not really make
3
Ibid., p. 108.
4
Compare this with Ruth Chang, who suggests that there is conceptual space in our
intuitive notion of evaluative comparability for a fourth value relation of comparability that
may hold when better than, worse than, and equally good do not. I call this relation
on a par., The Possibility of Parity, Ethics, 112 (2002): 661. In other words, we can have
comparability even if the trichotomy of relations does not hold. I believe maximization to be
relevant in deliberation both in relation to incomparable items and items on a par, granted that
there exists such a relation.
sense to say that if we have two works the value of which are incommensurable, then
if we can increase the accessibility of the one work compared to the other, we would
sooner or later come to the conclusion that that object is overall better than the other
object. It does not really seem reasonable to say such a thing in connection with
accessibility.
What is the difference between those properties that sooner or later reach the
point of intersection and those properties that do not? One obvious candidate has to
do with the difference between two kinds of quantiable property. For some of these
properties there is in principle no limit to how much the property may increase, but
for some others there are such limits. We have a difference here between properties
that are boundlessly quantiable and properties that are not boundlessly quantiable.
And as it seems, the property of accessibility belongs to the latter category there
is a limit to how much you can increase the accessibility at least of a philosophical
text, without tampering with its message.
The reason in turn why there is a limit to the quantiability of some properties
can vary, I gure. For negative properties, for instance the lack of spelling mistakes,
there is of course a natural limit. I suppose this is true of every kind of negative
property. But the property we are discussing now, accessibility, is not a negative
property, and so the reason why it is not boundlessly quantiable is more complex, I
believe, and has to do with psychology, semantics and the overall limits of language,
which means that there are no exact limits and also that they may be debatable.
So one idea would be to say that my thesis is valid for properties that are
boundlessly quantiable but not (generally) valid for properties that are not
boundlessly quantiable. Another idea would be to call in question also whether its
true of all kinds of boundlessly quantiable properties.
I want to solve this problem in a handy way: I conne myself here to the claim
that maximization of utility always has the property of being morally relevant in the
sense that if we try to compare the overall value of two items, the value of which is
incommensurable, where one of the items is better than the other in terms of utility
maximization, then we can always imagine what it would be like for this item to
outweigh the value of the other item by means of its utility maximization. (I here
use utility maximization as a quantiable concept one item might in other words
maximize utility more than another item.)
5
5
David Gauthier has criticized the theory of straightforward maximization, Morals by
Agreement (Oxford, 1986), Ch. 6, which claims that the agent should always choose the action
which yields the greatest expectation of benet for the agent. The problem with this theory
is of course that it will in certain circumstances put the agent into a prisoners dilemma (see
for instance J. D. Velleman, Deciding How to Decide, in Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut
(eds), Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford, 1997), p. 30) a well-known example in which
two people would both be better off if they refrained from doing what would make each
of them better off. There are various strategies available for a defender of straightforward
maximization. But one might also see the presence of these dilemmas as an occasion for
proposing an alternative to the traditional maximizing concept. This is what Gauthier does. A
discussion of this proposal is not needed here. I will just note, once again, that this particular
*
To sum up this part of the reasoning, I do believe that maximization in one way or
another is relevant in rational deliberation and in the rationalization process which
founds or tests a preference. And I believe that this is so whether or not we choose
between two items that are incommensurable in value. I agree with Richardson when
he says that commensurability is not a prerequisite of rational choice.
6
Whereas I
do not believe that commensurability is a prerequisite either for maximization or for
rational choice (since I believe that at least utility maximization has to be considered
when comparing the choice between two items that are incommensurable in value)
Richardson seems to agree only with the latter part of this claim.
The upshot, translated into terms of prudential preference rationality, can be
stated as follows.
Let us rst discuss commensurable values. Suppose you have a rm (and rational)
conviction that a certain object is valuable for you. Then there is a presumption for
saying that a preference for an alternative with a smaller amount of this good will be
irrational, in the sense that you would not have this preference if you were rational.
Some philosophers may want to qualify with a ceteris-paribus clause: If I have
other preferences (which I probably will) for other personal values, then increasing
one of the personal values may affect some other value of mine. Increasing the
personal value of solitude beyond a certain limit may negatively affect the value of
communicating with other people. However, if we discuss preference rationality and
not the rationality of having a preference satised then such contingent facts about
how personal values can be combined in this world will not, I believe, automatically
affect whether a preference for an increase of the good beyond the mentioned limit
will be rational or not. It may well be, also when it would not be rational to satisfy
it as it is.
On the other hand I may also (probably) have preferences concerning the overall
shape and mix of values in my life. I may want an equal mix of love, truth and beauty
in my life. In this case it would not be irrational, I think, to choose a smaller amount
of one of these values in order to preserve the balance. Therefore I could accept a
ceteris-paribus clause, but only in a discussion of these relative values, that is, things
that are valuable for us in a certain combination of other valuable things.
7
problem arises when practical rationality is conned to the perspective of the agents own
self-interest.
6
Richardson, p. 282.
7
My claims here seem to be incompatible with a satiscing model (see Michael Slote,
Common-sense Morality and Consequentialism (London, 1985), Ch. 3), according to which it
may be all right to prefer a sufcient amount of a certain good also when all other things are
equal. I believe that the satiscing model may come into conict with the rationality concept
we are discussing. However, the fact that it is irrational, other things being equal, to prefer
less of a valuable item to more of it, does not imply that it is also irrational to prefer nothing
of a valuable item rather than a very small amount of it. I may prefer to be dead to having
senile dementia. This does not necessarily indicate that I regard suffering from dementia as
Turning to the incommensurable personal values, I would say that maximization
is an important part of assessing the preferences directed also to such values (or
to the objects having or exemplifying them). I may not be able to compare the
personal value of being respected for being a professional teacher to the value of
being considered a kind teacher, but I think that there would be a point for both
values beyond which it would be irrational not to prefer maximization (given that
you embrace these values). The way I function I would consider it to be irrational
not to prefer being an extremely professional teacher rather than being a moderately
kind one; I would also consider it to be irrational not to prefer extreme kindness
to moderate professionalism. Perhaps this is not a good example, but I hope it will
illustrate my point.
4.2 The Hypnotist and Drug Examples
I have already touched upon the idea that it does not seem prudentially unreasonable
in some situations to choose not to make sure that ones preferences are rational in
the sense that we imagine vividly what it will actually be like to have them satised.
The mountaineer example was fairly realistic, but I will now consider some extreme
and fanciful examples.
Suppose you know there is a hypnotist in town. Every night he invites a person
to volunteer in his show. This person is hypnotized into what seems to be a very
euphoric state when told to imagine what it will be like to be an ecstatic hen that has
just laid an egg. To the amusement of the audience, the person starts to behave just
like a hen and to judge from this behaviour she has a good time. One person who has
been hypnotized reports that she does not remember the details, only that she felt the
hypnotic power to be extremely strong and irresistible.
Suppose you are asked to volunteer for tonights show. Spontaneously you feel
like saying no, since you are not the kind of person who wants to lose control and
make yourself into an object of ridicule in front of other people. At the same time
you rely on the reports from those people who have visited the show and also on the
reports from those who have been hypnotized. You know, in other words, that the
experience is strong and positive when you have it.
Now you ask yourself whether or not your preference not to volunteer for
the show is rational. If preference rationality depends on whether or not one has
imagined as vividly as possible what it will be like to have ones want satised, it
seems that you have reason to fear a rationality test of your preference. Once again,
objectively bad. I may regard life with dementia as void of value (that is to say, not good
and not bad), and I may, I believe, as a rational person prefer no life at all to this kind of life.
Our idealized selves may have different attitudes in this regard (which will be discussed later
on), but the important thing is that I do not think that a rational person of necessity has to be
indifferent in the choice between such a life (that she considers to be void of value) and being
dead she may rationally prefer to die out of sheer self-interest; she may prefer nothing at all
instead of a small amount of some good.
such a test would of course not only mean that you have to imagine exactly what
it would be like to be in the situation you will actually be in if you choose not to
volunteer. It will also mean that you have to imagine vividly what it would be like
to be in the situation you turn down you have to imagine what it would be like to
be hypnotized.
We have a situation that is well-known by now. If you were to imagine the situation
you want to turn down, then there is a risk that you would not be able to turn it down,
since the experience it involves is, by hypothesis, strong and irresistible.
I am not assuming here that one part of the problem is that this would be
incompatible with some kind of maximizing strategy. The problem is not that as a
rational person you have to weigh the intense but short experience of having laid
an egg against the feeling of having been turned into an object of ridicule which
normally has a much longer duration from time to time you would probably return
to the thoughts about how the situation must have appeared from the outside and
every time you do so there is a not very intense but stinging feeling of shame. But
not so in this case. We assume that although you are a controlled and proud person,
you are also able to shake off the memory of this kind of situation pretty soon. So the
choice is indifferent from the point of view of maximization.
Let us take an even more extreme example. Suppose you know there is a drug
that will give you extremely euphoric experiences. It is not really like other drugs,
however, since the bad effects from taking it are not bad enough to outweigh the
positive effects. You prefer, however, a drug-free life and so you do not want to take
the drug. You have reason to fear that if you were to imagine vividly the alternative
you are turning down, that is to say, if there were a method for imagining vividly
what it would be like to take a drug for instance by hypnotism without actually
taking it, then you would no longer be able to say no to the drug. Your preference
against the drug will turn into a preference for it.
The problem in this case is the same as in the other cases it does not seem
unreasonable to refuse to imagine vividly what it will be like to have a preference
satised compared to having it frustrated.
8
4.3 Gibbards First Example
Allan Gibbard has discussed full information analyses in Wise Choices, Apt Feelings
and his critique seems, at least on the surface, similar to my critique. Gibbard
addresses himself to Richard Brandts formulation of full information analysis in
terms of cognitive psychotherapy. We will get back to Brandts formulation, but at the
moment nothing of importance hangs on whether we discuss Brandts formulation or
Harsanyis in 1.3. Gibbard writes:
8
Compare this with the following remark by Jon Elster: a person who decides that
he wants to try everything once before he decides on his permanent long-term choice may
lose what little character he has if he gets into one of the absorbing states associated with
addiction, Sour Grapes, p. 139. See also Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens, Part II.
Suppose, for instance, I think that full and vivid realization of all the relevant facts would
evoke a debilitating neurosis a neurosis I have kept from controlling my life only by
avoiding vivid confrontation with certain facts. Perhaps with a more vivid realization of
what peoples innards are like, I would want to stay away from dinner parties and do all
my eating alone although then I would feel lonely and isolated. Suppose on that ground I
accept the claim If you were fully rational in Brandts sense, you would not ever eat with
other people. Would that have recommending force?
9
Let me comment.
The example is intricate. In my examples above the general structure has been
the following one. Suppose you have a preference either for doing a certain thing
or for not doing it. Suppose furthermore that this preference would change if you
reected in a vivid manner on what it would be like to have it satised. However, in
Gibbards example the main problem appears to be that making all your preferences
rational would result in some considerable amount of unhappiness. You would have
to stand both the neurosis and the loneliness and isolation.
So in this case we seem to have a conict between different aspects of rationality,
and once again we have to ask whether its always rational to see to it that all of
our preferences are rational. In Gibbards case it does not seem irrational to refrain
from rationalizing some of your preferences, since this is the only way to achieve
happiness and to maximize utility. So from the point of view of maximization there
seems to be an obvious point in refraining from making all the preferences involved
rational. The rational thing from this perspective is to abstain from rationalizing the
preference for dinner parties, since this will maximize utility.
But will it maximize utility in the sense that rational preferences are satised?
Suppose I argue in the following way: In fact, the best way to satisfy as many
rational preferences as possible might well be to satisfy some irrational ones. This
is precisely what happens in Gibbards case. You have a rational preference for
avoiding the neurosis and a rational preference for avoiding the state of mind that
would result from loneliness and isolation. A prerequisite for having these rational
preferences satised is satisfying some irrational preference.
However, this reasoning is built upon a narrow concept of preference rationality
that I do not think is acceptable (from the point of view of a full information analysis).
Suppose that in order to be rational a preference has to be reected upon in the
following way: you have to imagine as vividly as possible what it would mean to
have it satised in the sense of what it would mean in itself to be in a state of mind of
having the preference satised and what this state of mind will bring with it and what
are the prerequisites of getting into such a state of mind. This would render the above
analysis impossible: you could not possibly have a rational preference satised by
means of having another irrational preference satised, since the rationality of the
rst preference requires that you imagine as vividly as possible the prerequisites of
getting it satised, and then, as in Gibbards case, you would have to reect upon all
the (relevant) details of participating in dinner parties, and so on.
9
Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Oxford, 1990), p. 20.
In other words, we cannot handle the situation within the framework of preference
sensitivity, claiming that in this case it is rational not to see to it that your preference
to go to dinner parties is rational, since going to dinner parties is a prerequisite for
avoiding the misery of being lonely and isolated. The thing is that my preference in
this case for not being lonely and isolated will not be rational unless I have tried to
imagine as vividly as possible what it would take to have it satised. This will require
that I visit dinner parties in my imagination and confront people whose innards are
such that I would prefer to eat alone if I just had vivid knowledge of them.
The question is once again: will it be reasonable to demand preference rationality
in this case? Would a reasonable person make sure that he had to endure loneliness
and isolation rather than retaining his irrational preference for dinner parties?
Im not sure what to say. If I, after having tested my preference for rationality,
seriously said to myself that even if being lonely and isolated is something bad in
itself, I prefer the isolation to socializing with people whose innards look the way
they actually do, then I might well have made the reasonable choice when I tested
my preferences for rationality. On the other hand, if there is a feeling of deep regret
over having destroyed something valuable in life, then again it is easier to say that
my choice was unreasonable.
4.4 Gibbards Second Example
Have a look at Gibbards next example:
A civil servant who rmly rejects all offers of bribes might fear that if he dwelt vividly
on all that he is forgoing, he would yield to temptation. That, roughly, is to fear that his
determination not to take bribes is irrational in Brandts sense. Cognitive psychotherapy,
to be sure, would involve vivid awareness of the social consequences of bribery and its
personal dangers. If the personal danger is minimal, though, the civil servant may well
suspect that vivid realization of the social consequences of bribery would little avail
against vivid realization of the pleasures accepting bribes would open to him. Moreover,
once temptations had done their work, he might well be glad they had. Suppose all this
is so. Is he being irrational when out of moral conviction he avoids contemplating the
temptations of his position? Is it irrational for him to refuse a bribe?
10
In my reading of this example you are a person who for moral reasons does not
want to take bribes and you ask yourself whether or not this is a rational preference.
Suppose you know that if you were to reect vividly enough on the personal gains of
taking bribes, then you would not be able to withstand the temptation. But what are
you to imagine parallel with this? What will it actually mean to take bribes what
are the full consequences of doing such a thing?
Gibbard says that besides the pleasures that the bribery would result in, you have
to take into consideration the personal dangers of bribery. However, these dangers
are minimal, which means that they cannot outweigh the pleasures. But there are also
10
Gibbard, pp. 2021.
the social consequences of bribery, and the question is whether these (together with
the personal dangers) would outweigh the personal pleasures if they were compared
in some kind of objective manner.
The problem is that whereas the personal pleasures are intense and well dened
(for instance, taking bribes might allow that you eat more often at luxury restaurants
and buy a sports car which you have dreamt of ever since you were a boy) the social
consequences might be less spectacular. We have a situation in which we weigh the
personal pleasures of taking bribes against the pain of facing the negative social
consequences of this in terms of diminishing feelings of trust.
As I have argued before: it might be difcult to compare intense and relatively
short-lived feelings of pleasure with non-intense but lengthy feelings of pain or
annoyance. There seems to be some kind of inherent liveliness connected with the
former and some kind of inherent non-liveliness connected with the latter. Therefore
a requirement of rationality in terms of lively imagining will automatically favour
the former experiences, as it seems.
So the conspicuousness of the intense feelings will be particularly prominent in
the concrete comparisons between different experiences, but it may also in some
cases have an effect in purely abstract choices: for instance if you are fond of
adventure. In Gibbards example the civil servant has an abstract preference for the
greatest amount of satisfaction although he knows full well that the phenomenon I
have called the conspicuousness of intensity would force him (psychologically) to
abandon this abstract preference if he yielded to the temptation.
4.5 Savulescu on Obstructive Desires
Consider the following classical example on roughly the same theme as the previous
examples. Circe warned Odysseus
that he must next pass the Island of the Sirens, whose beautiful voices enchanted all
who sailed near Now they sat and sang in a meadow among the heaped bones of sailors
whom they had drawn to their death. Plug your mens ears with bees-wax, advised Circe,
and if you are eager to hear their music, have your crew bind you hand and foot to the
mast, and make them swear not to let you escape, however harshly you may threaten
them. As the ship approached Siren Land, Odysseus took Circes advice, and the
Sirens sang so sweetly, promising him foreknowledge of all future happenings on earth,
that he shouted to his companions, threatening them with death if they would not release
him; but, obeying his earlier orders, they only lashed him tighter to the mast. Thus the ship
sailed by in safety, and the Sirens committed suicide for vexation.
11
In my view this is an example of the same kind of problem for an information
requirement as the other examples considered in this chapter. In order for Odysseus
to make sure that his preference to let himself be tied to the mast be rational, he will
have to imagine vividly what it will be like to have this preference satised. In doing
11
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: Volume Two (Harmondsworth, 1960), p. 361.
so, however, he will risk being overwhelmed by the frustration he will then feel if
not released. Consequently, it would not be recommended here that Odysseus made
sure that his preferences were rational according to the qualitative criterion.
Julian Savulescu, when discussing this example, seems to draw another conclusion
when he describes Odysseus desires that his men release him when he is in the
grip of the Sirens song as an irrational desire. Moreover, this desire obstructed the
expression of his autonomy. We see in this case how it is necessary to frustrate some
of a persons desires if we are to respect his autonomy.
12
It is clear that although Savulescu discusses the case in terms of an autonomy
ideal, the argument for this ideal is that autonomy is an important part of a good
life. Furthermore, he claims that in order for a person to be able to choose between
the alternatives in an autonomous way, and to judge which of the alternatives ts
better her life-plan,
13
she must appreciate the alternatives as they are and know
what each alternative is like. In other words, she must have rationalized those desires
the satisfaction of which is included in her life-plan. A central thesis in Savulescus
article is therefore that a necessary condition for a desire to be an expression of a
persons autonomy is that it is a rational desire or that it satises a rational desire.
14
Concerning the example of Odysseus and the Sirens, Savulescu claims that
Odysseus before sailing made a considered evaluation of what he judged was best.
His order that he would remain shackled was an expression of his autonomy.
15
I am
not sure that Savulescu is right here, since in my mind a precondition for Odysseus
to succeed in his plan to hear the Sirens song but not join them is that he abstains
from rationalizing this preference for being tied, since, once again, if he really did
imagine with maximal vividness what it would be like to be tied to the mast, then he
would probably also expose himself to the hypnotic power in the Sirens song and
might not want his men to tie him.
So in a case like this we may want to say that Odysseus preference to be tied is
rational even if it is not so according to an information requirement with an element
of vividness; furthermore, we may also allow ourselves to hold that a self-governing
person may let such a preference be included in her life-plan, although it might not
as it seems be an expression of a persons autonomy according to Savulescus
criterion.
In the next chapter, I will pursue this discussion by commenting on Gibbards
examples.
12
Julian Savulescu, Rational Desires and the Limitation of Life-Sustaining Treatment,
in Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer (eds), Bioethics (Oxford, 1999), p. 538.
13
Ibid., p. 535. Ibid., p. 535.
14
Ibid., pp. 5345. Ibid., pp. 5345. . 5345.
15
Ibid., p. 538.
Chapter 5
Comparing Examples
If we compare Gibbards rst and second example in general terms, do they both
pose the same problem for the information requirement?
5.1 Producing a Neurosis
In Gibbards rst example there is indeed one conspicuous feature that will explain
at least our spontaneous reaction: to rationalize my desire in this situation would
mean bringing about or evoking a disease a neurosis. A rationality requirement
that exhorts people to produce a state of neurosis will seem highly suspicious. But
why is that?
One answer is that a neurosis will be an instance of mental illness. One simple
way (in folk psychology) of dening a mental illness is to say it is a chronic state or at
least a disorder of some duration that affects our rational capacity. So there is a built-
in contradiction between neurosis and rationality. And this is something I believe
follows also from a primitive folk psychological denition of rationality being
rational, if it means anything, will at least mean not being neurotic, schizophrenic
and so on.
Rationality discourse often yields the agents doings, either in her thoughts or by
her actions, but there is also a very important usage concerning an agents thoughts
that is not also a part of her doings, namely her beliefs.
1
A typical example of
irrationality is a belief that is not justied by the body of evidence the agent has at the
time. That may explain why we spontaneously would not say that a recommendation
to rationalize ones preferences in the sense discussed here is acceptable. It does not
seem to be rational to do something that will eventually make you land in a state of
irrationality.
But this is not a wholly unproblematic claim either, since even if we concentrate
on the irrationality of beliefs (which I take to be an essential or at least important
element in such mental diseases as neurosis, schizophrenia and so on) it is not obvious
what to say about Gibbards rst example. One might claim that there is something
wrong with the beliefs I would have to live with if I produced the neurosis. But on
the other hand, what goes on in peoples innards when they eat is something that I
1
Some would say that this is the primary usage. See for instance Fumerton: I will
be dening rational action and moral action in part by reference to rational belief about the
consequences of action I take the concepts of practical rationality and morally right action
to be parasitic on the concepts of epistemic rationality, p. 11.
cannot conceal from myself if I want to have a complete picture of what is going
on around me when I sit and eat my dinner together with other people. I am not
wholly rational as far as my beliefs are concerned if I try to hide from myself what is
obviously true some facts about other peoples bodily processes.
I would say that the irrationality evoked by the vivid realization is particularly a
question of focusing its not that my beliefs are false or incomplete, its rather that
I focus on some tiny fraction of all the true beliefs about the situation; its a kind of
irrationality of perspective. When I choose not to realize vividly all the relevant facts
of the situation on the other hand, the irrationality will be a question of incomplete
knowledge.
But then, how come there is a tendency which I assume there is to hesitate
about the value of making sure that ones preferences are rational in the present
sense in Gibbards rst example?
The easy answer seems to be that the belief element indeed is an important
element of mental diseases, but it is not the only element. Another element concerns
pathological desires. These pathological desires will bring with them psychological
states that are irrational in some sense.
For instance, a desire not to eat together with people in our example is of course
in one sense founded on a reason (about what the innards of these people actually
look like). But in another sense it is unreasonable, since it is uncontrollable by
reasoning. After having evoked the neurosis it seems that even if I can say to myself
that the fact about other peoples innards is just one fact among others to take into
consideration when deciding whether or not to attend dinner parties, it will hardly
affect my desires. There will be a rigidity in my conative apparatus that will not
reect the richness of nuances in my cognitive outlook. And this kind of rigidity I
take to be irrational, or a likely candidate for irrationality.
So the fundamental problem with the state that will be invoked by applying an
information requirement in Gibbards rst example is that it is irrational in at least
two important respects.
First, it is irrational in the sense that it will in a way block the possibility of
paradigmatic rational reasoning. By this I mean what I tried to describe above the
taking into consideration of various aspects of a situation and the liability to be
practically inuenced by these considerations.
Second, it is irrational also in a less formal sense, namely that it seems to lead to
nothing but suffering. To feel lonely and isolated is realistically seen to be an object
of pain and suffering (in contrast to being lonely and isolated, since a recluse might
well be that without feeling that he is). And what is more, there appears to be no
temporal limitation assumed in Gibbards example, which means that it is difcult
to see how this state could be anything but negative to me.
2
2
In saying this I am not claiming that it will never be rational to bring about a state of affairs
that in itself is negatively valued, since that would be absurd. What I am questioning by afrming
the intuitive force of Gibbards example, is whether it is rational to bring about something that has a
negative intrinsic value if this is not part of some larger plan or strategy. If you have a strategy, there is,
Comparing Examples 57
But isnt this compensated for by the fact that I also satisfy one, as it seems, fairly
strong want when I eat alone? Gibbard says that the vivid realization of peoples
innards will result in a want to stay away from dinner parties and do all my eating
alone and obviously, this is a want that I will satisfy by doing all my eating alone,
even at the cost of feeling lonely and isolated. So if it were not for these negative
feelings, I would end up on the positive side if I turned down invitations and did all
my eating alone after having made my preferences rational. So the argument goes.
I do not think the argument holds. I am not sure that I can formulate a general
principle, but intuitively it does not seem that my want to stay away from dinner
parties will make up for my loss of well-being. One reason is that the want in
question is negative. Of course, I positively want to be alone, but only as a result of
realizing that I am no longer able to do what I in one sense would like to do most of
all eat with other people.
In order to see the absurdity of placing this kind of want on an equal footing with
all other wants we may construct another example. Suppose you suddenly become
depressed. You do not see the meaning in your life projects and so you think that you
may as well stay in bed. In fact, in view of the meaninglessness of all your projects
you prefer to stay in bed. Once again, you do not want to do this because you see
some particular value in doing so; on the contrary, you want to stay in bed since you
suddenly do not see any value in carrying on with your projects. For that reason, it
would be absurd to count the satisfaction of your want to stay in bed as something
with a positive value.
If this is true, then I believe the same goes for my want to eat alone. This may
explain our spontaneous feelings about the prospect of making ones preferences
rational in Gibbards rst example. Why do so when there is nothing to gain? In other
words, even if we accept the information requirement, it seems that we have rational
reasons for abstaining from producing a neurosis in Gibbards rst example.
5.2 Thanking Yourself Afterwards
What are we to say about Gibbards second example? Is there any signicant
difference in the way we react to this example compared to the rst one?
Consider again the rst example about the neurosis. Gibbard says nothing about
how I would think about having rationalized my preferences in this example, but I
guess I would feel no gratitude for what I have done. It makes no sense to believe
that when I sit alone and eat my dinner feeling lonely and isolated, I will console
myself with the thankfulness of having realized vividly all relevant facts, so that I do
not have to attend dinner parties together with people with innards of such and such
a kind. Realistically, I would rather very much regret the fact that, by making my
preferences rational, I had spoiled my chances of getting pleasure out of attending
dinner parties.
as far as I can see, nothing absurd even to cause oneself to enter into a state that is obviously irrational.
Cf. Part, Reasons and Persons, p. 13.
And I guess this is also how we would react to similar but less spectacular cases.
Suppose for instance that while eating your Danish sausage somebody insisted on
telling you all the things that are in it and how it has received its lovely red colour
(by the means of dried and crushed red lice). This information would probably not
increase your appetite, however true it would be the opposite is more probable. But
then ask yourself if, after having lost your appetite, you would feel gratitude to the
person who told you the truth about the Danish plse? I doubt it.
Here I believe we have a difference between Gibbards rst and second case, due
to the fact that the person in the second example might well, as the example says,
approve of the rationalization in retrospect.
I am not claiming that retrospective endorsement will always make for a
justication (other things being roughly as in the kind of example we are discussing
now). Recall our previous discussion of preferences that are unconditional on their
own persistence. I have assumed that we may well pay moral regard to a preference
that is unconditional on its own existence (at least as long as it is rational), even
in a case where I came to regret this fact. Many of our perhaps most important
preferences, for instance the ideals, work this way. We gave examples of this.
Some people would claim that these ideals hold a unique position in our moral
life and I am not claiming here that these people are wrong. But even if you believe
that preferences that are unconditional on their own existence ought to be considered
even if we come to regret this fact in the future, I would say that if you come to regret
the fact that such a want is satised in the future, then that will make a justication
of your position more difcult.
5.3 A Standing Desire for Future Satisfaction
Compare this with Brandts statements concerning the mistake of ignoring future
desires. He writes:
Suppose I am going on a hike and am not thirsty now, but decide to take a ask of water.
Why? The answer is that I now have an aversion to being uncomfortably thirsty four hours
from now. However we acquire such aversions, the fact is that we have them. Again,
although I am not thirsty now, perhaps the idea of a cool draught when thirsty later is
attractive to me now It looks, then, as if there is at least a xed present aversion to
frustration of almost any desire, and often a xed desire for its satisfaction. This fact
explains in part how known future desires can be taken into account in present action.
3
It is true that the statements are highly qualied with almost any and often, but
even then I believe that the statements are debatable.
One distinction that has to be made concerns preferences the satisfaction of which
has some impact on our experiential life and preferences the satisfaction of which
has no such impact. This is not the same distinction as the one between conscious
3
Brandt, A Theory of the Good and the Right, p. 84.
and unconscious satisfaction of a preference. My consciousness might be affected
by the fact that my preference is satised even when I am not aware of whether
or not the preference is satised. Suppose I have a preference for not having lung
cancer. I may now have an experiential advantage from the fact that this preference
is satised, although I am not able to say whether or not it is actually satised.
Brandts suggestion about a standing desire for future satisfaction and for avoiding
the frustration of future desires is more plausible in the case of future desires that
will then have some impact on our experiential life compared to future desires that
will have no such impact.
So we have the following picture: it is harder to justify the satisfaction of some
present ideal if we know that doing so will lead to future unhappiness. This does not
of course mean that we do not want to satisfy a present ideal if this will lead to future
unhappiness, since indirectly the possibility of this consequence is included in the
denition of ideals: an ideal is a preference for certain things whether or not I desire
them (and therefore feel contentment) at the moment of satisfaction. As far as I can
see, it does not even mean that we do not want to satisfy a present ideal if we know
that doing so will in the end lead to an amount of unhappiness that in some way
exceeds the amount of preference satisfaction that I will get if I live in accordance
with my ideal.
What is the conclusion? Is there a standing want for the satisfaction of our future
wants only on the condition that this will be a prerequisite for our future happiness?
With some hesitation I would say yes. I cannot at the moment see that we have a
standing want for the satisfaction of a future want if this would yield no satisfaction,
happiness or pleasure. And therefore I do not believe we have a standing want for the
satisfaction of a future want as such.
Applied to Gibbards second example, this would mean that given that the civil
servant predicts that he will be glad that he yielded to the temptation, and not just
coolly approve of this, then this fact ought to be important for the civil servant also in
his present position, and ought therefore be a reason to yield to the temptation. If we
humans have a standing desire for future contentment, then it would be difcult to
imagine someone for whom this fact would not be a reason of this kind. In Gibbards
rst example, there is no such reason to be found.
5.4 The Importance of the Future
Is this concern for the future (indicated by the standing desire) something that we
ought to get rid of? Some philosophers believe so, and it is not out of the question
that they think it would tend to fade in a rationalization process.
In his book Changing Preferences, Krister Bykvist writes (and now I will quote
in a somewhat disconnected manner):
What shall we say about the past and future diachronic preferences of present people?
