The Retreat of Reason Part 4 pot

The Desire Relativity of Value 145

to F in many cases (like that of feeling pleasure) presupposes that you have been aware of

yourself F-ing, though it may be enough to have been aware of yourself exemplifying

some similar property (e.g. to know what it is to run, it may be enough that you have

been aware of yourself walking). But, definitionally, the object of an ultimately intrinsic

desire is something that is desired only because of what it explicitly entails.

As we have seen, an experience which is pleasurable will have other intrinsic properties

(upon which pleasure supervenes). If, as is likely, you do not have an ultimately intrinsic

desire for the exemplification of these properties, which together with pleasure make up

G, you do not have this sort of desire for the wholething G, but desire it for the reason that it

has pleasure as one of its intrinsic properties. Since this desire is reason-based, it is not

intrinsic in my terminology. It is, however, probably what Audi means by intrinsic desires

when he claims that such desires can be rational or well-grounded as well as ill-grounded

(2001: 87–8). For there cannot be any ground or reason for the ultimately intrinsic desire

for pleasure (that pleasure is pleasure is no reason). There is some justification for Audi’s

usage, when the relevant reason refers to intrinsic or non-relational properties of the object

of desire. But such desires will not qualify as ultimately intrinsic in the sense here defined;

since they are reason-based, they are derivative, though the reason consists in the predica￾tion of a property internal to their object. It may be that in the course of time the apparent

reason sinks into oblivion and, thus, that your desire for G is no longer reason-based. Then

it has transformed into an acquired or derivatively intrinsic desire for G.

This transformation from a reason-based or derivative desire to a (derivatively) intrinsic

one does not demand an internal relation, as the one between a part and a whole, to come

into operation. The external relation of a means to an end serves as well. Imagine that for a

long time one has desired p for the reason that, as one sees it, it has q as a causal, conven￾tional, or in some other way contingently external consequence. Eventually, one may have

become so accustomed to striving for p that one no longer considers what it leads to. One’s

desire for p has then turned into an intrinsic desire, for it is no longer based on any apparent

reasons. But it is a derivatively intrinsic desire (a “non-instrumental” desire in Audi’s termino￾logy, 2001: 82), not an ultimately intrinsic desire. Perhaps this phenomenon occurs, for

instance, in the case of a miser’s desire for money. (It is very hard to ascertain whether or not

such a transformation has occurred, though.) Were one now to discover that one’s intrinsic

desire has this origin and that it is false that p has q as one of its consequences, one would

regard one’s derivatively intrinsic desire for p as wrong, and it may lose its hold.

Return now to ultimately intrinsic desires and imagine that somebody points out to

you that the objective of one of your ultimately intrinsic desires, p, has some logical or

contingent consequence, q, of which you have not been aware and towards which you

have an intense aversion. Could this show that you were wrong in having an ultimately

intrinsic desire for p? Clearly not, for an aversion towards p because it has q as a hitherto

overlooked consequence could not contradict an ultimately intrinsic desire for p : q

cannot be explicitly entailed by p, since you were not aware of the entailment. As a result

of becoming aware of this consequence, you could only draw the conclusion that you

should not desire p all things considered. No consequence of p of which one could be unaware

and could need to be informed of could undercut one’s ultimately intrinsic desire for p.

An ultimately intrinsic desire is a desire to the effect that a certain property (e.g. being

pleasurable) be exemplified or that a property (e.g. being painful) not be exemplified.

Like all intelligent desires such desires involve beliefs, for example to the effect that some

property is (not) exemplified and that one could bring about a change in this regard.

These beliefs could conceivably be false, but that is irrelevant. For what we are interested

in are beliefs whose falsity would make us doubt the value of the fulfilling fact, were a

desire fulfilled, not falsehoods that make it impossible to fulfil the desire.

The proposal I have in mind is to define what is of value for us in terms of what fulfils

our ultimately intrinsic desires (for short, ‘intrinsic desires’), for they cannot be infected

by relevant cognitive mistakes. As indicated, I do not think we should say that having an

acquired or derivatively intrinsic desire satisfied is necessarily of value for one. Imagine

that for a long time I desire to take a certain pill because I believe it will do me good,

whereas it in fact has bad effects. In the course of time, it slips my mind that I desire the

pill for a reason. Surely, it would not be of any value for me to have this desire satisfied

and be exposed to the bad effects. (Let us assume that I do not realize that this desire has

been satisfied, so that I do not obtain any pleasure from this source.)

To make my proposal to define value in terms of the fulfilment of (ultimately) intrin￾sic desires more precise, note that corresponding to the distinction between intrinsic and

derived desires, there is a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic (or, as they are com￾monly, but misleadingly, called, instrumental) values. (Actually, the adjective ‘intrinsic’

masks an underlying linguistic difference: while things are desired or valued for their own

sakes, or as ends (in themselves) rather than in themselves, they have value in themselves

rather than for their own sakes.) It is, of course, intrinsic value that I propose to define as

that which fulfils an intrinsic desire.

