According to the Doctrine of the Guise of the Good, actions are taken to be good by their agents. Kieran Setiya, however, has formulated a new objection to the DGG based on the distinction between the notions of normative reasons and motivating reasons. Only the latter, Setiya claims, is required for intentional agency. However, I will argue that Setiya’s objection fails because it rests on the implausible assumption that motivating reasons are determined solely in terms of the content of the (...) belief involved in answering the ‘why’ question. But the basis, or origin, of a belief is crucially important in determining whether the content of a belief can constitute a motivating reason for action. However, I will argue that the failure of Setiya’s argument reveals an important but neglected facts about the DGG, namely, that it presupposes the view that beliefs (or our dispositions to judge) about normative reasons play a role in one’s knowledge of what one is doing when one acts for a reason. Moreover, my discussion will make it clear that the DGG has a better chance of being true if it is formulated in terms of disposition to judge, rather than belief. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The paper shows textual and non-textual evidence that Henry Sidgwick endorses a version of the guise of the good doctrine and a version of the guise of the reasons view. He also rejects the guise of the pleasant doctrine, criticizing Mill’s views of the relations between pleasure, desire and desirability. Sidgwick also anticipates the guise of the apparent good view, i.e. the claim that desire connects with evaluative appearances, not with evaluative full-fledged judgments.

The guise of the good doctrine is the view that whatever we desire, we desire it under the guise of the good, i.e. it appears good to us in some way. In this paper I first clarify the role that the doctrine of the guise of the good plays in the first step of J. S. Mill’s proof of the principle of utility (in which he shows that one’s happiness is desirable as an end). Then I provide textual evidence in (...) favour of ascribing the doctrine to Mill, arguing that he commits to it to the extent that he equates finding something pleasant and thinking it desirable. Finally I counter two potential sources of evidence against ascribing the guise of the good to Mill: apparent desires based on ‘fixed ideas’, and those habitual desires which are no longer associated with finding their objects pleasant. I argue that ‘fixed ideas’ do not feed actual desires, and that the habitual desires which seem to escape the guise of the good, even if not uncommon, have a secondary status as desires. (shrink)

The guise of the good is the thesis that an agent can only want, or intentionally do or pursue something, if and because this seems good to the agent in some respect or other. Bernard Williams criticizes the guise of the good in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. In this paper I reconstruct and assess his hitherto unnoticed critical remarks. Williams's opposition is based on the idea that it takes an “extra step” to go from desiring or pursuing something (...) to thinking of it as good. To show this, he employs an argument from elimination (with two strands: an argument from personal ends and an argument from immediate ends), and a separate argument which I call the one‐desire argument. I review and reject two types of answers to Williams's objections: answers that explore different varieties of what it can mean to “think of as good,” and answers that focus on different varieties of goodness under the guise of which one can desire something. I then consider whether a different, but nearby thesis, namely the guise of normative reasons, can accommodate Williams's objections, concluding that this alternative also fails. I end by looking at how this debate might move forward. (shrink)

The paper presents a positive argument for a version of metaphysically light ethical non-naturalism from the nature of mental states such as desires. It uses as its premise the time-honoured, and recently rediscovered, doctrine of the guise of the good, whereby it is essential to desire that the object of desire be conceived as good or as normatively favoured under some description. The argument is that if the guise of the good is a correct theory of desire, then a certain (...) version of non-naturalism is better placed than other meta-ethical views to make sense of it. First I define ethical non-naturalism and the guise of the good, providing also an initial defence of the latter. Then I briefly survey some historical precedents and proceed to the argument. For each major meta-ethical view I consider I offer reasons why combining them with the guise of the good leads to consequences that are or should be unwelcome by the guise of the good. At the end of this elimination process a form of relatively metaphysically light non-naturalism will emerge as the view that best fits with the guise of the good. (shrink)

I defend a view of the attitude of desire against a close rival. Both views are versions of “the guise of the good” thesis. The guise of the good says that a desire for P involves P appearing good in some respect. I defend a content-based account of value appearances against an attitude-based account. On the content view, a desire for P represents P as good while the attitude of that desire presents P’s value as true. In other words, a (...) desire for P presents it as true that P is good. The attitude view says that a desire represents P non-evaluatively while the attitude of that desire presents P as good. In other words, a desire for P presents P as good. The attitude view struggles to explain the relationship between the qualitative character of desires and appearances of value. It must either implausibly deny that there is a close relationship between the two, or explain the relationship by introducing a poorly motivated, revisionist mental ontology. In the present state of the debate between the two views, this problem tips the scales in favor of the content view. (shrink)

