Outline of Velleman's "The Guise of the Good"

SYNOPSIS:

Velleman argues that the Guise of the Good theory (henceforth, “GG theory”) errs by either making an evaluative term (henceforth, “the good”) part of the propositional content of the attitude motivating an intentional action (henceforth, “a desire”) or by unpacking the claim that desire aims at the good in terms of desire’s direction of fit. The first strategy fails because it entails that an agent can have a desire only if she possesses the concept of the good, and the second strategy fails because it conflates the constitutive aim of an attitude with its direction of fit.

OUTLINE:

Step 1: Velleman conceives of GG Theory in terms of an attempt to reconcile two seemingly incompatible stories of the origin of human action; namely, the story of motivation and the story of rational guidance. (3-5*)

Argument: According to the story of motivation, an agent acts intentionally when her action is caused by a desire for some outcome and a belief that the action will promote it. According to the story of rational guidance, an agent acts intentionally when the action justifying character of a proposition prompts her action via her grasp of that proposition. Noncognitivism emphasizes the story of motivation at the expense of the story of rational guidance, and cognitivism emphasizes the story of rational guidance at the expense of the story of motivation.

Upshot: Noncognitivists and cognitivists differ in terms of which story of the origin of human action they privilege: motivation and rational guidance, respectively.

Step 2: Velleman claims that the main motivation for rejecting noncognitivism and embracing cognitivism is a desire to preserve the commonsense story of the origin of human action. (5-6)

Argument: In the commonsense story, the agent is moved toward action because his reasons justify it; whereas in the noncognitivist story, her reasons justify her action in virtue of moving her toward it. Consequently, noncognitivism gets things backwards; it does violence to the common sense story.

Upshot:  Those who prefer cogntivism over noncognitivism are motivated by an attempt to preserve the common sense story.

Step 3: Velleman rejects simple cognitivism because it imposes the implausible requirement that an agent possesses the relevant evaluative concept in order to have a desire. (6-8)

Argument: According to simple cognitivism, desire aims at the good in virtue of its propositional content, which includes the evaluative predicate “good”.  This means that an agent could not have a desire unless she possessed the concept of the good.  However, infants have desires long before they have the concept of the good, or any other evaluative concepts.

Upshot: Simple cogntivism fails to offer a plausible account of why desire aims at the good.

Step 4: Velleman considers an alternative to simple cognitivism, dubbed “sophisticated cognitivism”, according to which desire aims at the good in virtue of its direction of fit. (8-9)

Argument: According to the sophisticated cognitivist, cognitive attitudes (like belief) aim at truth because their propositional object is regarded as a factum (something that is the case), while conative attitudes (like desire) aim at the good because their propositional object is regarded as a faciendum (something that is to be made the case). In keeping with this view, a propositional attitude is characterised, not only by the proposition that embodies its content, but also by the attitude's direction of fit (i.e., whether it represents its propositional object as factum or faciendum).

Upshot: According to sophisticated cognitivism, desire aims at the good because of the way the propositional object of a desire is grasped; namely, as faciendum.

Step 5: Velleman impugns sophisticated cognitivism on the grounds that it fails to distinguish between an attitude’s direction of fit and its constitutive aim. (9-15)

Argument: Belief is a cognitive attitude (i.e., has a certain direction of fit) because it depicts the world as being a certain way. In this regard, a belief is like other cognitive attitudes, like imagining and fantasising.  Truth is the constitutive aim of belief because belief depicts the world as being a certain way with the aim of getting things right (i.e., representing truly).  Thus, saying that belief has a certain direction of fit is different from saying that it has a certain constitutive aim.

Upshot: Sophisticated cognitivism errs when it fails to distinguish between saying that a desire has a certain direction of fit (i.e., that it is a conative attitude) and saying that desire aims at the good (i.e., that it has a certain constitutive aim).

Step 6: Velleman argues that since desires do not represent its object as faciendum, the good is not the constitutive aim of desire. (15-21)

Argument: Truth is the constitutive aim of belief because belief represents its propositional object as factum.  This is why it is impossible to believe something under the description of it being false.  If desire represents its propositional object as faciendum, then it should be impossible to desire something under the description of it being bad. However, the possibility of perverse desire shows that desire does not represent its object as faciendum.  This follows from the definition of a perverse desire as desiring something under the description of it being bad or pointless.

Upshot: Since it is possible to desire something under the description of it being bad or pointless the good cannot be the constitutive aim of desire.