There seems to be no obvious absurdity involved in counting the past and future diachronic
preferences of a present person when they agree with the persons present synchronic
preferences, that is, when they have the same object. In these cases what we now think
should obtain now does not differ from what we did think should obtain now. The problem
is rather when these preferences clash, and their objects cannot obtain at the same time.
4
After having presented an example about Goethe (or should we say Goethe) who
changed preferences concerning writing poetry (he has an unconditional interest in
writing poetry when he is twenty, which he loses at the age of forty) and a dismissal
of taking into account past preferences when they clash with present ones, Bykvist
continues:
I think many of us would feel the same uneasiness about taking into account the future
retrospective preferences of a present person if those did not agree with her present
synchronic ones, since the person has not yet changed her mind. Suppose, for instance,
that Goethe, in the example above, will regain interest in poetry towards the end of his life.
He will look back and prefer that he had written poetry at the age of forty. Should Goethe
at the age of forty take his future selfs retrospective preference into consideration?
5
If Bykvist is right in that we ought to count neither past nor future preferences when
they disagree with present ones, then of course the fact that you later on will approve
of doing now what you do not want to do now will have no relevance for the question
of whether or not to do it now. In that case, the fact that you will give a retrospective
disapproval of a rationalization in Gibbards second example will have no relevance
for the justication of this disapproval.
I agree with Bykvist (and many others)
6
that it might be hard to swallow
a recommendation to take into account a past preference when it clashes with a
present one. But I am not quite sure that I understand why, as it is suggested here and
elsewhere, past wants should (or at least might) count when they agree with present
ones, if they do not count when they disagree. Suppose that I do not want to be a
philosopher now, at the age of forty, although I nd myself to be one. Suppose also
that when I was thirty I wanted (unconditionally) to live the life of a philosopher.
According to Bykvist, this fact is not relevant today, which means that I have no
reason to continue life as a philosopher in view of the preferences I had at the age of
thirty. Suppose that during my life I have changed my mind about the value of living
the life of a philosopher several times and that, at the age of twenty, for some reason
I had very intense preferences against living a philosophers life. Should that fact
count today? Is my present situation at the age of forty worse in view of the fact that
at the age of twenty I had a global preference agreeing with my present preference?
If my present situation is unaffected by the preferences I had when I was thirty, then
I cannot see why they ought not to be unaffected also by the preferences I had when
4
Krister Bykvist, Changing Preferences (Uppsala, 1998), p. 86.
5
Ibid., p. 88.
6
See for instance Wlodek Rabinowicz, Act-utilitarian prisoners dilemmas, Theoria,
55 (1989): 32.
I was twenty. I cannot, in other words, see why a past preference should count when
it agrees with a present one but not count when it disagrees.
Whatever the truth about past wants, we may reason along the same lines also in
connection with future preferences. Bykvist suggests that we ought not to take into
consideration future retrospective preferences that disagree with the present ones.
But why not, if we ought to (or might) take into consideration future retrospective
preferences when these agree with the present ones? Taking into account future
preferences that agree with present ones would force me to considerations that go
beyond my present preferences. As far as I can see, this will intrude on my integrity
just as much as taking into account future preferences that disagree with my present
ones.
*
However, perhaps the question is even more complicated. Let me illustrate. Suppose
I am thirty and want to be a philosopher. But I also want to live in the woods and
I know that I cannot satisfy both wants. Either I have to stay in town where the
university is or take a job as a sexton in a country church in order to be able to move
to my cabin. At the moment my preference for living in the countryside is stronger
than my preference for being a philosopher. So using my present set of preferences
as a basis in my prudential deliberations, I ought rationally to move to the country.
Suppose I know that when I am forty I do not want to live, or have lived, the life
of a philosopher. This knowledge will change nothing in my deliberations, partly
because my strongest want already will lead me to abandon philosophy but also
because, notwithstanding this, the want in question does not agree with my present
want to be a philosopher.
Suppose, however, that I have reason to believe that I am the kind of person who
changes his mind about philosophy every ten years (since this is what has happened
so far in my life). I foresee that when I am fty I will once again be a person who
wants to live and have lived the life of a philosopher. Since this preference does
agree with my present preference to be a philosopher it seems that it ought to (or at
least might) count, according to Bykvists suggestion. But then suppose that counting
this future preference would tip the balance in favour of continuing my present life
as a philosopher. Would that mean that I ought to continue my present life as a
philosopher although this is not what my present set of preferences would dictate? If
so, it seems that the suggestion at hand might be a threat to my integrity.
There are some possible replies. First, you might claim that my preference at the
age of fty to be a philosopher does indeed agree with my present (non-dominant)
preference to be a philosopher, but it doesnt agree with my present preference to
live in the woods. Responding to this we have to ask what is meant by one preference
being in agreement or disagreement with another. In one sense my global preference
at the age of fty to be a philosopher does not disagree with my preference to live
in the woods, since I most of all would love to combine the two preferences my
dream is to be a philosopher who lives in the woods. The reason why I am not able to
satisfy both preferences is contingent facts about practicalities. Indeed Bykvist says
that the problem is rather when these preferences clash, and their objects cannot
obtain at the same time,
7
but it is not altogether clear what is meant by this. In any
case we have a future preference that in some sense both agrees and disagrees with
present preferences, and the question is whether or not it then ought to count.
Second, the prescription (or permission) could be to count future wants only
when they agree with my all-things-considered preference. In other words, we ought
to count only those preferences that agree with what on balance I most of all prefer.
In the example above, my preference to have lived the life of a philosopher at the age
of fty does not agree with the sum total of my preferences at the age of thirty, since
my preference then to move to the woods is stronger than my preference to continue
being a philosopher.
But it seems to me that there is no way of counting a future preference in a way
that will not have any practical relevance and that will not intrude on our integrity
and freedom as present agents. In my present deliberations about how to arrange
my present life I will have to take into consideration other preferences than those I
have at the present moment. Even if those other preferences agree with my present
preferences, taking them into account in a way that will have practical impact in my
present life will force me to do things out of considerations that have nothing to do
with my present set of preferences, just as much as taking these preferences into
consideration would do when they clash with my present ones.
5.5 Ought Future Wants to be Discounted?
We have to face the normative question: Is it plausible to disregard a future preference
that you foresee? I guess most people would say that it is more reasonable to take
future preferences into account in our present deliberations than taking into account
our past preferences. Future preferences have greater normative importance than
past ones, and I gure that this is so whether or not we speak of a future preference
that agrees with our present preferences and also whether or not we speak of future
contentment. Therefore, I do not think the fact that the person has not yet changed
her mind
8
is an argument for discounting the future.
Accepting the present relevance of future preferences seems fairly widespread.
My (then) twelve-year-old son reasoned along these lines. The choir that he was
a member of were going to London to do some concerts. Disliking singing in the
choir, he also disliked the prospect of going to London, since there would be a lot of
singing and hardly any time for anything else. He decided to go on the trip anyway,
one reason being some kind of sense of duty, but the important consideration for him
seemed to be that he foresaw that in the future he would come to appreciate the fact
that he went to London together with the other boys.
7
Bykvist, Changing Preferences, p. 86.
8
Ibid., p. 88.
Now, I want to interpret this as a consideration of a future want that was foreseen
but that had not yet come into being, and I consider the fact that my son reasoned
along these lines as evidence for the intuitive plausibility of taking into consideration
future preferences.
I do not think that this is a too advanced chain of ethical thoughts to ascribe to
a twelve-year old boy: Judging from the adults he knows of and has to listen to,
he foresees that he will change his mind about singing chorales in London. This
future valuation is tenseless the prime object of his future preference is not that he
has been in London together with the choir; rather, his being glad to have been in
London derives from the fact that he regards these kinds of things as valuable. And
this is something he wants to take into account in his present deliberations about
whether or not to go on the trip.
You can claim that this is not the simplest explanation for my sons reaching the
conclusion that he should go to London. Normally we are happy when we have our
preferences satised and we are sad when we have them frustrated. My son may
foresee that in the future he will regret having stayed at home when his choir went
to London. Even if this feeling is founded on a change in his evaluative outlook, it
is not this change in itself that he now considers as relevant in his deliberations but
rather its emotional effects. And there is no contradiction here between his present
and future evaluative judgements he disvalues having regrets now and foresees
that he will disvalue this feeling also in the future.
If what I have said before is true, we normally do not want to foresee a future in
which we feel bad, not even if the bad feelings in the future come from regretting
what we now do not care about. As I have pointed out before, it is true that there
are future bad feelings that we now care less for, namely those bad feelings that
come from a frustrated unconditional preference. In the Wittgenstein example, the
bad feeling is included in the object of the want, and I will later on discuss a case in
which bad feelings are tolerated in a non-standard but psychologically possible way.
But there is no such preference involved in the choir example the important thing
for my son now is not to avoid something he actively and unconditionally disvalues.
He only wants to avoid doing something he nds pressing and tiresome.
Some kinds of regret are emotionally laden and some other kinds are not very
emotionally laden, if it is at all emotional. Examples are easy to nd among regrets
for having done and particularly not having done certain things in our youth. For
instance, I myself regret that I did not become a sailor instead of working at a car
factory at the age of sixteen. I can talk about this regret and think about it without
any feelings at all. And the best diagnosis I can make of this regret is that I have
an evaluative attitude towards having done something in my youth that I then for
various reasons did not do (although I was on the way).
If we foresee such an (unemotional) attitude in the future, this fact may well give
us reason now to take it into consideration. We do not perhaps have a standing want
to that effect, but the possibility is there and I believe it is real. Furthermore, this
is so whether or not we now share the evaluative outlook. My son does not regard
going to London with the choir as something valuable, but he foresees that he will in
the future. Therefore, I believe there is reason to consider the fact that the evaluative
outlook changes in Gibbards second example as morally relevant. But an important
difference between Gibbards example and the choir example is that my son foresees
a change in his values whatever he does now, whereas the civil servant foresees such
a change only if he gives in to the temptation.
5.6 Conclusion and Coda
In this chapter I have discussed some of the examples which are designed to show that
there is something suspect about the information requirement in the full information
analysis.
Let me summarize and comment.
In Gibbards rst example about whether or not to realize what peoples innards
are like in a vivid manner, I believe we perceive a conict between, on the one hand,
having full and vivid knowledge of what we actually do when we dine with other
people, and a preference for faring well and leading a good life on the other. Why
rationalize our preferences if this will only make us worse off?
I believe this is also a good illustration of the complexity of and tensions in the
conception of rationality. I claim that in Gibbards rst example we have a conict
between two elements in this conception one element being about knowing fully
what we are doing when we are doing it and another element being about maximizing
our well-being (which in Chapter 4 I claimed was always rationally relevant). Our
problems, so far, have consisted in the clash between these elements. Gibbards rst
example illustrates a dilemma in which you cannot comply with the one element
without violating the other.
In Gibbards second example there is no obvious conict between the requirement
of rationality and maximization of pleasure (supposing that we talk about the agents
pleasure). The civil servant will lead a more pleasurable life if he yields to the
temptations than if he does not.
But how rational is this refusal? Gibbard suggests that it would not be irrational
if a person out of moral conviction avoids contemplating the temptations of his
positions, and therefore also that applying the information requirement would give
us the wrong answer in this case. But is this really so?
In Gibbards example it is not only the case that the civil servant will feel good in
terms of pleasure, it seems also to be the case that he will approve of these feelings
together with having given in to the temptation. Its impossible for me not to interpret
this as a moral approval of the decision to yield to the temptation.
If this is so, I would say that it is not obvious that the rational thing to do for the
civil servant is to refrain from contemplating the temptations. Or rather, let me put
it this way: it is not obvious that the information requirement will give us the wrong
answer in Gibbards example, when it exhorts the civil servant to contemplate the
temptations in a vivid manner.
This may sound strange, since it suggests that there is no obvious value in moral
integrity either. If I want to refrain on moral grounds from yielding to temptations
that I know will mean fundamental changes in my moral outlook, it seems that I
ought to refrain from giving in to the temptations in order to respect the integrity of
my present moral agency. This is how we reason in many other cases: taking a moral
standpoint means a commitment to this very attitude and means therefore that one
ought to take measures against what may lead to radical changes of this attitude.
This follows from the fact that a moral attitude is practical if I judge that
a certain state of affairs is morally preferable to another, then I am committed to
preventing that things happen that will make it more difcult for these states of
affairs to obtain. And if my possible future moral attitudes are among these things,
then I ought to prevent them from being realized. So there is typically a built-in
intolerance in ones moral outlook. (This might be true also when tolerance is a
central value in ones moral position, since it is not obvious that one should tolerate
cases of intolerance.)
However, this built-in intolerance might be true at some general level. For
instance, my moral position commits me to preventing changes in my attitudes that
there are no obvious reasons for. The mere passage of time may constitute one such
source of change one just gets tired of a moral position and so accepts a new one.
But the case we are discussing is different, since it is a matter of changing a moral
attitude after having been closely acquainted with experiences that one merely had
an intellectual acquaintance with in advance. And if vividness is an element in the
everyday conception of rationality, there is a case for claiming that you have reason
for contemplating all the relevant facts of a case even if this meant a change in your
moral attitude. Changing our moral attitudes may be the rational thing to do in this
situation.
So, once again, I believe that the crucial question boils down to a purely conceptual
question about what there is in the concept of rationality. If there is a qualitative
element in this concept, then it is not obvious that the information requirement will
give the wrong answer in Gibbards second example, provided that we base our
discussion on intuitions. On the other hand, neither is it obvious that it will give the
right answer. Gibbards example looks indeed like a problem for the requirement,
since it seems to render certain kinds of idealism impossible, and therefore in the end
void of personal value, although it is self-regarding.
But I would say that this element is made plainer in our example about the
hypnotist. This example and Gibbards second example are indeed similar in certain
respects you dislike the prospect of having strong positive feelings under certain
circumstances. There is also another important similarity this dislike has an
idealistic foundation; your aversion to this prospect has moral overtones. In Gibbards
example you refrain from contemplation for explicitly moral reasons, whereas in the
hypnotist example we can say that the reasons are at least demi-moral they concern
your dignity as a rational and moral person.
But there is also a decisive difference. In the hypnotist example you will be
extremely glad if you join the show, but it is not a gladness particularly for having
joined the show. This is the case in Gibbards example you give a retrospective
moral approval of your decision that is founded on a closer look at the details of the
case.
A judgement of a present decision is based not only on the prospect of future
satisfaction and frustration of interests, but also on the foreseen future judgements
of this decision.
*
Michael Smith has argued that whereas it is indeed true that deliberation can produce
new and destroy old intrinsic preferences, it is a mistake to think that imagination in
itself has any important role in this process. Smith writes: By far the most important
way in which we create new and destroy old underived desires when we deliberate is
by trying to nd out whether our desires are, as a whole, systematically justiable.
9
It is possible to interpret Smith in the following way. There is a process of
creating and destroying desires by the exercise of imagination, as we have assumed
in our examples. But when we ask ourselves what we are to require in the name of
rationality, the aim of getting a psychology that is maximally coherent and unied
is more important than the aim of presenting to oneself in imagination as vividly as
possible all the relevant facts. Smith writes: For the imagination is liable to all sorts
of distorting inuences, inuences that it is the role of systematic reasoning to sort
out.
10
If we apply this reasoning to our subject which seems to be a reasonable
thing to do it might suggest that we drop the qualitative element in the rationality
requirement and try to solve the problems discussed with the element concerning
coherence and consistency. The latter element has more to do with logic and careful
reasoning than with information simpliciter.
In this way we may try to handle Gibbards second example. We may argue
that refusing the bribes will render the civil servants psychology more unied and
coherent than will accepting the bribes. No matter if he thanks himself afterwards that
he gave in to the temptation, it is still true that this reaction will stand in sharp contrast
to his former moral convictions. So in the light of these convictions and the kind of
person the civil servant wants to be, refusing to take bribes will make his psychology
more coherent overall. Therefore, it would be rational to avoid contemplating the
temptations of his position also if we proceed from the information requirement.
This would take care of Gibbards second argument.
Compare this with Smiths example:
Vividly imagining what it would be like to kill someone, I might nd myself thoroughly
averse to the prospect no matter what the imagined outcome. But, for all that, I might
well nd that the desire to kill someone, given certain outcomes, is one element in a
systematically justiable set of desires. Merely imagining a killing, no matter what the
9
Michael Smith, Internal Reasons, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 55
(1995): 114.
10
Ibid., p. 116.
imagined circumstances, may cause in me a thoroughgoing aversion, but it will not justify
such an aversion if considerations of overall coherence and unity demand that I have a
desire to kill in certain sorts of circumstances, and such considerations may themselves
override the effects of the imagination and cause me to have the desire I am justied in
having.
11
I accept that coherence, unity together with consistency might be reasonable elements
in the concept of rational agency and I also accept that this fact may have the effects
described in Smiths example. In order to preserve the harmony in ones set of
preferences one will have to refrain from contemplating the details of ones actions.
Otherwise one will receive an aversion to killing that sharply contrasts with ones
conviction that killing is the right thing to do in these circumstances. What I am not
so sure about, however, is whether Gibbards example and the other examples we
have presented are to be analysed in the same way on closer inspection.
Take a look at Smiths example rst. He seems to assume that imagining what
it will be like to kill someone would create an aversion against killing without
affecting ones overall judgement concerning the desirability of killing in these
circumstances. The only change that will ensue from the imagination is an attitudinal
change concerning a particular act of killing. And, to be sure, the combination of an
aversion to a particular act and a preference for the type of act that this particular act
belongs to is incoherent (or alternatively, being averse to and at the same time for
one and the same particular act is incoherent).
If we look at Gibbards second example, however, another interpretation of the
situation easily presents itself. Suppose the civil servant yields to the temptation
to take bribes as a consequence of his vivid imagining of what this would be like.
Then it seems that his attitudes will undergo a fairly fundamental change, since he
will be glad that he gave in to the temptation. It is much harder to imagine a similar
reaction in Smiths example. Suppose my imagination created an aversion to killing
that is contrary to my overall conviction that the killing ought to be done, then why
would I be glad that I abstained from killing? In Smiths example it seems that there
is a framework of preferences that remains constant over time, whereas in Gibbards
example, the imagination changes this framework too.
We have to address the following question: Are the logical categories we are
discussing, that is, coherence and unity, time-relative? Does the notion of rational
agency require that an agents preferences form a coherent set in relation to points of
time or in relation to the agents lifetime in its entirety? Which of these alternatives
you choose will have consequences for how to judge the rationality of a particular
preference or even a particular set of preferences. A particular preference may be an
element in a coherent set at one point of time in the life of a person, without being
such an element in the set of preferences over a persons whole lifetime.
Suppose the civil servant during his whole career has refused to take bribes out
of the conviction that it is wrong to take bribes and that it is more important to be an
honest person than having the pleasures that accepting the bribes would give him. At
11
Ibid, p. 116.
the end of his career he suddenly starts to contemplate the pleasures he has hitherto
denied himself. If the rationality of his psychology is judged from the perspective of
his whole lifetime, then it might well be rational to refrain from contemplating the
temptations. If, on the other hand, the rationality of his psychology is judged from
the perspective of the kind of person he will become as a result of the pleasures he
will get from the bribes, the contemplation may instead be rational.
Therefore, one way of disarming Gibbards second argument is to assume that
the logical categories we are discussing apply to an agents lifetime. In that case,
contemplating the pleasures of taking bribes is an irrational activity also according
to an information requirement.
But if we choose this solution we would also have to argue for this very assumption.
Would you as fully rational be more concerned about whether a particular preference
created coherence among the preferences you have over a lifetime than about
whether it will create coherence among your contemporary or future preferences?
I am not convinced that this is what we have in mind when we talk about people
being fully rational, since this conception of rationality seems to make preference
changes generally problematic. Other things being equal, in this conception it is
more rational to keep to a small set of preferences over a lifetime than develop new
sets of internally coherent preferences. This is a kind of preference conservatism that
I dont believe is rationally prescribed.
And observe that in this kind of conservatism not only past preferences that are
unconditional on their own persistence that is to say, ideals will get a standing,
but also preferences that are not conditional in this way, for instance a preference
for strawberry ice cream over chocolate ice cream.
12
Concerning the former kind of
preferences there is a debate about the value of satisfying them (which has also been
addressed in this book). The value of taking into account the latter kind of preferences
is much more controversial. Narrative theories of personal value may indeed take
past psychological states into account when judging the value of a psychological
change. There might for instance be a special value in a persons happiness over
having been successful in some particular task if the person has prepared and longed
for it during a lifetime.
13

12
I want to qualify my position concerning preference changes. Jon Elster says that the
perfectly rational man is free from inconstancy, Ulysses and the Sirens, p. 147. I believe it
is much more reasonable to hold that constancy is rationally prescribed for the goal-setting
desires or ideals than for desires generally. However, I think there is logical space for arguing
that two different persons may embrace contradictory desires (where each person considers
the object of her desire to be what Railton calls an appropriate object of desire or pursuit,
p. 52) without this being problematic from a rational point of view. In a similar vein, one and
the same person may embrace different desires under phases of her life without problem. But
once again, I am not fully convinced of this, and it may also be that we can disarm Gibbards
second example with a requirement of constancy.
13
It does not, however, follow from this that the narrative structure is in our conception
of what is rational.
Smith suggests that we take previous psychological states into account in a
similar but in some important respects different way. The structure of the whole
of ones psychological states over a lifetime is indeed important, but value is to be
conferred only on the structure of coherence. Every kind of structural element that
will struggle against this, for instance diversity and spontaneity, will have to be
avoided. If a person has loved strawberry ice cream above every other kind of ice
cream it would be irrational and therefore not desirable if suddenly and for no
reason he changes this preference.
Another way of disarming Gibbards second argument is to deny one of its
implicit assumptions, and the very assumption I made when I asked about the domain
of coherence and unity as elements in rationality: Ought we to strive for coherence
at every particular point of time or over a lifetime? The assumption is that different
possible sets of preferences may be internally coherent without being coherent
with each other; a particular psychological state may increase/decrease the level of
coherence at one particular point of time without increasing/decreasing coherence
over the agents life. This seems to be another way of stating the same assumption:
a rational being may have a coherent set of preferences that is not consistent with
the coherent set of preferences of another rational person; two rational persons may
have diverging preferences.
Smith denies a relativistic or what he calls Humean conception of reason
and argues instead for an anti-Humean or Kantian conception. He describes this
conception in the following way:
if we were to engage in a process of systematically justifying our desires we would all
eventually reason ourselves towards the same conclusions as regards what is to be done.
That is all possible rational creatures would desire alike as regards what is to be done
in the various circumstances they might face because this is, inter alia, what denes them
to be rational.
14
Applied to Gibbards example, even if you thanked yourself afterwards for having
contemplated the temptations and even if this thankfulness is in line with the kind of
moral convictions you have received as a result of your new experiences, one might
claim that these attitudes are irrational. It is not the case that we have two coherent
set of psychological states and it is not the case that contemplating the temptations
is a rational thing to do in relation to one of these sets but not the other. The act of
contemplation is either rational in both these sets or in neither. Suppose we assume,
which seems reasonable, that it is irrational, then we have an answer to Gibbards
question: contemplating the temptations is irrational, as is the thankfulness that
would result from it.
I am not going into detail here about why Smith sides with the absolute conception
of rationality. His main reason seems to be that he believes that our ordinary concept
of a reason is non-relative: We are talking about reasons period; about the common
14
Smith, Internal Reasons, p. 118.
set of reasons that are appreciable by each of us.
15
But even if this may be so in
relation to reasons unspecied, it is not necessarily the case in the ordinary concept
of personal values and the reasons stemming from them.
Is there an independent argument for assuming that the rational preferences that
form the basis of different persons values may contradict each other? I believe so,
because I am convinced that some of our intrinsic preferences are, so to speak, rationally
free-oating or independent of other intrinsic preferences. Some of our intrinsic
preferences do indeed support each other. For instance, if I want to devote myself
to my interests in Italian food, then I can rationally support my intrinsic preference
for a specic Italian dish. But if I have no such gastronomic meta-preference and if
there is no system to be found among my specic gastronomic preferences, then I
would say that these specic preferences are rationally free-oating. This means that
you may either have a preference for a specic dish or against it. This will also mean
that two rational persons may have preferences for the dish that contradict each other
without thereby contradicting the persons other preferences. That they have these
contradicting preferences, furthermore, may be explained by the fact that there is a
difference in their physiological make-up. Such differences, as well as differences
as regards temperament, may also explain why different agents may have internally
coherent but mutually incoherent sets of preferences.
And if we allow relativism of personal value, then it seems that Gibbards
argument might be a problem for the information requirement after all.
15
Ibid, p. 119.
Chapter 6
Truth and Deliberation
We have found and discussed two elements in the requirement of preference
rationality, or, for short, the information requirement. First a quantitative element,
which says that a preference in order to be rational or informed has to be founded
on all those beliefs that are relevant for either the existence of the preference or for
its strength. My preference for an object, therefore, is irrational if it is founded on
too small a body of beliefs. This kind of irrationality is not primarily a question of
truth and falsity, but instead of completeness. The other element is a qualitative
element. Suppose I have not made my belief lively enough to be able to affect my
preference and consequently that my preference would be affected by my belief, on
the condition of its liveliness.
Is there an understanding of liveliness which is distinct from richness in
informational content (which I take to be a purely quantitative notion)? I have
claimed that the distinction between the rst and second element can be upheld.
There is a difference between what is in your beliefs and how they appear.
In his article Internal and External Reasons Bernard Williams proposes that full
practical rationality presupposes that an agent (1) has no false beliefs, (2) has all
relevant true beliefs, and (3) deliberates correctly.
1
In my eyes (2) is fairly close to
our rst quantitative element in preference rationality: its not enough to have true
beliefs about what it will mean to have ones preference satised; one has to have
all those true beliefs that are relevant for whether or not ones preference will be
affected.
The other elements on the list have not yet been given a separate treatment in this
study, although it has appeared in our discussion. In this chapter they will be given
such a separate, though fairly brief, treatment.
6.1 The Truth Element and Epistemic Circumstances
The irrationality of an instrumental desire is perhaps the paradigm case of preference
irrationality. It is an instance of irrationality of an attitude that is built on the
irrationality of a propositional thought.
Michael Smith writes:
2
1
Bernard Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge, 1980). Cf. also Smith, Internal Reasons, p. 112.
2
Smith develops an example by Williams, p. 102.
Suppose, for example, I desire to drink from a particular glass, but that my desire to do so
depends on my belief that the glass contains gin and tonic when in fact it contains gin and
petrol. Then we would ordinarily say that though I might think that it is desirable to drink
from the glass, it isnt really desirable to do so. Why not? Because I would not desire that
I do so if I were fully rational: that is, if, inter alia, I had no false beliefs
3
I assume that when Smith is talking of a desire to drink from a particular glass, this
is an instrumental desire. Probably, my preference for drinking from the glass is an
instrumental preference for drinking gin and tonic which in turn is an instrument for
achieving pleasure (or a particular kind of pleasure). Clearly this desire to drink from
the glass is irrational in the sense that it is built on a false belief.
Smiths example says nothing about what I have reason to believe. That discussion
is important, since it will again wind up with a discussion of whether we need an
information requirement at all.
Consider the following claim by Ingmar Persson:
what it is rational for one (to want) to do is relative to ones epistemic circumstances,
to the factual information at ones disposal, while there is no such relativity in the notion
of what it is best for one to (want to) do.
4
Whether it is rational for me to (want to) drink from the glass will, according to
Persson, depend on my epistemic circumstances. Suppose I order a gin and tonic
in my favourite pub where I have never received anything but the most splendid
mixture of gin and tonic. Suppose also that I have no reason to assume that the
circumstances are different in any way this evening. If the glass this night happens
to contain gin and petrol due to some unique mistake, then would the rational thing
for me to do be to refrain from drinking from the glass?
If we build our understanding of the full information account on Harsanyi
which we have done so far then it seems that the question of preference rationality
is non-relative. To talk about the true or rational preferences as the preferences a
person would have if he had all the relevant information is not to relativize the
concept of rationality. The sum of all the relevant factual information seems to be
the same for two persons whatever epistemic situation they are in, provided their
other circumstances (relevant for the preference in question) are the same. For some
preferences the actual epistemic circumstances of a person might also be relevant,
if for instance, I want to be a less ignorant person; if I want to increase my actual
knowledge of myself and my world. But this is not the kind of relativity Persson has
in mind.
Neither are the other parts in the quotation from Harsanyi necessarily relative,
for instance the demand that we should reason with the greatest possible care. The
criteria for what is possible for a human being in this regard may be difcult for the
individual to full. And even if there were some relative or subjective elements in
3
4
The Retreat of Reason (Lund, 1992), p. 161.
Truth and Deliberation 73
Harsanyis account of preference rationality, that would not change very much, since
for the full information account of rationality on the whole to be non-relative in the
sense that rationality cannot be determined entirely in relation to the agents actual
epistemic situation it is enough that one of the important elements in the demand
is non-relative.
6.2 The Availability Qualication
Compare this with another classical formulation of a rationality requirement. Richard
Brandt writes:
an action is rational (we might call this objectively rational) only if it is what it would
have been if the agent had utilized all relevant information available at the time, including
what he might not easily nd out But we might also have decided to say that an action
is rational (we might call this subjectively rational) if it was based on the full use of
beliefs rationally supported by the evidence the agent actually had at the time.
5
This is a statement about the rationality of action, but I use it as an illustration.
Maybe we should interpret the information requirement in accordance with Brandts
objective requirement. In spite of the name of this requirement the availability
qualication would, as far as I can see, introduce a relative element, since what
information is available for me is certainly a function of my position in the world. For
example, I might have a preference for living a bohemian life as an artist. Suppose
the same has been true of both my parents and their parents. Then I am in a position
to understand what it actually is like to live the life of an artist. The relevant factual
information (or at least an important part of it) that is needed for my preference to be
rational is easily available for me.
On the other hand, suppose I have lived all my life in an upper-class milieu
without ever having met an artist in real life, let alone seen at close range under what
conditions she has to ght for her daily existence. In this case the relevant factual
information is something that is not that easily available. This does not necessarily
mean that the information is unavailable, since the availability qualication is not
only a relative notion but also something that comes in degrees.
Brandt seems to think that the availability qualication about what he might not
easily nd out is what will make the rst option an instance of objective rationality.
But of course that is not really so, since what is possible to nd out although it is
not easily found out will vary from person to person.
Is Brandts qualication warranted in our discussion, that is, in connection with
preferences?
There is a stricter sense of objective rationality in connection with preferences,
since we may include information necessary for a preference to be rational that is
not even available to the agent. If we take Harsanyis words at face value, then the
5
question of whether or not the relevant factual information is available and whether
or not it is possible for the agent to nd it out will not be a decisive issue. So I may
have an irrational preference that I am unable to rationalize, since I am not in a
position to make myself informed about all the relevant facts.