The term ‘intrinsic value’ has, however, been used—for instance, by G. E. Moore—in a

stronger sense than mine, to designate that something has a value that is independent of

all matters extrinsic to it. This use is adopted by Christine Korsgaard when she claims that,

if things have intrinsic goodness or goodness “in themselves, they are thought to have their

goodness in any and all circumstances—to carry it with them, so to speak” (1983: 171).

This rules out the subjectivist idea that intrinsic goodness can be relative to something, for

example, desires, because the goodness of p consists in its standing in the relation of satisfy￾ing to some desire, for of course this goodness will not hold “independently of all conditions

and relations” (1983: 187). (Perhaps this is also why Audi (2001: 123–4) thinks that “instru￾mentalists” about practical reason are “at best unlikely” to appeal to intrinsic goodness.)

So, one might think that this goodness is ‘extrinsic’, since this is Korsgaard’s contrast to

intrinsic goodness. She characterizes extrinsic goodness as “the value a thing gets from

some other source”; in other words, things that are extrinsically good “derive their value

from some other source” (1983: 170). This naturally suggests that the “other source” is

valuable or good, that the goodness of p is extrinsic if and only if it derives from p’s standing

in some relation to some other facts that are good. But the value of the things that subject￾ivists want to designate as intrinsic is not conceived as being derivative from the value of

something else. In particular, their idea is not that its value derives from the value of the

desire fulfilled, but rather that a value (that is not present beforehand in either relatum) is

created when a desire is fulfilled.

146 Reason and Value

The Desire Relativity of Value 147

In contrast, on the view Korsgaard attributes to Kant, a desire or an instance of willing,

provided it is rational, appears to have intrinsic value, a value that is “conferred upon” the

object desired (1983: e.g. 182–3).² But this theory is different from the subjectivist one

I am developing—and, I think, less plausible. For on the Kant–Korsgaard approach, it

seems not to be the materialization of p that satisfies a desire which is of value, but rather

the proposition p as an object of desire, for it appears to be upon this which the act of desiring

or willing must confer value, since it is the objective of willing. But then we seem to face

the odd consequence that it is evaluatively unimportant whether the object of a desire

materializes.

Never mind, the main point I am out to make is that, on the given characterization,

extrinsic value is not a proper contrast to intrinsic value, as conceived by Moore and

Korsgaard, for whereas extrinsic value will here mean derivative value (i.e. a value that

derives from the value of something else), their intrinsic value must be neither derivative

nor relative (in the subjectivist sense). Consequently, this terminology leaves no term for

values that are relative, but not derivative.

Against this background, it is not surprising that some ambiguity or wavering in

Korsgaard’s conception of the extrinsic goodness can be detected. Just after the charac￾terization of intrinsic value quoted above, she writes that extrinsic goodness “is derived

from or dependent upon the circumstances” (1983: 171). This covers both the possibility

that goodness is relative and that it is derivative for, of course, the notion of something’s

goodness being dependent upon the circumstances is much broader than that of its goodness

being derived from another source, which suggests that this source is good. The objection to

her characterization is, then, that it lumps together two quite different ideas: that (1) the

goodness is extrinsic or derivative from something external (that possesses goodness) and

that (2) it is a relative notion. I propose to keep these ideas apart by using ‘intrinsic’ in

opposition to ‘extrinsic’, and ‘absolute’ in opposition to ‘relative’.

My concern is then with intrinsic value within the framework of a subjectivist theory,

according to which all value is relative. The definition of it I would like to put forward is

as follows:

(IV) It is intrinsically valuable for A that p becomes (or remains) the case if and only if A has

an ultimately intrinsic (intelligent or non-intelligent) desire that p becomes (or

remains) the case or would have such an intrinsic desire to this effect were A to think of

p (as something she might be able to bring about if the desire is intelligent).

The reference to what A would intrinsically desire if . . . is essential because a state of

affairs can be of intrinsic value for one even though one has never thought of it or has

once thought of it, but has now forgotten all about it. Note, however, that p is of intrinsic

value for one at present only if one would at oncestart to desire it were one to be conscious

of it. If it takes training or habituation to develop a desire for p, it could only be of future

value for one.

² Recently, Korsgaard has admitted that in her earlier papers she “made it sound too much as if value were some meta￾physical substance that gets transferred from us to our ends via the act of choice” (1998: 63). But, apparently, she still holds

on to the view that value which is “conferred” by willing is extrinsic. For another discussion of this view of hers, see

Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (1999: 36–9).

Given (IV), we can lay down that q has derivative value for you if there is a state of

affairs, p, such that p has intrinsic value for you, and it is a fact that if you bring about q,

then p results, and no state of affairs having a greater negative intrinsic value for you also

results. The derivative value of q can be either extrinsic as it is when p is external to q

or non-extrinsic as it is when p is internal to q (e.g. when the value of feeling something

pleasantly cool is derived from that of feeling something pleasant). The more common

form of derivative value is extrinsic: for example, when q is a causal means to p, and q’s

value is instrumental.