CONCLUSION:

Neither simple nor sophisticated cognitivism successfully show that desire aims at the good. As such, the central contention of GG theory remains unestablished.

*Page numbers based on Velleman, D. [1992], “The Guise of the Good”, Nous, 26 (1): 3-26.

The Concept-Deployment Asymmetry Objection

I wish to raise an objection to the Desire-as-Belief Thesis; the claim that the desire to ϕ is equivalent to the belief that ϕ is good. According to this objection, believing that ϕ is good requires that one deploy the concept of the good while desiring to ϕ does not. Call this the concept-deployment asymmetry objection.

My argument for concept-deployment asymmetry runs as follows: We begin by drawing a distinction between apprehending that X is F and apprehending X as F, where X is some state of affairs or proposition and F is an evaluative concept, such as goodness or truth. It is worth noting, at the very outset, that the distinction between apprehending that and apprehending as is a theoretical one; it is not intended to capture the semantic significance of the expressions in ordinary English. The theoretical distinction hinges on the observation that there are two different ways in which an attitude may count as evaluative vis-à-vis goodness or truth. We may gain a firmer handle on this distinction by contrasting what it means to say that the belief that it is good to give to charity is evaluative vis-à-vis the good versus what it means to say that it is evaluative vis-à-vis the truth.

There is a straightforward sense in which the belief that it is good to give to charity is evaluative vis-à-vis the good. I maintain that this sense is tied to the propositional content of the belief. That is to say, the belief that it is good to give to charity is evaluative vis-à-vis the good in virtue of its propositional content. That this is so, is suggested by the fact that if we keep the attitude of belief fixed, but alter its propositional content so that the concept of the good no longer features therein, the attitude of belief no longer counts as evaluative vis-à-vis the good. For example, believing that it is raining outside does not entail an evaluation of its raining outside as good. However, the belief that it is raining outside and the belief that it is good to give to charity are both the same type of attitude—namely, a belief. They only differ in terms of their propositional content. The former has the propositional content, “it is raining outside” and the latter has the propositional content, “it is good to give to charity”. Given that the only difference between the two beliefs has to do with their propositional content, and given that this difference is enough to make the latter, but not the former, evaluative vis-à-vis the good, it follows that whether or not a belief counts as evaluative vis-à-vis the good depends on its propositional content.

Let us now contrast the sense in which the belief that it is good to give to charity is evaluative vis-à-vis the good, with the sense in which it is evaluative vis-à-vis the truth. We begin by noting that believing that it is good to give to charity entails apprehending the proposition, “it is good to give to charity” as being true. Hence, there is a straightforward sense in which the belief that it is good to give to charity is evaluative vis-à-vis the truth. However, and herein lays the rub, if one believes that it is good to give to charity, one's belief counts as evaluative vis-à-vis the truth in virtue of the intrinsic nature of the attitude, regardless of its propositional content. That this is so is suggested by the fact that (1) the belief that it is good to give to charity is evaluative vis-à-vis the truth, even though the concept of truth does not feature as part of the propositional content of the belief and (2) if we keep the attitude of belief fixed, but alter the attitude's propositional content, it remains evaluative vis-à-vis the truth. For example, there is a sense in which both the belief that it is good to give to charity and the belief that the founder of charity X is telling the truth are evaluative vis-à-vis the truth, even though the concept of truth only features as part of the propositional content of the latter. This is the same sense in which all beliefs, regardless of their propositional content, may be said to be evaluative vis-à-vis the truth.

To believe a proposition just is to assess that proposition as true. This suggests that the sense in which the belief that it is good to give to charity is evaluative vis-à-vis the truth has to do with the intrinsic nature of the attitude itself, independent of its particular propositional content. The upshot is that the sense in which the belief that it is good to give to charity is evaluative vis-à-vis the good (a sense that is tied to the propositional content of the belief) and the sense in which the belief that it is good to give to charity is evaluative vis-à-vis the truth (a sense that is tied to the nature of the attitude itself, independent of its propositional content) instantiate two different ways in which an attitude may be evaluative vis-à-vis goodness or truth.

I use the expression apprehending that X is F to pick out the sense in which the belief that giving to charity is good is an evaluation vis-à-vis the good. I use the expression apprehending X as F to pick out the sense in which all beliefs may be said to be evaluations vis-à-vis the truth. One upshot of this way of putting things is that when we say that an attitude is an instance of apprehending that X is F, we are essentially making a claim about its propositional content, and not a claim about attitudes of a particular type. By contrast, when we say that an attitude is an instance of apprehending X as F, we are essentially making a claim about all attitudes of a particular type, regardless of their propositional content. Hence, when we say that believing that it is good to give to charity is an instance of apprehending that X is F (where X is the state of affairs of giving to charity, and F is the evaluative concept of goodness) we are actually making a claim about the propositional content of the belief, rather than a claim about the type of attitude that beliefs are.

