Jonathan Lear’s book Aristotle: The Desire to Understand [end of year Aristotle series]
Philosopher and psychoanalyst examines Aristotle’s theory of ‘deliberation’ [calculation]
Jonathan Lear wrote:
Chapter 4
Man’s Nature
5. Mind in action
Man, says Aristotle, is a principle or source of actions. Things do not just happen to man, he is capable of doing things. Human action is as mysterious as it is commonplace. On the one hand, our lives are permeated with our activities: we have no conception of what it is to live except in a life saturated with action; on the other hand, human action is a very special type of event. …
Human action is a species of animal movement. All animal movement, Aristotle argues, must flow from desire. Lesser animals have basic appetites as well as sense perception, and imagination based on their sensory awareness. But their movements would be incomprehensible on the basis of sensation and imagination alone. The mere seeing of food cannot provoke an animal to move toward it. There must be something which moves animals to move, and this motive force is desire. Desire and animal movement have a similar structure: desire is desire for an object which the animal is lacking, and animal movement is directed toward the object of desire. It is in animal movement that desire finds tangible expression. One might think of animal movement as desire in action.
Humans distinguish themselves from other animals by their ability to think and by the fact that in addition to the appetites they have more sophisticated desires — for example, the desire to understand. Human action cannot be understood merely as an attempt to satisfy basic appetites. But once one admits that man has 'higher-order' as well as 'lower-order' desires, that he is able to think about what he wants and how to obtain it, that his actions are often the outcome of complex cognitive processes, it becomes much more difficult to see how action results. Aristotle distinguishes different faculties of the soul by their different functions — and yet desire seems to cut right across the various 'parts' of man's soul. For, as Aristotle says, we find wishes in the part of the soul which reasons about how to act, and we find desires in the 'irrational' part of the soul: for example, the basic appetites for food and sex. However, if the basis for distinguishing parts of the soul is by the function of each part, but the source of movement seems to be located in both the rational and the irrational parts, what reason is there for thinking that the soul has parts at all? It seems that either Aristotle must give up the idea that the soul has parts, or he must find a way of conceiving the source of movement to be a single part of the soul. He chooses the latter option. There appear, he says, to be two sources of movement, practical mind and appetite. Practical mind differs from theoretical mind in that it is concerned with considering how a desire can be satisfied. It is that part of the mind with which an agent considers what he should do. Aristotle locates both practical mind and appetite within a single faculty of the soul responsible for movement: the desiring part of the soul. For, although a desire which finds explicit expression in a mental process may appear very different from an unconsidered innate drive toward food, both have a similar structure: both are motivating forces for the achievement of an (as yet) unattained goal through action.
If the desiring part of the soul is a single faculty which contains both a mental part (practical mind) and an a rational part (the basic appetites) one wants to know how these disparate parts fit together. And if practical mind is to be subsumed under the desiring part of the soul, we ought to be able to conceive of this mind as an expression of desire. How does practical mind work? It does not seem odd to suppose that we can employ our ability to reason in the service of satisfying our desires, but it does at least initially seem odd to suppose that reason is itself an element in the desiring part of the soul: that reason itself motivates us to action. To see how reason can motivate, one must look to Aristotle's theory of deliberated choice (prohairesis). 'Choice' and 'decision' are often used as translations for Aristotle's concept of prohairesis, but these translations suppress the fact that at least in the paradigm case one makes a prohairesis only after a process of deliberation.
Aristotle's theory of deliberation (bouleusis) is a theory of the transmission of desire. The agent begins with a desire or wish (boulesis) for an object. The object of wish appears to be a good to the agent. But the appearance helps to constitute the wish itself. So a wish is something which both has motivating force — an agent is motivated to obtain an object of wish — and is a part of consciousness. That is, an agent's awareness that he wishes for a certain end is itself a manifestation of that wish. The wish motivates the agent to engage in a process of deliberation whereby he considers how to obtain his desired goal. Aristotle describes deliberation as a process of reasoning backward from the desired goal, through a series of steps which could best lead to that goal, until the agent reaches an action which he is or will be in a position to perform. One description Aristotle gives of this process is the reasoning a doctor engages in when he is considering how to cure a patient:
... health is the logos and the knowledge in the soul. The healthy subject, then, is produced as the result of the following train of thought; since this is health, if the subject is to be healthy this must first be present, e.g. a uniform state of the body, and if this is to be present, there must be heat; and the physician goes on thinking thus until he brings the matter to a final step which he himself can take. Then the process from this point onward, i.e. the process towards health, is called a ‘making’.
