Exploring Conscience and Motive: Man is NOT a Machine :: Philosophy Essays

Exploring Conscience and Motive Man is NOT a MachineMany philosophers believe that all human being subprogramion stems from commit or motive or urge or some much(prenominal) thing. On this ruling, if men ever do the good or the honorable it is because in some sense they desire to. Perhaps the desire to do the right is sometimes nothing more than than the pressures of past societal or parental training, or conceivably it might stem from some potpourri of social instinct planted deep within us, or more likely it stems from the realization that it is in the long-term interest of the agent. But in any case it is supposed that men do not exploit independently of some kind of desire. Consider the stark expression of this purview from an important ethical theorist, Richard Brandt. . . action-tendencies are a multiplicative function of valencys (occurrent desires and aversions), and thusly . . . an action-tendency is always zero in magnitude if there is no valence attached to the c ontemplated action itself or its expected outcome . . . no knowing action testament occur without desire or aversion enjoin at it or its outcome, and hence no rational, ideally criticized action will take place without desire or aversion. (If some philosophers have thought, as some seem to have done, that a person can do his traffic even if so doing is not positively valenced for him . . . , perhaps out of respect for duty in some sense, they were wrong and their psychology of morality needs elementary revision.)1This appears to be a purely mechanistic view of human action. scarce the same thing as Brandt says of human action could be verbalise of the questionment of billiard balls . A billiard ball does not move unless there is a positive valence in the direction of its movement.This view has a powerful appeal to the human imagination,--so much so that umteen philosophers find it self-evident, and find that they are unable even to conceive an alternative. capital of Minnes ota Henle, speaking of an approach to ethics which seems to deny that men always act from desire, flatly declares that such an approach creates an insoluble problem of ethical motif.2On the other hand, there is a remarkable usage, mainly derived from Kant, which denies that human action must always be understood as stemming from desires and motives. This tradition acknowledges of course that men are often and even usually do by desire.