By contrast, when we say that believing that it is good to give to charity is an instance of apprehending X as F (where X is the proposition, “it is good to give to charity”, and F is evaluative concept, true) we are actually making a claim about the type of attitude a belief is, rather than a claim about its propositional content. Since GG theory is, at heart, a claim about the type of attitude a desire is, and not simply a claim about the propositional content of a particular desire, I believe GG theory is best understood as the claim that desires involve apprehending X as F (where X refers to that which is desired and F refers to the evaluative concept of the good). In fact, it would do violence to GG theory to construe it as committed to the claim that desires involve apprehending that X is F (where X refers to that which is desired and F refers to the evaluative concept of the good) since this would make GG theory a thesis about desires with a certain propositional content—namely, ones in which the evaluative concept of the good figures—rather than a theory about desires, simpliciter.

With the distinction between apprehending that X is F and apprehending X as F in hand, we may now unpack GG theory—i.e., the claim that desire aims at the good—by saying that desiring to ϕ entails apprehending ϕ as good. On this view, the aim of a propositional attitude is specified by the apprehending as relation rather than the apprehending that relation. This makes sense given that the apprehending that relation varies as we alter the propositional content of an attitude, while the apprehending as relation remains the same as we alter the propositional content of an attitude. Hence, the apprehending as relation is able to capture the intuition that the aim of a propositional attitude remains the same regardless of its propositional content.

Moreover, while the apprehending as relation specifies the aim of a propositional attitude, the apprehending that relation bestows a propositional attitude with a certain evaluative flexibility. For example, it is in virtue of apprehending that X is F (where F is the evaluative concept of the good) that a belief is able to be evaluative vis-à-vis the good. Or, to give another example, consider the belief that apples are delicious. It is in virtue of apprehending that X is F (where F is evaluative concept delicious) that the belief that apples are delicious is able to be evaluative vis-à-vis the delicious. (This point generalises, pari passu, to the belief that Brussels sprouts are disgusting, the belief that roses are beautiful, and so on.) Hence, the apprehending that relation is that which allows the attitude of belief to be evaluative vis-à-vis something other than truth. In short, it gives belief evaluative promiscuity.

This brings us to the final step of our argument in favour of concept-deployment asymmetry. Let us say that an agent deploys some concept, F, when she has attitude Y, just in case F features as part of the propositional content of Y. Believing that ϕ is good requires that one deploy the concept of the good because it entails apprehending that ϕ is good. By contrast, desiring that ϕ does not require that one deploy the concept of the good because it entails apprehending ϕ as good, but does not entail apprehending that ϕ is good. This, I claim, represents a fundamental asymmetry between desiring to ϕ and believing that ϕ is good. Consequently, the Desire-as-Belief Thesis, which holds that the two are equivalent, must be false.

The Normative Aim of Intention/Desire

The main contemporary motivation for the Guise of the Good Theory of Desires--namely, the claim that desires aim at the good (henceforth, GG theory)--comes from Anscombe, who claims that wanting aims at the good in the same sense that judgement aims at truth. Anscombe's claim has lead many GG theorists to draw an analogy between desire and belief. However, I believe that this is mistake. When Anscombe says that wanting aims at the good, she actually has something quite different from our ordinary conception of desires in mind:

'Wanting' may of course be applied to the prick of desire at the thought or sight of an object, even though a man then does nothing towards getting the object. . . . The wanting that interests us, however, is neither wishing nor hoping nor feeling nor desire, and cannot be said to exist in a man who does nothing towards getting what he wants. (Anscombe [2000], Intention. p. 67-68.)

The above passage suggests that Anscombe's notion of wanting is more like an intention than a desire; it entails taking steps towards getting the object wanted. If this is right, then the Anscombean thesis is most aptly interpreted as the claim that intentions aim at the good in the same way that beliefs aim at truth. On this reading, the appropriate analogy is not one between belief and desire, but between belief and intention.