Aristotle makes an analogy between this process of reasoning and the method of analysis in Greek geometry. Ancient Greek geometrical practice comprised two methods, analysis and synthesis, of which we are much more familiar with synthesis. In a synthesis, a complex geometrical figure is constructed from simple elements by iterations of basic constructions: for example, the drawing of a line between two points or the drawing of a circle of a certain radius around a fixed center point. Most of the proofs in Euclid's Elements are examples of synthesis. Analysis was designed to help one get to a position in which one could begin a synthesis. One begins an analysis with the finished product: a complex geometrical figure which one would like to be able to construct in a step wise, rigorous fashion. One then breaks the figure down in a series of orderly steps. At each stage one resolves or analyzes the figure into the immediately more simple figures which constitute it. One continues this stepwise analysis until one reaches the basic constructions which a geometer is allowed to make. An analysis is therefore a deconstruction, and once it is complete one can simply reverse direction in order to carry out a synthesis.
Similarly with deliberation and action. The deliberation starts with the desired goal and analyzes it into a series of steps which lead from the goal right back to the deliberating agent. Once the deliberation is complete the agent can begin the 'synthesis': he can begin acting so as to attain his desired goal.
Often the deliberation will culminate in a decision to act in a certain way. For example, the doctor may decide to warm the patient by wrapping him in blankets. This deliberated decision is a prohairesis. Suppose that the doctor is also aware that he has blankets in his nearby closet. Then, as Aristotle would say, straightaway he will move toward the closet. Aristotle represented an action as being the conclusion of a piece of practical reason. The idea is that once one has decided to act in a certain way and believes that one's current circumstances allow one to act in that way, nothing more is needed to explain the occurrence of the action. A deliberated decision is therefore the last step the mind takes before it extends itself outward into action:
The same thing is deliberated upon and chosen except that the object of deliberated choice is already determinate, since it is that which has been decided upon as a result of deliberation that is the object of deliberated' choice. For everyone ceases to inquire how he is to act when he has brought the moving principle back to himself and to the ruling part of himself; for this is what chooses.
Deliberation is not merely an intellectual process by which an agent realizes how to act; it is a transmitter of desire. The doctor begins both with medical knowledge and with a desire to cure his patient. As Aristotle points out, a doctor who has medical knowledge alone need not cure anybody. The desire to bring the patient back to health itself motivates the doctor's deliberation, and the deliberation transmits desire to each of the stages of the deliberation. For example, the doctor has no independent desire to heat the patient's body. He obtains this desire by realizing that, if he is to bring the patient back to health (which he does desire), then he must produce a uniform state of the body, which he can do by heating it. Having realized this, he now desires to heat the body. And, again, the doctor lacks any independent desire to wrap the patient's body in blankets: it is only because he realizes that this is the best way for him to heat the patient's body that he desires to wrap it up. Deliberation is thus the way the mind transmits desire from the wished-for goal to an action the agent can perform.
Some philosophers have complained that Aristotle has too narrow a conception of deliberation: in particular, that he insists that we can only deliberate about means and not ends:
We deliberate not about ends but about what contributes to ends. For a doctor does not deliberate whether he shall heal, nor an orator whether he shall convince, nor a statesman whether he shall produce law and order, nor does anyone else deliberate about his end. Having set the end they consider how and by what means it is to be attained; and if it seems to be produced by several means they consider by which it is most easily and best produced, while if it is achieved by one only they consider how it will be achieved by this and by what means this will be achieved, till they come to the first cause, which in the order of discovery is last. For the person who deliberates seems to inquire and analyze in the way described as though he were analyzing a geometrical construction ... and what is last in the order of analysis is first in the order of becoming.
Do we not, it is objected, deliberate about what are to be the ends in our lives — for example, whether to become a doctor or a statesman? In response, supporters of Aristotle have pointed out that the things which contribute to an end may include constituents of the end: for example, one may deliberate about whether being a doctor or being a statesman is to be a constituent of the good life which one hopes to lead. One does not deliberate whether or not to have a good life, but one may deliberate about what the good life is going to consist in.