6.3 Two Models
A quality-of-life theory can be understood in at least two different ways. We may
take it to be a deliberation theory used in our decisions about what to do and which
preferences to satisfy or accept in the near and distant future. In this case whether
or not we actually will experience disappointment in the future from having our
preferences satised makes no difference as far as the rationality of our preference
is concerned. The important thing is what we had subjective reason to believe at the
point of decision. This is how we are to understand a theory of welfare if we take it
to be our guide in life; our deliberation-guide.
6
An alternative understanding of a theory of well-being is to see it as a measure
of well-being, a measure that will enable us to assess the actual quality of a part of
life, whether past, present or future. According to this alternative, whether a present
preference is rational is in one sense an objective question. The theory of welfare, so
to speak, settles an ideal that will provide the objective measure of a particular part
of life. This is a distinction between what Sobel calls decision procedures on the
one hand and truth-makers on the other.
7
I have indicated (in 3.7) that I do not think there is a mutually exclusive choice
of these alternatives. In preferentialism or in a preference-sensitive theory of well-
being or quality of life, the truth-making view of preference rationality ought to
yield also a decision procedure in the end. But we may nevertheless note that a
purely objective account of a rational preference in which a preference might be
irrational in virtue of some piece of information that the subject could not possibly
nd out is easier to t in with the second understanding of the theory of well-being
as a measure.
Again, take a look at our examples. Suppose a person wants to be an artist and
has worked hard in order to rationalize her preference, which means that she has
also been searching for relevant information which includes what has not been
easily found out. After the rationalization process she still wants to be an artist.
The guidance theory of well-being tells her to become one, ceteris paribus, and this
judgement is not affected by the fact that she will be disappointed when she actually
becomes an artist.
6
Cf. Wlodek Rabinowicz, who claims that rationality should be a deliberation-guiding
concept, Grappling with the Centipede: Defence of Backward Induction for Bi-Terminating
Games, Economics and Philosophy, 14 (1998): 115. Cf. also Nomy Arpaly On Acting
Rationally against Ones Best Judgment, Ethics, 110 (2000): 488.
7
Sobel, Subjective Accounts of Reasons for Action, pp. 464 ff.
There are different understandings of the measure theory of preference
rationality.
8
According to most of them, if you would not have preferred to be an
artist on condition that you knew what this would actually mean, then there is no
quality of life to be gained if we satisfy your actual preference to be one. The value
of satisfying your preference is measured in view of what will actually happen if you
become one and in view of whether or not your preference would have changed if
you knew of this. And the fact that you could not possibly know beforehand what life
as an artist would actually be like does not affect this judgement.
Discussing a theory of well-being, it is hard to believe that we ought to choose a
purely guiding or deliberative model, if this model is about what the subject of the
life has (subjective) reason to believe. For instance, consider again our friend who
wants to be an artist. Ought we to take her preference seriously if we know that she
will not be able to enjoy that kind of life and if we know that this is something that
she could not possibly nd out?
If we are in a position to satisfy or frustrate our friends preference for being an
artist, what ought we to do? In a coming chapter I shall discuss the various problems
connected with claiming that we ought not to contribute to the satisfaction of this
kind of preference, but at the present moment it seems more important to point to
the problems that would ensue if we did contribute to its satisfaction. What would
the reason for this kind of contribution be if we know that she would not appreciate
our contribution afterwards and if we also know that she would not at the present
moment appreciate our contribution if she knew what actual effects it would have?
Is this an argument against the deliberative model applied to the welfare theory,
or is it merely a problem of how to formulate or specify the deliberative model?
Once again, I believe it is a problem of formulating the theory: it is the position
of a possible benefactor that determines whether satisfying or contributing to the
satisfaction of a particular preference will also contribute to the quality of life of the
preferrer. Often this possible satiser or benefactor is identical with the preferrer,
since after all I believe that most of the time most people deliberate over their own
life more than they deliberate over other peoples lives. But in some cases they are
not identical. If I am a possible benefactor who considers the quality of life of another
person, then I ought not to base my decision on this persons subjective reason. In
some situations I ought also to base it on reasons that are objective in relation to this
person. However, if I take into account such objective reasons, this will make sense
only if they are subjectively rational in my own epistemic situation.
6.4 Deliberative Correctness
An obvious element in a requirement of rationality is rationality in the narrower
sense of correct reasoning. I will only give this element a brief treatment, since I
take it to be fairly uncontroversial.
8
See 3.7.
It is not enough that you are informed about all the relevant facts in a situation,
if you fail to consider them properly in your actions and if they are not absorbed
in your preferences. Based on your factual knowledge, you have also to deliberate
according to the laws of logic. And I believe that these laws of logic will include
both formal and informal, deductive and inductive, ones.
Consider a persons aversion against ying. A person may be afraid of getting
into an aeroplane and travel a certain distance and she may prefer to travel this
distance by car, in spite of all the evidence pointing towards the conclusion that the
plane is safer than the car. The person may be well aware of this evidence, but fail
to absorb it, so to speak. Her fear is irrational and founded on a failure to reason
correctly.
This kind of mistake may come in degrees: sometimes you break obvious
principles of reasoning and some other times you break more subtle ones. Suppose
you are choosing between a career as a taxi driver and an airline pilot. You have at
your disposal all the statistical evidence there is concerning the dangers of travelling
by plane and taxi respectively. And you are rational enough to prefer going by a
plane on your holidays instead of travelling the same distance by car. Suppose now
that you also prefer to be an airline pilot in order to choose the safer career of the
two. This may, however, not be the most rational thing to prefer, since one cannot go
from the fact that a plane is safer than a car when travelling a certain distance, to the
conclusion that a career as a pilot is safer than a career as a taxi driver. You have to
consider also the fact that the distance a pilot will travel during his or her career is
much greater than the distance covered by a taxi driver. All the evidence for reaching
this conclusion might be at your disposal, but you may simply fail to realize that
when forming your preference.
9
6.5 Conclusion
So we have two additional elements in the conception of preference rationality.
(1) One so-called truth element, which claims that a preference is irrational in
so far as it is based on a false belief. Compared with the quantitative element, the
truth element means that over and above a demand that the body of relevant true
beliefs is complete, it has also to be pure, so to speak, containing no false beliefs.
Another discussion has been about whether the objective truth and falsity
ought to be part of ethics and rationality. I believe that the subjective and objective
alternatives are not to be seen as mutually exclusive, if we acknowledge an inferential
relationship between them.
9
An analysis of common human inferential shortcomings as well as an abundance
of interesting scientic and anecdotal examples are to be found in Richard Nisbett and
Lee Ross, Human Inference (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1980). The authors trace the
source of many inferential errors to two tendencies: the overutilization of certain generally
valid, intuitive, inferential strategies and the underutilization of certain formal, logical, and
statistical, strategies, ibid., p. 15.
(2) The second element discussed in this chapter (and the fourth element
discussed in this study) is about correct deliberation. I have assumed this to be an
uncontroversial element, requiring that all the reasoning relevant to the formation
of a preference ought to be made in accordance with sound formal and informal
principles of inductive and deductive logic.
However, this is a thin conception of rationality. To be rational means being
theoretically rational, and it is important to know whether the information requirement
also demands practical rationality. Will a fully rational person accept the standard
axioms of decision theory?
10
There is no clear answer to this question even when we take the information
requirement to be a demand for instrumental rationality, since this can be given
both a theoretical and a practical interpretation. We may make mistakes about the
relations of cause and effect, by choosing means that are insufcient for the intended
result. I may, for instance, try to cut down a big oak tree with a small table knife. But
even in such an example, J. L. Mackie says, it is, strictly speaking, not the passion
(expressed in this attempt) that is contrary to reason but the belief which precedes
or accompanies it.
11
It is fairly common that advocates of the information requirement have in mind
a demand for theoretical rationality. Julian Savulescu stresses the importance of Ps
not making any errors of logic, since false beliefs which arise from correctable
errors of logic corrupt Ps appreciation of the nature of the options, and so reduce the
autonomy of his choice.
12
When he exemplies this point with a person who knows
that there is a risk of dying from anaesthesia, that she needs anaesthetic if she is to
have an amputation and from this draws the conclusion that she will die if she has an
amputation, it is clear that he has in mind a theoretical fallacy.
Scanlon has distinguished between two kinds of rationality requirements in the
following way:
Requirements of the rst kind specify the form that our thinking must take if we are to
avoid the charge of irrationality. Requirements of the second kind specify what we have
most reason to do, hence what we would do if we were ideally rational.
13
It seems that we have two distinctions to take into account; one distinction between
theoretical and practical rationality and one between rationality in some kind of
minimal and maximal sense. For Scanlon these two distinctions appear to coincide in
the case of decision theory, since it should be understood as presenting requirements
of rationality in the second sense I distinguished.
14
10
Cf. Krister Bykvist, who discusses whether a thick concept of rationality would even
prescribe prudence, Sumner on preferentialism in Eric Carlson and Rysiek Sliwinski (eds),
Omnium-gatherum (Uppsala, 2001), p. 58.
11
J. L. Macke, Humes Moral Theory (London, 1980), p. 45.
12
Savulescu, Rational Desires and the Limitation of Life-Sustaining Treatment, p. 535.
13
Scanlon, p. 30.
14
Ibid, p. 31.
By way of precaution I will, unless otherwise stated, assume that an idealized
person in the information requirement is fully rational particularly in the theoretical
sense, and with no specic restrictions. I will assume that such a person has to show
some degree of practical rationality as well, but here I believe that we ought to
conne our rationality conception to concern the most central and uncontroversial
axioms, such as Kants proposal that any fully rational agent who wills an end
necessarily wills the means to the end.
15
Kants reason is that the proposition is
analytic; I would contradict myself if I claimed that a rational person wills an end
without willing the action which is a means to it. Analytic or not, I believe the
proposition to be central. Exactly what axioms are central and indispensable may of
course be open to discussion.
An information requirement based on the full conception of practical rationality
is, as I will argue in Chapter 10, not very plausible, since it suggests that an agents
true interests will concern options that are much too risky for both the agent and a
normal benefactor. Traditional decision theory will recommend that you take a risk
as long as the expected value of taking the risk is higher than the value of playing it
safe. I believe that in certain circumstances and particularly when there is much to
lose, we must leave room for the possibility that the caring thing to do would be to
play it safe.
15
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (New York, 1964), p. 28.
Chapter 7
Intrinsic and Final Preferences
To what kind of preferences can the information requirement be applied? We have
seen that it can be applied to instrumental preferences, but can it be applied to other
preferences as well?
1
*
Let us reconsider the example about my preference to be a tragic philosopher la
Wittgenstein. We have rst to decide what I really want in this situation: what is the
proper object of my preference? This question can be notoriously difcult to answer,
even when we consider our own preferences. Do I want to be a reluctant philosopher
in order to be like Wittgenstein, or has Wittgenstein inspired me to be a reluctant
philosopher? How do I know what comes rst in my attitude towards this way of
living does Wittgenstein inspire because of the strange and in a way tragic life he
led, or am I inspired to do the same things and lead the same strange life as he did
because of some independent property of the person Wittgenstein?
How do I know? I might of course be able to remember in what order I learned
about Wittgenstein and his biography, but that is not enough unless I also know to
what degree my Wittgenstein inspiration has changed in relation to the different
things I have learned about his life. This kind of self-knowledge is normally hard
to get, and so it might be difcult to say whether my preference to be a reluctant
philosopher is intrinsic or something else.
7.1 Korsgaards Distinctions
What is the meaning of the term intrinsic preference and intrinsic value? (I
assume that an intrinsic preference is one that has an intrinsic value as its object.)
There is no consensus here, and my suspicion is that we often use the term in a rather
unreective manner. Two pairs of distinctions are often mixed up, which is pointed
out by Christine M. Korsgaard in Two Distinctions in Goodness, where she warns
against confusing the distinctions between nality and instrumentality on the one
hand and intrinsicality and extrinsicality on the other.
2
1
An earlier version of this chapter was published in Wlodek Rabinowicz and Toni An earlier version of this chapter was published in Wlodek Rabinowicz and Toni
Rnnow-Rasmussen (eds), Patterns of Value: Essays on Formal Axiology and Value Analysis
(Lund Philosophy Reports 2003:1).
2
C. M. Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 24974.
Suppose I want to be a tragic philosopher out of inspiration from Wittgenstein.
This might well be a nal want in me, which means that I do not want to be a
tragic philosopher in order to achieve something else, not even in order to be like
Wittgenstein. Rather, it is my fascination for Wittgenstein that makes me value
various elements in his way of living, wherein the antipathy to leading a philosophers
life is one important ingredient. The value of Wittgenstein so to speak spreads to
everything I learn about his life. I value being a reluctant philosopher as an end in
itself and not in virtue of what it may lead to. So here we have a contrast between
a nal and an instrumental value. And in the same sense we have a preference that
might be termed nal.
Is my preference intrinsic as well? From the information we have, this question
might be difcult to decide. For instance, suppose we are talking of a purely causal
process leading from my fascination for Wittgenstein to a fascination for one element
in his way of living the life of a reluctant philosopher. In that case I believe my
preference might well be called intrinsic, since the causal history of a preference
is one thing and its present phenomenology quite another. It might have been my
fascination for Wittgenstein that caused me to get an intrinsic preference for the
kind of life he was leading, which is proved by the fact that I may continue to be
fascinated by leading a reluctant philosophers life even after I have ceased for some
reason to be fascinated by Wittgenstein. In this example my preference is both nal
and intrinsic. It is intrinsic in virtue of having its present value for what it is in itself
for me it does not get its value from any other source.
Then suppose instead that I am well aware of the relation between Wittgenstein
and being a reluctant philosopher. Suppose I want to lead such a life out of direct
inspiration from Wittgenstein. In that case it does not seem correct to say that I
value being a reluctant philosopher in itself, when I value being such a philosopher
because of Wittgenstein. On the other hand, it may well be correct to say that I value
being a reluctant philosopher as an end in itself. I prefer to be the kind of reluctant
philosopher that Wittgenstein was, for no further reason.
I think we nd many examples of preferences that are extrinsic and nal in this
way.
3
For instance, suppose I have inherited some furniture from my grandmother.
It may well be the case that I like this furniture that has been my grandmothers, for
no further reason. I place it in my living room neither because of its beauty nor its
usefulness, but only because of its relation to my grandmother. It is not valuable in
itself, since I would probably not care about it if it were not for the link it has to my
grandmother. But when I care for the piece of furniture in question, I care for it as an
end itself; I do not care for its function. I care for the piece of furniture independently
of any beliefs about consequences.
4
3
See also Wlodek Rabinowicz and Toni Rnnow-Rasmussen, A Distinction in Value:
Intrinsic and For Its Own Sake, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 100 (2000): 41.
4
Cf. Fumerton, p. 146.
Intrinsic and Final Preferences 81
7.2 Combinations
So we have examples of preferences that are at the same time both extrinsic and
nal and above we presented a case where we had a combination of intrinsicality
and nality.
5
And as far as I can see, we can have all kinds of combinations of these
two pairs of distinctions.
Can we nd realistic examples of a combination of an intrinsic and instrumental
preference? Is it possible to prefer something intrinsically for what it may lead to or
be used as?
No one could deny that we may value an object both for what it is in itself and for
its instrumental qualities. I may want to buy a painting by Klee both because of its
beauty, which I here take as an intrinsic value, and in order to impress my colleagues.
But this is an uncontroversial combination, since the instrumental preference for this
painting of Klee does not originate merely in the intrinsic properties of the painting.
If the painting did not have certain effects on my colleagues, then I would not, we
may suppose, value it instrumentally.
6
I also believe we can nd many examples of a more intimate connection between
the instrumental and the intrinsic. For instance, I believe that I would not appreciate
the beauty of my motorcycle if it were not for the fact that it could function as a
means of transportation.
7
At least, I would say that the beauty and therefore intrinsic
value I see in my bike would be less if I were unable to start the engine and take a
ride. In other words, I see an intrinsic value, a value in the motorcycle itself that is at
least partly explained by my instrumental valuation.
I am not claiming that I see a total value in my bike that is partly explained by
its beauty and partly by the fact that I can use it when I want to go somewhere. The
point is instead that the element of value that consists in its beauty is tied together
and supported by the element of instrumental value. It is also important to note that
both the elements are still there. So it is not simply a question of an instrumental
value that transforms into an intrinsic one.
*
I believe one can develop this idea into a general point; there are not only nal values
which are dependent on conditions and states of affairs outside themselves, so to
5
I think there are several extrinsic and nal wants in our everyday life. Yet I believe
that the nal preferences are fewer in number than the instrumental ones. Some philosophers
would even claim that only pleasure or happiness can be the object of a nal want. According
to this position, when I put the piece of furniture that has belonged to my grandmother in my
living room I may more or less unconsciously do so in order to feel safe and secure (it reminds
me of the good old days).
6
But see also 7.10 below.
7
Shelly Kagan uses a similar example in order to show that a racing car may be
valuable as an end with reference to its causal properties of lets say, its ability to perform at
a particular speed, Rethinking Intrinsic Value, The Journal of Ethics, 2 (1998): 283.
speak, as when we value a piece of furniture independently of its use because of its
causal relation to our ancestor. There are also intrinsic values that are dependent for
their existence on conditions outside themselves. A thing might have its value in
itself, it might be its own source of value, but only under certain circumstances.
Consider rst the value I bestow on my grandmothers furniture. We would not
regard this as an intrinsic value, since the source of the value we see in this object is
its causal relation to something else. I value the piece of furniture for its relation to
my ancestor; its value is derived from this relation.
On the other hand, when I claim that there might be a dependency between what
we value intrinsically and external relations, I have in mind something less intimate.
Consider the motorcycle example. I would not say that I value the beauty of my
motorcycle for its instrumental value
8
I value its beauty on condition that it also has
an instrumental value; this condition affects the extent to which I value its beauty.
It is still its intrinsic properties I value or relations within the object that consists of
my motorcycle. This is further emphasized by the fact that I may be totally unaware
of this conditional. I may believe that there are no other conditions involved when I
enjoy the pure lines, vivid blackness and 1340 cc engine of my bike and nevertheless
become negatively affected in this valuation when I learn that its engine has broken
down and would be too expensive to repair. This is not possible in the furniture
example I would not value the piece of furniture if I were unaware of its relation to
my grandmother; the difference this makes is not something that may surprise me.
In other words, I would not say that I value the beauty of my motorcycle for
its relation to another kind of value, although I would say that I value the piece of
furniture for its causal relation to my grandmother. Instead I would say that I value
the beauty of my motorcycle for what it is in itself, but only on condition that the
motorcycle functions.
7.3 Applications of the Dependency Idea
In the motorcycle example we have a positive conditional the object has an aesthetic
value that is conditioned by some positive external factor concerning functioning. I
believe there are also examples of negative conditionals, where an object is its own
source of value on the condition of the absence of some external factors.
(1) Elsewhere I have argued for this idea in connection with the question of
human dignity and the special value of being biologically human.
9
For instance, it is
rather common to challenge the idea that we humans have a special value and that
there might be intrinsic preferences directed at the property of being human. Mostly
the challenge consists of presenting thought experiments in which we have some
visiting non-human beings from outer space with all the mental capacities that we
humans have and with a culture that is at least as rich as ours. Then we ask ourselves
8
This is where my example differs from Kagans racing-car example. See Kagan,
Rethinking Intrinsic Value, p. 284.
9
Dan Egonsson, Dimensions of Dignity (Dordrecht, 1998).
whether there would be any morally signicant difference between these beings and
humans. Since most people would not believe that we are morally justied in treating
these beings worse than we treat human beings, for instance killing them or making
use of them in ways that we would not consider tolerable if they were humans, the
conclusion is that the property of being a biological human has no intrinsic value and
might therefore not be the object of an intrinsic preference.
I believe this is a hasty conclusion caused by the fact that one overlooks the kind
of dependency I have described above. Even if there were no preferences prescribing
a special treatment of adult human beings with a capacity for rationality and culture
and so on, compared to the beings from outer space with similar capacities, and
even if we therefore conclude that we may not morally discriminate between human
beings and these beings, it does not follow that the property of being human never
has any intrinsic importance. The intrinsic importance of this property may depend
on conditions that are external to it.
My suggestion is that when we compare two persons from different species, that
is to say two beings that are rational and self-conscious, then the species property has
no intrinsic importance. On the other hand, when we compare two merely conscious
(that is, not self-conscious and not rational) beings from different species one of
which is a human being, then we might well sense an intrinsic value in the human
being, which suggests that this intrinsic value depends on a lack of personhood.
And this dependence on a lack or absence of something personhood supports
the conclusion that it is not a question of valuing the complex property of being a
human being plus something else. It is tempting to use the metaphor that the value of
being human is overshadowed by the moral importance of being a person, whereas
it appears and comes in sight when there is no personhood. This suggests that the
value is still there also in persons, but since I believe that a value that does not appear
and has no practical importance equals no value at all, I would say that we have a
genuine dependency after all.
To support my example let me recall a rather recent moral discussion. Many
people seem to regard as morally problematic the idea of using brain cells from
aborted foetuses and transplanting them into the brain of a human adult in order to
provide therapy for neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. Parkinsons, Alzheimers and
Huntingtons). D. Gareth Jones writes:
The ethical debate surrounding fetal neural transplantation focuses on the use of tissue
from fetuses made available by induced abortion The Polkinghorne Report in the
United Kingdom did precisely this arguing that human fetuses are not to be treated
instrumentally as mere objects made available solely for investigative and clinical
purposes.
10
I have no better explanation of this position, which in my experience is fairly
widespread, other than the one I have suggested above. We see a value in an aborted
human foetus that we do not see in an equally developed non-human foetus (dictating
10
D. G. Jones, Speaking for the Dead (Aldershot, 2000), p. 171.
that the human foetus ought (not) to be treated in certain ways). This value is solely
dependent on the fact that the human foetus is precisely this human. It does not
seem to have anything to do with the fact that a human foetus is a potential person,
since otherwise I gure that the discussion instead would focus on the moral problem
of having the foetus aborted in the rst place. The abortion seems fairly uninteresting
in this discussion. The interesting thing is how we treat an organism of which the
mere fact that it is a biological human being seems to be the source of a value.
11
And since there are many examples in the philosophical literature of successful
refutations of a similar thesis with regard to persons, I conclude that the special value
some people see in a human foetus (prescribing a special treatment even when it is
aborted) is a value that depends on the absence of personhood in the foetus.
(2) Suppose you once gave birth to a daughter, but were forced by your life
situation to give her to adoptive parents in a foreign country. You miss your daughter
very much, and after some years you feel that you would like to know how she is
getting on. So you contact the organization that arranged the adoption. They assure
you that the girl is very happy with her adoptive parents and lacks nothing. Naturally
this news is a relief, and you are eventually able to live a happy life of your own.
However, after some forty years, in the September of your own life, you somehow
come to know that the information delivered by the adoption bureau was false and
that your daughters life was miserable from the day she came to the adoptive parents
to the day she died by her own hand at the age of thirty, after years of assault, sexual
abuse and drug addiction.
When you learn that your daughters life before her premature death had been
hell, you become shocked and depressed. However, this reaction is not only caused
by the misery of your daughters short life, but also by the fact that you had enjoyed
your own life; you had been happy with your own life, parallel and simultaneous
with the tragic destiny of your daughter. So part of your depression is caused by the
fact that you were happy when your daughter felt miserable.
This example might be analysed in various ways. But the crucial question in
my view is what kind of value the experience of happiness has in a case like this.
In your own opinion it has negative value when it occurs simultaneously with the
misery of your child. If that is correct, I would say that we have an intrinsic value
that is negatively conditional on some external factor you value (intrinsically)
being happy only on the condition that this happiness does not occur parallel to your
daughters sufferings.
11
Someone might think that we have here a nal value that is dependent on external
factors and not an intrinsic value, since if the foetus has the value in question it ought not
to be treated as a means only. However, I do not think this is incompatible with my idea of
an intrinsic value, since this kind of value may well dictate that the thing which has it ought
to be treated as an end in itself, that is, as something that has nal value. The thought is that
if we treat it as a nal value, that depends on its having the source of its value in itself, that
is, conditional in the way described. Furthermore, the element of being an end in itself is
probably just one out of several elements in the value we bestow on human organisms.
7.4 Moore on Intrinsicality
But isnt it a contradiction in terms to say that we have an intrinsic value of an object
that depends on some fact that is external to the object? And would it not therefore
also be contradictory to say that we may have an intrinsic want towards an object on
condition that it stands in some external relation to some other object?
As far as I know, G. E. Moore introduced this vocabulary of intrinsic values. He
writes:
And I will take as an example that usage in which we make judgements of what was called
intrinsic value; that is to say, where we judge, concerning a particular state of things
that it would be worth while would be a good thing that that state of things should
exist, even if nothing else were to exist besides, either at the same time or afterwards.
12
This does not seem incompatible with my claim about an intrinsic value, for instance
the intrinsic value of being a human being, since I have claimed that this value
appears on condition that the human being is not at the same time a person. In other
words, when we have a conditional value in which the condition is the absence of
a certain factor, then as far as this passage from Moore is concerned we may well
call this value intrinsic. If we were to imagine that nothing else existed besides the
intrinsically valuable thing, then we would also have to imagine the absence of the
crucial factor. But once again, this will not affect the fact that the presence of the
intrinsic value in question is conditional on something external to it.
On the other hand, my example about my intrinsically valuing the beauty of
my motorcycle does not seem to t in with the quotation from Moore, since in this
example I see an intrinsic value in something on the condition that some other factor
is present, namely the capacity of my bike to function as a means of conveyance. Of
course, one might wonder if this capacity is something that exists besides the valued
thing. But I believe that this phrase ought to be given a wide interpretation. I have
to imagine whether I would still value the beauty even if there were no other and
therefore no functional properties besides the physical appearance of my bike.
Then consider how Wlodek Rabinowicz and Toni Rnnow-Rasmussen understand
the term intrinsic:
Following G. E. Moore an object is thought to be intrinsically valuable insofar as its
value depends on (supervenes on) its internal properties.
13
A possible difference between Moores view of intrinsic value in the quotation above
and Rabinowicz and Rnnow-Rasmussens view is brought into focus by my claim
that there might be a value in the property of being human that depends on the absence
of personhood. In this case we would not say that the value of being a human being
depends only on the internal properties of, for instance, the human embryo, since if
12
G. E. Moore, Ethics (Oxford, 1966), p. 83.
13
Rabinowicz and Rnnow-Rasmussen, A Distinction in Value: Intrinsic and For Its
Own Sake, p. 33.
the human embryo by hypothesis were a rational and self-conscious being, then we
would not, if I am correct, regard it as something that had the special value of being
a human being. In other words, being a genetic human organism is valuable not only
in view of this organisms internal properties, since if we combined these internal
properties with another property being rational and self-conscious then the value
of being human would disappear.
One might question whether the value of a non-person really depends on
something that is external to it. Is not the lack of personhood an internal property
of the non-person? I do not think so, since we may describe the difference between
having and not having the special human value in the following way. The body of
a human non-person has a kind of value that the body of a human person lacks,
that is to say one and the same kind of body, one and the same kind of complex
of properties is sometimes valuable and sometimes not. Is not this to say that the
internal properties of a human body lack value when belonging to (or whatever
term we care to use) a person, whereas the same complex of internal properties has
a special value when it does not belong to a person? And if one and the same object
is valuable in one situation and not valuable in another situation, then the value in
question has to depend on factors that are external to it. So it does not seem correct
to call the special value of a non-person intrinsic, according to Rabinowicz and
Rnnow-Rasmussen. And if we might call this value intrinsic according Moores
quotation, since the human body would retain its value even if we were to imagine
that nothing else existed beside it, for instance a person to which it belonged, then
we may conclude that Moores and Rabinowicz and Rnnow-Rasmussens view of
intrinsic value differ at least in these quotations.
How are we then to use the term intrinsic?
7.5 Strong and Weak Dependency
In one sense I believe Rabinowicz and Rnnow-Rasmussens usage is the most
recommendable, which means that we should use intrinsic to mean internal,
and intrinsic value to refer to the value some object has in virtue of its internal
properties and independently of external factors. At the same time I believe there are
some interesting distinctions to be made between different degrees of independence,
and so I suggest that we make a distinction between a strong and a weak sense
of independence and consequently between a strong and a weak sense of intrinsic
value.
14
In other words, there seems to be a third category of value which is neither nal
nor intrinsic in the traditional interpretation, but which is very close to intrinsic
value. And I believe we have some terminological freedom here.
14
There might be strong and weak variants also of the other values discussed here. But
then the dichotomy will have another base and is therefore to be understood differently. See
Toni Rnnow-Rasmussens discussion of strong and weak instrumental values, Instrumental
Values Strong and Weak, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 5 (2002): 2343.
(1) We may distinguish between different senses of intrinsic value, where the
term either may refer to an independent or a non-derivative value. In the rst case we
follow Rabinowicz and Rnnow-Rasmussens recommendation and in the second
case we make use of the ambiguity Bengt Brlde
15
nds in Korsgaard and say that
an object that is intrinsically valuable does not inherit its value from some other
valuable object.
16
(2) Another possibility is to make a distinction between the good-making
properties of an object and the properties on which its value supervenes (that is, the
properties on which its value depends). In that case one and the same property or
complex of properties is good-making in one specic setting but not in another. The
thought behind this distinction is to do justice to the value phenomenology involved
in the cases we are discussing. When the body of a human non-person is endowed
with a special kind of value, it is the internal properties (its genes) that make this
body valuable, even if this process depends on some external factors (that is, the
absence of personhood).
This would also seemingly have close similarities to Jonathan Dancys distinction
between resultance and supervenience, which he explains in the following way:
the idea is that the resultance base contains only those properties in virtue of which the
action is wrong (those which make the action wrong). There is no guarantee that wherever
those properties are present, no matter how much the action may differ in other respects, it
will be wrong too. It may be that there is present in the new case a countervailing property
strong enough to turn the tables, as it were, which was absent in the rst case. This does
not mean that the absence of the countervailing property should have been included in the
original resultance base.
17
Translated to the deontic question of an actions rightness, this looks very much like
our suggestion above: We are to distinguish between right-making properties and
the properties on which the moral status of an action supervenes or depends. One
and the same property of an action may make it right in one setting but fail to do so
in another. The rightness of an action may well depend on the absence of a certain
property in the setting, without this property being included among the properties
which make the action right. In this sense Dancy seems to make the rightness of an
action context-dependent in much the same way as we have made the value of a
property.
18
But a closer reading of Dancy makes me hesitant. For instance, when he explains
the difference between supervenience and resultance he claims that supervenience
is not concerned with the particular case. It is a relationship between classes of
15
Bengt Brlde, The Human Good (Gteborg, 1998), p. 388.