The claim that intentions aim at the good in the same sense that belief aims at the true gives rise to the following question. In what sense does belief aim at the true? We may distinguish between psychological, metaphysical and normative readings of the claim that belief aims at the true. According to psychological reading, beliefs may be said to aim at the true because agents are motivated to form beliefs by a desire for truth. The psychological reading was famously denied by Charles Pierce, who insisted that our motivation for forming beliefs is a desire to alleviate the discomfort caused by doubt. Even if one does not buy into Pierce's positive claim, it seems undeniable that we are often motivated to form beliefs by considerations other than truth. Pride, fear, comfort, and consistency are just a few of the many possible motivations an agent may have for adopting a particular belief. Consequently, the claim that truth is the psychological aim of belief seems implausible.

According to the metaphysical reading, truth is what makes belief the kind of psychological state it is. On this view, if the proposition that constitutes the intentional object of a putative belief turns out to be false, then the attitude in question is not a belief. It should be immediately clear that when we say belief aims at the true, we do not mean that truth is the metaphysical aim of belief; to wit, that a belief only counts as such if the proposition believed is true. Such a view would have the implausible consequence that there are no false beliefs. Moreover, it threatens to collapse the distinction between belief and knowledge, since the latter does seem to have truth as its metaphysical aim; to wit, knowing that p counts as such only if p is true. Consequently, the claim that truth is metaphysical aim of belief also seems implausible.

I believe that the claim that belief aims after truth is best understood in normative terms. According to the normative reading, the belief that p is in some sense incorrect if p is false. Unlike the metaphysical reading, the normative reading does not entail that a belief only counts as such if the believed proposition is true. Thus, the normative reading makes room for the possibility of false beliefs. Moreover, unlike the psychological reading, the normative reading does not entail that we are always motivated to form beliefs by a desire for truth. Consequently, the claim that truth is normative aim of belief is more plausible, and does a better job of capturing what we mean when we say that belief aims after truth, than the psychological and metaphysical readings. Given the normative reading of the claim that belief aims at the true, the claim that intentions aim at the good in the same sense that belief aims at the true entails that the intention to φ is incorrect if φ is not good.

Having said what it means to say that intentions aim at the good, we may now ask why intentions may be said to aim at the good in aforementioned sense. One proposal is to say that the good is the normative aim of intention because an intention to φ is justified if and only if φ is good. However, this is not plausible. First, the intention of φ may be justified if the agent has a justified, but false, belief that φ is good. For example, suppose Mary has the justified belief that it would be good to give to a charity X, when in fact the charity X is a scam and it would in fact not be good to give to X. Quite plausibly, it may still be justified for Mary to adopt the intention to give to charity X, given her justified belief that it would be good to do so. Second, the intention to φ is not justified if the agent has the justified, but false, belief that φ is not good. For example, suppose Bob has the justified belief that allowing his company to dump industrial waste in a river would harm the environment, when in fact the waste in question may actually be beneficial to the environment. Quite plausibly, it may be unjustified for Bob to adopt the intention to allow his company to dump the industrial waste, given his justified belief that doing so would be harmful.

An alternative proposal, the one I wish to endorse, is to say that intentions have the normative aim of the good because intending to φ entails being committed to the goodness of φ. On this view, the claim that a psychological state or speech-act has a particular normative aim is not a claim about when an agent is justified in adopting that psychological state or engaging in that speech-act. Rather, it is a claim about the types of normative commitments an agent takes upon herself by adopting a particular attitude, and the type of rational criticism said commitment entails. Thus, if an agent adopts an intention to φ, and subsequently learns that φ is not good, then that agent is normatively committed to giving up the intention to φ and is rationally criticisable if she fails to do so. In this regard, the normative aim of intention is perfectly analogous to normative aim of belief. Truth is the normative aim of belief because believing that p entails being committed to truth of p. If an agent adopts the belief that p, and subsequently learns that p is not true, then that agent is normatively committed to giving up her belief that p and is rationally criticisable if she fails to do so.

The preceding discussion offers us an analysis of what it means for intentions to aim at the good. But what can we say about the relationship between desires and the good? In answering this question, I exploit an analogy between desire and perceptual experience. To this end, we may say that desires aim at the good in the same sense that perceptual experience aims at the true. However, it is not plausible that perceptual experiences aim at the true in the same way that belief aims at the true. Recall, we unpacked the claim that belief aims at the true in terms of the claim that believing that p entails that one is committed to the truth of p. However, perceiving that p does not entail that one is committed to the truth of p. Moreover, if one perceives that p, one is not in a position to alter one’s perceptual experience if it turns out that p is false. Thus, it would not do to say that perceptual experiences aim at the true in the same sense that belief does.

