An Essay on the Desire-Based Reasons Model

Abstract

This dissertation aims to contribute to the discussion about the viability of what is sometimes labeled as the classical theory of practical reason: the Desire-Based Reasons Model (the Model). The line of argumentation employed is negative in character. Its aim is to not to construct a novel theory of practical reason, but to examine and criticize the Model from different angles. To do so, we need first a detailed presentation of the Model; this is the task of Chapter I. Since the Model offers us an account of normative reasons, the chapter focuses on the clarification of this notion. The strategy employed is comparative: I discern the notion by contrasting it with the notion of motivating reason. The framework thus arrived at helps me to distinguish three versions of the Model against which I argue in proceeding chapters. Chapter II is the first step on that road. It attacks the second and third version of the Model through their naturalist underpinnings. My aim is to show that the Model understood in this way is unable to account for the normativity of reason-claims. To this end, I employ a recent argument by Derek Parfit that points to a problem with the naturalist account of normativity. Parfit’s claim is this: naturalism trivializes the agent’s practical argument and therefore abolishes the normativity of its conclusion. Although Parfit intends his objection to refute naturalism per se, my analysis shows that naturalists might be able to avoid his criticism in case they can vindicate the reduction proposed. However, by developing an argument borrowed from Connie Rosati, I show that this is exactly what advocates of the Model are unable to do. Chapter III takes up another line of argument against the second and third versions of the Model. The approach I consider questions the idea that the reason-relation must contain reference to the agent’s desires. There are several ways to do this, but I focus on the attempt that in my view promises the most: the idea of reason-based desires. On this view, since desires are based on reasons (first premise), which they transmit but to which they cannot add (second premise), they cannot themselves provide reasons for action. In the chapter I defend both premises against potential counter-examples. Furthermore, in the course of doing so, I also consider and reject the so far neglected first version of the Model. Chapter IV turns back to the second and third version of the Model and investigates their motivational defense. The defense infers the Model from two premises: the Internalism Requirement (IR) and the Humean Theory of Motivation (HTM). In the chapter I attack the latter by focusing on its three corollary theses. These are: desires must (a) have real psychological existence and be present when action takes place, I call this the Existence Criterion (EC); must (b) constitute, together with a suitable instrumental belief, the agent’s motivating reason, which I label the Motivational Criterion (MC); and (c) must be independently intelligible from beliefs, which gets the title of the Intelligibility Criterion (IC). In the course of discussing the path that leads to my preferred solution, I argue that the EC makes sense as a requirement, whereas rejection of the IC would take us too far from the scope and elements of the HTM. Analysis of further objections, however, shows that the MC is not met because the role it attributes to desires makes it impossible for them to serve as motivators. A version of Jonathan Dancy’s pure cognitivism is true: it is beliefs about the object of the desire together with corresponding normative beliefs that constitute the agent’s motivating reason. I call the resulting theory the Cognitivist Theory of Motivation (CTM) and devote the remainder of the chapter to its elaboration and defense.