16
Cf. also Elizabeth Anderson, Reasons, Attitudes, and Values: Replies to Sturgeon and
Piper, Ethics, 106 (1996): 5401.
17
Jonathan Dancy, Moral Reasons (Oxford, 1993), p. 77.
18
See also Jonathan Dancy, On the logical and moral adequacy of particularism,
Theoria, LXV (1999): 1446.
properties, not between whatever members of those classes happen to be present in
the case before us. He then concludes that when we think about particular cases,
we are almost certainly thinking about resultance; when we think in general terms,
we are almost certainly thinking about supervenience.
19
I fail to see why this should
be so. In my view we may generalize just as much about the good-making properties
as about the properties on which goodness depends, which is exactly what I think
we do when claiming that one and the same property will be good-making in some
combinations but not in some others.
Since Dancy dislikes generalism and since he believes that we think in general
terms when we think about supervenience, he consequently says that thoughts
about supervenience, though true enough, are not of much use.
20
I do not agree that
supervenience is an ethically uninteresting concept and I also believe that this should
be clear from this study. Indeed I believe that dependence as we have outlined it is
an important as well as neglected concept. But since I am not sure whether this is
due exclusively to the fact that I disagree with Dancys general outlook and how
he makes use of the distinction discussed or whether there is some disagreement
as to how to understand the very distinction, I will be content with pointing to the
similarity between Dancys distinction and my proposal.
(3) Yet another terminological possibility would be to distinguish between the
intrinsic value of an object and the value the object has in itself. According to this
alternative, it might be that the value of an object depends on external factors and that
therefore these external factors are included among the good-making properties of
an object even when the object is valuable in itself. Also this alternative would have
some phenomenological support, since the situation referred to is a situation where I
see a value in the object and not in the objects relation to some other external factors
or objects in other words, I see a value in the object in itself but only when some
other external factors are present as well.
*
As I indicated above I suggest that we solve this question by simply distinguishing
between a strong and a weak sense of independence and a strong and a weak sense
of intrinsic value.
A strong sense of independence is at hand when the value I see in an object does
not in any way depend on the presence or absence of other factors as well. I may
value an experience of happiness for what it is in itself and independently of anything
else. In this case I would say that the experience of happiness is intrinsically valued
by me in the strongest possible sense.
A weak sense of independence is exemplied by the cases discussed above: both
the example of my intrinsically valuing the beauty of my motorcycle on the condition
that I can ride it, and the special value of being a genetic human that is endowed
19
Dancy, Moral Reasons, p. 78.
20
Ibid., p. 79.
only on the bodies of beings who are non-persons. And I think there are many other
examples to be found. Take for instance an expensive Rolex watch. Personally I am
often unable to see the beauty in this kind of watch. I do not hesitate however to say
that those who wear them probably do so because they nd them beautiful. Now I
will start to guess and my guess is that those who see an aesthetic value in a Rolex
watch do so only on the condition of its expensiveness. I do not believe that these
people wear Rolex watches because they are expensive and in order to show the
world that they can afford to wear one, but I do believe that these peoples interest in
wearing Rolex watches would decrease if Rolexes became cheap.
In placing a value on an object that is weakly dependent on the presence of some
external factors, I value the object in itself and not the relation in which this object
stands to some other object or factor. Neither do I place a value on the object as
part of a complex I do not value having an expensive Rolex watch, that is to say
the complex property of being a Rolex watch and being expensive I value having
a Rolex watch on the condition of its expensiveness, where this conditional is not
included in the object of my want.
The focus of my preference is on the object, whereas the conditional is in the
periphery.
7.6 Negative Conditionals
Recall what I said about those intrinsic preferences that rest on some negative
conditional. I claimed that we may see a value in being an organism with human
genes only on the condition that this organism is not at the same time a body that
belongs to a person (since in that case the being would indeed be valuable, but not
in virtue of its genetic constitution). If I am right in this, we have an object that is
weakly intrinsically valuable. The object in question is its own source of value on the
condition of the absence of some external factors.
This reasoning, however, threatens to undermine the proposed distinction
between strong and weak intrinsic values, since one might question whether there
exists any value that is not negatively conditional in this sense. Will there not exist
negative conditionals together with most or all of the objects that we believe we value
intrinsically? Would not a normal parent value her happy experiences conditionally
she does not want to be happy while her child is miserable?
I believe this to be so, which would mean that many of the things which are
commonly held to be intrinsically valuable for instance hedonic experiences turn
out to be weakly intrinsically valuable after all. But I believe that this is not so
for all of us. I guess that not all of us would claim that their preference for happy
experiences is conditional in this sense.
21
Furthermore, I also believe that even for
21
Actually, when I have confronted my students with examples very similar to the
example about the mother who gave away her daughter for adoption, a majority claim that
the value of the happiness of the mother is conditional on the actual experiences of her child.
But a minority claim that the value of the mothers happiness is unconditional. It is interesting
a person who would say that her preference for happiness is conditional, there are
other objects that she will value unconditionally, such as the object that consists in
the fact that her children are happy.
In other words, I do not think the distinction between weak and strong intrinsic
values will be undermined by the reasoning about negative conditionals, since
reasonably there will always be objects of intrinsic preferences which are not even
negatively conditional. What the normal proportion is between weak and strong
intrinsic preferences in a person need not worry us at the moment.
7.7 Moores Value as a Whole
Another thing might worry us. I have used the distinction between weak and strong
intrinsic values (or preferences) in order to make a point about conditional values. I
claim that weak intrinsic values depend on the presence or absence of some external
factor. Will not Moores concept of the value a thing possesses as a whole capture
the cases I have discussed much better than my conceptual apparatus? Consider the
following passage from Principia Ethica:
it must now be observed that the value which a thing possesses on the whole may be
said to be equivalent to the sum of the value which it possesses as a whole, together with
the intrinsic values which may belong to any of its parts. In fact, by the value a thing
possesses as a whole, there may be meant either (1) That value which arises solely from
the combination of two or more things; or else (2) The total value formed by the addition
to (1) of any intrinsic values which may belong to the things combined.
22
The crucial question is whether the cases in which I claim we see an intrinsic value
in the weak sense, that is, intrinsic values that are conditional on external factors,
ought not to be analysed according to Moores conceptual apparatus instead. In other
words, is not the weak intrinsic value merely the value a thing has in combination with
other things, as a part of the value of the thing and the other things as a whole?
I have tried to argue that the weak intrinsic value is distinct from the value of
the combination of the thing in question and the other things, and I believe that this
point might be even clearer if we proceed from Moores distinction in the discussion
of the concrete cases.
Take for instance the case of the mother who gave her daughter away for adoption.
According to Moore this case should be analysed in the following way. First we ask
what is the value of the things (in a wide sense of course) that are involved in the
case as a whole. I have claimed that the morally conspicuous fact in this case is that
I as a mother lead a happy life whereas my daughter leads a miserable life and that
these things partly overlap.
to note that I have not yet met a parent who denies that the value of a parents happiness is
conditional on the welfare of her child.
22
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1903), pp. 21415.
In Moores analysis we should say that the value as a whole of the combination
of my leading a happy life and my daughter leading a miserable life and the temporal
overlap (the relevance of which I am not quite certain) is negative: it is an evil.
If we follow Moores analysis, however, the total value of the situation is what
he calls the value all things involved have on the whole. To estimate this value we
have to count the intrinsic value of each thing involved considered in isolation and
add this to the value that the combination of things has as a whole. But I think that
it is on this point Moores analysis goes wrong if applied to our case, since there is
no intrinsic value in the happiness the mother feels while her daughter suffers. If
there were such an intrinsic value, then it would, so to speak, count as an extenuating
factor.
But this is not how we would think about this case. If we believe it is a bad
thing that the mother is happy under these circumstances, then we are also unable
to see the value of the happiness per se in the situation. The negative value of the
combination of the mothers happiness and her daughters suffering is so to speak
the end of the matter. There is no other consideration that will subtract from this
negative value. This is what makes me believe that we actually have a case in which
the intrinsic value of a thing depends on its relation to some other factor, since
otherwise we would have to add to the total value of the situation the intrinsic value
that the mothers happiness has in isolation.
And my point is easily translatable to how you would think about the situation
if you were directly involved, say if you were the mother. Indeed you would feel
miserable when contemplating the fact that you were able to live a fairly carefree
and even happy life while your daughter never came close to any of these feelings.
You feel bad about contemplating these two facts taken together. You do not feel less
bad, however, if you consider the fact that one of the components in this tragedy is
your own happiness you do not say to yourself at least, I was happy and that is a
good thing about the situation. The reason is, I believe, that your happiness in this
situation has no positive intrinsic value. And from this observation it is a small step
to my point that your happiness in the situation in fact has negative intrinsic value
it has what I have called a negative and weakly intrinsic value.
But if the mothers happiness has a negative intrinsic value when it occurs
together with her daughters suffering, then I would say that if the daughter had not
been miserable and if the mother had been happy, the intrinsic value of the mothers
happiness would be negatively conditional on the fact that her daughter was not
living a miserable life. In other words, the positive value of her happiness depends
on the absence of her daughters suffering.
The reason why I call this a negative conditional is that I do not think it would be
correct to say that the value of the mothers happiness was positively conditioned by
the daughters happiness, since the mothers happiness would retain its value whether
or not there existed any daughter in the rst place. It is more like a ceteris paribus
condition if a person is happy, then this is something positively valuable unless
there are some further particulars that might subtract from this value, such as the
existence of a suffering child. And as far as I can see, this is a negative conditional.
One might object that this is guilt by association, since I have in fact not argued
against viewing the value of a mothers happiness together with the absence of
her childs suffering as a value of the combination of the two states.
23
I have only
argued against the package-deal analysis which consists of counting the added value
that may belong to the things in the situation apart from the value they have in the
combination. And Moore could say that in the situation with the happy mother the
happiness would have no value in isolation when it occurs simultaneously with a
childs suffering, but insist that what is negatively valuable in the situation is the
combination of these things.
However, if one chooses Moores analysis, it seems natural to count the way he
does. One rst asks what valuable combinations there are to nd in a situation and
then what valuable things (or the other way around). But still, this is not an argument
against the idea of a combinatory value, since one might isolate it from the package-
deal analysis.
In the end, therefore, I have to resort to some kind of intuition or phenomenology.
When I value an experience of happiness in the absence of my childs happiness, the
object of my preference is my happiness, and the value of this object has some kind
of irreducible conditionality. This is how it feels the happiness is in the centre
whereas the conditional is in the periphery.
7.8 Another Objection
There is an alternative way of analysing the example of the happy mother that will
have some similarities to Moores analysis (and I take this to be a valid alternative
whether we take the happiness to be both nally and intrinsically valuable or just
nally valuable).
24
For there seem to be two different kinds of value involved when
the mother is happy whereas her child is suffering. On the one hand there is a natural
value of the mothers happiness and a natural disvalue of her childs suffering. On
the other hand there is a moral disvalue in the discrepancy between how the mother
and her child fare. This moral disvalue stands in direct proportion to the size of the
discrepancy. So the happier the parent is, on the condition that her child is suffering,
the larger will the moral disvalue be. And if this discrepancy is large enough we
may have a total value of the situation that is negative (independently of the natural
disvalue of the childs suffering taken by itself). That also explains why the mother
is not able to console herself with the fact that she at least had been happy, since that
very fact is indeed the root of the evil in this case.
And observe that this way of analysing the example not only allows us to say that
there has been a positive nal value in the mothers experiences, it also presupposes
it, since the discrepancy consists of the very fact that the mother has had a good time
whereas her daughter has had the opposite.
23
I owe this objection to Wlodek Rabinowicz.
24
This proposal comes from Ingmar Persson in personal communication.
This seems to be a promising analysis, particularly since it will explain the
problem with the happy-mother example more neatly than I have done. The problem
according to the proposal is that the mother fares well because of her happiness
when her daughter fares badly because of her sufferings. I have suggested that the
mothers happiness loses its value in these circumstances and consequently that she
actually does not fare well after all. But, one may ask, what is so problematic then if
the mother as well as her daughter fare badly? Would not the mother be satised with
being happy under these conditions, since it will have a disvalue and in that sense
harmonize with the daughters experiences?
I do not feel forced to accept this analysis, since I believe we have intuitions that
pull in the direction of our analysis. This is the case in the happy-mother example,
since it is hard to see the intrinsic value of being happy under these circumstances.
Indeed, it is also hard to tell whether this is due to the absence of such a value or
only to a difculty of abstracting the intrinsic value of the happiness from the moral
disvalues.
In any case, it will not be fatal for the ideas presented here even to borrow the
alternative analysis for some of the examples considered above. It will only mean
that we have to rest on other examples, preferably examples that do not contain this
moral element that seems to open up for the alternative proposal.
25
As an illustration
of a weak intrinsic value that is positively conditioned we still have the motorcycle
example. And if we give up the happy-mother example we may construct the
following example as an instance of a negative conditional.
Suppose you are a great admirer of some paintings made by an eccentric. The
reason you admire them is simply that you nd them beautiful, and not that you are
fascinated by the artist you admired the paintings before you knew anything about
the odd originator. But then suppose that it comes to your knowledge that the artist
in order to receive the correct nuance in the colours mixed his own excrement in the
paint. This information, I claim, may well affect your admiration for the paintings,
that is, it may affect the value you see in them. When you know what is in the paint
you will see no or at least less beauty in the paintings.
7.9 The Model of Instrumental Preference Rationality
What difference does it make to the question of preference rationality if we have the
categories nal preferences and weakly intrinsic preferences (that is, preferences the
objects of which are nal values and preferences the objects of which are weakly
intrinsic values) which may be conditional on external factors in the sense explained?
One obvious effect will be that we can build a concept of rationality of these kinds of
preferences on the model we have used (6.1) when judging whether an instrumental
25
Many of the examples used in this context have this moral element. See for instance
Johan Brnnmark Good Lives: Parts and Wholes, American Philosophical Quarterly, 38
(2001): 226.
preference is rational or irrational. The irrationality of an instrumental preference
comes from the falsity of the belief on which it is founded.
I have argued that not only instrumental preferences are founded or dependent
on beliefs, but also nal and intrinsic preferences. Take for instance the preference
for the piece of furniture that has belonged to my grandmother. I want this piece of
furniture not for what it is in itself (that is, independently of its relations to other
things) but precisely for its causal relation to my grandmother. Since I want the piece
of furniture for its causal relation to something past, and not for its causal relations to
some future event, it is a nal preference in contrast to an instrumental one.
Using the model of the irrationality of instrumental preferences, a nal preference
is irrational when the belief on which it depends is false. Suppose I have confused
two different pieces of furniture and that the very piece I want to own in virtue of its
relation to my grandmother is similar but not identical to the piece of furniture my
grandmother owned. I assume that my preference for this very piece of furniture is
irrational in a fairly straightforward sense. And it is denitely irrational according to
the traditional readings of the information requirement, since I would not have had
this preference if I were fully informed and rational.
Then consider a weakly intrinsic preference. In our example you admire some
paintings, but cease to do so when you are informed about some distasteful facts about
their coming into being. Your preference for the paintings is therefore conditional on
the absence of this kind of information: you value the paintings intrinsically but only
on the condition that they are not created in this distasteful way.
Suppose, however, that this information is merely a false rumour. In that case
your negative or weakened positive preference for the paintings will be an irrational
preference, just as much as an instrumental preference that rests on a false belief
is irrational. And I can see no obvious reason not to treat the weakly intrinsic
preferences on a par with the belief-dependent nal preferences.
7.10 Returning to the Discussion of Preference Objects
When discussing different understandings of the object of a preference, we
distinguished between an intentional and extensional understanding. According to an
intentional understanding, the object of my preference is determined by my thoughts
about the object. It is, Part says, what we want as we believe that it would be.
26
My preference for X is satised when there is an X with the properties that I ascribed
to X in the rst place. According to an extensional understanding, on the other hand,
the object of a preference is only pointed out, so to speak in your imagination.
Now, consider the question of an instrumental preference being irrational. Does
not this presuppose that we understand the object of this preference according to
the extensional model? The way we have described it, an instrumental preference
is irrational when the object does not have the properties we believe it has. And if
26
Part, Rationality and Reasons, p. 37.
so, doesnt this presuppose that the object of my preference is pointed out but is not
wholly determined by what is in my mind?
Recall Michael Smiths example of instrumental irrationality.
Suppose, for example, I desire to drink from a particular glass, but that my desire to do
so depends on my belief that the glass contains gin and tonic when in fact it contains gin
and petrol.
27
Smith concludes that it is not desirable for me to drink from the glass, since the
preference is irrational in the sense that I would not have it if I were fully rational.
In this example, I believe the glass contains gin and tonic. So according to an
intentional understanding, the object of my preference is a glass containing this kind
of liquid. And this preference is not irrational, since it may well be the case that I
would want a glass of gin and tonic even if I were fully rational.
In contrast with this, in an extensional understanding the object of my preference
is the glass in front of me since this is what is pointed out by my mind. What I do
in my mind when preferring an object is equivalent to pointing at the object with
my physical nger I prefer the object I point at, in this case the glass with its
liquid. Because I also point at the petrol in the glass, I also want the petrol. And
since I would not have had this preference if I were fully informed, my preference is
irrational.
I take the following to be a general truth of our causal beliefs: when we believe
that an object has certain causal properties, we believe it has these properties in virtue
of its intrinsic properties. Otherwise I see no reason to believe that this particular
object has the causal or external property in question. To believe in causal properties
of certain objects is to believe that there is something that explains why the objects
have these properties. In such an explanation extrinsic properties may indeed gure,
but then always beside some intrinsic property of the object.
So it seems that instrumental preference irrationality is more difcult to reconcile
with an intentional understanding of a preference object than with an extensional
understanding, since in the former understanding we may call in question whether
we really prefer an object that fails to have the effects we believe it has. For it is in
virtue of its intrinsic properties that we believe the object has its causal effects it is
in virtue of the glass containing gin and tonic that we believe it will give us pleasure
to drink from it. Therefore, something that contains gin and petrol would not be an
object of our preference.
However, we have to distinguish between two senses in which the belief that lies
behind an instrumental preference can be false. First, we have the case as in Smiths
example when I falsely believe that an object has a specic intrinsic property that
will serve as a cause for something else. I falsely believe that the glass contains
the gin and tonic that would give me some pleasure. Here I have one false and one
true belief. The false belief concerns the intrinsic properties of the object of my
preference. The true belief concerns the causal power of the intrinsic properties I
27
believe that the object of my preference has I truly believe the combination of gin
and tonic would give me pleasure. Here I would once again say that we are assuming
an extensional understanding.
Second, the falsity may also be the other way around. I may truly believe that the
object of my preference has a certain property; I may truly believe that the glass in
front of me contains gin and tonic but falsely believe that drinking it would give me
pleasure. This is also a case of an irrational instrumental preference, since I would
not have a preference for the object if I was fully informed. Here also I have one
false and one true belief. But the false belief this time concerns the causal power
of the intrinsic properties of the object of my preference, whereas the true belief
concerns the presence of these intrinsic properties in the object.
In the second case I do not assume an extensional understanding of the object
of my preference, since my mistake here concerns something that, so to speak, lies
outside the object of my preference, namely the causal relation between it and its
properties and something else.
7.11 Objects and Non-Instrumental Preferences
Let us discuss kinds of understanding a preference object in connection with those
preferences the irrationality of which I claimed may be modelled on the irrationality
of instrumental preferences. What about nal and weakly intrinsic preferences
are we not assuming an extensional understanding when we claim that they can be
irrational?
Look at our examples. First, suppose I have in my possession a piece of furniture
I believe has been my grandmothers. I claimed that this piece of furniture may be
nally valuable for me and so I have nal preferences towards it, although these
preferences are conditional on my belief about its origin and causal history. If
these beliefs are false, if for instance my grandmothers piece of furniture has been
confused with another qualitatively identical piece of furniture, then I would say that
my nal preference to have the piece of furniture in my possessions is irrational.
How are we to understand the object of this preference? If the object is
determined by my beliefs, it might be claimed that I do not prefer to possess the
piece of furniture that I actually possess (or I do not prefer this with the strength of
my actual preference) since this piece of furniture by hypothesis has not belonged to
my grandmother. In other words, there is an important difference between the object
of my preference and the piece of furniture that I possess.
However, just as in the second sense of instrumental preference irrationality,
I would say that this difference is not a difference of intrinsic properties. It is in
virtue of somethings intrinsic properties that I have an instrumental preference for
a glass of liquid when I believe it contains gin and tonic. But it is not in virtue of the
intrinsic properties of this particular piece of furniture that I want to possess it on
the contrary, it is in virtue of its external properties, namely its origin. It is not the
case, as with the object of my instrumental preference, that there are certain intrinsic
properties of this object that I believe explain why it has the history I take it to have.
Actually, I do not need to believe that my grandmothers ownership of the piece of
furniture in question has left any traces in or on it. Of course, I may identify the piece
of furniture in question with the aid of its internal properties, but then they just serve
to identify the object and not what lies behind its causal relation.
Therefore I have no false beliefs about the intrinsic properties of the object of
my preference but only about its relational property and so I have not excluded an
intentional understanding in this case I have a preference for this very object with
its intrinsic properties, it is just that this preference is irrational.
What are we to say about the irrationality of the weakly intrinsic preference?
In this case too I would say that the false beliefs concern relations that are external
to the proper object of my preference. When in my original analysis you want
to be happy although your daughter without your knowledge is faring very badly,
the object of your preference is your happiness with its intrinsic properties. It is
these properties furthermore that are the source of value. You truly believe that
your happiness is the way it is but falsely believe that you experience it while your
daughter fares well. And so we may, if we want, choose an intentional understanding
even here.
7.12 Concluding Remarks
Let me summarize. I claim that we have weakly intrinsic preferences, that is,
intrinsic preferences for some object that are conditioned on some external factors.
One example of a weakly intrinsic preference would be a mothers preference for
leading a happy life that is conditional on the fact that her daughter does not lead a
miserable life. In my view this mother would regard the experiences of happiness as
their own source of value only on the condition that her daughter is not leading an
unhappy or miserable life.
One suggestion considered was whether this case should not instead be analysed
according to Moores distinction between value as a whole and value on the whole,
suggesting that it is not the case that the value of the mothers happiness decreases
in the case of her daughters suffering. What happens is instead that the positive
intrinsic value of the happiness has to be added to the negative intrinsic value of the
whole that consists of the mothers happiness plus her daughters sufferings.
I responded that this analysis is probably not true, since there is a case for denying
that the mothers happiness in this case will have any positive intrinsic value at all.
The mother will not be consoled by the fact that one isolated element in this case
is her experiencing happiness. On the contrary, this fact will only subtract from the
value of the example and never add any positive value.
I am not claiming that there are no examples in which there might be a matter of
dispute whether to apply this analysis or Moores.
28
Cases in which Moores analysis
28
Or Ingmar Perssons.
has an application might well be ones comparable to one of his own examples about
vindictive punishment.
29
I have no intention to argue against Moores analysis in
this case and so I have no intention to argue against the suggestion of a plurality of
analytic tools in connection with examples that are related to each other and where
the claim is that my analysis might be suitable for some of these examples whereas
Moores analysis is more suitable for other examples.
29
Moore, Principia Ethica, p. 215.
Chapter 8
Strongly Intrinsic Preferences
We concluded that a weakly intrinsic preference may be irrational in the sense that
it rests on a false or irrational belief about relations. In this chapter I will consider
whether an intrinsic preference that is not belief-dependent can be irrational.
I have suggested that the so-called extensional understanding of a preference
object is primary, in the sense that I presume this understanding if nothing else is
said. If we proceed from the extensional understanding and ask in what sense a
strongly intrinsic preference can be irrational, I will assume that we are looking for
irrationality in some non-trivial sense. Trivially, any preference can be irrational in
the extensional understanding, since the agent may have false beliefs concerning the
(merely) intrinsic properties of the object. When she learns about the objects true
intrinsic properties, she may drop the preference. For instance, I may have a strongly
intrinsic preference for listening to a certain piece of music that will disappear when
I learn more about the musics merely intrinsic properties. In other words, we are
looking for irrationality in strongly intrinsic preferences in some stronger or at least
more interesting sense than that. Furthermore, we are looking for preferences that
are irrational in a non-idiosyncratic sense. In a naturalistic information requirement
any preference may disappear or be affected by the rationalization process. We are
looking for preferences that will tend to disappear because of the agents rational
capacity, that is, non-idiosyncratic preferences the disappearance of which seems
reasonable and can be rationally comprehended.
8.1 Consistency
Consistency has a prominent place in practical rationality. For many people
rationality and consistency are more or less interchangeable. Suppose I want my
daughter to be a virtuoso on the violin. Then I cannot praise her for the particular
way she is holding the bow one day and the other day blame her for doing exactly
the same thing, supposing she is playing exactly the same piece of music and nothing
else is changed in the situation.
I believe that when we are talking of inconsistency of actions as an instance
of irrationality, we think rst of all of inconsistencies in the relation of actions
and preferences. In the absence of any preference whatsoever or in the presence
of constantly changing preferences, there would be no irrationality involved in a
sequence of internally inconsistent actions. Suppose I have a preference for my
daughter being a virtuoso the day I praise her and that I have an opposite preference
the other day when I blame her for the same thing, then my praise and blame will not
necessarily be irrational.
The action of blaming my daughter for the way she holds the bow is something
that can be an irrational instance of inconsistency, given a certain preference about
her future playing. But we also need a belief to the effect that holding the bow
in that particular way will have negative effects for my daughters future playing.
So we have an inconsistency in a set of one preference, one belief and one action.
Furthermore, the action and preference would not be inconsistent with one another
if it were not for the belief; and the belief and action would not be inconsistent with
one another if it were not for the preference.
We may ask if an instance of inconsistent preferences can be seen as irrational
as well. Such an instance is inconsistent, it might be claimed, if we have preferences
that conict with one another in the sense that they cannot all be satised. In view
of our previous discussion we shall put this question in relation to strongly intrinsic
preferences. We have already noted that there is a sense in which weakly irrational
preferences can be irrational; we ask now if there is a sense in which strongly intrinsic
preferences can be irrationally inconsistent.
Fumerton addresses this problem in the following way:
Suppose that I am a hedonistic sadist. I intrinsically desire producing pain and suffering in
other people, but I also have normal desires concerning more mundane pleasures. I enjoy
music, golf, tennis (especially hitting my opponent in the face with an overhead), and
so on. Given this society and its laws, and more generally, given human nature, it might
be extremely difcult for me to satisfy my sadistic intrinsic desires and at the same time
satisfy my desires for these more mundane pleasures. Sadists who satisfy their sadistic
desires often end up in prison, where it is notoriously difcult to maintain a hedonistic
lifestyle.
1
In this example Fumerton assumes (at least for the sake of argument) that the
desires for the pleasure in music, golf, tennis and so on are all intrinsic desires.
Someone might say that a more reasonable description is that I have various kinds of
instrumental preferences for means of attaining pleasure, and that the only intrinsic
preference in the case concerns this attainment of pleasure. In that case I see no
problem in calling it an instance of irrationality, but, once again, irrationality of
instrumental preferences.
However, suppose the case is realistically described; suppose we have here a
conict of intrinsic preferences. Would it be correct or reasonable to see it as an
instance of irrationality?
Fumerton thinks not, if by irrationality we mean intrinsic irrationality. He
writes:
I can well believe that our hypothetical sadist would be much better off if he could rid
himself of his sadistic desires. He might well have good reason to seek psychiatric help.
1
Fumerton, p. 144.
Strongly Intrinsic Preferences 101
Conversely, he might well be irrational for not taking steps to remove the intrinsic desire
whose presence is causing so much difculty. In keeping with our imprecise descriptions
of the world, we might well transfer the irrationality of our sadists inaction to the
intrinsic desire that remains because of that irrational inaction.
2
In other words, Fumerton does not want to call any of the involved desires irrational.
What is rational or irrational in the case does only concern what the agent does with
his desires. And this in turn depends on the agents goals. Given a hedonistic life
plan, which in this context should be understood as a plan according to which one
desires to maximize ones pleasure, an action is rational insofar as it promotes this
goal and irrational insofar as it has the opposite effect.
Although basing his view on a fundamentally different theory of rationality, Derek
Part draws the same conclusion as Fumerton concerning the idea that inconsistency
of intrinsic desires might be instances of irrationality. Part writes:
Suppose that, in some disaster, I could save either of my childrens lives, but not both.
Even when I realize this fact, it would not be irrational for me to go on wanting to save
both my childrens lives. When we know that two of our desires cannot both be fullled,
that would make it irrational for us to intend to full both; but it would still be rational to
want or wish to full both, and to regret that impossibility. When our desires are, in this
sense, inconsistent, that might make our having them unfortunate. But, as I have claimed,
that does not make such desires irrational. It would at most make it irrational for us, if we
could cause ourselves to lose these desires, not to do so.
3
As we can see here, Fumertons and Part views on this subject are similar.
I agree with these conclusions in so far as we discuss the kind of examples that
both Fumerton and Part use, namely examples in which the conict between our
intrinsic preferences are dictated by contingent facts about the world and not dictated
by some stronger necessity.
Consider how Fumerton constructs his example. His explicit claim is that Given
society and its laws, and more generally, given human nature it is difcult and
even extremely so to have all ones desires satised if some of ones preferences
are sadistic. And even if one has no reason to believe that this is something that
will change in the future, it is indeed a contingent fact about human nature and
society (provided that it is a fact; one might indeed doubt whether it is that difcult
to combine these preferences for a talented person).
In a similar way it seems to be a contingent fact that in Parts example I cannot
save both of my childrens lives. I prefer to do so, and in doing this I am not irrational
my desire to save both of my childrens lives is not more irrational than a preference
to the effect that it should be possible for me to do so. Naturally, I would deeply
regret the fact that I cannot in the situation save both of my childrens lives and I can
2
Ibid., p. 145.
3
Part, Rationality and Reasons, p. 34.
see no reason not to regard this regret or preference as reasonable in the sense that a
rational person may well have it.
4
Consider instead a case in which the impossibility of attaining some objects
of ones preferences does not depend on matters of fact that might change, but is
instead dictated by some stronger necessity. Suppose for instance that I have two
preferences directed at the same object, one of the preferences being for the object
and the other against it.
As an illustration we might proceed from Fumertons example about the mundane
pleasures, for instance concerning music. Suppose I have an intrinsic preference for
listening to Wagners operas but also an intrinsic preference for not doing so. In
other words, suppose I both enjoy and do not enjoy listening to Wagners operas. Is
my set of preferences irrational?
Some explanations can be put aside right away. Naturally I may be very fond
of some of the overtures but not fond at all of others; I may love the Tannhuser
overture but dislike some other. And that is not remarkable, let alone irrational.
