Pippin, Robert B. (b. 1948)

Natural & Normative

Summer 2009

"It is in this sense that the first-personal perspective is strictly unavoidable: I am not a passenger on a vessel pulled hither and yon by impulses and desires; I have to steer."

Knowing something about evolutionary psychology might contribute to understanding the revenge culture in which Orestes finds himself in Aeschylus's Oresteia, or why he at once feels compelled to avenge his father's murder by his mother Clytemnestra and horrified at the prospect of killing her in cold blood. But none of that can be, would be, in itself at all helpful to Orestes or anyone in his position. Knowing something about the evolutionary bene fits of altruistic behavior might give us an interesting perspective on some particular altruistic act, but for the agent, first-personally, the question I must decide is whether I ought to act altruistically and, if so, why. I cannot simply stand by, waiting to see what my highly and complexly evolved neurobiological system will do. The system doesn't make the decision, I do -- and for reasons that I find compelling, or that, at least, outweigh countervailing considerations. Of course, there are times when I cannot provide such reasons; perhaps I am even surprised that, given what I thought my commitments and principles were, I acted as I did. However, we cannot leave the matter there, especially when confronted by another's demand for a reason, and given that what I did affected what she would otherwise have been able to do. It is in this sense that the first-personal perspective is strictly unavoidable: I am not a passenger on a vessel pulled hither and yon by impulses and desires; I have to steer. Or as Kant put it: everything in nature happens according to law; human actions happen in accord with some conception of law.

Vehicles::Vessel Population::Passenger

Reading

Pippin, Robert B. "Natural & Normative." Daedalus. Summer 2009. Vol. 138, No. 3: 35-48. <Link to Article at MIT Press>

01/10/2010