Although this 'Aristotelian' response is consistent with Aristotle's claim that we deliberate about things which contribute to the end, it is doubtful that Aristotle himself included this type of thinking within the compass of what he called 'deliberation' (bouleusis). 'Deliberation' is a term of art which Aristotle used to describe a very special sort of practical reasoning: that in which desire is transmitted from premisses to conclusion. So we should not think that everything we are willing to call a deliberation counts as a deliberation in Aristotle's sense of the term. The paradigm of an Aristotelian deliberation is when one begins with a desired goal and considers how to achieve it. While it is not inconceivable that the consideration of what should be the constituents of the end will involve the transmission of desire, it is unlikely. …
… There do seem to be some cases where one can deliberate in Aristotle's sense about the constituents of an end, but they are rather peculiar pieces of reasoning. … The crucial point about an Aristotelian deliberation is that it is meant to cover only those forms of practical reasoning in which desire is transmitted from the end to the means — or to those constituents which can derive desire from the desire for the end.
But if a deliberation is a transmitter of desire and a deliberated choice is the last step of a deliberation, this would suggest that deliberated choice is itself a desire. Aristotle accepts this suggestion:
The object of deliberated choice being one of the things in our own power which is desired after deliberation, deliberated choice will be deliberated desire of things in our own power; for when we have decided as a result of deliberation, we desire in accordance with our deliberation.
Elsewhere Aristotle says that deliberated choice is either thoughtful desire or desiring mind, and that it shares in reason and desire. So it is not just that deliberation transmits desire from the agent's goal to his deliberated choice; the deliberated choice is itself a desire. But it is a desire with very special features. First, it is a desire about which we can have absolute certainty: unlike many other desires, one cannot have a deliberated choice unless one is aware that one has it. Second, the awareness of this desire is part of the desire itself. Modern philosophers tend to think of consciousness as being distinct from the objects of consciousness. So, for example, if one has a desire for food, one's awareness that one has a desire for food is distinct from the desire itself. But with an Aristotelian deliberated choice one's awareness of the desire to act in a certain way is part of the desire itself. There is in this case no distinction to be made between thought and object of thought. Third, a deliberated choice is an essentially reflective desire: it is of the essence of a deliberated choice that one be aware of it. And the reflection is part of the desire itself. For the self-conscious thought — say, 'I shall wrap him in blankets' — both is a manifestation of self-consciousness and is the deliberated choice.
Thus deliberation, for Aristotle, should not be conceived as supervenient upon given desires and motives, as though it is occurring in a different part of the mind. Deliberation is itself an expression of desire: it is motivated by a wish, it is a transmitter of desire, and its conclusion is either a desire — that is, a deliberated choice — or an action immediately motivated by the deliberation. And deliberation is not just expressive of desire; it helps to constitute our desire. The doctor's desire to make this man healthy is, through deliberation, transformed into the desire to make this man healthy by wrapping him in blankets. Deliberation helps to make our desires concrete: to render them into a sufficiently specific form that we can begin to act on them. Deliberation thus brings our abstractly given desires back to us: it presents our desires to us in a form in which we can begin to satisfy them. …
…The doctor's deliberation is itself a manifestation of his desire to cure, and in the process desire is transmitted to the means. It is also the process by which the desire to wrap the patient in blankets is formed. Of course, much more needs to be said if we are to show that any piece of Aristotel ian practical reasoning is also a manifestation of human freedom. But the way is at least left open to consider reflection as an expression of desire rather than as an activity carried out in complete detachment from desire. This is important for anyone who wants to naturalize human freedom: that is, to give an account of freedom that makes it plausible that a certain type of animal, a human being, can enjoy it. Reflection is an activity we engage in, and, if Aristotle is right that all our activities are products of desire, then reflection too must be motivated by desire. What we wish to understand is how a single peculiarly human activity can be at once a product of desire, a manifestation of desire, an effective reflection, and a manifestation of freedom.
… Aristotle was not directly concerned with specifying the conditions sufficient for human freedom: he was concerned with the conditions for living a good life. The good life, for Aristotle, was a life of happiness (eudaimonia), and happiness partially consists in the desires within our soul having taken on a certain organization. Ethics is, among other things, a study of the organization of human desire. When we look to the motivational structure of a good man, it becomes possible to see how a single activity can be both a manifestation of human freedom and the triumph of a desire.
[END of chapter]
The Source:
Jonathan Lear*, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand, Cambridge University Press 1988
*Social Science Files subscriber
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.
Quality tools for Social Science since 2022 … no rasping, just filing.