Instead, I propose that we see perceptual experiences as aiming at the true in a derivative sense. To wit, we may say that a perceptual experience is correct just in case it would yield a correct belief if it were assented to. Given that the belief that p is correct only if p is true, it follows that a perceptual experience that p is correct (in a derivative sense) only if p is true. Analogously, desires may be said to aim at the good in a derivative sense. To wit, we may say that a desire is correct (in a derivative sense) just in case it would yield a correct intention if it were assented to. Since the intention to φ is correct just in case φ is good, it follows that the desire to φ is correct (in a derivative sense) just in case φ is good.

The "Guise of the Good" Theory of Desires

I wish to outline what may be called the Animal Objection to the "guise of the good" theory of desires. In his paper, “The Judgement of a Weak Will”, Sergio Tenenbaum describes what (following Kant) he refers to as the “old formula of the schools”:

We desire only what we conceive to be good; we avoid only what we conceive to be bad.

I wish to focus on the first part of the formula; the claim that desiring φ involves conceiving of φ as good. One motivation for this account of desires is that it preserves the idea that there is a conceptual connection between evaluation and motivation. I will refer to any theory of desire that posits such a connection as a “guise of the good” theory of desires. In their most unqualified form, such accounts involve something like the following necessary condition for desiring φ:

(D1): For all agents, φ, if an agent desires φ then that agent believes that φ is good.

However, I find (D1) problematic since it seems incompatible with the widespread practice of attributing desires to nonlinguistic animals.

One may take (D1) to be inconsistent with the claim that nonlinguistic animals have desires; either because one holds that nonlinguistic animals cannot have beliefs simpliciter, or because one holds that they are incapable of having beliefs with the required content. The word ‘belief’ is a term of art. There are philosophical usages of the word according to which only animals with conceptual and linguistic abilities are capable of having beliefs. Whatever the merits of such usages, they are not the usage that features in pieces of instrumental reasoning.

In order to reason instrumentally, an agent must be able to engage in a nonlinear decoupling and recombination of means and ends. This means they must be able to recognise that X may be both a means and an end, that X and Y may be means to the same end, and that X may be a means to two different ends. This means/end decoupling and recombination is engaged in by many nonlinguistic animals, including all mammals. In order to decouple and recombine ends and means in this way, an agent must be capable of assenting to a proposition of the form, “X is a means to Y”. Moreover, I define belief just as assent to a proposition. It follows that insofar as a non-linguistic animal is capable of means/end decoupling and recombination, it must have beliefs.

I will refer to nonlinguistic animals that have beliefs (in the above sense) as proto-rational agents. Even if we grant that nonlinguistic animals may have beliefs, there are clearly certain kinds of beliefs that (due to their content) only rational agents—animals with conceptual and linguistic abilities—can have. I will refer to such beliefs as judgements. This presents the possibility of the following necessary condition for desires:

(D2): For all agents, φ, if an agent desires φ then that agent judges that φ is good.

(D2) clearly precludes the possibility that proto-rational agents may have desires. Insofar as we take a “guise of the good” theory of desires to involve judgements, then such an account cannot be reconciled with the intuition that proto-rational agents may have desires. However, if we take the type of belief implicated in (D1) to be of the sort that proto-rational agents can have—i.e., the kind which stands in contrast to judgements—then there is no reason why the necessary condition for having a belief simplicter should preclude proto-rational agents having desires.

Nevertheless, there remains the problem of whether or not proto-rational agents can have beliefs with the content in question—i.e., that having to do with the goodness of some φ. Since proto-rational agents lack the capacity to entertain the concept of the good, the belief implicated in (D1) is not the sort that a proto-rational agent can have. Due to its content, the belief implicated in (D1) is one that falls under the umbrella of what I have been calling judgements. Consequently, (D1) simply collapses into (D2). Thus, (D1) fails to preserve the intuition that proto-rational agents are capable of having desires.

I believe that (D1) and (D2) both fail because they conceive of desires in terms of agential level evaluations on the good. This requires that the agent have a criterion for the good, which in turn requires that the agent have a concept of the good. Since proto-rational agents lack concepts, they cannot have desires so conceived.