Another explanation to be put aside is that I may like and dislike one and the same
piece of Wagner music for different reasons. For instance I may like the intensity of
the piece in question but dislike its straining after effect.
The difcult issue is when you like and dislike one and the same piece of music
for exactly the same reason, meaning in this context for the same properties. Would
not that be an instance of irrationality, that is to say, to want that a particular object
should obtain and to want at the same time that this particular object should not
obtain?
As we noted in the previous chapter, it is hard to know exactly what makes you
prefer an object and the exact nature of the preference. Take for instance the strength
of a preferences intrinsicality; it can be hard to say for sure when ones preference
is weakly or strongly intrinsic and when it is a mixture of both.
A person may declare that she has an ambivalent attitude to Wagners music,
in other words, that she both likes and dislikes it and that she has this ambivalence
to one and the same object. It is in other words not a mixture of feelings toward
different aspects. But one of the reasons why she dislikes the music may be that it
is created by a man who indeed showed some kindness towards animals but who
apart from that seems to have been a very pompous and disagreeable man. In this
case it might be that she has, so to speak, two different kinds of attitudes towards
Wagners music. She partly likes it for its own sake, since she nds it beautiful. But
she also has a negative feeling that comes from her knowledge of the kind of man
who created it.
4
Cf. Robert Nozick, who seems to have a similar approach to preferences, but not to
desires: Desires, unlike mere preferences, will feed into some decision process. They must
pass some feasibility tests, and not simply in isolation: your desires must be jointly copossible
to satisfy, The Nature of Rationality (Princeton, New Jersey, 1993), p. 144.
And I believe this is the background for a preference that is weakly intrinsic. You
have an intrinsic preference against listening to Wagners music that is conditioned
upon your knowledge of the character traits of its creator.
If this analysis is correct, we will have a conict between one strongly and one
weakly intrinsic preference. We have established that there is a sense in which the
weakly intrinsic preferences can be irrational. Therefore I see no need to show that
they can also be irrational in virtue of being inconsistent. The question is instead
whether we may say that the strongly intrinsic preference is irrational in virtue of
being inconsistent with a weakly intrinsic preference.
The explanation why a weakly intrinsic preference is liable to irrationality has to
do with belief-dependence. This kind of preference rationality, in turn, is modelled
on the rationality and irrationality of instrumental preferences.
If the rationality of the instrumental preference is a model for the rationality of a
weakly intrinsic preference, then if a conict between a strongly intrinsic preference
and a rational instrumental preference is not an instance of irrationality, we may also
question whether a conict between a strongly intrinsic preference and a weakly
intrinsic one is such an instance. If the one kind of conict is rationally innocent,
then why not the also the other?
Suppose I have an intrinsic preference for listening to (some of) Wagners music
on some Tuesday morning. Suppose also that this pleasure stands in the way of
my ambitions to do some work on a philosophical manuscript this morning. In this
situation I believe we have a kind of conict between a strongly intrinsic preference
and an instrumental preference.
We may question whether my intrinsic preference in this situation really is
rational, for suppose that it does not only stand in the way of my preference to work
on my philosophical manuscript but also in the way of my preference to live a decent
and happy life in order to do that I need to get the job I plan to qualify myself for
by working on the manuscript. In this case I agree with Fumerton that this sense of
irrationality of an intrinsic preference is derived from something else, namely from
the irrationality of not trying to avoid what stands in the way of some more long-
term or more valuable pleasure (see above). The conict depends on contingent facts
about the situation given a slightly different psychological set-up I might instead
be able to concentrate more on my book if I listen to Wagner when I write it.
Most people like the taste of food and would for that reason have preferred to
eat more than they actually do. The explanation why they do not is that they also
have a negative instrumental preference towards eating the food. In one sense I
believe we have a conict here between instrumental and intrinsic preferences as
regards roughly one and the same object. A smoker experiences a similar thing, not
to mention a person who likes alcohol. In other words, I think we have these kinds of
conict all the time but it does not seem right to call them irrational.
A rational person, however, may treat these conicts in a different way compared
to an irrational person a rational person would not eat more than his instrumental
preferences allows him to do; he would not be overwhelmed by the strong intrinsic
desire for the hamburger. But also: this is not an example of an intrinsic preference
being intrinsically irrational but instead an example of a derivative concept of
irrational intrinsic desire.
5
Therefore, these examples of a conict between an intrinsic and extrinsic desire
are rationally innocent, and the same goes for a situation in which the extrinsic
preference in such a conict is a weakly intrinsic one.
*
We have not yet found what we want in order to test our rationality intuitions in
a conict situation a conict between two strongly intrinsic preferences that is
dictated by some stronger form of necessity. What I have said so far is that these
conicts either concern contingencies or different kinds of intrinsic preferences.
8.2 An Example
I need an example in which two strongly intrinsic preferences necessarily come into
conict with one another, that is, two intrinsic preferences that do not depend on
beliefs (concerning relations that these objects have to other objects or concerning
other objects). The kind of example to look for is genuine ambivalence, as when
a person has a strongly intrinsic preference for some object and at the same time
a strongly intrinsic preference against it, for the same reason. Moreover, the
ambivalence ought not to be rationally innocent in the sense that a fully rational
person would normally not regard embracing the two preferences simultaneously as
something problematic.
Some genuine ambivalences may not be rationally problematic, like for instance
the double kind of feeling or preference one has about watching a horror movie. I
may have a preference for watching a horror movie and a preference against doing
so for the very same kind of reason, namely that it is scary. I doubt that a fully
rational person would regard this as problematic.
On the other hand, take a similar and just slightly different example. I have
discovered a phenomenon in myself that I do not like. When on the news they show
some really horric event or when I pass by a trafc accident, I experience both
curiosity and disgust; it seems to me that I have a preference for looking at the
horric thing as well as a preference against doing so, and sometimes I experience
them as equally strong. The involved preferences are all strongly intrinsic as far as
I can see.
In this example I would say that we may have a case of intrinsic irrationality in the
sense that a set of strongly intrinsic preferences are by their very nature inconsistent.
And I believe that it makes sense to claim that a fully rational person would regard
this set as problematic as a result of her being rational, and also that this may have
an impact on her preferences.
5
See Fumerton, pp. 1445. See Fumerton, pp. 1445.
8.3 Brandts Conception of Irrational Intrinsic Preferences
We have already mentioned Brandts general idea of preference rationality. It is
impossible to ignore his treatment of the problem, due to the impact it has had on the
development of the information requirement.
Brandt summarizes his position and the information requirement in the following
way:
What I mean by rational criticism of preferences is partly this: Suppose a person initially
prefers A to B; then his preference has been rationally criticized if, as a result of acquiring
demonstrated or empirically conrmed beliefs and representing them to himself with
maximal vividness (possibly involving repetition), he reversed (or, in case the criticism
is such as to be supportive, retained) his preference, provided he did not represent to
himself vividly (even vaguely, unclearly) any other factual beliefs which are unjustiable
and which would tend to reverse this effect.
6
I would like rst to discuss a case where Brandt does not believe there is a place
for rational criticism. I am not sure he is correct in this. Next I will discuss a
case where Brandt believes there is a place for such criticism, but where some of
his critics believe there is not. I think these critics are wrong. I will discuss the
distinction between weakly and strongly intrinsic preferences again and I will nish
by considering whether Brandts conception of a criticism really ought to be a part
of a conception of rationality. Some critics believe not.
Examples of desires that cannot be rationally criticized are, Brandt says,
desires with a bodily basis. Begin with thirst, not itself a desire. Dictionaries dene
thirst as unpleasant (disliked) dryness in the mouth caused by need of a drink; the
psychobiological denition, a bit more technically, holds that thirst is the unpleasant
dryness brought about by a condition of the lateral hypothalamus caused by dehydration
of the cells of the body, or a low level of uid outside the cells. (Thirst is hard-wired; I do
not suggest it is subject to rational criticism.)
7
Although it is not made clear in this short passage, Brandt believes that the intrinsic
desire to drink which is caused by the dehydration of the cells is not subject to
rational criticism. The reason is that this desire is too intimately connected with its
bodily or physiological basis: The story is much the same for hunger, although here
the cause is primarily a deciency of glucose in the cells
8
This passage surprises me, since it seems that the desire to drink, or eat for
that matter, is easily inuenced by information and by the manner in which this
information is presented. Suppose I have been on a long walk in a dry and dusty
landscape where I dare not drink the muddy water in the ditches. I have nished the
6
R. B. Brandt, The Rational Criticism of Preferences, in Christopher Fehige and Ulla
Wessels (eds), Preferences (Berlin, New York, 1998), p. 63.
7
Ibid., p. 66.
8
Ibid., p. 67.
water I carried with me and now I start feeling thirsty. I know that if I carry on I will
eventually, within some hours, come to fresh water. What do I do? I would at least in
this situation refrain from thinking too much about the sound of pouring water and
the feeling of putting a glass of cold water to my lips. Why, if not for the fact that this
mental imagination may increase my thirst, or if you prefer, my desire to drink even
more? (I have created a desire to drink merely by writing this passage.)
If that is the case, then it seems that the desire in question is subject to rational
criticism, since it will be inuenced by the kind of cognitive processes Brandt is
talking about, namely the representing to oneself with maximal vividness certain
true beliefs. In this case the beliefs concern how pouring water sounds and what it
would be like to put a glass of cold water to ones lips. These are all, we may assume,
true beliefs.
Brandt may have a reply here: he claims that wanting to drink something has
what he calls a dual basis.
9
I take this to mean that a desire to drink, for instance,
a glass of water, is partly conditioned by my general thirst, which is caused by the
dehydration of my cells but also by the pleasantness of the taste of water. And
Brandt might say that only the second element in my desire to drink is subject to
rational criticism. I may increase my desire for drinking a specic kind of drink
by contemplating what it would be like to taste it. In other words, the reason why I
refrain from thinking of cold water on my walk is that these thoughts increase my
desire to have a glass of cold water, and not that they increase my desire for drinking
generally.
If this is the reply, then I believe it is wrong. My general desire for drinking is
not unaffected by my meditating on what it would be like in this situation to put a
glass of cold water to my lips. Of course, it is difcult to present any arguments
either for or against such a statement, but I strongly believe that if I were to meditate
constantly on drinking cold fresh water during the nal leg of my trip before I reach
the place where I might drink, then I would not only increase my preference for
drinking the cold water I have imagined, but also my preference for taking a cold
beer or a coke if it should turn out that plain water were not available. In other words,
my constant meditation had strengthened, I would say, my disposition to drink some
(drinkable) liquid generally.
Brandt says that hunger as a preference for food will work in the same way. I
believe we might easily nd counter-examples here too. One phenomenon that is
fairly well-known is that you may get hungry by browsing in cookery books or if
you already are hungry you may increase your hunger by doing so. And of course
there is an element of increasing the hunger for the particular dishes you read about
and look at the sensual pictures of. But there is also, I think, another element, which
is the increment of a general desire for eating, which means that after having read
in the cookery book your disposition to eat any (within some limits) dish will have
increased.
9
Ibid., p. 67.
Let us consider a case where Brandt believes that rational criticism has a
place. Brandts idea is that it has a place particularly when the involved desires are
manifestly mistaken. One such mistake is, according to Brandt, time-discounting,
where I have intense desires for an event that is to take place now or soon but less
intense desires for this event if is to take place in a more distant future, and where
this difference in time is the only difference between the events.
Brandt writes:
what pure time-discounting overlooks is the fact that the experience of something nice
now will be the same as the identical experience of something nice a year from now, no
more and no less. Two events which differ only in date can hardly be desired differently by
a thoughtful person Evidently it is possible to criticize time-discounting rationally.
10
My view is slightly different. If one looks only at this quotation, Brandt seems to
believe that its always irrational to be a pure time-discounter, that is to say to prefer
an event to another merely for when it is placed in time. I believe that the correct
view is instead that pure time-discounting may be irrational in certain circumstances
and actually one may think that this is also Brandts view, to judge from other parts
of his writings.
Consider two cases that are slightly different from Brandts. In the one case you
choose between having two positive experiences, one now and one a year from
now. You know that these experiences will be the same apart from the fact that the
experience which will occur a year from now will be slightly more intense, that is to
say, a little bit nicer. You undergo the kind of cognitive process that Brandt describes,
which means that you confront yourself with true beliefs in a maximally vivid way
about what it will be like to have the two experiences. Suppose you insist on wanting
to have the slightly less intense experience now instead of the more intense one in a
year. That will make the want in question rational. You are also rational in the sense
that you know what you prefer you prefer what you prefer in full knowledge. And
given the mysteries of human nature, even if we typically do not do this type of time-
discounting, it does not seem obviously insane to me. I would even say that such a
preference is comprehensible.
To assume the irrationality of pure time-discounting suggests that the only proper
object of a rational preference will be the quality of an experience. But I cannot
see why we have to accept this qualication. In other chapters we have already
discussed preferences for all kinds of things and preferences for experiences that
are conditioned on things in life other than my own experiences, and I can see no
reason to disqualify preferences for pure temporalities, for particulars and so on as
irrational. That would disqualify a substantial part of our everyday life, as it would
disqualify, for example, many of the preferences involved in simple love, at least
according to some denitions of this feeling.
11
10
Ibid., p. 70.
11
For instance, J. D. Velleman, Love as a Moral Emotion, Ethics, 109 (1999): 33874,
and Toni Rnnow-Rasmussen, Love and Value (unpublished).
Consider another case where you have an initial preference for the slightly less
intense experience now to the more intense experience a year from now. Suppose
you reect on these preferences and as a result have them changed. After realizing
what it would be like to forsake the more intense experience in the future, you start
to prefer this more intense experience to the less intense one. In this case you do not
seem to know what you prefer before exposing the preference to rational criticism.
And this I believe is irrationality in a fairly uncontroversial sense. I also believe the
change is rationally comprehensible.
Would Brandt agree that my preference is rational in the rst case and irrational
in the second one? I am not sure.
There are two possible interpretations. On the one hand, Brandt holds that those
preferences that withstand and resist cognitive psychotherapy should be regarded as
rational. And this is also an element in his theory of preference rationality that has
been much criticized. Fumerton, to take just one example, writes:
it is surely a strange feature of Brandts view that the fact that a desire is inextinguishable
is a sign of rationality. If the underlying thrust of Brandts position is that desires are
irrational insofar as they are produced by cognitive defects, then why should a desire be
any the less rational just because it was so effectively produced by a cognitive defect that
I cant get rid of it?
12
Im not so sure that this is Brandts view. Brandt himself seems to hesitate. In the
paper I have referred to he ends with the following thoughts:
It may be that, for a change of state of mind to be rational, it is enough if it derives from
careful reection on facts or justied beliefs, and is a change which thoughtful people
generally would go through as a result of such reection.
13
This could be interpreted in the following way. Suppose I have what Fumerton
describes as a cognitive defect that is so deeply ingrained that I cannot get rid of it
with the help of cognitive psychotherapy. (We may discuss how we are to understand
defect, but I assume that one thing that is commonly assumed is that defects are
in some way abnormal.) Now, this cognitive defect in Fumertons example would
then not qualify as rational if people normally would not be affected by it or rather,
if people normally would have their preferences changed after having undergone
cognitive psychotherapy. This is obviously not the same view as the one Fumerton
criticizes above.
I believe there is a case for saying that Brandt describes an example of irrationality
of strongly intrinsic preferences in the purely time-discounting preferences. What
can be discussed is whether these preferences would all be qualied as irrational.
12
Fumerton, p. 148.
13
Brandt, The Rational Criticism of Preferences, p. 57, my emphasis.
8.4 Kussers Argument against Brandt
Although she does not discuss time-discounting in particular, Anna Kusser in her
reply to Brandt gives a general critique of Brandts theory that will be applicable
also to our example. Suppose for instance that (normally) a pure time-discounter
who prefers to have a less intense positive experience now to a more intense positive
experience later would have her preferences changed as a result of the kind of
reection Brandt is talking of. Would that be an instance of rational criticism?
Anna Kusser denies this, with the following argument:
But would such a change of preference really be due to a process of reection and
could we consequently qualify its result as rational? The answer is no A concomitant
emotional experience of having a belief, not the belief itself identied by its content, is
responsible for the modication of a preference. Admittedly, there seems to be a certain
connection between these two, consisting in the hypothesis that to have a belief about
something unpleasurable (or pleasurable) is itself an unpleasurable (or pleasurable)
experience. But this tie is weak and arbitrary because we often have beliefs about
unpleasurable or pleasurable things without having an emotional experience consonant
with those beliefs.
14
Kusser is probably both right and wrong here. She is right in the sense that when
reecting, for instance on what it would mean to have my preferences for the different
experiences satised, a change in my preferences will not be an effect of the content
of these reections or beliefs only at least not their propositional content. But I
believe she is wrong if she claims that the only alternative left is to say that the
preferences are changed due to the concomitant emotional experience of having a
belief.
Recall that Brandt describes the rational criticism of someones preferences as
a result of acquiring demonstrated or empirically conrmed beliefs and representing
them to himself with maximal vividness. I believe the answer to Kussers critique
lies in the last part of this quotation, and what we in earlier chapters have called the
qualitative element.
In a previous chapter we concluded that the vividness of a belief is not a direct
function of its propositional content. The element of vividness is independent of
what is believed; as we said earlier, vividness is instead a function of how one
embraces the informational content in a belief.
So I believe that one important cause of pure time-discounting is the difference
in liveliness with which one embraces the relevant beliefs. Therefore I believe that
training in embracing future events with maximal vividness may be a remedy for
pure time-discounting, at least the irrational instances of it.
Events that are closer to us in time tend to be closer in our imagination as well.
If I know I am going to give a public speech one year from now I have to make
14
Anna Kusser, Rational by Shock: A Reply to Brandt, in Christopher Fehige and Ulla
Wessels (eds), Preferences (Berlin, New York, 1998), p. 83.
an effort to call forth in my imaginations the situation as something real. If, on the
other hand, I know that I shall give the speech one hour from now I look upon the
situation as something real without the slightest effort. Seeing something as real is
to me one aspect of representing something to oneself with maximal liveliness. A
difference between a representation that is not lively and one that is lively is surely
for reasons having to do with human psychology, if not for logical reasons a
difference in motivational potency. If therefore liveliness is an indispensable part of
Brandts information requirement which seems to be the case then we are dealing
with something stronger than just a concomitant emotional experience of having a
belief. The presence of motivational force and even emotional engagement may
instead be an essential part of a well accomplished rationalization process.
Kusser may not want to call such a motivational or emotional part of the process
rational reection. In one sense I agree with her, and that is also the reason why I
prefer to say that the demand for liveliness is one part of an information requirement,
since I would say that to represent to oneself a future event with maximal liveliness
is to inform oneself about it. However, the important thing to note is that this is a
terminological question and not one of substance.
8.5 Conclusion
In this chapter I claim that there is a case for saying that even strongly intrinsic
preferences may be irrational if we use Brandts method of rational criticism of
a preference. I have also claimed that this criticism is carried out as a result of
the manner in which a preference object is represented and not particularly as a
result of what is represented. Furthermore, I gave an example of a set of strongly
intrinsic preferences that seems irrational in virtue of being genuinely ambivalent,
or necessarily contradictory.
Chapter 9
A Problem of Hypothetical Approval
I will discuss a problem that seems to pertain to the traditional formulation of the
information requirement. I will also consider whether the problem so to speak lies
at the heart of the requirement or whether it may vanish with a reformulation or
revision.
9.1 Traditional Formulations
Recall Harsanyis formulation of a requirement of preference rationality: a
persons true preferences are the preferences he would have if he had all the relevant
factual information, always reasoned with the greatest possible care, and were in
a state of mind most conducive to rational choice.
1
There is an ambiguity in this
formulation. What are a persons true preferences? Are they the ones he has already
and would have also if he had all the relevant information? Or are they the ones he
would have if he had all the relevant information, whether or not he already has these
preferences or will have them in the future? Or are they the preferences he will have
in the future when he has all the relevant information? My guess is that Harsanyi
would say that a true or rational preference is one that a person would have if he
were fully rational, without considering whether that preference is now among the
persons actual preferences.
Richard Hare is more explicit about this question, when he claims that prescribing
in other persons interests does not only involve taking into account what they
actually at present prefer and desire:
It also involves, when I am considering the desires of others, considering what they would
be if those others were perfectly prudent i.e. desired what they would desire if they were
fully informed and unconfused.
2
Hare does not believe that a rational preference is also an actual or at least future
preference. For Hare, as well as Harsanyi, we are talking about a pure hypothesis
my rational preferences are the ones I would have if I were fully informed, whether
or not I will ever be informed, and independently of whether or not I will ever have
such a preference that would (hypothetically) withstand all relevant information.
1
2
R. M. Hare, Ethical theory and utilitarianism, in Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams
(eds), Utilitarianism and beyond (Cambridge, 1982), p. 28.
Consider what Brandt says:
I shall call a persons desire, aversion, or pleasure rational if it would survive or be
produced by careful cognitive psychotherapy for that person.
3
The same kind of ambiguity pertains to this formulation: to talk about those of a
persons desires that would be produced by careful cognitive psychotherapy seems
to suggest an actual existence of these desires, not necessarily now but at least in the
future. However, Brandt probably does not require such an existence; the emphasis
is put on the hypothetical would survive or be produced.
Most of the traditional formulations of the rationality requirement on preferences
seem to share a problem, namely: what is the value of satisfying a purely hypothetical
preference? Not only will it raise difculties for an individuals actual preferences
to meet the requirement, it seems that it will also assign value to the satisfaction of
preferences that no individual actually has.
There is a negative and a positive interpretation of the requirement. It can be
seen as a requirement not to count the satisfaction of those preferences that are
not rational. Or it can be seen as a demand to count also the satisfaction of those
preferences the agent would have if she were rational. Here I assume the positive
interpretation. I believe, however, that similar problems will ensue also from the
negative formulation, namely, what is the value of disqualifying the satisfaction of
an actual preference with reference to the fact that the agent would not have it in
a situation that she is not actually in? What I will henceforth call a problem of
hypothetical approval is a problem of seeing a personal value in adjusting to what a
person would prefer or approve of in merely hypothetical circumstances.
4
There is a related phenomenon that ought to be mentioned. In order to avoid
not the disappointment of getting what you (irrationally) prefer but instead the
disappointment of not getting what you (rationally) prefer one common strategy
is to adapt ones preferences to the kind of situation one is actually in and to what
one believes to be possible.
5
If I cannot nd a woman to marry I eventually develop
3
4
This problem is an instance of a general problem which R. K. Shope has called the
conditional fallacy, The Conditional Fallacy in Contemporary Philosophy, The Journal of
Philosophy, LXXV (1978): 397413; esp. pp. 41113. See also Amartya Sen and Bernard
Williams, Introduction: Utilitarianism and Beyond, in Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams
(eds), Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge, 1982), p. 10; Grifn, p. 11; Dan Egonsson,
Interests, Utilitarianism and Moral Standing (Lund, 1990), Ch. 4 (from which I re-use the
punk example); Wlodek Rabinowicz and Bertil Strmberg, What if I were in his shoes? On
Hares argument for preference utilitarianism, Theoria, LXII (1996): 95123; Bengt Brlde,
pp. 2758; David Alm, Agent-neutral and Agent-relative Value (unpublished); Stephen
Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care (Princeton, 2002), pp. 278.
5
For Jon Elster adaptive preferences to what one believes to be possible (sour grapes)
are examples of non-autonomous preferences. The example I will focus on is also, according
to Elster, an example of non-autonomous preferences, namely conformism, i.e. adaptation of
ones preferences to those of other people, Sour Grapes, p. 22.
A Problem of Hypothetical Approval 113
preferences for being free and unmarried. This is a preference I would not have if
I thought it was possible to get a woman to love and marry. We might think that
the information requirement is relevant also to these preferences, since in a way
we deceive ourselves with them. At heart I do wish to be married instead of being
a bachelor. However, I do not think the information requirement will solve this
problem. I even think it may grow worse with the requirement. If you are fully
informed, there are lots of things you realize you will never achieve. If you know
that you will never marry the woman you deeply love, then you may eventually cease
to want it. In this case the adaptation takes place when your information grows. The
way of solving this problem is instead, I believe, to look upon a preference for an
object as a tendency to bring it about if one thinks it possible. Whatever you actually
or rationally believe to be possible concerning marrying a particular person, if you
would tend to ask the person to marry you under the condition that you thought she
might say yes, then you have a preference for marrying her. If a fully informed person
asked herself whether she would tend to try to get married to a certain person if she
counter-factually thought this possible, then she has a preference to get married.
In other words, our problem does not concern the fact that an actual preference
may be understood in terms of a hypothesis, but instead the fact that the information
requirement sees a value in satisfying preferences that are not even actual. The
problem addressed is not the value of asking what some actual person would try to
realize given that she thought it was possible, but instead the value of asking what
some purely hypothetical person would try to realize given that kind of thought.
9.2 The Punk Rock Example
Suppose your daughter loves punk music and you know that she would very much
like a CD with that kind of music for her birthday. Suppose you have reason to
believe that your daughters taste for punk music is based on the fact that she has
not made proper acquaintance with other kinds of music; you believe that if your
daughter gave classical music a chance, then that kind of music would give her
deeper and more intense musical experiences.
Here we have, I assume, an instrumental and, according to the information
requirement, irrational preference for a CD of punk music in order to have a musical
experience. How are you then to comply with the requirement? Ideally we might
think that the best thing would be to let your daughter undergo the training that
would make her realize that she may gain more intense musical experiences from
listening to classical music. But this is not realistic, since you know of no method
of exposing her to that training she would refuse to take part in such a project. In
that case it seems that the only way of complying with the requirement is to buy
the classical CD, since that is what you have reason to believe would satisfy your
daughters rational preference. All the same, you also know that she will never listen
to the classical CD.
It is difcult to see in what way her life will be better if she receives the classical
CD. The preference for listening to classical music is not actual in your daughter and
it will not become actual as a result of your action. And once again for the sake of
clarication: the problem is not that your daughter lacks rationality in the sense that
she does not actually base her preference on full information and rational reasoning.
The problem is that she does not, and for all we can say, will not have an actual
preference that would withstand a hypothetical rational criticism. In other words, the
problem of hypotheticalness does not pertain to the criticism but to the preference
acting on an actual preference that hypothetically might pass some tests is not
unreasonable.
It might be suggested that the information requirement is both unreasonable and
superuous. The punk example shows that it is not reasonable, but it may also show
that it is superuous (whatever its plausibility). What we have is an instrumental
preference for a certain kind of music in order to have a positive experience. All the
problems considered will vanish if what has value in connection with preferences
is ultimately the satisfaction of intrinsic preferences. Take a look at the example.
If you reject the information requirement and concentrate on your daughters
intrinsic preferences, then you buy the punk CD if you believe that this will satisfy
your daughters intrinsic preferences (whatever they are) to a greater extent than a
classical CD will do. In this way you avoid the disappointment and make the best
of the situation. The information requirement is superuous in the sense that the
specication of prudential value in terms of intrinsic preferences seems to have been
the rationale behind the requirement all the time.
This position, however, rests on the assumption that these intrinsic preferences
in turn will not be irrational. In Chapter 7, I argued that the concept of intrinsicality
is about focus and what the preferrer values an object for. In an instrumental
preference the preferrers focus is on the external part in a causal relation; when
you value something instrumentally your primary focus is on what this something
is an instrument for. In an intrinsic preference you focus on the object itself, that is,
you value some object for its internal properties. Your reason for the preference is
based on the objects internal properties. I also argued that this does not mean that
your intrinsic preferences are unaffected by facts about external relations. There
is a family of different kinds of intrinsic preferences, that is to say, preferences
concerning objects that are assigned intrinsic value. Some of these are conditional:
you value an object for its intrinsic properties only as long as you believe it stands in
some relation to some other object. I may see the beauty in a piece of music only as
long as I believe that it is composed by my favourite composer. As soon as I realize
that the piece in question was recently composed by a cheap computer program, the
aesthetic value I saw in the piece vanishes. And notice that I do not value the piece
for its composer: my focus is all the time on the internal properties of the musical
piece. The beauty I see in the object itself is conditional on my having certain beliefs
about its relations.
It is important here to distinguish between what we may call internal and external
conditionality.
6
To begin with the latter. It might be the case that my prejudices
against computer-composed music prevent me from giving it the time and attention
necessary to see its internal beauty. My failure to appreciate the beauty of the music
is caused by my prejudices. This is an external or causal conditionality; a belief of
mine prevents an intrinsic preference. The kind of conditionality described in the
paragraph above was internal. I am fully aware of the internal properties of the piece,
but am nevertheless (or would nevertheless be) affected by the information that the
piece is composed by a cheap computer program and not by my favourite composer.
A set of properties of internal properties are my reason for nding the piece beautiful
only if at the same time I believe that my favourite composer has created it.
Stronger forms of intrinsic preferences, as we have seen, do not in this way
depend on beliefs of the preferrer (neither positively on the presence of some belief
nor negatively on the absence of some belief). I may nd some piece of music
beautiful without having any beliefs about its origin or other external relations. And
I may continue to love the piece even after having learnt that it was composed by
a mass murderer or a cheap computer program. In this case we have a strong or
unconditional preference.
The conditional and intrinsic preference may be irrational according to the
information requirement, if the belief on which it is conditional is false (say that
I falsely believe that the piece of music I listen to was created by my favourite
composer). I have also argued that an unconditional preference may be irrational and
change as a result of the preferrers gaining new information. However, I will not
discuss these unconditional preferences again in this chapter.
Suppose you falsely believe that a certain kind of music is in at the moment
and suppose your intrinsic preference for its aesthetic qualities is at least partly
conditioned by that belief, then your preference is irrational. Suppose your daughter
for some reason has failed to follow the musical trends among her friends perhaps
you have been abroad for quite some time and now you plan to give her a birthday
present. She expressly wants a punk CD but you have reason to suspect that this is
because she has not been aware of the changing trends among the people she used
to look up to. A rumour you rely on, but not your daughter, says that these people
have all become well-adjusted lovers of classical music. Once again we have a case
in which you will disappoint your daughter if you disregard her irrational preference,
whereas you will not be able to make her listen to the classical CD.
I shall not focus here on what are the moral reasons for complying with your
daughters actual interests in a case like this. There may be both hedonistic reasons
and reasons stemming from the value of autonomy. However, I believe there is a value
in not assuming an alternative ethical framework in our criticism of the information
requirement, but to proceed from a preferentialist or at least preference-sensitive
understanding of the normative and ethical basis. The fact that we may show that
the information requirement gives the wrong answer in the punk example according
6
I owe the discussion of this distinction to Ingmar Persson and Wlodek Rabinowicz.
to a hedonist or Kantian will not impress the preferentialist. And observe that even
a preference-sensitive theory may conclude that you have an all-considered moral
reason to buy the punk CD in virtue of the fact that the hedonistic reasons in this
case outweigh the preference-sensitive one your reason to go for your daughters
actual and irrational preferences are stronger than your reason for satisfying her
hypothetical and rational ones. My objection is instead that I can see no reason
whatsoever to adjust to the hypothetical preference. To say there is a reason for
doing so is ethically problematic, given that your daughter will remain in her actual
irrational state.