I intend the last subjunctive clause of (IV) to be read as presupposing that A has the

capacity to think certain thoughts—hence, she must be a conscious being (though she

need not be a being capable of propositional thinking to have non-intelligent desires). So

it follows from (IV) that something can now be of value, can be good or bad, only for an

entity that is now endowed with consciousness. If, however, a being has the potential to

develop a capacity of consciousness, things may be good or bad for it in the future. In

my view, this is sufficient for it to be possible now to act wrongly to the being by doing

something that will have bad consequences for it at a future time at which it has devel￾oped consciousness (or, indeed, to deprive it of consciousness of good things).

What if it is doubted whether the possession of consciousness is necessary for being a

subject for whom something may have current value? It may be asked why the satisfaction

of a striving which is not, owing to the absence of consciousness, a desire—for example,

a plant’s striving towards the sunlight—cannot constitute a valuable state of affairs for it.

The reply is, I think, that it cannot because the context ‘the plant strives to . . .’ is exten￾sional in the sense that materially equivalent descriptions can be substituted in it, whereas

the context ‘it is valuable for X that . . .’ is not. In the former context, one may substitute

for ‘to be in the sunlight’ a description of what happens on a micro-level when a plant is in

sunlight (processes such as photosynthesis). But a substitution of any materially equi￾valent description will not do when a (conscious) being desires to be in the sun or when

this state is said to be valuable for it. For instance, when what is valuable for me is that the

smell I am perceiving is pleasant, it does not follow that it is valuable for me that certain

chemicals stimulate some of my sense-receptors (I would not be worse off if, per impos￾sibile, the latter had not happened when I perceived the smell).

Alternative Subjectivist Conceptions

This way of defining value by reference to desires could profitably be contrasted with an

idea that Henry Sidgwick found “intelligible and admissible” (though there is an alternat￾ive conception that he judges to be “more in accordance with common sense”):

a man’s future good on the whole is what he would now desire and seek on the whole

if all the consequences of all the different lines of conduct open to him were accurately

foreseen and adequately realised in imagination at the present point of time.³

148 Reason and Value

³ (1907/1981: 111–12). Sidgwick’s idea is taken up by Rawls (1971: § 64).

The Desire Relativity of Value 149

Such a proposal—of hypothesizing omniscience—might seem to offer the promise of

an alternative route around the difficulty of desires having faulty doxastic bases. There is,

however, a seemingly devastating objection to it. A lot of the intrinsic desires we have

presuppose that we are not omniscient. We are curious about an endless number of

subject matters, ranging from fundamental truths about the universe to trivial daily

affairs. Given curiosity or an intrinsic desire to acquire knowledge about something, it is

of value to become more knowledgeable about it. As things stand, we are curious about

what the future has in store for us, but this curiosity would, of course, not survive “if all

the consequences of all the different lines of conduct open to” us “were accurately

foreseen”. Consequently, the Sidgwickian proposal is unacceptable because it rules out

the value of a number of states of affairs that appear to be of value for us as we in fact are

(albeit not for us in an omniscient state).

This observation shows that practical deliberation is threatened not only by the Scylla

of knowing too little, but also by the Charybdis of knowing too much. It is frequently

remarked that we are generally forced to make up our minds about what to do under

circumstances of regrettable ignorance. The fact that something intrinsically desired

may always, when its consequences are inspected, turn out to be undesirable overall is

one thing that makes it hard to be confident about what to aim for in a particular situ￾ation. Moreover, when this is settled, there remains the difficult problem of determining

what is the most effective way of accomplishing this aim. Apart from this, there is the

uncertainty stemming from the fact that even the most well-tried means occasionally fail

(e.g. the car that has taken one to a certain destination countless times suddenly breaks

down). In short, when we decide on what to do, we often have to do so almost blindly: a

course of action that seems to be very rewarding could in fact turn out to cause misery

and premature death.

So it would appear to be desirable to know more about the consequences of the different

lines of conduct open to us. In deliberating about whether to embark on some research￾project whose completion will take several years, I would like some guarantee that I

will not die or fall seriously ill before its completion and that the conclusions at which

I shall arrive will be worthwhile. But it would seem that in practice I cannot get such a

guarantee without knowing in considerable detail what will happen—including what

results I shall reach—if I embark on the project, and of course this is bound to still the

curiosity or desire to know that is the prime motivating force behind engaging in

research. Therefore it seems that one is here caught in an insoluble dilemma of either

having to accept a risk of making erroneous assessments or draining one’s future of an

important source of value.

Of course, it is not true that omniscience will drain one’s future of all value or

satisfaction: for instance, it will not deprive one of the value of experiencing sensory

pleasure, for anticipating a pleasure will normally not make one cease desiring it.

Quite the contrary, anticipation of a pleasure is itself pleasant, and so it adds to the

amount of value. Yet, a significant subset of the things we value consists in states of

affairs fulfilling desires that presuppose ignorance, and for these the dilemma sketched

arises.