Suppose you pursue truth for its own sake. As we learn from Aristotle, it does not follow that you don’t pursue truth for the sake of something else. For the most valuable things are both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable, and so they are typically pursued both for their own sake and for the sake of something else.
What if you pursue something, but not for the sake of something else. Does it follow that you pursue the thing for its own sake? Maybe, but it’s not as clear as it might seem. Imagine that you eat fiber for the sake of preventing colon cancer. Then you hear a study that says that fiber doesn’t prevent colon cancer. But you continue to eat fiber, out of a kind of volitional inertia, without any reason to do so. Then you are pursuing the consumption of fiber not for the sake of anything else. But merely losing the instrumental reason for eating fiber doesn’t give you a non-instrumentally reason. Rather, you are now eating fiber irrationally, for no reason.
Perhaps it is impossible to do something for no reason. But even if it is impossible to do something for no reason, it is incorrect to define pursuing something for its own sake as pursuing it not for the sake of something else. For that you pursue something for its own sake states something positive about your pursuit, while that you don’t pursue it for the sake of anything else states something negative about your pursuit. There is a kind of valuing of the thing for its own sake that is needed to pursue the thing for its own sake.
It is tempting to say that you pursue a thing for its own sake provided that you pursue it because of the intrinsic value you take it to have. But that, too, is incorrect. For suppose that a rich benefactor tells you that they will give you a ton of money if you gain something of intrinsic value today. You know that truth is valuable for its own sake, so you find out something. In doing so, you find out the truth because the truth is intrinsically valuable. But your pursuit of that truth is entirely instrumental, despite your reason being the intrinsic value.
Hence, to pursue a thing for its own sake is not the same as to pursue it because it has intrinsic value. Nor is it to pursue it not for the sake of something else.
I suspect that pursuing a thing for its own sake is a primitive concept.
7 comments:
1) Maybe seeking something for its own sake is a combination of both? Not seeking it for the sake of something else, and also seeking it because of the intrinsic value it has?
2) As for the example of seeking the truth (which has intrinsic value, as specified) for the money you'll be given, I think the usage of reason in "But your pursuit of that truth is entirely instrumental, despite your reason being the intrinsic value." is a bit incomplete, since most people would use the word "reason" to describe the actual goal they have in mind for which seeking a true fact is purely instrumental.
The intrinsic value of the truth then is kinda like any other property any other thing might have that has utility - the intrinsic value is subordinated and viewed in the light of the use it has for giving you money.
You might as well be talking about seeking the proper tools to rob a bank with a vast sum of money.
Wesley:
1. But you can seek something for its own sake while seeking it for the sake of something else as well.
2. So, this is the weird thing about my example: the non-instrumental value is being instrumentally pursued. (It kind of reminds me of Frege's infamous "The concept horse is not a concept".) But the point remains that the non-instrumental value is indeed a goal one has, just as when one is seeking to rob a bank, the obtaining of the tools is a goal one has. Sure, you can use "goal" or "reason" in such a way as to indicate the ultimate goal which one non-instrumentally pursues, but then the account of non-instrumental pursuit becomes circular: you non-instrumentally pursue X iff X is your non-instrumentally pursued goal
By the way, one can combine my truth and "volitional inertia" examples. Suppose that a rich eccentric is paying me each time I get something of intrinsic value. I am greedy and generally lacking in virtue, so I pursue all sorts of things of intrinsic value solely for the sake of money. Then the eccentric withdraws the offer. Out of volitional inertia, I continue to pursue the things of intrinsic value, and do so because they have intrinsic value, but I don't suddenly come to pursue them for their own sake. So in this example, I pursue something because of its intrinsic value, and for no other reason, and yet I do not pursue it for its own sake.
I still think there is no way out of these cases other than to make the concept of pursuit of a thing for its own sake primitive.
If there is a primitive notion in the vicinity, wouldn't it just be the three-place predicate "x pursues y for the sake of z"? From here, we can analyze "x pursues y for its own sake" as "x pursues y for the sake of y," and we can analyze "x pursues y for the sake of something else" as "for some z, x pursues y for the sake of z & z is not y."
(Maybe there would be Frege-puzzle problems with this proposal, e.g., where y = z but the agent doesn't know this, and pursues y for the sake of z?)
Brian:
That's an option, but it seems to me that pursuing y for the sake of y is different from pursuing y for its own sake, in the same way that x knowing themselves is not the same thing as x knowing x, and similarly for other kinds of reflexive actions. For x to play chess by themselves is not the same as for x to play chess with x. The game is essentially different because when you play chess by yourself you know what you're planning. (One could imagine a case where Brian plays chess with Brian, without it being Brian playing chess by himself, by supposing time-travel.) The Frege puzzles capture a part of the difference, but I am not sure they capture all of it.