I propose an account of desire that reconciles two apparently conflicting intuitions about practical agency. I do so by exploring a certain intuitive datum. The intuitive datum is that often when an agent desires P she will seem to immediately and conclusively know that there is a reason to bring P about. Desire-based theories of reasons seem uniquely placed to explain this intuitive datum. On this view, desires are the source of an agent’s practical reasons. A desire for P grounds (...) conclusive knowledge of a reason to bring P about because that desire makes it true that there is a reason to do so. However, this implies that a basic desire for P can never be in error about there being at least some reason to bring P about. We have the conflicting intuition that basic desires sometimes rationally count for nothing. The guise of the good explains this intuition about the fallibility of desires. On this view, a desire for P represents P as good in some respect. Desires and reasons are independent, so a desire might misrepresent one’s reasons. But this independence is usually taken to rule out that desires ever provide conclusive knowledge of reasons. Capturing the intuition about conclusive knowledge rules out capturing the intuition about fallibility, and vice versa. I propose an epistemological disjunctivist version of the guise of the good that reconciles fallibility with the possibility of conclusive knowledge. (shrink)

According to the guise of the good, a desire for P represents P as good in some respect. ‘Perceptualism’ further claims that desires involve an awareness of value analogous to perception. Perceptualism explains why desires justify actions and how desires can end the regress of practical justification. However, perception paradigmatically represents the actual environment, while desires paradigmatically represent prospective states. An experience E is an awareness of O when the nature of E depends on the nature of O. How could (...) desires depend on the merely possible? Extant perceptualist accounts have not adequately addressed this question. I propose a novel account of how desires can be an awareness of value. An awareness of value involves the successful exercise of a capacity to discriminate value out of non-evaluative representations. The resulting content and phenomenology of such a desire depends in the right way on the value properties of the desired state. An agent requires the right view of the non-evaluative features of a state to discriminate its evaluative features. I argue that imaginings are uniquely able to provide such a view, and so enable value discriminations. My account retains the epistemological attractions of perceptualism despite the disanalogy between desire and perception. (shrink)

Alex Gregory (2017a; 2017b; 2018; 2021) provides an ingenious, systematic defence of the view that desires are a species of belief about normative reasons. This view explains how desires make actions rationally intelligible. Its main rival, which is attractive for the same reason, says that desires involve a quasi-perceptual appearance of value. Gregory (2017a; 2018; 2021) has argued that his view provides the superior explanation of how desires are sensitive to evidence. Here, I show that the quasi-perceptual view fairs better (...) in this regard. Negatively, I argue that Gregory’s view overestimates the evidence-sensitivity of desires and implies that we are systematically mistaken in having different attitudes about desires and beliefs. Positively, I argue that quasi-perceptual appearances of value are brought into the scope of rational control through their dependence on prior representational states. I also provide a novel explanation of why some kinds of desires are resistant to rational control. I propose that desires are produced through exercises of an affective capacity to discriminate value. Variations in the way this capacity is exercised, and its links to prior representational states, can produce systematic insensitivity to evidence in certain kinds of desires. This paper advances the debate around desire on two fronts: first, it performs the neglected task of showing how the quasi-perceptual view can simultaneously explain both the sensitivity and insensitivity to evidence exhibited by desires and, second, it shows how the explanation offered is superior to one of its closest rivals, the view that desires are a species of normative belief. (shrink)

In this essay I offer a new interpretation of Kant’s discussion of “the old formula of the schools” in the Critique of Practical Reason – “nihil appetimus, nisi sub ratione boni; nihil aversamur, n...

If there is something (P) that every possible agent is committed to value, and certain actions or attitudes either enhance or diminish P, then normative claims about a range of intentional actions can be objectively and non-trivially evaluated. I argue that the degree of existence as an agent depends on the consistency of reflexive-relating with other individuals of the agent-kind: the ontological thesis. I then show that in intending to act on a reason, every agent is rationally committed to value (...) ‘above all else’ being an agent, what consists in exercising the capacity to act and having the freedom to discriminate between more or less valuable actions: the transcendental thesis. Since the degree of possession of this personal but non-contingent good depends on relating to other agents in a special way, certain actions and attitudes may be objectively right or wrong for all agents. (shrink)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz endorses a version of the guise of the good thesis: he holds that whenever we do something intentionally, we do it because it seems good to us. This paper explores Leibniz...

The aim of this paper is to show how certain distinctive elements of Hegel's theory of action can provide a fresh philosophical perspective on the phenomenon of addiction. What motivates the turn to Hegel is a set of puzzles that arise out of contemporary medical and philosophical discussions of addiction. Starting with questions concerning ongoing attempts to define addiction, the paper examines the resources needed for addiction to be classed as a disorder, as it commonly is. Provisionally settling with the (...) notion of akrasia, the paper turns to Hegel for a theory of agency that fills in the gaps of the account of akrasia used in the contemporary literature on addiction and helps resolve the puzzles that occasioned the paper. (shrink)

Kant clearly endorses some version of the ‘old formula of the schools’, according to which all volition is sub ratione boni. There has been a debate whether he holds this only for morally good actions. I argue that a closer look at the distinction between the good and the agreeable does not support this conclusion. Considering Kant’s account of the detrimental and the correct use of this thesis, I argue that rational beings always will sub ratione boni, even when they (...) act immorally, because they act on principles. I argue that Kant’s accounts of self-love and self-conceit support this view. (shrink)

