OPTIONAL READINGS: I have two optional readings this month. I highly encourage you to inspire and clarify your thinking on the ideas and debates by reading or skimming to either or both of the following. Here's the first of them:

1. "Wants Found Wanting" by philosopher Nicholas Rescher, at 2 or 3 pages, is from TPM, The Philosophers Magazine, at www.philosophersnet.com/magazi...cle.php
However, you probably need a subscription to this good magazine to access this article, so I've pasted the article below .


HERE'S THE FULL TEXT OF THE ARTICLE:


Wants Found Wanting

Nicholas Rescher

Economists, decision theorists, and utilitarian philosophers often maintain that rationality turns on the intelligent cultivation of one's preferences. But this is problematic in the extreme. We cannot extract judgmental rationality from preferences because mere preferences as such are unevaluated wants, and there is no such rationality without evaluation. After all, what I want or merely think to be good for me is one thing; what I need and what actually is good for me is another. To move from preferences and perceived interests to genuine benefits and real interests I must engage in a rational critique of ends – to examine in the light of objective standards whether what I desire is desirable, whether my actual ends are rational ends, whether my putative interests are real interests. The genuinely rational person is the one who proceeds in situations of choice by asking not the introspective question “What do I prefer?” but the objective question: “What is to be deemed preferable? What ought I to prefer on the basis of my best interests?” Rational comportment does not just call for desire satisfaction, it demands desire management as well. The question of appropriateness becomes crucial here. And this is an issue about which people can be – and often are – irrational; not just careless but even perverse, self-destructive, and crazy. We pursue mere will-o'-the-wisps when we impute to our ends a weight and value they do not in fact have.

We should certainly not deny the personalistic element of subjectively originating tastes, desires, inclinations, and personal involvements. But we should insist that they ultimately have a footing in our genuine needs. Wants and preferences as such are not enough; legitimate values must have a rationale. Consider the contrast between:

• professed wants: what I say or declare that I want or prefer;
• felt wants: what I (actually) do want or prefer;
• real (or appropriate) wants and actual needs: what the reasonable (impartial, well-informed, well-intentioned, understanding) bystander would maintain that I ought to want on the basis of what is “in my best interests”.

It is this last item – namely what is in my “real” or “best” interests – that is decisive for rationality. Rationality, then, is not just a matter of doing what we want (if this were so, it would be far simpler to attain), but a matter of doing what we (rationally) ought, given the situation in which we find ourselves.

The rationality of ends is essential to rationality as such; there is no point in running, however swiftly, to a destination whose attainment conveys no benefit. It is useless to maintain “rational consonance” with what we believe or do or value if those items with respect to which we relativise are not themselves rational in the first place. More is at issue with rationality than a matter of strict instrumentality – mere effectiveness in the pursuit of arbitrarily selected ends, no matter how inappropriate they may be. The rational appropriateness and legitimacy of ends is thus an indispensable aspect of rationality at large.

Contentions like “Smith is selfish, inconsiderate and boorish” accordingly do not lie outside the sphere of rational inquiry; nor for that matter do contentions like “Behaviour that is selfish/inconsiderate/boorish is against the best interest of people.” The issue of appropriate action in the circumstances in which we find ourselves is pivotal for rationality. Be it in matters of belief, action, or evaluation, we want – that is to say, often do and always should want – to do the best we can. One cannot be rational without due care for the desirability of what one desires – the issue of its alignment with our real, as distinguished from our putative, or merely seeming interests.

But just what is it that is in a person's real or best interests? Partly, this is indeed a matter of meeting the needs that people universally have in common: health, satisfactory functioning of body and mind, adequate resources, human companionship and affection, and so on. Partly, it is a matter of the particular role one plays: co-operative children are in the interests of a parent, customer loyalty in those of a shopkeeper. Partly, it is a matter of what one simply happens to want. (If John loves Mary, then engaging Mary's attention and affections are in John's interests – some sorts of things are in a person's interests simply because he takes an interest in them.) But these want-related interests are valid only by virtue of their relation to universal interests. Mary's approbation is in John's interest only because “having the approbation of someone we love” is always in anyone's interest. Any valid specific interest must fall within the validating scope of an appropriate universal covering principle of interest legitimation. (The development of my stamp collection is in my interest only because it is part of a hobby that constitutes an avocation for me and “securing adequate relaxation and diversion from the stress of one's daily cares” is something that is in anyone's interests.)