So we seem to have a problem of hypothetical approval supported by the
information requirement also in connection with the intrinsic preferences, and if
so we cannot solve our problem by concentrating on these intrinsic preferences
and assuming that the problem will only disturb us on the level of the external
and instrumental preferences. In the next section I will consider whether or not a
modied understanding of the requirement may solve our problem for all kinds of
preferences.
9.3 Railtons Objectied Subjective Interests
The problem of hypothetical approval questions the value of seeking to satisfy
those of an actual persons preferences that she would have if she were rational
and informed. If your daughters rational self would have no preference for punk,
it seems offensive to claim that your actual daughter who has such a preference
would fare better if you ignored her actual preference for punk. It seems more
natural to say that her life would have less personal value for her if she did not
get her actual preferences satised. The reason is partly that she will simply fail to
secure an opportunity to get an intrinsic preference satised and partly the feeling of
frustration that this will probably cause.
The problem of hypothetical approval may consequently be a problem about
the offensiveness of an information requirement. We feel inclined not to say that
your daughter will be better off if you ignore her actual and irrational preference
for punk, but rather inclined to say that she would be worse off. The proposal of the
information requirement seems therefore to offend our sense of ethics.
David Sobel has argued that the traditional information requirement would
also be pointless in certain circumstances. For instance, suppose that in my actual
circumstances in which I am no connoisseur of wine the only distinction I make
and the only difference I can discern is the one between red and white wine I
am offered a wine which my rationalized self with his rened palate would prefer.
Sobel claims that if the expensive wine tastes just like the cheaper stuff to me, it
is implausible to say that one wine is much better for me than another when I
cannot tell the difference. And he concludes that in the traditional formulation of
the information requirement the idealization process turns us into such different
creatures that it would be surprising if the well-being of the two of us, my informed
self and my ordinary self, consisted in the same things.
7
One formulation of the requirement which seems to avoid these problems is Peter
Railtons, built on the notion of an objectied subjective interest. The idea is that if
A is a persons non-idealized self whereas A+ is his idealized self with complete and
vivid knowledge of himself and his environment, and whose instrumental rationality
is in no way defective, then we
ask A+ to tell us not what he currently wants, but what he would want his nonidealized
self A to want or, more generally, to seek were he to nd himself in the actual condition
and circumstances of A.
8
In Railtons formulation we can see that although a persons good is to be
determined by what he would have preferred if he were rational, there are double
ties between a persons actual and rational selves. First, the reduction basis for the
idealized versions preferences is the non-idealized versions actual constitution and
personality it is the preferences that someone like him would embrace if he were
informed. Second, the idealized version in turn is asked to imagine what he would
prefer for himself if he was transformed into the circumstances of his actual and
uninformed self.
It is particularly the second tie that enables Railtons model to escape the problems
we have pointed to. For instance, why would my rational self prefer the expensive
wine for a situation in which he were unable to sense any difference between this
wine and the cheaper one, if we like Sobel assume that it is only the taste of the
expensive wine which causes our idealized self to prefer it over the cheaper stuff?
9
Furthermore, we can also see why your daughters idealized self would have wanted
her non-idealized to have a punk CD even if she would have wanted a classical one
for herself. If she wants to avoid future frustration it seems that she will prefer the
punk CD, since that is the only one she realistically will listen to and enjoy.
However, I am not sure that Railton actually has avoided the problem of
hypothetical approval in his model. He may have avoided the most obvious forms of
the problem, but perhaps not all. And I believe that this conclusion can be reached
via two different arguments.
9.4 The First Argument
First, we may imagine that the rational self is fully informed in the sense that she can
compare the experiences that will follow from listening to different kinds of music
and weighing them against each other. The rational self knows and has a vivid
representation of what experiences are involved in listening to Schuberts string
7
8
Railton, p. 11.
9
quartets. For the sake of argument we also assume that these experiences are richer
and more profound than the ones of listening to punk music.
This argument is based on the possibility that someones rational self, contrary
to what we assumed does prefer her irrational self to be frustrated to indulging in
some pleasures she would nd inferior. But why would this possibility come true? I
believe this to be a psychological question.
(1) We may rst treat it as a general question about human psychology. How would
a person normally react if she underwent this kind of transformation and then were
to judge whether she would prefer her less rational self to be frustrated or indulging
in inferior pleasures? We normally change our musical taste during adolescence and
also possibly consider this to be a change from the inferior to the superior. But
would we normally prefer frustration in childhood to having our taste for inferior
music satised? Probably not, for two reasons. First, we might consider listening to
inferior music as a youngster a necessary and transient step in the development of
our musical taste. Second, normally we do not undergo such a dramatic experiential
change as our rational selves do. Therefore, whether or not we would prefer being
frustrated to having an inferior pleasure will not normally concern a choice between
pleasures of radically different qualities. But for all we know a fully rational self
may face such a radical choice; she chooses from a position where she has had vivid
experiences of listening to the very best music with maximally trained ears. And
can we say with condence that a person in this position would normally not prefer
being frustrated to indulging in some inferior musical pleasure? I dont think so.
(2) Then let us ask what this particular individual would prefer if she were more
rational? Being fully rational means being calm and cool, but in Railtons analysis
it probably does not also mean getting rid of all those preferences and peculiarities
that make up our personalities. Some of us are more elitist than others in the sense
that we identify very much with the kind of music, literature and so on that we
believe has high quality. Some people state that they prefer being bored to watching
what they regard as bad television. Suppose this is a trait you have found in various
situations in your daughter she is prepared to pay a high price to stay loyal to her
musical ideals. Will not this suggest that she might reason in a similar way if she
were rational and then prefer no pleasure (also for her less rational self) to being
pleased by listening to anything other than Schubert? As far as I can see, there is
nothing intrinsically irrational in such a preference. And should we then conclude
that Railtons model suggests that you turn your back on your daughters preference
for punk music, even if she did not care whether or not her rational self would
approve of her desire for punk? If so, I believe we have an objection to this model.
It is true that this is soft elitism, since we base our judgement on the attitudes we
believe your daughter would have if she were fully rational. We do not primarily base
our judgement on what an independent elite would say, other than as an indication of
what she would say if she had access to the knowledge and opinion of the elite. Still,
what the model wants us to do is listen to the agents preference on the condition that
she were more like the absolute elite than her actual self. And how closely will such
a person relate to the agents actual self?
For another illustration, consider again the example of a person contemplating
what should happen to her if she became gravely demented in her last years. Suppose
for some reason that I know that during this phase of my life I will lose all my interest
in literature, philosophy, and classical music and instead get a next to insatiable
desire for pornographic magazines. In other words, suppose I know that if one takes
seriously and tries to satisfy the preferences I will have as an irrational human being,
then I will spend the rest of my days reading porn and paying attention to nothing
else.
To my mind, it would not be unrealistic in this situation for me to prefer having
my desire for pornographic magazines unsatised, even if as a consequence of
this I would experience frustration. I prefer being frustrated to having this kind of
preference satised.
And I believe that there is often some kind of aesthetic valuation involved in
these issues. The rational self does not want the irrational self to admire the kind
of music the rational self would turn down for purely aesthetic reasons. The same
is true of my foreseeing a state of serious senile dementia in which I will be totally
absorbed by my preference for pornographic magazines. Why is it that I do not want
this preference to be satised if it is not for some kind of aesthetic reason? You might
claim that it has more to do with dignity than with beauty, but then I would reply that
I believe these two aspects are amalgamated (if not identical) in most cases. That is
also a possible explanation why we nd it tragic to hear that Iris Murdoch in her last
year, while she was unable to write and read, instead devoted herself to watching
Teletubbies.
So there seems to be an aspect of elitism also in Railtons model. Some kinds of
elitism are more offensive than others. In the punk example the offensiveness seems
fairly plain, but in the dementia example it is not so clear and may even be discussed.
We dont need to go into the explanation of this difference now, but I assume it has
to do with the fact that in the dementia case the elitism preference is actual whereas
in the punk case it is hypothetical.
It might be suggested that we get another picture if we assume that the idealized
self would have a caring attitude towards the non-idealized self or that she has a
standing want for happiness. But I do not think that will solve our problem either. The
idealized self may deny her non-idealized self to be entertained by simple pleasures
out of care for her non-idealized self; she does not turn down the punk CD out of
contempt for the non-idealized self, but rather out of scorn for punk music.
And even if the rational self would have a preference for the happiness of her
non-rational self, I assume that the rational self would not automatically have such
a preference for happiness or pleasure of any kind. Again, the rational self may well
distinguish between qualities of pleasures and also prefer to pay an experiential price
to avoid a low-quality pleasure. Otherwise, it is hard to see in what way it would
be a unique personality that would undergo the transformation. Railton exhorts us
to look at the individual in this process as a personality and ask what someone
like him would come to desire
10
And once again, I do not believe it is rationally
required that an individual give up her elitism in this process. Otherwise it is hard
to understand in what sense we would look upon and start from an individual as a
personality.
It is hard to know for sure that your daughter, if she had been rational, would
have preferred frustration rather than listening to punk. But this is, I think, a question
about what it is rational for you to believe regarding what would happen in such a
transformation. And in epistemic rationality we have to trust the available evidence.
Further evidence in the present case may be that similar character traits are common
in the family. Suppose most family members work that way they turn down
everything but the things they regard as best and most valuable, and suppose your
daughter is very similar to these family members in every other sense. Then I would
say that your evidence supports the conclusion that your daughter is as elitist or loyal
to her music as are these other members (she is not so much of an elitist actually; but
she is a person that is loyal to whatever kind of music she has decided to love). Once
again, you may not know for sure, but for the sake of argument it is enough that we
can gure out what in the situation would count as evidence for your conclusion.
In fact I believe there are two variants of this scenario. (i) The rational version of
your daughter may consider the pleasure of listening to punk to be objectively bad
or at least bad for someone who knows of a much better alternative. Indeed she will
describe listening to punk as an inferior pleasure, and there is no contradiction in this
unless you think that some kind of hedonism is rationally required. (ii) The rational
version need not consider the inferior pleasure to be completely void of value in
order to prefer no pleasure or even frustration to listening to punk. I may prefer
out of sheer self-interest no life at all rather than living in the n-world described in
the repugnant conclusion; I may prefer to be dead to having senile dementia. I also
believe that a rational version of myself may have this preference. And if there is a
logical space for this possibility, then there ought also to be a logical space for the
possibility that the rational version of your daughter may prefer no pleasure (for
her less rational self) to being pleased by punk, either because she believes that the
inferior pleasure is bad, or because she does not believe it to be good enough.
If this is the case, then Railtons model suggests that you turn your back on your
daughters actual preference for punk music, even if she does not care whether or
not her rational self would approve of her desire for punk music. Here I believe we
have an objection to this model.
9.5 The Second Argument
There is another line of reasoning if you ponder over the status of your daughters
preference for punk music according to Railtons model. Is this preference rational?
According to Railton this is determined by whether your daughters rational self
10
Railton, p. 60.
would desire that her irrational self satisfy this preference. He writes: When we ask
how his desires would change upon the impact of further information, we appeal to
what someone like him would come to desire or, more precisely, would come to
want that he pursue were he to assume the place of his original self.
11
In our rst argument for the possibility that your daughters rational self would
not want her to satisfy the preference for punk music, we discussed the possibility
that her rational self would insist on this alternative even if it resulted in feelings
of frustration. This would mean that her preference was irrational also according to
Railtons model. Assume now that her rational self would not prefer her irrational
self to be frustrated to having the preference for punk music satised. Assume in
other words that the rational self assigns positive value to the satisfaction of this
preference and would prefer the second-best alternative (which is listening to punk
music) to no musical pleasure at all. In this case, would your daughters actual
preference be rational, i.e. ought it to be satised?
As far as I can see, we may get the same result here as in our rst argument. It
seems natural to assume that the rational self in this situation would prefer that the
irrational self did not satisfy the preference for punk music, but instead submitted
herself to the cognitive training necessary in order to satisfy a preference for classical
music; this is what she would want her to pursue. And if possible, it seems even
more natural to assume that this is what her rational self would advise her irrational
self. Any other advice would be bad, in view of the intensity and quality of the
experiences that will come from listening to classical music.
Someone might claim that the fully rational self also believes that the irrational
self will actually not submit to the necessary training and will therefore not develop
a preference for classical music. This is true, but if we ask what the rational self
would desire that her irrational self do about her actual preference it is obvious that
she would desire that the irrational selfs preferences were changed.
After all, it would not be impossible for the irrational self to bring about this
change she would bring it about if she just wanted to. This is the sense of possibility
required by the concept of a desire or preference. The fact that you (as fully informed)
have good reasons for believing that you will not as a matter of fact obtain a specic
object cannot be a hindrance to desiring or preferring it. Therefore, I assume that
your daughters rational self may desire that her irrational self have her preference
for punk music replaced by a preference for classical music and would furthermore
want that she pursue that, were she to assume the place of her original self.
So we seem to have an answer to the prudential question about what your
daughters good would consist in according to the information requirement it
consists rst and foremost in the satisfaction of a preference for classical music. This
is what her highest intrinsic good consists in. There exists a second-best alternative,
since it would after all be intrinsically better for your daughter to satisfy a preference
for punk than satisfying no musical preference at all. But this alternative seems to
be ineligible.
11
Ibid., p. 60.
Therefore, Railtons objectied subjective interests model will probably have
to cope with the same problems as the traditional formulations of the rationality
requirement.
12
9.6 Rosatis Two-Tier Internalism
Connie S. Rosati has discussed some of the problems considered here, and advocated
what may be viewed as a developed version of Railtons model, which she calls
two-tier internalism. This model is dened as follows:
The stronger form of internalism that we nally arrive at tells us that something X can
be good for a person A only if two conditions are met: 1. Were A under conditions C and
contemplating the circumstances of her actual self as someone about to assume her actual
selfs position, A would care about X for her actual self; 2. conditions C are such that the
facts about what A would care about for her actual self while under C are something A
would care about when under ordinary optimal conditions.
13
Rosati gives a set of necessary conditions and furthermore she does not specify
these conditions in detail. Therefore, I will just try to show that if the condition C
is built on the traditional kind of information requirement we have considered so
far, in other words, if C is fully informed and rational, then I believe there will be a
problem of hypothetical preferences also in Rosatis model.
14
In fact I believe that
12
Railton employs his model as a way of analysing personal value. A similar model is
developed by Michael Smith as a way of analysing the desirability of a person acting in a
certain way. He writes: The internalism requirement tells us that the desirability of an agents
-ing in certain circumstances C depends on whether she would desire that she s in C if
she were fully rational, Internal Reasons, p. 110. The intention is that the rational self is
supposed to look at her less rational self in the evaluated world and form a desire about what
her less rational self is to do in the circumstances she faces. Smith says that we are to imagine
that the rational self gives her less rational self advice about what to do, and consequently
he names this the advice model of the internalist requirement. It is to be contrasted with the
example model, in which the desirability of someones performing a certain action depends on
whether her rational self would prefer to perform this action in the evaluating world, that is,
in a world where she were fully rational. In this model the fully rational self is setting up her
own behaviour in her own world, the evaluating world, as an example to be followed by her
self in the evaluated world, ibid., p. 110. In other words, in the rst model an agents reasons
are determined by what it would be rational for her to do given her actual irrationality whereas
in the second model her reasons are determined by what it would be rational for her to do in
a purely hypothetical world in which she were rational. Because of the similarity to Railtons
model I believe that an advice model will also be vulnerable to the problem of hypothetical
approval. But this point is not central for my argument.
13
C. S. Rosati, Internalism and the Good for a Person, Ethics, 106 (1996): 307.
14
Observe that Rosati is stating a necessary condition about a persons good. In order to
use her suggestions as an explication of a rationality requirement you would also have to treat
it as sufcient.
this problem will crop up no matter how conditions C are specied, as long as they
are not As actual conditions.
In this interpretation, condition 1 is similar to Railtons model, since it requires
that we listen to the attitude the rational A will have vis--vis X on the condition
that she were to take up the actual, that is, the less rational As position. Something
X can be good for A only if A cared about it if she were fully informed and rational
and contemplating being in or being transformed into the actual As position.
Caring furthermore should be understood in a broad sense, as something that does
not necessarily motivate, but as having one or another of those proattitudes that we
commonly have toward things plausibly regarded as a part of our good, such as
desiring, liking, being glad of.
15
What is special in Rosatis model is condition 2. In stating this condition Rosati
wants to ensure that the counterfactual conditions have some authority over the
actual A and that A, so to speak, will respect her rational selfs verdict. This in turn
is necessary in order to avoid alienation and arbitrariness concerning what is to be
considered as a good for the actual A.
The important thing is not that the actual A unconditionally cares about what her
rational self would care about, since her actual self might be hypnotized or drugged
or manipulated in some other way into caring or not caring about anything. Therefore
she introduces these ordinary optimal conditions, and writes:
These would include that a person not be sleeping, drugged, or hypnotized, that she be
thinking calmly and rationally, and that she not be overlooking any readily available
information Ordinary optimal conditions are simply those that we already accept as
the minimal conditions that must be met for a person to think sensibly about her good at
all.
16
Rosati mentions brainwashing as a serious non-optimal condition, but in view of what
she says about the ordinary optimal conditions, I believe she would also include the
absence of being a subject of indoctrination, and other kinds of strong inuence.
In one sense I sympathize with the second condition, since, as you may remember,
in the punk-music example I thought it relevant to consider whether your daughter
would be impressed by the fact that her preference for punk is irrational. But we then
discussed whether the actual agent would care about whether or not her preferences
met the information requirement, and not whether the actual agent under ordinary
optimal conditions would care about this. My suspicion is that the introduction
of these ordinary optimal conditions will create just the same or at least a similar
problem as did Railtons model for those persons who will not full them.
Look at the punk example, and allow me to make some further modications.
Suppose your daughter is a member of a group of people who listen exclusively
to punk. What are the mechanisms that lie behind your daughters preference for
15
Ibid., p. 301.
16
Ibid., p. 305; see also Rosati, Persons, Perspectives, and Full Information Accounts
of the Good, p. 301.
punk under these circumstances? I would say that major mechanisms are group
pressure and some kind of indoctrination; I would not say that a young person who
is a member of such a group normally has a rational choice between the musical taste
of the group and any other music. That is simply not the way it works. To choose to
listen to some radically different kind of music, for instance classical music, would
be psychologically difcult for your daughter. In view of these facts I would not say
that your daughter fulls the ordinary optimal conditions and therefore, in Rosatis
model, you need not bother about whether or not she cares about what her rational
self would care about.
(1) Again, suppose her rational self would have preferred that she listened to
classical music and would even prefer some disappointment to listening to punk
music, and suppose that this fact would impress your daughter under ordinary
optimal conditions but not under the actual conditions. In this case what do you do
as a parent when she wants you to buy a punk CD? Do you refrain from doing so
and let her be disappointed with reference to two hypothetical persons that are not
identical with your daughter? And if so, is not this problematic?
And as far as I can see, it would not solve our problem to insist that your daughter
in the example fulls the ordinary optimal conditions, since then I believe we might
easily construct a similar example in which your daughters preference for punk is
a result of proper brainwashing. Should her preference be disregarded even if this
created frustration? The best thing would of course be to neutralize the effects of the
brainwashing; but what if that is not in our power?
(2) A slightly different picture emerges if we assume that listening to punk would
have enough value according to the rational version of your daughter. In that case
getting the punk CD and having pleasures from listening to it is the second-best
alternative and is better than getting the classical CD and being deprived of any
musical pleasure. Your daughters rational version would care more about getting
the punk CD than getting the classical one, since she prefers some inferior musical
pleasure to no pleasure at all. The main reason why Rosatis model is better equipped
in this second situation is its focus on what the rational version of your daughter
would care about for her actual self. Railtons model instead focuses on what the
rational version would want her actual self to want or to pursue. The rational version
will not care about the classical CD when she knows that she will not listen to it, but
she may still prefer that she trains her ears and listens to it, even when she knows that
this will probably not happen.
9.7 Conclusion
I conclude that we have a problem of hypothetical approval which is inherent in
the information requirement, even in Railtons and Rosatis models. I am willing
to admit, however, that the offensiveness of not taking into account an irrational
preference is less obvious in Railtons model than in the traditional formulations. I
am also willing to admit that possibly this offensiveness is even less obvious if we
build a requirement on Rosatis model. But I believe that the problem is not wholly
solved in Rosatis model either.
Chapter 10
Hypothetical Approval in Medicine
We seem to have a problem of hypothetical approval in the full information account
of a persons good that prevails even in the modern versions of this account.
I support the ambition of the information requirement, namely to combine the
normativity of the rational and the plausibility of internalism, that is to say, the view
that in order for something to be normative or valuable for me, it must somehow
connect with my personality and motivational set-up. My personal good is personal
also in the sense of being tailor-made for me and not being alien to me.
1
In a similar
vein, the requirement is also supported by the autonomy ideal, by claiming that I
must somehow recognize and accept a personal value. Therefore, to acknowledge
a problem of hypothetical approval is not necessarily an ideological critique of the
information requirement.
In this chapter I will focus on two much debated areas in medical ethics: euthanasia
and coercive mental care. I want to show that the information requirement causes
problems in medicine too.
10.1 Life-Sustaining Treatment
When I write this, the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo has just died as a result of her
feeding tube having been removed. I do not want to take a stand here in the debate
about whether this was the right thing to do. The many obscurities in this particular
case make me doubt that it can be judged in a safe way. However, on the surface the
case looks like many other classical euthanasia cases:
2
Terri Schiavo collapsed when
her heart temporarily stopped beating in 1990. She went in what court-appointed
doctors said was a permanent vegetative state from which she would not recover.
After some years her husband pleaded that his wife should no longer be kept alive,
since she would not have wanted to live in that condition. So this is a case where
the patient has left no written instructions about what action she wanted taken in this
situation, and where a close relative acts on what he believes, for more or less good
reasons, is the patients hypothetical preferences. One thing we might discuss is
how good we are at guessing the preferences of a close relative. According to some
1
See C. S. Rosati, Persons, Perspectives, and Full Information Accounts of the Good,
p. 301; Railton, p. 47.
2
Cf. the well-known cases of Karen Quinlan in the seventies and more recently Nancy
Cruzan.
ndings, we are less good at this than we perhaps would like to think.
3
But I will not
let this problem disturb our discussion.
The Terri Schiavo case is just one case of what we normally call passive
euthanasia among countless others. It is typical in the sense that we normally believe
that the patients hypothetical preferences can work as a moral justication of what
we do or cease doing to her.
Suppose the following is true. A patient, let us call her T, has suffered severe
brain damage and is now in a chronic vegetative state. She has no cognitive
functions and there is no hope of recovery, according to the doctors. Her parents ask
themselves whether or not her respirator ought to be disconnected and if they are to
seek permission from the courts to do so. Suppose the parents believe that the quality
of our life is determined by our preferences. What kind of preference ought to be
decisive in a case like this? We know that T is not able to communicate her actual
preferences and we even know that she does not have any such preferences in any
reasonable sense of the word. One has to consider Ts hypothetical preferences.
We can make a distinction between two kinds of such preferences. One kind is
the preferences T as a matter of fact would have now if she had any preferences.
These are her hypothetically factual preferences. Another kind is the preferences her
actual self would have if she had any preferences and were rational. These are her
hypothetically rational preferences. If her parents believe that Ts own preferences
are to decide whether or not the respirator is to be disconnected, should they listen to
her hypothetically factual preferences or to her hypothetically rational preferences?
I believe that whatever alternative the parents choose when these two kinds of
preferences clash, they will feel morally uncomfortable.
Suppose T was indoctrinated by her religious friends into thinking that all kinds
of euthanasia are wrong and that she therefore, as far as the parents can tell, would
not have wanted to be subject to euthanasia in the situation she is now actually in.
Suppose also that her parents do not share these religious beliefs and do not think
T would have been inuenced by them either, if she had been more rational. In
that case, would it make sense to disconnect the respirator with reference to her
hypothetically rational approval, if we know that this is not what T actually would
have wanted?
The situation is more likely in the euthanasia case than in the punk case, if we
apply the information requirement as it has been developed by Railton and Rosati.
There are no costs involved when the rational self in the euthanasia case asks herself
what she would have wanted if she were to take up the position of her actual self
3
See Angela Fagerlin et al., who tested the accuracy of relatives and spouses prediction
of preferences for life-sustaining treatment in different kinds of end-of-life scenarios. They
found that surrogate predictions more closely resembled surrogates own treatment wishes
than they did the wishes of the individual they were trying to predict, Projection in Surrogate
Decisions About Life-Sustaining Medical Treatments, Health Psychology, 20 (2001): 166.
The general tendency was for surrogates to want more treatment than patients. One noteworthy
nding was that the accuracy of the surrogates predictions did not increase even when the
surrogate discussed the directive with the patient immediately prior to the prediction task!
Hypothetical Approval in Medicine 129
(who is in a coma). In the punk case we had to count with the possibility that the
rational self would prefer some frustration rather than indulging herself in musical
pleasures of a low quality. It is easier to believe that someones rational self would
insist on having it the way she prefers, if she will not have to pay any experiential
price for this. The problem of hypothetical approval will therefore come up more
easily in euthanasia cases than in cases that are similar to the punk case.
The problem of hypothetical approval will also be a more serious problem in the
euthanasia case. It seems to be a more cautious thing to choose non-consciousness
before death. Choosing death is absolute and irreversible, whereas choosing the other
alternatives is not; you might compensate for a decision you regret in the punk case,
just as Ts parents might regret (at least until T dies a natural death) and change a
decision not to disconnect the respirator. Furthermore, if you are wrong concerning
the value of death and the wrongness of euthanasia, if in other words those people
who normally object to euthanasia are right, then it is probably worse to be killed
when one ought not than to be kept alive when one ought not. Therefore, the parents
would probably err on the safer side if they abstain from euthanasia, and this is what
the principle of caution bids them to do.
I am not denying that there is an element of irreversibility also if you abstain
from euthanasia, since we cannot possibly reverse time. If the parents decide to let
T live and if as an effect of this she stays alive during T
1
T
2
, then it will forever be
the case that she stayed alive during that interval as a result of their decision (or
indecision). However, if the magnitude of their wrongdoing is a function of how long
the daughter will stay alive in her chronic vegetative state provided that the parents
abstain from letting her die, then we must bear in mind that a decision not to let her
die at T
1
may be reconsidered at T
2
. If their decision at T
2
is to let her die, then the
space of time from T
2
to when she would have died a natural death if the parents had
persisted in their decision not to let her die, will reduce the magnitude of their overall
wrongdoing. A similar story is out of the question if the daughter dies as a result of
her parents decision to let her die.
10.2 The Conscious-T Case
So far I have not addressed the paradigmatic euthanasia case in which a person is
able to express her actual preferences. Forget about the original T case for a while
and imagine a case in which someone with a painful and terminal disease expresses
a preference which differs from her hypothetically rational preferences. Call this the
rst variant of the conscious-T case. This is an obvious example of the problem of
hypothetical approval, and especially so if we have an expressed preference against
euthanasia and at the same time a rational preference for it.
I assume that no person would advocate involuntary euthanasia in this case. But
if the information requirement is to determine what is truly valuable for me and
therefore in my true interests, and if, furthermore, we believe that a persons true
preferences have any authority in these existentially important situations (and why
not, if we let them have any voice in existentially less important matters?), then we
have an argument for killing people even when they express a strong preference that
we should not.
We may recall that in Rosatis two-tier internalism it is not enough that a
persons rational self would want a certain arrangement, for instance to be dead
rather than being in the situation of the actual self. It is also necessary that the actual
self under ordinary optimal conditions would care about what her rational self
would have preferred if she were to take up the position of her actual self. But as
you may also remember, these ordinary optimal conditions include that the person is
thinking calmly and rationally and they will probably also include that the persons
thinking is not an effect of serious indoctrination. This means that if a person just
like T is indoctrinated by her religious friends into thinking that euthanasia is wrong
and therefore strongly prefers that it should not be done to her, we would do her a
favour if we refused to listen to her. She is not under ordinary optimal conditions and
so we need take no notice of the fact that she does not care about what she would
have wanted if her preferences had satised the information requirement.
In this case just as in the punk case there is a price to be paid for the rational
self if she were to take up the position of her actual self and if she were then subjected
to involuntary euthanasia. But once again, if we allow for the fact that certain values
and ideals may be an essential part of our personality, even when they manifest
differently in our rational self than in our irrational self, then we may well have a
situation where a persons irrational self may want to avoid euthanasia for the same
kind of reason that her rational self wants not to. Both versions of her self show
the same loyalty to their convictions; both versions are strongly inspired by doing
the right thing in view of their values. And for people with this kind of loyalty and
inspiration, it is not unthinkable to pay a price in its name.
10.3 Consent
We have so far discussed three different kinds of approvals: the actual, the
hypothetically factual, and the hypothetically rational preference. In the euthanasia
case we have a problem of hypothetical approval both when the actual and
hypothetically factual preference clash with the rational one.
Let us consider another kind of approval, namely consent (which perhaps is the
paradigm of approval). I believe it is important to ask oneself what it is we take to
guide our moral decision in the euthanasia case of a non-conscious patient; what
kind of approval are we looking for? Do we ask whether the agent would have
desired that we let her die, or do we ask if she would have consented to it?
We may discuss whether it is possible to choose or consent to what one does not
prefer, want or desire. I believe so. To see why, consider Jonathan Wolff, who gives
the following example to show that it is hard to know whether a democratic vote
reveals the voters preferences or interests:
Suppose a group of people are in dispute about whether smoking should be permitted in
a public place which they share and control perhaps a student house. Suppose also that
they agree to be bound by a majority decision. Does this mean that the group will vote to
permit smoking if and only if a majority prefer there to be public smoking? At rst sight
this might seem obviously so, but a moments reection reveals that it need not be. It will
be true that some people will vote as if they are expecting to answer the question would
you prefer there to be smoking or not? These people will indeed vote according to their
preferences. But others will vote as if the question they are answering is do you think that
smoking ought to be permitted? Accordingly some smokers will vote to deny their own
pleasure, arguing that it is wrong for smokers to submit others to the adverse effects of
their behaviour. Some non-smokers, too, will vote against their own preferences, arguing
that smoking is a matter of individual decision. In other words these people are voting in
a disinterested fashion, and so do not reveal their interests by their vote.
