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Is Satan a Lover of the Good?
Author(s) -
Dunn Robert
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
ratio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-9329
pISSN - 0034-0006
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9329.00105
Subject(s) - action (physics) , plural , agency (philosophy) , epistemology , unification , value (mathematics) , psychology , aesthetics , philosophy , linguistics , computer science , physics , quantum mechanics , machine learning , programming language
There are, apparently, two inherited stories of intentional action. On the motivational story, intentional agents are pursuers of goals. On the evaluative story, intentional agents are pursuers of value. In a spirit of unification, we might try to supplement the motivational story with the evaluative one – or even collapse the former into the latter. The problem with such moves is that they cannot accomodate certain pathologies of agency. Thus, they convert apparently perverse agents – like Satan and self‐haters – into closet lovers of the good. I argue that pathological agents like Satan and self‐haters are not lovers of the good. They are just lovers of success in action. We can make sense of such agents as practical reasoners because the cares that constitute us as practical reasoners are plural.