5 - Single evaluative perspective

Summary

My overall goal in this book is to understand the nature of the sort of practical rationality that is distinctive of persons. In chapter 1, I briefly characterized this sort of rationality as linguistically informed, articulate, self-conscious, critical, and reflexive, and I then went on to describe two persistent problems facing any account of such practical reason: the motivational problem and the deliberative problem.

The motivational problem, recall, is roughly that of how to understand the connection between deliberate choice and our being moved to act. The problem is that, in order for us to have rational control over what we do, it seems that we have to postulate an essential connection between our evaluative judgments and our desires, for anything less would seem to make that connection be merely contingent and fortuitous in a way that undermines the thought that we have control. However, it also seems as though there cannot be any such essential connection between evaluation and motivation given the persistent possibility of weakness of will, of our being motivated to act contrary to what we judge best. How, then, is our having rational control over our actions, when we have it, consistent with the simultaneous possibility of weakness of will?

The deliberative problem is roughly that of how it is possible to deliberate about and so choose our cares and values, thereby making intelligible how we can have a say in, and so be responsible for, our identities as persons. However, our having a say in what has import to us seems like a matter of autonomous invention, involving a kind of freedom that is distinctively human.