But what of those “mere whims and fancies”? If I have a yen for eating crabgrass then is my doing so not a perfectly appropriate “interest” of mine? Yes it is. But only because it is covered by a perfectly cogent universal interest, namely that of “Doing what I feel like doing in circumstances where neither injury to me nor harm to others is involved.” A specific (concrete, particular) interest of a person is valid as such only if it can be subordinated to a universal interest by way of having a basis in people's legitimate needs. It is these higher-level principles that are the controlling factors from the standpoint of reason. Only through coming under the aegis of those larger universal needs can our idiosyncratic want come to be validated.

The person who does not give such manifest desiderata their due, who may even set out to frustrate their realisation, is clearly not being rational. This certainly can, and does, happen. Like various beliefs, various evaluations are palpably crazy. Reason, after all, is not just a matter of the compatibility or consistency of pre-given commitments, but of the warrant that there is for undertaking certain commitments in the first place. An evaluative rationality which informs us that certain preferences are absurd – preferences which wantonly violate our nature, impair our being, or diminish our opportunities – fortunately lies within the human repertoire.

Xenophanes of Colophon was doubtless right. Even as different creatures may well have different gods so they might well have different goods. But no matter. For us humans the perfectly appropriate sort of good is our sort of good: the human good inherent in the manner of our emplacement within the world's scheme of things. In this regard, Aristotle did indeed get to the heart of the matter. For us, the human good is indeed an adequate foundation for substantive, practical rationality. Given that we are what we are, it is this that is decisive for us. We have to go on from where we are. It is in this sense alone that there is no deliberation about ends. The universally appropriate ends at issue in our human condition are not somehow freely chosen by us; they are fixed by the (for us) inescapable circumstance that, like it or not, we find ourselves to exist as human beings, and thus able to function as free rational agents. Their ultimate inherence in (generic) human needs determines the appropriateness of our particular, individual ends and thereby endows a functionalistic pragmatism with a broadly humanistic value orientation.

We humans are so situated that from our vantage point (and who else's can be decisive for us?) various factors can and should be seen as goods – as aspects or components of what is in itself a quintessentially good end in its relation to us. Without achieving such goods we cannot thrive as human beings: we cannot achieve the condition of well-being that Aristotle called eudaimonia (“flourishing”). Flourishing as humans, as the sorts of creatures we are, patently is for us an intrinsic good (though not, to be sure, necessarily the supreme good). It “comes with the territory” so to speak, being mandated for us by our place in nature's scheme of things. And this desideratum is itself many-faceted in serving as an umbrella goal that can carry others in its wake. It must, after all, come to be particularised to the concrete situation of specific individuals and thereby becomes complex and variegated. On this basis, the rationality and objectivity of evaluative ends inheres in the simple fact that we humans have various valid needs – that we require not only nourishment and protection against the elements for the maintenance of health, but also information (“cognitive orientation”), affection, freedom of action, and much else besides. Without achieving such varied goods we cannot thrive as human beings.
To be sure, a person's “appropriate interests” will have a substantial sector of personal relativity. One person's self-ideal, shaped in the light of his own value structure, will, quite appropriately, be different from that of another. And, moreover, what sorts of interests a person has will hinge in significant measure on the particular circumstances and conditions in which he finds himself, including his wishes and desires. (In the absence of any countervailing considerations, getting what I want is in my best interests.) All the same, there is also a large body of real interests that people not only share in common but must pursue in common, for example, as regards standard of living (health and resources) and quality of life (opportunities and conditions). Both sorts of interests – the idiosyncratic and the generic – play a determinative role in the operations of rationality, and must figure in a sensible pragmatism's concern for the efficacious realisation of our valid objectives.


Suggested reading

The Validity of Values , Nicholas Rescher (Princeton University Press).
Welfare , Nicholas Rescher (University of Pittsburgh Press).
Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh.