4 - Varieties of import: cares, values, and preferences

Summary

In chapter 3, I presented an account of import as constituted by projectible, rational patterns in one's felt evaluations. In doing so, I implicitly made two simplifying assumptions: that import is a single, homogeneous kind of thing, and that the interconnections among elements within such patterns are all we need in order to make sense of import. It is now time to complicate matters by lifting the veil these simplifying assumptions provide. Thus, first, we need to make a distinction between two kinds of import, caring and valuing, in terms of their depth, for this distinction will prove to be central in understanding the difference between persons and mere animals and so to making sense of how deliberation about value is possible for us persons. Second, in order to provide an account of practical reason in Part II, I need to make sense of relations among the various things that have import, including means–end relations and relations of relative degree of import.

My aim in this chapter, therefore, is to provide a richer, more complicated account of import by shedding these oversimplifications so as to come to a clearer understanding of the kinds of rationality that make that import possible. Consequently, to a large extent my concern in this chapter will be with the conditions of the warrant of the felt evaluations that are elements of the patterns constitutive of import. By filling out the rational interconnections at issue in defining individual patterns and their relations to each other, the accounts of both import and felt evaluations will be strengthened and enriched.