According to the Guise of the Good, an agent only does for a reason what she sees as good. One of the main motivations for the view is its apparent ability to explain why action for a reason must be intelligible to its agent, for on this view, an action is intelligible just in case it seems good. This motivation has come under criticism in recent years. Most notably, Kieran Setiya has argued that merely seeing one’s action as good does (...) not suffice to make the action intelligible. In this paper, I show that this objection has bite only because the Guise of the Good’s theory of intelligibility has yet seen little sustained articulation. Properly understood, this theory holds that an action is intelligible to an agent only if it appears to them to possess some substantive evaluative property. I then argue that this response to the objection has a significant implication for contemporary Guise of the Good theories, for it shows that the currently ascendant version of the theory, the attitudinal theory, cannot avail itself of the intelligibility motivation. (shrink)

According to the perceptual theory of introspection, introspection is a kind of perception of our mental life. To evaluate the perceptual theory’s plausibility, we obviously need to know what entitles a mental phenomenon to the qualification “perceptual.” I start by arguing that this task is complicated by the fact that we really have two notions of the perceptual: a functional notion and a phenomenological notion. The heart of the chapter is an argument that even if we have no reason to (...) think that introspection is a kind of perception in the functional sense, we do have strong reasons to think it is a kind of perception in the phenomenological sense. In the phenomenological sense, I argue, two features are central to a phenomenon’s status as perceptual: its involving direct awareness of the perceived, and its taking a distinctively perceptual attitude toward it. The bulk of the chapter consists in (i) an argument from inference to the best explanation for the thesis that introspection involves direct awareness of the introspected, and (ii) a more direct argument that introspection involves an attitude almost identical to the attitude distinctive of sensory perception. The chapter then closes with responses to some of the standard objections to the perceptual theory. (shrink)

This thesis motivates a novel account of desire as the best explanation of an intuitive datum. The intuitive datum is that often when an agent desires P she will immediately, outright know that she has a reason to bring P about. Existing explanations of the intuitive datum cannot simultaneously satisfy two desiderata. We want to explain how desires enable outright knowledge of reasons and also explain the fallibility of desires. Existing views satisfy the first desideratum at the expense of the (...) second, or vice versa. I propose an epistemological disjunctivist account of desire that satisfies both. On this view, a desire for P represents the value of P in a manner analogous to perception. Desires come in two distinct epistemic kinds: an awareness of value or an illusion of value. An awareness of value enables outright knowledge of reasons and allows the agent to tell by reflection that she has such knowledge. An illusion of value merely seems to provide grounds for knowledge, which explains the fallibility of desires. The proposed account is a strong candidate for the truth because it best explains central features of our practical agency. (shrink)

This dissertation is about the partiality problem for fitting attitude (FA) analyses of value. More specifically, it is about whether and how the problem might be resolved. In Chapter 1, I set the stage by offering a short introduction to the topic and a rationale for investigating it. I then give a more detailed account of FA analyses of value in Chapter 2, including a brief outline of their history and appeal, before explaining more thoroughly just what the partiality problem (...) is for such analyses in Chapter 3, where I distinguish between several different versions of the problem, identify two broad strategies for resolving it and put forward six evaluation criteria in terms of which the plausibility of a resolution can be assessed. According to FA analyses of value, what it is for something to have value is, roughly, for it to be fitting to have a certain sort of attitude toward it. To have a positive value, such as being good, is to be something that it is fitting to favor (to have a pro-attitude toward); to have a negative value, such as being bad, is to be something that it is fitting to disfavor (to have a con-attitude toward); and to have a relational or comparative value like being better than, worse than, equally good as or equally bad as something else is to be something that it is fitting to favor more than, disfavor more than, favor equally much as or disfavor equally much as the other thing. The partiality problem is, roughly, that there are situations in which two things seem to have equal value, which, if things are as they seem and FA analyses of value are correct, means that it is fitting to respond to them equally – to be impartial between them. However, in these situations, there are some people for whom it does not seem fitting to respond in that way because they stand in a certain relationship to one of the bearers of value. For these people, it seems that the fitting response is an unequal or partial response, not an impartial one. If such intuitions about fitting partiality and value are veridical, then how can FA analyses of value be correct? The rest of the dissertation is then a critical, in-depth study of a wide range of responses to the partiality problem. In Chapter 4, I examine the first of the two response strategies, which is to deny the veracity of at least one of the intuitions that generate the problem without making any changes to the FA analyses themselves. I then turn to the second strategy, which is to try to accommodate the intuitions by revising the FA analyses in some suitable manner. In Chapters 5–13, I consider the possibility and plausibility of solving the problem by revising the FA analyses on the basis of: the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties (Chapter 5), the notion of basic value (Chapter 6), the notion of agent-relative value (Chapter 7), the notion of an impartial observer (Chapter 8), the distinction between moral and non-moral fittingness (Chapter 9), a sui generis notion of fittingness (Chapter 10), the distinction between pro tanto and overall fittingness (Chapter 11), the distinction between actions and attitudes (Chapter 12) and the notions of evaluative distance and perspective (Chapter 13). My assessment is that none of these responses is entirely plausible. Thus, in Chapter 14, I conclude that although the partiality problem may not be irresolvable, it is yet to receive a fully plausible resolution. I also discuss the ramifications of this conclusion. (shrink)