4
Wolff points to a real problem in a democratic voting process. But I believe the
problem is even greater than what comes out in this quotation. First, I believe we
may vote against our interests understood not only as personal or egoistic interests
but also as disinterested or altruistic interests. Second, I also believe we may vote
against our interests not only for moral reasons but also for non-moral ones. And
if this is true we may take what Wolff describes as an argument for a more general
distinction between what we desire and prefer on the one hand and what we choose
and consent to on the other. The term approval seems ambiguous and can be
understood in both senses.
Before I start to modify Wolffs example I want to consider a possible objection.
Wolff seems to be claiming that consenting to something is one thing and preferring
it is another thing. I may consent to smoking in a public area although I do not want
it. Someone may say that this discrepancy will dissolve when we spell out the object
of my preference and consent respectively. To what am I consenting? I consent, one
might claim, to the state of affairs that smoking is allowed in the area, and this is
something I may also prefer. And I may prefer it not particularly for disinterested
reasons; I may for personal reasons prefer that there are as few prohibitions as
possible in the public area. What I do not prefer, on the other hand, is that smoking
takes place in the area, and that is another thing.
This seems to make sense, but not as a general analysis. A contradiction between
my personal preferences and consent is not a psychologically impossible thing; it
is not even psychologically far-fetched. I believe we may both consent to the fact
that smoking is allowed in the area and prefer that it is not allowed. I may be a
tolerant person in a voting situation but at the same time wish that smoking were
not permitted. And therefore I would say that one may vote and give ones consent
against ones personal preferences.
Now look at the following modication of Wolffs example. Suppose we already
have a law that prohibits smoking in public areas and are to vote for a law that will
regulate smoking in peoples private homes. Suppose also that a majority will vote
4
Jonathan Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Oxford, 1996), pp. 801.
against such a law. Just as in Wolffs example, I do not believe this proves that a
majority prefer that people smoke in their homes when they want to do so. I am not
even sure it proves that the majority prefers that it should be allowed to do so. As
a non-smoker I may wish for their own sake that people do not smoke in their
homes even when they strongly desire to do so, just as I prefer that they do not kill
themselves even if they strongly desire to die. I may also in my own heart wish that
there were a law against private smoking (once again for the sake of the smokers)
even if I would not want to vote to that effect. And if this is so, then I do not choose
the law and do not even consent to it, although I wish and prefer that it will come into
existence. In this case I vote against my disinterested interests.
Another modication of Wolffs example: Suppose you are to vote for a law
that will prohibit trees near country roads in your country. There have been several
tragic accidents in the last year and experts unanimously claim that big trees near the
roads are dangerous and ought to be cut down. It seems therefore that we have moral
reasons to vote for the law. It also seems that I as a biker might prot from the law.
In this case I may both prefer the trees to be cut down and have moral and altruistic
reasons for voting for the law. Nevertheless I believe I may hesitate as to whether or
not I should vote for the law. This might be for aesthetic and non-egoistic reasons
the avenues are beautiful and I recognize the value they represent even if I will not
personally be able to take pleasure in them and even if among people the group of
avenue lovers is as big as the group of avenue haters.
And I believe this is relevant in the euthanasia case, since it means that we have
to take into account the possibility that a patient who would prefer the doctors to help
her to die may not consent to it, and the other way around: a patient who consents to
euthanasia may not want to have it done. Furthermore we have to discuss what moral
relevance this will have.
Let us modify the conscious-T case and let us suppose for a while that T would
consent to passive euthanasia, in the sense that when the doctors bring the question
up, she asks them to disconnect the respirator.
5
I will leave one problem aside right from the beginning, namely when a patient
says that she consents to a treatment or non-treatment but does not really mean it,
as when a patient does not dare to say what she believes the doctors do not want to
hear. Another similar case is when a persons consent is a result of what she believes
her relatives and perhaps the rest of society expect from her, although she personally
would prefer not to consent. In these cases I would say that we have no genuine
consent.
5
I have assumed that this would be an instance of passive euthanasia. In Sweden it
seems (at least sometimes) to be regarded as an instance of active euthanasia. I nd this
startling, since a right to disconnect from a respirator whenever I want so ought to follow
directly from my right as a patient to decide whether or not I should be submitted to a certain
kind of treatment. The true nature of this right can be discussed (see for instance Elisabeth
Rynning, Samtycke till medicinsk vrd och behandling (Uppsala, 1994)) but it is denitely
held to be morally fundamental.
The morally interesting situation is when we have consent that is a result of
a personal conviction but which at the same time is at variance with the patients
personal preferences. Suppose T consents to passive euthanasia out of a truly altruistic
preference not to waste health care resources that might be of better use somewhere
else. This is a personal conviction. It is not what she believes the doctors or anyone
else expect or want her to do. On the contrary, it is her autonomous decision despite
the fact that the doctors and other people make it clear that she ought to think only of
herself in this situation. She answers that this is what she is doing and then consents.
What are we to do if we believe that her consent in spite of this is a result of altruistic
and moral convictions?
I nd this question problematic, since if our respect for someones decision is
dictated by the autonomy ideal and a wish to avoid paternalistic actions, then we have
to listen to T in this case, since that would be to let her live (and die) in accordance
with her own evaluations even if we believe that in her heart she wishes that we do
not listen to her! This is a remarkable result, but I am not sure it is an instance of the
problem of hypothetical consent.
Consider another possibility. Suppose T wants to die, since she nds the effects
of the disease to be unbearable. This preference is rational as well: a fully rational
version of T would share it. At the same time, she does not consent to passive
euthanasia and she is very determined in this decision. Her reason for saying no to
euthanasia is a religious belief to the effect that she will somehow be punished if she
fails to bear the pain and either asks for or allows the respirator to be disconnected. If
the respirator is disconnected on someone elses initiative she will not be punished.
In this case, we have a decision not to consent that is determined by what we
consider to be a false belief, whereas we have an actual and rational preference that
her decision should not be listened to.
This is an instance of the problem of hypothetical approval in so far as your
decision to ignore her refusal to consent is based primarily on the fact that her wish
to be thus ignored is rational. I also believe it is an obvious, and not too unrealistic,
example of a case where someones freely given consent or free decision not to
consent and her preferences are at variance.
Look at another modication of the conscious-T case. Everything is just as in
the previous version, except for the fact that T believes that she will be punished
not only for asking for and allowing euthanasia but also for not being ingenious
enough to prevent it. So she actually prefers that the respirator is not disconnected
and she tells the doctors that they must not disconnect it. In other words, she has a
strong actual preference not to be disconnected. However, she has a hypothetically
rational preference to be disconnected if she had been fully rational she would not
have the erroneous religious concept and would consequently have preferred to be
disconnected. Ought her rational preference in a case like this have any say; do we
have a reason for ignoring both her actual preference and her decision?
To my mind, not complying with her decision seems more offensive in this case
than in the previous one. There is no consent and no actual preference for euthanasia
in a case like this. To my mind this indicates that we have a genuine problem of
hypothetical consent, since if we hesitate about euthanasia in this case we do so not
only out of an uncertainty concerning whether we ought to give priority to someones
good or autonomy in a case like this, but rather whether the information requirement
ought to determine what someones good actually is.
This is also an important distinction to bear in mind in this discussion:
6
What is it
that offends our moral feelings in these cases: is it the fact that we allow considerations
of what is in a persons good or best interest to have a say when this will conict with
her consent? Or is it that we let the information requirement determine what is in a
persons good? The problem of hypothetical approval rests on the possibility that the
latter kind of offence is stronger than the former.
Furthermore, I am not claiming that the information requirement will recommend
that we go for what is in a persons interest rather than what she is consenting to in
a case like this. Even in a full information account, autonomy may be superior to a
persons good. What may disturb us is that this understanding of a persons good has
any say in a case like this, even if in the end it is trumped by autonomy.
On the other hand, the ideal of autonomy has several aspects. One aspect concerns
respecting a persons judgement and decision even if it opposes her well-being or
good. Another is that our decisions do not result from manipulation and delusion. In
this, one might claim, the information requirement harmonizes with the autonomy
ideal. In other words, the information requirement may seem to conict with some
of the elements in the traditional autonomy ideal, but a closer look will reveal that it
in fact comes very close to it.
However, an even closer look may reveal another truth. If there is a genuine
distinction between preference and consent, then we would have four main categories
of approval: the actual and rational preference and the actual and rational consent.
My consent, in other words, may be founded on a misconception or it may have a
rational foundation. In both cases it may coincide neither with my actual nor with
my rational preference.
Take a nal look at the conscious-T case: everything is just as in the previous
case: Although T would have wanted to die if she were fully rational, this is not what
she actually wants nor what she has decided. She says no to passive euthanasia, she
does not actually want it even if she rationally does so. Add to this picture that Ts
decision is rational, which means that although she rationally would have preferred
that we let her die, she would not rationally consent to it. If a persons preferences
are logically distinct from her consent and decisions then this kind of discrepancy
should be allowed in a rational person as well: she may prefer that we let her die but
believe that she ought not to surrender to this preference.
In a case like this I would say that we have a problem of hypothetical approval
that is explained by the fact that the information requirement is in conict with both
the internalism ideal and the autonomy ideal. The autonomy ideal will lay stress on
the rationality of a persons decisions rather than the rationality of her preferences.
6
Wlodek Rabinowicz made me realize the importance of stressing this distinction.
Therefore, given a distinction between rational and irrational preferences on the
one hand and between preferences and consent on the other, paradigmatic euthanasia
cases may actualize an abundance of normative problems. Many of these seem to be
instances of the problem of hypothetical approval, whereas some others, although
they might be ethically interesting in their own right, are not such instances.
I conclude this section by returning to a philosopher who does not seem to
distinguish between preferences and consent, but claims that respect for someones
autonomy equals respect for her rational preferences. Julian Savulescu claims that
In order to respect a now incompetent patients former autonomy, it is not enough to know
what a patent would now desire if she were competent. We must know what she would
rationally desire Treatment of an incompetent person ought to be limited if limitation
is what she would rationally desire.
7
This seems clear enough. But then Savulescu continues by exemplifying his position
with a euthanasia case in which a persons formerly expressed wish to be allowed
to die is deemed to be irrational. The person would not have expressed this wish
if he had been rational in the sense of being able to vividly imagine what the
consequences of satisfying this wish would be like for him. Savulescu claims that
the person ought not to be allowed to die, which may entail acting contrary to an
expressed past preference (including an advance directive), if that preference was
irrational (obstructive).
8
However, I believe that Savulescus choice of example does not fully reect the
radicalism of his position. We may accept that the person in his example ought not to
be allowed to die if his wish to do so is irrational. But the explanation why this is so
may once again be that this is what we should do if we are not sure about what is the
morally right action in this situation and if we therefore want to err on the safe side.
Consider instead a case in which a now incompetent person has expressed and even
given an advance directive about not being allowed to die in the situation she is now
in, and in which we believe this preference to be an expression of an irrational fear
of death. When Savulescu holds that treatment of an incompetent person ought to
be limited if limitation is what she would rationally desire (see above) then it seems
that his position will entail that we allow people to die even if we could easily have
prevented it and even if this is contrary to the advance directive given by the patient
and even if it is not what the patient would have wanted for herself if she had been
able to express her preferences. I believe that this is a controversial position.
7
Savulescu, Rational Desires and the Limitation of Life-Sustaining Treatment, p.
547.
8
Ibid., p. 547.
10.4 Psychiatric Care
Suppose that a mentally ill person does not assent to the medical treatment she is in
urgent need of. May she be given coercive care with reference to her hypothetical
approval?
Consider the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine adopted by the
Council of Europe 1997, Article 7:
a person who has a mental disorder of a serious nature may be subjected, without his
or her consent, to an intervention aimed at treating his or her mental disorder only where,
without such treatment, serious harm is likely to result to his or her health.
Coercive care under these circumstances has been justied in consideration of two
facts. First, we do not infringe the right of autonomous decision of someone who is
not capable of such decisions. Second, considering a being who lacks the capacity
of autonomous decision-making, we have to make a substituted judgement and ask
ourselves what the patient would have decided or preferred if competent. This is to
ask for a hypothetical approval.
9
These points seem to be brought together in what Torbjrn Tnnsj calls the
incompetency model:
If a treatment exists, if a person needs it, but cannot make an autonomous decision, then
it would be wrong not to coerce this person into accepting the treatment in question,
irrespective of the grounds for the incompetency of this person. Coercively treating this
person is not at variance with the principle of respect for the autonomy of the individual
in decisions about medical care and social services. When such coercion is exercised,
it is reasonable to assume that the coerced person, if capable of making an autonomous
decision, would assent to it.
10
However, we have to be careful about how we describe what we are doing in these
situations where a person is coerced to care for her mental illness (observe that
we are not discussing mentally ill persons who are also in urgent need of somatic
treatment).
In the previous section we discriminated between three main senses of approval
in a situation where it was important to justify the withdrawing of life-sustaining
treatment. It may refer either to a persons rational preference or to her actual
preference or to her consent (all these senses may furthermore come in either actual
9
According to Torbjrn Tnnsj the substituted judgement standard is used in the US
when courts take a decision about medication against the will of an incompetent patient. In
Sweden there is a law that allows the compulsory admission of a mentally ill person, Coercive
Care (London, 1999), p. 90; see also Rynning, pp. 352 ff. In Rynnings book one gets the
impression that the idea of hypothetical approval has gured in the origin of the law; see for
instance pp. 3923.
10
Tnnsj, Coercive Care, p. 93.
or hypothetical forms). Basing a consent (or assent) on the fact that there is a need
for psychiatric treatment may suggest a further category in this discussion.
Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress describe the best interests standard
for surrogate decision-making in the following way:
Under the best interests standard, a surrogate decision maker must determine the highest
net benet among the available options, assigning different weights to interests the patient
has in each option and discounting or subtracting inherent risks or costs. The term best
is used because the surrogates obligation is to maximize benet through a comparative
assessment that locates the highest net benet. The best interests standard protects
anothers well-being by assessing risks and benets of various treatments and alternatives
to treatment, by considering pain and suffering, and by evaluating restoration or loss of
functioning.
11
I believe that both the incompetency model and best interest model rely on the
possibility of assessing both needs and risks in an objective way that might be
difcult to associate with the information requirement. Normally when you assess
a risk rationally and let us concentrate on risks you are said to multiply the
probability and value of an outcome. Positively and negatively valued outcomes
furthermore are to be treated symmetrically: other things being equal, the fact that
one course of action probably will result in one positive unit of a certain good, will
be a reason for taking (or preferring) this action, just as the fact that another course
of action probably will result in one negative unit of this good is a reason against
taking (or preferring) this action. An advantage of a certain magnitude speaks for an
action to exactly the same extent as a disadvantage of the same magnitude speaks
against it.
Suppose you are presented with the following alternatives. You have a disease
for which there is only one treatment. The probability that the treatment will work
is 75%. If it works you estimate that the value of your remaining lifetime is about
100 units. The probability that it will not work is 25%. If it does not work, this will
cause you an amount of suffering with the magnitude of 100 negative units, which
you have no chance to escape. The second alternative, which is open to you now but
not if you choose the treatment and it fails, is to take an overdose of morphine and
forever go out, which is neutral in value in the sense that it is neither good nor bad
for you.
The rational thing to do, given a traditional conception of practical rationality,
12
is to choose the treatment, since the expected value from choosing this alternative is
higher than the expected value from choosing the morphine. But does it follow that
this is what you would have chosen if you had been fully rational, according to the
information requirement? I dont think so.
11
T. L. Beauchamp and J. F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics (New York,
2001), p. 102.
12
Cf. Christian Munthe, Etiska aspekter p jordbruk (Jordbruksverkets rapport 1997:
14), Ch. 5.
For one thing, many people with whom I have discussed similar examples will
not choose the lottery option and would rather choose the safe alternative. And none
of the persons who would choose the lottery would do so if they were to choose
on behalf of their children. In other words, the recommendations of the traditional
conception of practical rationality do not seem to coincide with what people normally
would prefer and it does denitely not coincide with the preferences of each one of
us.
Therefore, insofar as the best interest model is about maximizing benet in a
traditional sense, it does not seem to describe how we normally think about these
matters. If being rational is being a maximizer of expected benet, then, trivially,
one is irrational when turning down the treatment. The meaning of rationality is an
important question, but for now I just note that it does not seem to follow from the
information requirement (just as it does not follow from common-sense morality) that
a fully informed and rational person would be a maximizer of expected benet. The
main reason for this is that the rationalization process is individualized, in the sense
that an individual brings (and possibly also retains) her personality in the process.
Therefore, even an idealized version of a person who is cognitively rational and
reasons according to the laws of deductive and inductive logic and who is what we
described in Chapter 6 as minimally practically rational (and therefore fulls Rosatis
minimal conditions of rationality) may prefer to play it safe and drop the treatment
offer. Therefore, if the best interest model is about full practical rationality in the
traditional sense which is suggested by its talk about an obligation to maximize
benet then this model cannot be reduced to what a rational person according to
the information requirement would want for herself.
There are passages in Beauchamp and Childress that might seem hard to reconcile
with this picture. For instance, when they discuss standards of disclosure in regard to
informed consent, they favour a subjective standard, because it alone acknowledges
persons specic informational needs
13
and claim that the weighing of risks in the
context of a persons subjective beliefs, fears, and hopes is not an expert skill.
14
Furthermore, concerning standards for surrogate decision-making, they are in some
circumstances for a subjective standard about making the decision the incompetent
person would have made if competent: We believe that the standard of substituted
judgment should be used for once-competent patients only if reason exists to believe
that a decision can be made as the patient would have made it.
15
And this looks very
much like the individualized information requirement.
However, the crucial difference concerns the circumstances under which the best
interest standard gets priority over the substituted judgement standard (which they
believe can be reduced to a pure autonomy standard). Beauchamp and Childress
write:
13
Beauchamp and Childress, p. 83.
14
Ibid., p. 82.
15
Ibid., pp. 99100.
We believe the best interests standard, so understood, can in some circumstances validly
override advance directives executed by autonomous patients who have now become
incompetent, refusals by minors, and refusals by other incompetent patients. This
overriding can occur, for example, in a case in which a person has designated another
by a durable power of attorney to make medical decisions on his or her behalf. If the
designated surrogate makes a decision that clearly threatens the patients best interests, the
decision should be overridden unless there is a clearly worded, second document executed
by the patient that specically supports the surrogates decision.
16
Beauchamp and Childress position is, I believe, the following one: The ideal is
that the patient should get it the way she would have chosen in view of her values
and attitude to risks and so on. In this sense their standard is as subjective (or even
more subjective) as is the information requirements. However, when there is a lack
of (strong) evidence concerning what the patient would have chosen or preferred,
17
then we should go for her best interest, which means that there is a presumption for
the maximization of benet if nothing else is said.
This is, I believe, where the best interest model goes wrong. If I am correct
in my suspicion that people normally are more cautious concerning risks than is
suggested by the best interest model, then the presumption should be for protecting
people from signicant risks rather than protecting their best interest.
18
When stating
the conditions for adherence to the best interest standard Beauchamp and Childress
fail to live up to their subjective ideals in the context of autonomy, if the subjective
preference or choice most probably is for caution. The best interest model as
described by Beauchamp and Childress therefore is more rigid and less adjusted
to the subjects personalities than is the information requirement. I am not claming
that this feature is inherent in the best interest model; my reections apply only to
Beauchamp and Childress and their treatment of the model and the conditions for
its applicability.
*
Suppose I am wrong. Suppose rst that the best interest model is reducible to what
a rational person in the information requirement would want (or choose) for herself.
In that case the offensiveness of the best interest model would also be a part of
the problem of hypothetical approval in the information requirement. A persons
rational self would take risks if playing it safe would clearly threaten the patients
best interest, even if the actual person would not dream of taking such risks. This
would be a problem from the perspective of the internalism requirement, since I am
pretty condent that our attitude to risks lies deep in our personality.
16
Ibid., p. 102.
17
In this discussion I ignore the difference between choosing and preferring.
18
Unless of course you understand a persons best interests as equivalent to this kind of
protection. But, once again, that is not what Beauchamp and Childress seem to do.
Secondly, suppose for a second that the reason why the best interest model
could be derived from the information requirement is that a fully rational person,
according to this requirement, is besides being fully cognitively rational also fully
practically rational. In that case we would indeed have a problem of hypothetical
approval, since the rational version of a person would take any risk if only the
chances outweighed the risk, no matter to what extent. The information requirement
would justify gambling on behalf of people in a way that they would, once again,
never dream of doing. The information requirement would be more extreme than the
best interest model outlined by Beauchamp and Childress, since what they claim is
that this model should be adhered to only when the surrogate makes a decision that
clearly threatens the patients best interests.
19

For these reasons I have assumed that the information requirement uses a
qualied concept of practical rationality. Otherwise I cannot see in what way to take
an individuals personality into the rationalization process.
10.5 Assessing the Best Interest Model
This will also give us a clue as to how to assess the best interest model as an
independent decision-making standard of hypothetical assent. It seems to follow
that in whatever way we understand a persons approval of a certain treatment, she
may disapprove of a treatment that lies in her best interest according to the model
Beauchamp and Childress describe.
We have touched on several understandings of the concept of approval. To approve
of a treatment in the morally relevant sense may imply that I prefer it or consent to it.
What this means in connection with the case in question can be debated. In view of
what we have discussed there seem to be three main alternatives:
Approval as an actual preference. It may mean that the agent before the psychiatric
illness had an occurrent (but not necessarily clearly worded and documented)
preference for the treatment or would have had such a preference if the question had
been brought up. In this sense it is clear that the agent may have disapproved for
instance because of being risk-averse of a treatment that is in her best interest. You
may have any bizarre reason for actually preferring not to undergo a psychiatric
treatment that is in your best interest.
Approval as a rational preference. If what we have said above about our
personalities or true selves and attitudes to risks makes sense, then the agent may
also disapprove of a treatment that is in her best interest when fully informed about
the nature and effects of the treatment, and when processing this information in
conformity with the laws of deductive and inductive logic and the central axioms of
practical rationality. In this sense the agents reasons are not allowed to be bizarre.
But the reason that she does not want to submit to a risky treatment, even when the
chances are slightly higher than the risks, is not bizarre.
19
Ibid., p. 102, my emphasis.
Approval as consent. Suppose again that what we consent to may be dictated by
our convictions also when these do not (necessarily) accord with either our rational
or actual preferences. In this sense an agent might not (actually or rationally) consent
to a treatment that she knows is in her best interest. Her reasons may be altruistic: she
nds the treatment too expensive for society and possibly also that there are other
people in better need of the treatment. But the agent may also refuse to consent to
treatment for some bizarre reason. Furthermore, this refusal may have taken place in
reality, but it may also be that we judge that the agent would not have consented to
the treatment if asked.
The best interest model will therefore be incompatible with the internalism
ideal, since it may recommend that the agent is treated for a mental illness although
she would not want to have this treatment in any of the senses discussed. It will
also be incompatible with the autonomy ideal, since the surrogate may know that
the agent would not have approved (in any of the above senses) of a psychiatric
treatment that is in her best interest. It is true that Beauchamp and Childress will
listen to a surrogate decision maker who makes a decision that is clearly against the
agents best interest, but only if, again, there is a clearly worded, second document
executed by the patient that specically supports the surrogates decision.
20
10.6 Assessing the Incompetency Model
In so far as need in the incompetency model is interpreted in the direction of what
is in the patients best interest, we get the same problem in this model. Furthermore,
it is a mistake to believe that when coercion is exercised and justied by this model,
then it is reasonable to assume that the coerced person, if capable of making an
autonomous decision, would assent to it.
21
I have claimed the opposite; I am not
even sure that people normally would assent to what they need and what is in their
best interest and I am denitely sure that some people would not assent to it.
Another problem pertains to the incompetency model. Not only does it conict
with the autonomy ideal as an abstract ideal, it also conicts with the principle of
autonomy as it is normally understood in health care. Consider what, according
to Tnnsj, it takes for a person to be competent, that is, to be able to decide
autonomously for himself or herself (I just quote the last item on the list of necessary
conditions):
Seventh, the person needs to be able to modify his or her beliefs and values in the light
of arguments and new experiences. His or her beliefs and values must not as such have a
compulsive nature.
22
20
Ibid., p. 102.
21
Tnnsj, Coercive Care, p. 93.
22
Ibid., p. 12.
Tnnsj is eager to show that this is not to say that every person with a strange view
of reality is incompetent. For instance: A person who rejects a suggested treatment
because he or she believes that the medicine has been contaminated should not for
this reason alone be considered incapable of reaching his or her own decision, no
matter how unlikely it is that the medicine has actually been contaminated. On the
other hand, if this belief is immune to reection, i.e. if it has a compulsive nature, if
it is what the voices inform her, then her no to the medicine need not be taken
at face value.
23
If this is the criterion to use in psychiatric as well as somatic health care, I believe
we will get problems, not least with Jehovahs Witnesses refusal to accept blood
transfusion. Tnnsj takes this as an example of a decision that is founded on a
bizarre belief, but in which the patients decision ought to be respected in virtue
of her competence. However, one may doubt whether Jehovahs Witnesses will
full the seventh necessary condition, that is, whether there is any argument that
may persuade them to abandon their convictions. Some of these people do indeed
abandon their church, but many of them will not be able to do so without extensive
debrieng.
24
My suspicion is therefore that with Tnnsjs criterion we would (at
least in many cases) be able to justify both coercive blood transfusion of Jehovahs
Witnesses, and coercive psychiatric treatment of patients who refuse treatment out
of similar beliefs. I assume that this is not compatible with the common use of the
autonomy principle in health care.
Besides, it would also be somewhat strange to listen to someones refusal to a
treatment if it is based on a false belief that she would change if she took the time
to ponder it, but not on someones refusal when there is no chance that she will ever
think differently. In the case of a Jehovahs Witness (JW) and blood transfusion this
means that we listen when the person who refuses might well have thanked you
afterwards if you had not listened, whereas we do not listen to someone who will
never (probably) be able to appreciate the fact that we do not listen. Intuitively, the
reasonable thing seems to be to do just the reverse.
And related to this question is another one: Cant we expect that some of our
most important and respected values are such that they would not be possible to
modify by any argument? To take a classical example: What kind of argument may
modify my conviction that it is wrong to torture an innocent child just for fun? And
what kind of experience may have led me to reconsider that conviction? Does it
mean that a decision that is founded on such a value fails to be autonomous? That
would indeed be a bizarre position. And what is strange about the position is that
a person who realizes that there are no good or rational arguments to abandon this
value and therefore refuses to let any argument affect it will not satisfy Tnnsjs
23
Ibid., p. 12.
24
This shows, I believe, that it is not a question of not wanting to abandon a bizarre
belief; it is not the case that Jehovahs Witnesses could revise their faith if they just wanted
to. On the contrary, the compulsive nature of their beliefs remains even when there is a strong
desire to get rid of it.
condition, whereas a person who does not realize this and therefore lets herself be
persuaded by bad and irrational arguments will satisfy the condition.
*
Savulescu handles the JW case in a slightly different way. Savulescu, as we have
seen, holds that we may act contrary to an advance directive if it is not an expression
of an autonomous decision and act contrary to an expressed preference if the
preference is irrational. Wouldnt that mean that we need not bother about a JWs
refusal to receive blood, if we rationally believe that there is no evidence that he will
go to Hell if we do not respect this preference?
Savulescu does not think so, since he believes that such a reasoning would
presuppose that the JWs belief that he will go to Hell if he receives (another persons)
blood is a descriptive belief that is true or false. It is possible, he says, that a religious
statement does not express a mere statement of facts, but
an attitude, a commitment to a way of life, an adherence to an ideal. On this reading
religion is a construct which gives meaning to peoples lives, rather than an empirical
statement about the nature of the world.
25
But this would mean that we refuse to listen to a JW who really believes, in the
descriptive sense, that he will end up in Hell if he receives blood, whereas we do
listen to a JW who does not really believe that he will go to Hell, but who expresses
a refusal of blood transfusion out of a wish to live like a JW, since doing so gives a
meaning to his life. In other words, we do not let a person die who really believes
that not doing so will send him to his death. On the contrary, we do let a person die
who does not really believe that he would go to Hell if we had saved him with a
blood transfusion, but who clings to his ideals out of a desire to get as much out of
his life as possible!
Furthermore, I believe admittedly without evidence that it is simply not true
that a JW normally does not believe in the descriptive sense that it will be better for
him not to receive someone elses blood. The strong impression I get when I come
in contact with JWs is that they are literal they are full-edged believers in what
they say and preach.
This does not necessarily mean that Savulescu is wrong when he holds religious
beliefs to be non-descriptive, but I would guess that one reason why they are, that is,
one reason why religious beliefs give meaning to someones life and therefore also
express a commitment is that they have a foundation in descriptions of the world.
A commitment to the ideals of JWs will give meaning to your life particularly if you
are able to believe that your faith is descriptively true.
25
Savulescu, Rational Desires and the Limitation of Life-Sustaining Treatment, p.
546.
10.7 Two Final Psychiatric Cases
Let me nish the discussion of coercive psychiatric care by returning to the
information requirement and the problem of hypothetical approval. I believe that
this problem will disturb us when we discuss psychiatric care just as it did when we
discussed euthanasia, although I am not sure we may nd so many variations of the
problem in the area of mental illness. But I think we will nd the paradigmatic case.
Suppose that a person is highly inuenced by her religious friends in her antipathy
against any kind of drugs, psychopharmacological ones in particular. If she were
fully informed and rational, however, she would not have had this antipathy. Does her
hypothetical and rational preference give us a reason to force psychiatric treatment
on this person? Does it give us such a reason, also if this treatment will not make her
change her mind?
Consider another case. Suppose I feel very embarrassed by a deep and chronic
depression and that the only cure for my depression is a medicine that to a certain
extent will lower my intellectual capacity. In my present state I am more than willing
to pay this price, especially in consideration of the fact that the intellectual reduction
is not very signicant. Suppose, however, that the rational and fully informed version
of me would think otherwise. Suppose the fully informed version, inuenced by
ascetic thinkers, would prefer to be depressed rather than being content with having
his intellectual capacities reduced. My rational version prefers to be fully aware of
lifes misery. Does this give you a reason to refuse to prescribe the medicine to me?
I let these questions hang in the air.
10.8 Conclusion
I have discussed examples in which the problem of hypothetical approval will
trouble us in one way or another. Our trouble in the prudential example is that we
seem to be squeezed in between the theoretical reasonableness of the information
requirement and primarily the offensiveness of applying it. This was also the trouble
in the moral and medical ethical examples. Listening to someones hypothetical and
rational self, as for instance if a person does not want euthanasia in her irrational
condition although she would have wanted it if she were rational, seems to offend
our moral sense. Similar cases will show up both in the euthanasia debate and in
the debate about coercive care. In the moral cases we were also considering the
distinction between consenting and preferring. If hypothetical approval adds to the
ethical legitimacy of a certain arrangement, what kind of approval are we discussing?
