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 EGONSSONLund University, Sweden

Dan Egonsson 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Dan Egonsson has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 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

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Contents

Preface xi

Introduction 1

1 Analysing Disappointment 7

1.1 Sumners Example 71.2 Disappointment and the Vigorousness of a Preference 81.3 The Need for an Information Requirement 91.4 Two Understandings of Object 121.5 Fumertons Distinction 131.6 Fumertons Distinction and the Information Requirement 16

2 The Quantitative Element 19

2.1 Disappointment in the Intentional Understanding 192.2 Preference and Satisfaction Rationality 202.3 The Wittgenstein Case 212.4 Recapitulation 242.5 Buying a Pig in a Poke 25

3 The Qualitative Element 27

3.1 The Desire Satisfaction Theory 273.2 Feelings and Reactions to Feelings 293.3 Knowing and Having an Experience 313.4 Vividness and Possibility 333.5 The Time Aspect 333.6 Two Situations 353.7 Versions of the Information Requirement 383.8 A Problem of Possible Alternatives 393.9 A Comment on Metaphorical Language 42

4 The Qualitative Element Criticized 43

4.1 Maximization 444.2 The Hypnotist and Drug Examples 484.3 Gibbards First Example 494.4 Gibbards Second Example 514.5 Savulescu on Obstructive Desires 52

5 Comparing Examples 55

5.1 Producing a Neurosis 55

Preference and Informationviii

5.2 Thanking Yourself Afterwards 575.3 A Standing Desire for Future Satisfaction 585.4 The Importance of the Future 595.5 Ought Future Wants to be Discounted? 625.6 Conclusion and Coda 64

6 Truth and Deliberation 71

6.1 The Truth Element and Epistemic Circumstances 716.2 The Availability Qualication 736.3 Two Models 746.4 Deliberative Correctness 756.5 Conclusion 76

7 Intrinsic and Final Preferences 79

7.1 Korsgaards Distinctions 797.2 Combinations 817.3 Applications of the Dependency Idea 827.4 Moore on Intrinsicality 857.5 Strong and Weak Dependency 867.6 Negative Conditionals 897.7 Moores Value as a Whole 907.8 Another Objection 927.9 The Model of Instrumental Preference Rationality 937.10 Returning to the Discussion of Preference Objects 947.11 Objects and Non-Instrumental Preferences 967.12 Concluding Remarks 97

8 Strongly Intrinsic Preferences 99

8.1 Consistency 998.2 An Example 1048.3 Brandts Conception of Irrational Intrinsic Preferences 1058.4 Kussers Argument against Brandt 1098.5 Conclusion 110

9 A Problem of Hypothetical Approval 111

9.1 Traditional Formulations 1119.2 The Punk Rock Example 1139.3 Railtons Objectied Subjective Interests 1169.4 The First Argument 1179.5 The Second Argument 1209.6 Rosatis Two-Tier Internalism 1229.7 Conclusion 124

Contents ix

10 Hypothetical Approval in Medicine 127

10.1 Life-Sustaining Treatment 12710.2 The Conscious-T Case 12910.3 Consent 13010.4 Psychiatric Care 13610.5 Assessing the Best Interest Model 14010.6 Assessing the Incompetency Model 14110.7 Two Final Psychiatric Cases 14410.8 Conclusion 144

11 Summary and Conclusions 147

11.1 Summary 14711.2 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 Information2

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 persistence3 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 factis 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 B2 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 exp

Documents

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