Here's another reason to think there is a difference. If I achieve x for the sake of y, then y is a final cause of x. But if I achieve x for its own sake, then x is not its own final cause. So to achieve x for its own sake is not the same as to achieve x for the sake of x. And what goes for achievement probably goes for pursuit.
Now, you might say that if I achieve x for the sake of y AND x and y are distinct, then y is a final cause of x. But now it looks like there is a serious structural difference between achieving x for its own sake and achieving x for the sake of y: in the latter case we have final causation and in the former we don't. But now it seems "x for the sake of y" claims are disjunctive in nature.
1) You can indeed seek something for its own sake while also seeking it for the sake of something else, but that implies there are two motives properly distinct from the other; and one could then perhaps say that what defines the motive of seeking something for its own sake is to not seek it for the sake of something else AND to seek it for the intrinsic value it has. This motive, having such a structure, would still be properly distinct from the other motive which DOES seek something for the sake of something else.
2) So about seeking a thing of intrinsic value instrumentally, I think this just reifies (or is that the wrong word to use?) or reduces the intrinic value of a thing to just a means - you could literally just replace it and have the rich man tell you he's gonna give you much money if you find something completely red today.
The redness in this case, just like the intrinsic value in the other, is just an identifier that you're looking for in order to gain something else. So I think there's a confusion of meaning going on when someone says they pursue X because of the intrinsic value it has. One could take this in an instrumental sense, or one could instead take this in a sense similar to how one loves others for their own sake, or oneself for one's own sake.
When one seeks the good of another person for the other's own sake, I guess one is thereby recognising the intrinsic axiology or value-ness of the person and doing the action on the basis of that.
One sees the value of the other and recognises that benefitting the other person itself, taking the person as the end because they're valuable simply as such (axiologically I guess?) is good. So benefitting them is just intrinsically worth seeking of itself, with the end being the person, and the grounds being the value & worth of the person properly distinct from any other end.
3) As for achieving X for the sake of Y, I think the person doing the achieving is also crucial. For the person wanting to achieve X for the sake of Y, Y is the final cause of their achieving X, not X by itself simpliciter.
So it seems one could say that, for the person wanting to achieve X, if he wanted to do this for its own sake, he'd be taking X as the final cause of the very achieving itself, or the seekig to achieve. There's no problem in taking X as the final cause of itself then, since it's not about a final cause inhering in X itself.
4) I'd also love to know the difference between seeking X for X's sake and seeking it for its own sake, because those two seem identical to me - what is "its own sake" in regards to X? How could it not be, well.....X itself? Since the "own" is self-referential to X?
Hello, Dr. Pruss.
I have not engaged with your work before. I am a layman (of pretty much everything). I have been diagnosed with a serious and fairly rare mental illness called Schizoaffective Disorder which is basically a combination of Schizophrenia and Bipolar without having enough symptoms for a dual diagnosis. I have a book coming out soon.
I find your article very intriguing! I had come to this website because, in a private group on Facebook, someone recommended I read about an article you wrote on jstor (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2215186?origin=crossref) which I do not have access to. They said this in reference to an argument for God that I have in my book which I shared with the group. The argument I give is basically this:
P1. If there are reasons entities change over a time, then a greatest entity exists.
P2. There are reasons entities change over a time.
C. Therefore, a greatest entity exists.
I made a thread saying that someone else I know who I shared this argument with said it resembles a Least-upper-bound property which I didn't know what that is (and still don't as the math seems fairly advanced).
I am writing this to you because I find this article touches on several factors that I also have thought about which I have written in my book. For starters, you mention the "guise of the good" and how that works to some degree and even talk about it in relation to Truth. My perspective is that Truth is the grounds for Free Will. And I say that you must want the Truth above anything else and it is often at personal cost to us that we attain some small sliver of the Truth (like Newton). And I would also say that all people have a certain nature about them. Jesus has the same nature as the father and Satan's nature is that he is a liar, for example. As such, I am a compatibilist who believes that salvation is a radical thing that produces a change in a person rather than simply being a choice like what shirt we will wear today. It is only when we see what is True--a Truth that was there long before we existed--that we are Free. The primary verse I would go to for this is John 8:32 "And you will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free." Elsewhere we read, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."
My view of God's sovereignty and free will is sorta like this:
P1. God chose to create all information.
P2. Persons are a subset of information God created.
P3. The information a person perceives is a subset of the information God chose to create.
P4. Persons make choices based on the information they perceive.
P5. A person’s choices are a subset of information.
Therefore,
C. A person’s choices are a subset of God’s choices.
I do not consider myself a Molinist. Rather, I think God mostly takes a hands-off approach to things and chooses to intervene at key points like a king running a kingdom.
I would be thrilled about a response, but I understand you are probably busy.
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