Heuer's Argument Against the Humean Theory

In his paper, “Reasons for Actions and Desires”, Ulrike Heuer attempts to cast doubt on the Humean account of practical reasons (in the sense of justificatory reasons for action). Heuer describes the Humean account as the claim that “all practical reasons are based on a person’s given motives, or desires” (p. 43).  Moreover, he takes the Humean to be committed to the following two claims:

(H1) Anything can be the object of a desire. 

(H2) Actions can be justified (at least in some rudimentary sense) by showing that they are suited to lead to the satisfaction of a desire. (p. 52)

I will put aside the question of whether the Humean is necessarily committed to (H1) and (H2) for the time being. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that she is.  This, Heuer argues, makes the Humean account susceptible to the following counterexample, due to Warren Quinn: 

Imagine that I had a disposition to turn on every radio within my reach, but not because I want to listen to music or news; as Quinn puts it: ‘Indeed, I do not turn them on in order to hear anything’. (p. 51)

The preceding case is supposed to present us with a scenario in which an agent has a desire, but in which the desire fails to justify the actions that would lead to the satisfaction of that desire.  In order to constitute a genuine counterexample to the Humean account, the Humean must be committed to saying that the agent in Quinn’s example does in fact have a desire.  In order to establish that the Humean is so committed, Heuer notes that “most Humeans rely on” a functionalist conception of desire, according to which an agent desires some end just in case she is disposed to perform actions that would lead to achieving that end (p. 51).  Since the agent in Quinn’s example satisfies the right-hand-side of the preceding biconditional, it follows that he has a desire.

One immediate problem with the preceding argument is that Heuer fails to establish that the Humean must be committed to a functionalist (or some relevantly similar) conception of desire.  He only claims that most Humeans “rely” on a functionalist conception. However, it matters little if most (or even all) Humeans rely on a functionalist conception of desire.  What Heuer needs, if he is to establish that the counterexample has force against the Humean, is that the Humean is necessarily committed to a functionalist (or some relevantly similar) conception of desire, given her other theoretical commitments. But, as we shall soon see, the Humean need not be saddled with a functionalist conception of desire.

Perhaps it is Heuer’s recognition of the above point that leads him to stress the Humean’s commitment to (H1).  The idea seems to be this: since the Humean is committed to the claim that anything can be the object of a desire, it follows that she has no basis for denying that the agent in Quinn’s example has a desire to turn on every radio within reach. If this is supposed to be Heuer’s line of argument, then it appears to rest on a mistake.  Specifically, Heuer appears to conflate two very distinct claims: the claim that (i) there is no formal constraint on the content of a desire, and the claim that  (ii) there is no formal constraint on the nature of a desire. While (H1) plausibly entails (i), it does not entail (ii).  That is to say, a Humean need not be committed to saying that every attitude that has the function of disposing an agent to act is a desire (i.e., the functionalist conception of desire). For example, a Humean may consistently subscribe to the following hybrid of a pleasure-based and action-based conception of desire:

Pleasure-Action-Hybrid View (PAH)

S desires P iff S is disposed to take whatever actions S believes necessary to bring about P, and S has this disposition in virtue of the fact that S is disposed to take pleasure in the thought that P and displeasure in the thought that not-P. 

According to PAH, an agent counts as having a desire only in those cases in which she is disposed to perform actions in a specific way; namely, in virtue of being disposed to take pleasure in the thought of the desired outcome obtaining, and displeasure in the thought of the desired outcome failing to obtain. Significantly, this is not a formal constraint on the content of a desire.  It is formal constraint on what constitutes a desire.  Admittedly, it may turn out that, as a matter of fact, a given agent may be disposed to take pleasure or displeasure in the thought of only certain outcome’s obtaining and not others. But his is an empirical and contingent matter. Not a formal one.  It remains true that, in principle, anything may be the object of desire, even if it turns out that some things seldom or never are.  Hence, PAH is perfectly consistent with (H1).

Moreover, PAH allows the Humean to adopt the following more nuanced reply to Quinn’s example.  According to PAH, the agent in Quinn’s example has a desire to turn on every radio within reach only if he is disposed to satisfy the desire in virtue of a disposition to take pleasure in the thought of every radio within reach being on and displeasure in the thought of every radio within reach being off.  But once we substitute PAH for a functionalist conception of desire, Quinn’s purported counterexample seems much less compelling.  If, on the one hand, the agent in Quinn’s example is disposed to take pleasure in thought of the radios being on, it seems less obvious that her desire to do so fails to provide her with some (even if rudimentary) justification.  After all, the fact that she is disposed to take pleasure in the thought of the radios being on does seem to provide her with some (even if rudimentary) justification for acting so as to satisfy her desire.  If, on the other hand, the agent in Quinn’s example is not disposed to take pleasure in the thought of every radio within reach being on (which seems truer to Quinn’s original intention), then the Humean may consistently deny that the agent has a desire.  She may, instead, hold that the agent merely has a pathological urge or some other motivational state distinct from desire. In short, the Humean need not be saddled with the view that all states that dispose an agent to act so as to satisfy them are genuine desires.


Finally, there seems to be a fatal flaw in the overall structure of Heuer's appropriation of Quinn's example as an argument against the Humean account. Recall, Heuer defines the Humean account as the theory of rationality according to which “all practical reasons are based on a person’s given motives, or desires” (p. 43).  The Humean is therefore committed to the claim that having a desire is a necessary condition for having a practical justification. However, the claim that all practical justification is based on desire does not entail that all desires provide practical justification.  The former specifies a necessary condition for practical justification, while the latter specifies a sufficient condition. Hence, the Humean may grant that the desire of the agent described in Quinn’s example fails to provide him with a reason.  However, it does not follow from the fact that some desires fail to provide practical justification that all desires fail to provide practical justification or that all practical justification is not based onn desire. In short, Heuer has not provided us with a valid argument against the claim that all practical justification is based on desires.