Even if we proceed from the autonomy ideal, I can see no simple way of answering
this question.
We may note that some of these problems in the medical sphere will have to be
dealt with also if we reject the information requirement: suppose that someone tells
us not to let her die but in her heart deeply wishes that we wont listen to her and
suppose also that we can know this for sure.
We may conclude that there is probably no difference in principle between our
prudential example and the moral ones.
Chapter 11
Summary and Conclusions
If you are satised with the picture you have of the arguments in this study, please
proceed to Section 11.2.
11.1 Summary
I start this study by asking whether it would be reasonable to demand that preferences
should be informed and rational in order to be relevant to a persons good. Such a
demand I will henceforth call an information requirement. Any theory that assigns
some prudential value to the satisfaction of a persons preferences I call a preference-
sensitive theory (an expression I borrow from Krister Bykvist). I distinguish
between two kinds of personal values: welfare values and quality values. A theory of
the former kind of value is a theory of what it means to be well off. A theory of the
latter is more general and covers anything that adds to the quality of someones life
(which does not necessarily imply that it adds to her prospering or welfare). I assume
that a considerable number of theories of quality values, that is to say, quality-of-
life theories, are preference-sensitive. Analysing the full information account of a
persons good or quality of life, therefore, ought to be of general importance.
(1) Examples or thought experiments play a prominent role in this study, and one
important such experiment that has been discussed and developed is L. W. Sumners
example of the disappointed philosopher a person who chooses a career as an
academic philosopher but realizes after a while that his choice was a mistake. This
is a classic example of disappointment, and in analysing this concept I discuss two
possible understandings of what it is to be an object of a preference. According to an
intentional understanding, such an object is fully determined by your beliefs about
it. Disappointment, according to this understanding, is seen as getting an object
different from the one you wanted. According to an extensional understanding, the
object of a preference is determined by facts of the world and not exclusively by the
agents beliefs. Ones preference to be a philosopher is satised when one is one
as a matter of objective fact. Here disappointment will occur when the preference
is satised by an object that does not answer to the thoughts one had about it in
advance. The extensional understanding is in a way primary, but I try throughout this
study to confront the information requirement with both understandings.
Sumners example illustrates the need for an information requirement. In
Sumners example it seems that the original preference is irrational according to this
requirement, since it would probably not survive the confrontation of information
about what it will be like to have it satised. This is not to say that all preferences that
will end up in disappointment in this way are irrational. Some of our most important
preferences are, in Parts terminology, unconditional on their own persistence.
We cannot, as far as I can see, preclude that they are rational and will withstand
confrontation with facts and logic. In view of the central position of unconditional
preferences, one important reference for our discussion will be a modied version of
Sumners example, in which a person has a preference for being a philosopher who
does not like to be one.
I end the rst chapter with a discussion of Fumertons distinction between looking
at wants and valuing either as a disposition to value an object on contemplation of
it and a disposition to value it when realizing that it has actually occurred. This is in
Fumertons terminology a difference between contemplative and cognitive wants,
and he suggests that we should base our theory of rationality or morality on the latter
attitudes, that is, on the cognitive preferences. Would this make the information
requirement superuous? I argue that this is not the case, not even if we accept that
our normative theory is based on the cognitive preferences. The profound problem
with Fumertons suggestion is, however, that it would automatically disqualify
unconditional preferences. And this, I believe, is counter-intuitive.
(2) One important element in the information requirement is the quantitative
element, implying rst that a preference may be irrational when the body of beliefs
on which it is based is smaller than the body of relevant facts. Ones preference is
based on incomplete knowledge. I claim that a preference might be irrational in
this sense also according to the intentional understanding of a preference object.
Satisfying a preference for O may bring with it other facts that may affect ones
preference for O in a negative way. In this sense it may not only be irrational to
satisfy this preference; the irrationality is to be found in the preference itself. I may
cease to value an object when I am confronted with the situation of having it satised,
even when some of the important elements in this situation have nothing to do with
the object in itself. One may question whether such a change in my conative attitudes
really is logical; why cease to have a pro-attitude to an object per se merely after
having realized that it will bring with it some undesired facts, as the world happens
to work? As I interpret the information requirement, however, it does not in the rst
place ask what volitional changes this will reasonably cause. Instead it asks what
changes a piece of information will actually cause in a particular person, given her
specic psychological constitution.
In an extensive parenthesis I start to question the information requirement.
According to the requirement a preference should be founded on complete and
correct information about what it will mean to have it satised. (The correctness
of the information is treated as a separate truth element.) As it seems, this will
automatically disqualify some venturesome preferences where I may have as a
strategy not to think thoroughly about its actual satisfaction, since I have reason
to fear that this would make me hesitate. If we accept the information requirement
it would be irrational to want to buy a pig in a poke in this sense. I regard this as a
Summary and Conclusions 149
problem with the information requirement, but postpone a development of it until
Chapters 4 and 5.
(3) I claim that there is also an important qualitative element in the information
requirement, having to do with the vividness of a belief. A preference may be
irrational although it rests on complete and correct information, if this information
is not represented in a vivid manner, and if vividness would make a difference to
the preference. I try to show that this element is different from the quantitative and
propositional element discussed above it is a question not of what you believe, but
instead how you represent your beliefs to yourself.
I then consider some problems with the demand for vividness. One problem
concerns experiences that are not in themselves especially vivid. These experiences
will occasion an elucidation of the vividness demand: we ought to represent an
experience with an accurate degree of vividness, that is, with as much vividness as
it will have in reality. On the other hand, this will in turn occasion another problem.
If one ought to imitate the real world in ones imaginations, how does one represent
to oneself a lapse of a long time? Is it possible to represent to oneself for a minute
what it will be like to have a certain experience, say, for a year? Would an accurate
representation here be physically and psychologically possible? This problem
is discussed without any denitive conclusion being reached. There seem to be
psychological as well as physical and metaphysical problems with the qualitative
element, although it seems to be as prima facie reasonable as any other part of the
information requirement: just as additional information can change your preferences,
so can the manner in which you represent the information you already have.
(4) In Chapter 4 I pick up a critical thread from Chapter 2. I claim that although
a vividness demand makes sense in some cases, as for instance in Sumners
philosopher case, it is not obvious that it makes sense in other cases, as for instance
in our adventurer example. Furthermore, I claim that the maximization-of-utility
aspect in one sense is always relevant in deliberation and rationality, and that this
is so independently of incommensurability. I introduce more examples in order to
question the qualitative aspect of the requirement and consider two examples from
Allan Gibbard to the same effect.
(5) In Chapter 5 I assess Gibbards examples. In one example he considers
whether or not it would be wise to imagine as vividly as possible what other peoples
innards would be like when dining with them, if one knows that this is likely to
produce a neurosis. In another example he discusses whether it would be wise for a
civil servant, who wants to be honest, to dwell on the pleasures that would follow
from taking bribes, if he believes that he would give in to the temptations if he
thought about the matter in a vivid manner. I assume that if Gibbard is right in this,
then it would also affect the plausibility of the information requirement, since it
will disqualify from a persons good some of the preferences it seems wise not to
rationalize. In other words, it will disqualify preferences that seem as genuine and
reasonable as do the preferences for adventure mentioned earlier.
In the discussion of the rst example I reach the conclusion that we have a conict
between different elements in the conception of rationality: it both seems rational to
know what you are doing and irrational to search for this knowledge, when there
is nothing to gain from it in welfare terms. This tension means that it may be hard
to claim that the full information account is straightforwardly false, but it would of
course be as difcult to claim the opposite.
Concerning Gibbards second example, I discuss at some length the moral
relevance of the fact that the civil servant knows in advance that he will thank himself
for having yielded to the temptations. I discuss the moral relevance of future desires
and claim that they seem to be relevant now. And in that case it might be wise,
after all, for the civil servant to contemplate the temptations and the information
requirement would consequently give the right answer or at least not obviously the
wrong one. I close the chapter by discussing Smiths claim that imagination in itself
has no important role in the rationalization process. I also discuss, and criticize,
Smiths idea that all rational creatures would desire alike as regards what is to be
done in the various circumstances they might face.
1
(6) I consider two other elements in the information requirement, the truth
element and the element about deliberative correctness. I particularly discuss the
former and give some brief examples of the latter. The truth element says that a
preference is irrational in so far as it is based on a false belief. One central question
concerns whether or not preference rationality ought to be related to ones epistemic
circumstances. I note that one classical formulation of the requirement Harsanyis
does not explicitly relativize the concept of preference rationality in this way,
which may aggravate the problems to be considered in Chapters 9 and 10. I claim that
the question of whether to choose a subjective (or relativized) or objective version
of the information requirement has to do with how one looks upon the theory of
welfare. This theory (and the theory of morality) may either serve as a deliberation
guide or as a measure. In Sobels terminology this is a distinction between viewing
theories of well-being as either decision procedures or truth-makers. I believe that
these points of view need not exclude each other.
(7) Ever since Korsgaards article Two Distinctions in Goodness, many
philosophers have observed a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value
on the one hand and end value and instrumental value on the other. I claim that
there are strong and weak intrinsic values, where a strong intrinsic value is its
own source of value without being dependent on anything else. Objects which are
weakly intrinsically valuable may be their own source of value in the sense that
we value them for their intrinsic properties, but only in certain contexts and under
certain circumstances. In this sense I may value the beauty of an engine only on the
condition that it works. The possibility of using it as a working engine at least affects
the value I see in it and therefore the preferences I have for it. This weakly intrinsic
value seems to be an independent category of value that is neither nal nor intrinsic
in the traditional sense, and I claim that it will not be covered by Moores concept
of value as a whole.
1
I want to show that not only nal but also intrinsic preferences may be built
on beliefs and therefore be irrational in roughly the same sense as an instrumental
preference. In the extensional analysis of a preference object this is obviously so, but
I think that a parallel with instrumental preference rationality can be maintained also
with an intentional understanding.
(8) In Chapter 8 I consider whether a strongly intrinsic preference can be
irrational over and above the fairly trivial sense in which according to the extensional
understanding any preference can be irrational in virtue of being built on false
beliefs concerning intrinsic properties of the object. I claim that inconsistency in a
set of preferences need not be irrational, but I give some examples where we have
a necessary conict between two strongly intrinsic preferences, which seem to be
instances of irrationality. This happens when we have strongly intrinsic preferences,
one positive and one negative, for and against one and the same object (and for one
and the same reason). I may both prefer and not prefer to watch what I nd scary or
horrid, like for instance a horror lm or a car accident.
I bring some examples of Brandts into the discussion. I discuss whether he is
right when he claims that desires with a bodily basis cannot be rationally criticized;
I think he is wrong. But I think he may well be right when he claims that pure time-
discounting can be rationally criticized.
I end the chapter by discussing Anna Kussers critique of Brandt.
(9) According to the classical formulations of the information requirement a
persons true or rational preferences are the ones she would have if she were fully
informed and rational, whereas a persons preference is irrational if it disappeared
under such circumstances. This will create what I call a problem of hypothetical
approval: how are we to handle the fact that a persons preferences are irrational
if there is nothing we can do to change this fact? Are we to ignore her actual and
irrational preference and satisfy her hypothetical and rational preference instead?
This will cause frustration and may seem pointless.
I ask if this problem will disappear with a reformulation of the information
requirement, proceeding from Peter Railtons idea of an objectied subjective
interest. A requirement built on this model would call those of a persons preferences
rational which her rational self would want her less rational self to satisfy, were the
rational self to assume the place of her less rational self. The classical formulation
of the requirement seems instead to have certain similarities to the example model,
which would call those of a persons preferences rational which her rational self
would want to satisfy for herself.
I do not think we solve the problem of hypothetical approval by building the
information requirement on Railtons model, since for all I know someones rational
self may well in some cases prefer that her irrational self be frustrated instead of
having an irrational preference satised. In Connie S. Rosatis Two-Tier Internalism
Railtons model is further rened. I believe Rosatis model is closer to a solution of
the problem of hypothetical approval than is Railtons model, but that it is not close
enough.
(10) In this chapter I discuss whether we have a problem of hypothetical approval
also in bioethics. I believe so, for instance in cases of euthanasia and coercive care
of mentally ill persons. I use the much debated case of Terri Schiavo as a basis
for this discussion. I distinguish between hypothetically factual preferences and
hypothetically rational preferences and claim that the information requirement seems
to recommend that a benefactor satises the former kind of preferences of a person
in a chronic vegetative state. If a person out of a religious belief you take to be
mistaken does (or would) not want euthanasia, the requirement would nevertheless
regard it as a favour to her. This is an instance of the problem of hypothetical
approval, and similar problems will show up in the discussion of psychiatric
treatment. The normative problems will be even more serious if we acknowledge
a distinction between preferences (and desires) on the one hand and consent on the
other. Your hypothetically rational preference may in that case be at variance with
your actual preference, your hypothetically factual preference, your actual consent,
your hypothetically factual consent as well as your hypothetically rational consent.
I discuss a proposal that the principle of autonomous choice ought to be understood
in terms of rational preferences. I suggest instead that it is to be understood in terms
of rational consent. So we may have a conict between the information requirement
and the autonomy principle as well as the internalism ideal (since the requirement
is not internalistic enough).
2
In any case I believe that there is no difference in
principle between the problem of hypothetical approval in the prudential and moral
examples.
11.2 Conclusions
We have discussed a model of preference rationality in which the necessary conditions
for rationality contain the following elements:
(1) A quantitative element. Your preferences have to be based on all the relevant
knowledge there is to procure in a case. Your body of true beliefs ought to be as
complete as possible (within the limits of what is relevant).
(2) A qualitative element. It is not enough to have all the true beliefs, you also
have to embrace them with vividness. Your preference is not rational if further
vividness in imagining what it would be like to have it satised would in some way
modify the preference.
3
2
One interesting discussion that I have left out concerns the exact relationship between
the ideals of internalism and authenticity and whether or not the latter ideal is a part of the
autonomy ideal. Cf. also Insoo Hyun, who claims that having authentic values is a necessary
precondition for acting autonomously, Authentic Values and Individual Autonomy, The
Journal of Value Inquiry, 35 (2001): 207, and Sigurdur Kristinssons discussion of Hyuns and
similar attempts in Separating Autonomy and Authenticity (unpublished).
3
For an investigation of the inuence of vividness, see Alexander Gattig, Intertemporal
Decision Making (Groningen 2002), Chapter 4.
(3) A truth element. Neither is it enough to have all the true relevant beliefs and
embrace them in a vivid manner, unless there are no false beliefs present. You must
not only know what is true, you also must not believe what is false.
One might claim that if you have access to the complete truth concerning a
certain preference then you must also know when a particular belief concerning this
preference is false, and so (3) will follow from (1). This will in the end come down
to a question which will not be discussed here concerning whether or not it is
possible to embrace contradictory beliefs.
(4) A deliberation element. It is not enough to have all the true beliefs represented
to oneself in an ideally vivid way and no false beliefs, unless you reason in accordance
with the laws of logic and are minimally practically rational. One may imagine
obvious and elementary mistakes in this category and one may also imagine more
subtle ones.
(5) A consistency element. There is no irrationality, necessarily, if we have a set
of preferences the inconsistency of which depends on some contingent matter. On
the other hand, when the inconsistency is dictated by necessity, we may have a case
of irrationality. For instance, if you both prefer that a certain object obtains and, for
the same reason, prefer that it does not obtain.
Suppose, however, that someone insisted on this set of necessarily inconsistent
preferences even after having contemplated its irrationality. Would that make it rational
according to the information requirement? This depends on how we understand
the fourth element: is a principle concerning a strong inconsistency of preferences
included amongst the logical principles that should guide our deliberation? If that
is the case, then the fth element would be included in the fourth element. On the
other hand, if it is not included in the fourth element, then it seems that this kind of
preference inconsistency may survive the exposure to facts and logic and so not be
an essential element in the requirement.
I will not make a decision on this question, but I do believe that a consistency
element is a more important part of an account of preference rationality than is
coherence. I am not sure that every kind of inconsistency will be problematic from
the perspective of full rationality. But I do think that some inconsistencies will trouble
a rational agent, whereas I do not think that this is the case concerning incoherence.
This is why I retain (5) as a separate element.
Is the information requirement acceptable or useful? To begin with the positive part
of the answer, I agree with what J. David Velleman says before stating his criticism
about Brandts theory of preference rationality: I think that Brandts denition of
good begins with a sound intuition. The intuition is that something is wrong with a
desire if it would be extinguished by information that one shouldnt want anything
that one wouldnt want if one knew more.
4
The information requirement has a direct
basis in common sense. I also believe this fact to be a reason for revising the theory
in the face of the discussed problems, instead of abandoning it.
4
J. D. Velleman, Brandts Denition of Good, The Philosophical Review, 97 (1988):
371.
Another strength of the information requirement is its scope. I have claimed that
not only extrinsic and instrumental preferences can be the target for the requirement.
Weakly as well as strongly intrinsic preferences can be rationally criticized. Many of
the critics, for instance of Brandts account, have denied the possibility of intrinsic
preferences being irrational. I take the message that these critics are wrong to be
positive for the information requirement, since it shows that its scope is as wide as
some of its proponents have thought. This will add to its importance.
On the negative side we have the problem of hypothetical approval. And observe
what this problem is about. I see no problem in a suggestion that we ought to regard
some actual preference as rational, if it would also have been produced if the agent
had been informed and rational. I see a problem, though, in a suggestion that we
ought to regard some actual preference as irrational and therefore ignorable, if it
would have been extinguished if the agent were informed and rational.
5
The problem of hypothetical consent is an evaluative and normative problem
to pay attention to some merely hypothetical preferences of some agent seems
normatively suspect. One reason is that it would alienate the actual agent from the
one who appears in the theory of prudence and morality.
Another (partly) normative problem discussed in this study concerns whether
we will always regard it as a good and valuable thing to gain more knowledge
concerning our preferences. Pointing to some intuitive problems here will therefore
also show that we in the end have conicting attitudes towards the general soundness
of the intuition described by Velleman above.
Finally, let us consider what Velleman takes to be a big problem with the
requirement, as it has been formulated by Brandt, namely whether or not asking what
a person would prefer after having exposed herself to facts and logic is a determinate
question.
Velleman writes (being such a lively description of a problem I quote the whole
passage):
To begin with, the facts in question would have to be represented in a particular medium,
and there is more than one medium available. I can state the facts, I can picture then, I can
diagram or map them, and their motivational impact may well depend on their medium of
representation. Surely mental pictures of open-heart surgery would affect me differently
from a mental ow chart or narration. Furthermore, each medium of representation
affords me considerable latitude in style and perspective. For instance, I can describe the
operation in medical jargon, using words like incision, suture, clot, and hemorrhage;
or I can describe it in laymans terms with words like slice, sew, gob, and gush. If
I choose instead to picture the operation, I can picture platelets and leucocytes rushing
to the scene of damaged tissue; or a seething chest cavity laid bare by steel instruments;
5
Velleman criticizes Brandts step from a negative criticism that something is wrong
with a preference if it would be extinguished by information of a preference to a positive
criticism, which says that one should want what one would want if one knew more, ibid.,
p. 371. There is at least a supercial similarity between this criticism and the problem of
hypothetical approval.
or an operating table surrounded by machines and gowned gures; or perhaps even a
quiet Midwest town in which there stands a gleaming hospital, whose operating theater is
bustling with activity one dark winter morning.
6
Velleman does not think the vividness demand will help much here, since there is no
such a thing as vividness simply; instead there is verbal vividness, visual vividness,
and so forth and so the problem described in the quotation will remain.
7
I believe we have a problem here on one level, since it will surely be a problem
how to proceed when practising cognitive psychotherapy. And I believe this is a
problem particularly when you are to describe the relevant facts for another agent,
for instance when you are to describe for a prospective philosopher what it is like
to be a philosopher. But I do not think we have the same latitude when it comes to
representing for oneself the relevant facts concerning a particular preference. And
if I am right in this, then at least in theory well have an ultimate test also of the
accuracy of third-person descriptions.
I suggest that in most cases the relevant facts concern how the agent will
experience having the preference in question satised. The way of representing to
oneself the relevant fact is to try to imagine what these experiences will feel and be
like. This is a consequence of the fact that most of our preferences depend on our
experiences, in the sense that only facts about our experiences can modify them (at
least in the short run).
If you want to be a philosopher as in Sumners example you ought to imagine
what experiences you will have as a philosopher. The accurate representation of
these experiences will not be some scientic description of them or some mental
pictures about what your lectures will look like if you stand outside the lecture
theatre one winter afternoon and look through the windows. Instead it will be to
produce in your imagination the feelings, thoughts, smells that you will have and
experience when you lecture and write and ponder about its value. When you as
an agent confront the facts about a prospective satisfaction you do not confront a
text in some particular style; ideally you confront instead the experiences in your
imagination. Again, choosing the style of description is a practical problem if you
are to describe some feeling for another agent.
Suppose you have preferences concerning other objects than your own
experiences (so-called external preferences). For instance, you do not want your
daughter to suffer even when you are not aware of it. In this case there is no such
thing as what it will feel like for you to have this preference satised, or at least this
6
Ibid., pp. 3656.
7
Cf. Nisbett and Ross who claim that informational vividness affects what is retained in
memory: Thus, the more vivid the information is, the greater its impact can be on inferences
that occur at some temporal remove from the initial exposure to the information, p. 51. Not
surprisingly, this is the case with information that is more concrete and imaginable. This may
tempt one into concluding that that there is an inherent vividness in pictures compared to,
for instance, words. But one has to remember that there is also normally a difference in the
informational richness of a picture compared to a verbal report.
is not an object for the preference. In this case too I believe there is a solution, since
here it is relevant to represent in your imagination your daughters experiences. You
ought also represent to yourself your own hypothetical experience on the condition
that you were near your daughter. Even if you have preferences for other objects than
your own experiences your experiences are relevant.
This consideration is also relevant in Vellemans example about open-heart
surgery. A representation with a privileged position should be what it would be like
for you if you stood nearby and watched (listened to, and smelled) the operation. That
would be the natural human perspective, so to speak, and indeed it would be more
natural than to imagine what it would be like to be among the small leucocytes.
*
I am not sure that the problem Velleman points at ought to be compared to the other
problems with the information requirement discussed here. But the important thing
is not to nd an exact ranking of the problems. Neither has it been the aim here
to attain completeness in the lists of pros and cons. I am not even sure that this is
possible.
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Index
advance directive, 135, 143
advice model, 122
aesthetic value, 812, 89, 115, 119, 132, 150
Alm, David, 112
ambivalence, 104
amnesia version, 41
Andersson, Elizabeth, 87
Aristotle, 2
Arpaly, Nomy, 74
autonomy ideal, 53, 77, 127, 1335, 138,
141, 144, 152
availability qualication, 734
Beauchamp, T. L., 13741
belief,
relevant, 19
vividness of, 314, 423, 489, 512,
67, 10910, 149, 1523, 155
best interest standard, 13741
Brandt, R. B., 10, 16, 24, 278, 31, 49,
589, 73, 10510, 112, 151, 1534
Brlde, Bengt, 87, 112
Brnnmark, Johan, 38, 93
Bykvist, Krister, 2, 5963, 77, 147
Carlson, Erik, 77
causal relations, 957
Chang, Ruth, 45
Childress, J. F., 13741
choice-worthiness, 34
coercive care, 136, 142, 144, 152
cognitive defect, 108
cognitive psychotherapy, 49, 51, 108, 112,
155
coherence/consistency, 6670, 153
commensurability/incommensurability,
448, 149
conditional fallacy, 112
consciousness/self-consciousness, 83
consistency, 1004, 153
Cruzan, Nancy, 127
Cullity, Garrett, 46
Dancy, Jonathan, 878
Darwall, Stephen, 112
deliberation element, 758, 153
democratic voting process, 1312
dependency, 82
strong/weak 869
desire, see preference
desire satisfaction theory, 28
dignity, human, 823
disappointment, 79, 1213, 1925, 43, 112,
115, 1478
dispositional theory of value, 2
Egonsson, Dan, 82, 112
elitism, 11820
Elster, Jon, 13, 43, 49, 68, 112
empathy, 32
epistemic circumstances, 713
euthanasia, 12835, 144, 152
active/passive, 128, 132
involuntary, 12930
example model, 122, 151
Fagerlin, Angela et. al., 128
feelings, rst- and second-order, 2930
Fehige, Christopher, 16, 105, 109
full information account, 3
experiential model of, 312, 41
report model of, 31
Fumerton, R. A., 1318, 55, 80, 1004, 108, 148
Gattig, Alexander, 152
Gaut, Berys, 46
Gauthier, David, 46
generalism, 88
Gibbard, Allan, 4952, 5560, 6470,
14950
Goethe, 60
good-making properties, 878
Graves, Robert, 152
Grifn, James, 1, 112
Hare, R. M., 111
Harsanyi, J. C., 910, 234, 26, 39, 49,
724, 111, 150
hypothetical approval, 11145
in medicine, 12745
Hyun, Insoo, 152
ideals, 11, 15, 589, 68, 130, 143
idealism, 65
idiosyncrasies, 23
incompetency model, 136, 1413
information requirement, 3, 910, 110, 147
offensiveness/pointlessness of, 116, 144
qualitative element of, 27, 42, 66, 70,
109, 149, 152
quantitative aspect of, 19, 301, 42, 70,
148, 152
versions of, 23, 33, 389, 745, 150
inherent vividness, 33, 52, 149
interests, personal/disinterested, 131
internalism, 127, 134, 141, 152
intolerance, 65
intrinsic value, strong/weak, 8890; see also
intrinsic preferences
Jehovahs Witnesses, 1423
Johansson, Mats, 32
Johnston, Mark, 26
Jones, D. G., 83
Josefsson, Jonas, 3
Kagan, Shelly, 812
Kant, Immanuel, 78
Klee, 81
Korsgaard, C. M., 80, 87, 150
Kristinsson, Sigurdur, 152
Kuhse, Helga, 53
Kusser, Anna, 10910, 151
Lewis, David, 41
life preference, 21; see also ideals
logic, formal/informal, inductive/deductive,
768, 138, 140
Mackie, J. L., 77
Mandela, Nelson, 36
matching criterion, 32
maximization, 4450, 1379, 149
meaning of life, 25
metaphorical language, 42
meta-preference, 70
Monteore, Alan, 15
Moore, G. E., 856, 902, 978, 150
Munthe, Christian, 137
Murdoch, Iris, 119
narrativity, 68
negative conditionals, 825, 8992, 94
Nisbett, Richard, 76, 155
normality assumption, 245
Nozick, Robert, 102
objectied subjective interest, 11617, 151
Odysseus, 523
optimization, 39
ordinary optimal conditions, 1234, 130
Part, Derek, 3, 8, 15, 57, 94, 101, 148
perfectionism, 1
personal value, 25
personality, 11920, 130, 13840
personhood, 83
Persson, Ingmar, 23, 72, 92, 97, 115
Petersson, Bjrn, 3
possible benefactor, 75
practical rationality, 47, 71, 77, 1378, 140
objective/subjective, 715
prefererence,
abstract, 52
adaptive, 1123
all-things-considered, 62
and consent, 1345
and conviction, 133
changing, 5963
conditional/unconditional, 8, 115, 148;
conditionality, internal/external, 115
conict of, 20
conformism of, 112
contemplative/cognitive, 1314, 17, 148
external, 155
nal/instrumental, 72, 7982, 84, 927,
100, 103, 11314, 1501, 154
genuine ambivalence of, 104, 110
goal-setting, 8, 68
hypothetical/actual, 11245
hypothetically factual, 128
hypothetically rational, 128
Index 163
intrinsic/extrinsic, 7982, 8493, 97,
10010, 11416, 1501, 154
obstructive, 523
past/present/future, 21, 5964, 135
pathological, 56
prediction of, 128
rationally free-oating, 70
sadistic, 1001
strongly/weakly intrinsic, 88, 99110,
1501
tenseless, 63
true, 111
unconditional, 11, 1517, 201, 58, 60,
63, 68; see also ideals
vigorousness of, 8
preference object, 131
intentional/extensional, 12, 1921, 24,
278, 30, 947, 99, 147, 151
intrinsic/extrinsic features of, 1920
preference-sensitive, 2, 8, 51, 74, 11516,
147
preferentialism, 2, 8, 74, 11516
principle of caution, 129
problem of hypothetical approval, 112
psychiatric care, 13644, 152
punk rock example, 11325
quality of life, 34, 147
Quinlan, Karen, 127
Rabinowicz, Wlodek, 2, 38, 60, 74, 7980,
8587, 92, 112, 115, 134
Railton, Peter, 2, 8, 68, 11617, 11923,
128, 151
rational criticism, 10510, 114, 154
Rawls, John, 10
reason, Humean/Kantian conception of, 69
regret, 63
resultance/supervenience, 878
retrospective endorsement, 58
Richardson, H. S., 448
risk aversiveness, 138, 140
Rosati, C. S., 312, 3940, 1225, 1278,
130, 138, 151
Ross, Lee, 76, 155
Rynning, Elisabeth, 132, 136
Rnnow-Rasmussen, Toni, 3, 7980, 857, 107
satiscing model, 47
Savulescu, Julian, 523, 77, 135, 143
Scanlon, T. M., 34, 23, 77
Schiavo, Terri, 1278, 152
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 8
Schubert, 11718
self, idealized/non-idealized, 11724
self-interest, 43
Sen, Amartya, 43, 11112
serial version, 41
Shope, R. K., 112
Sidgwick, Henry, 10
simulation model, 32
Singer, Peter, 8, 43
Sliwinski, Rysiek, 77
Slote, Michael, 47
Smith, Michael, 6672, 95, 122, 150
Sobel, David, 312, 38, 412, 74, 11618,
150
sour grapes, 112
standing desire for future satisfaction, 58
standing want for happiness, 119
Strmberg, Bertil, 112
substituted judgement standard, 136, 138
Sumner, L. W., 79, 11, 2830, 40, 147,
149, 155
time-discounting, 10710
Trump, Donald, 79
truth element, 713, 76, 153
two-tier internalism, 122, 130
Tnnsj, Torbjrn, 2, 136, 1412
utilitarianism, 12
value, as a whole/on the whole, 902, 150
Velleman, J. D., 46, 107, 1536
vividness, maximal, 31, 33, 3940, 48, 53,
66, 1057, 109; se also belief
Wagners operas, 1023
want, see preference
welfare, 4, 147
well-being, 15, 147
subjectivist accounts of, 38
decision procedures/truth-makers, 389,
74, 150
Wessels, Ulla, 16, 105, 109
Williams, Bernard, 72, 11112
Wittgenstein case, 11, 201

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