Why Questions and Rational Agents

In this post I continue to limn a novel theory of action. I hold that an intentional agent counts as a rational agent if and only if that agent is responsive to should-questions. Examples of should questions include: “Should Sue have a third glass of wine?”, “Should I believe in God?” and “Should I desire revenge?” To ask if Sue should have a third glass of wine is to ask if having a third glass of wine is good. This gives rise to the following question. If having a desire already involves an appearance of the good (as I have claimed), then does not Sue’s desire for a third glass of wine already entail an affirmative answer to the question “is having a third glass of wine good?” I hold that in the case of animals that are unable to deliberate and thereby arrive at judgements about what is good this is in fact the case. However, agents with the capacity for rational deliberation may arrive at judgements about the good that are at odds with their desires. In such agents what appears to be good a la desire may be different from what is judged to be good.

What is judged to be good reflects the perspective of the agent. What appears to be good a la desire reflects the perspective of some subsystem of the agent. On this score, the analogy with theoretical reasoning is rather straightforward. For example, we may say that from the perspective of the visual subsystem it is true that a partially submerged stick is bent. Even so, from an agent-level perspective, it may be false that the partially submerged stick is bent. Thus, both theoretical and practical cognitions exhibit two distinct levels of evaluation—namely, sub-agential evaluations and agent-level evaluations. The sub-agential evaluations in theoretical and practical reasoning are (perceptual) appearances and desires respectively:

(T2): Appearances are sub-agential perspectives on the true

(P2): Desires are sub-agential perspectives on the good

The agent-level evaluations in theoretical and practical cognitions are theoretical and practical judgements respectively:

(T3): Theoretical judgements are agent-level perspectives on the true

(P3): Practical judgements are agent-level perspectives on the good

Sub-agential evaluations, (T1) and (P1), may be had by both rational and proto-rational animals alike. However, in the case of proto-rational animals, an appearance of the good a la desire, leads to intentional action without agent-level evaluations. For such agents, there is only one level of evaluation—namely, the sub-agential. However, for rational animals there are two levels of evaluation: the sub-agential (as represented by desires) and the agent-level (as represented by practical judgements).

Rational deliberation is the process by which competing sub-agential evaluations are weighed against each other in order to arrive at a unified agent-level evaluation of the true/good. The motivation for rational deliberation comes from a desire, inherent in all rational agents as such, for a unified perspective on the true/good. In cases in which all the relevant sub-agential systems agree on what is true/good (which may very well be the majority of cases) a unified agent-level perspective is easy to come by. In such cases, the need for deliberation is minimal and there may be very little difference in the cognitive activity of a rational and proto-rational animal. However, in cases in which two (or more) sub-agential evaluations are at odds with each other, a unified agent-level evaluation can only be arrived at by endorsing one and rejecting the other. In such cases, the advantages of having a capacity for rational deliberation become most apparent.

In cases in which a proto-rational animal experiences two competing sub-agential evaluations, which ever exerts the greater volitional force ultimately determines what the animal believes (in the case of appearances) or which action is performed (in the case of desires). For such animals there is no agent-level evaluation or all-things-considered judgement about what should be believed or done. For such animals, should-questions are simply not applicable. This imposes a significant limitation on the ability of proto-rational animals to achieve right belief or action. Which of the two competing sub-agential evaluation happens to exert the greater motivational force may not be the one that actually gets things right. Consider the partially submerged stick example. Suppose that while it appears true that the stick is bent, from the perspective of the visual sub-system, it also appears true that the stick is straight from the perspective of the tactile sub-system. We can imagine a proto-rational animal for which the deliverances of the visual system exerts greater motivational force vis-à-vis its beliefs than the tactile system. Such an animal would form the belief that the partially submerged stick is bent when it is in fact straight.

Contrast this with rational agents that have the capacity for agent-level evaluations. Confronted with competing appearances (each relative to a particular perspective), the rational agent can only arrive at a unified agent-level assessment by endorsing one of the sub-agential evaluations and rejecting the other. It decides which of the sub-agential evaluations to endorse based on which best coheres with its beliefs, values and commitments. For example, we can suppose that the rational agent has observed the stick being submerged and removed from the water and that it also has the belief that sticks are not the kind of things that can bend and straighten themselves out at will. Moreover, it may also believe that optical illusions are far more common than tactile illusions. When the deliverances of the visual and tactile subsystems are considered in the light of these beliefs, the rational agent may be led to see the tactile subsystem as a more reliable guide to the true, in the particular case. This may then prompt the rational agent to judge that the partially submerged stick is actually straight. I will refer to beliefs that are the product of rational deliberation as judgements. Judgements represent a special subset of beliefs that only animals with the capacity for rational deliberation can have. Judgements have a greater chance of getting things right than beliefs that are not judgements since they are not simply the product of what sub-agential evaluation happens to be stronger.

The upshot of a capacity for judgements is that an animal is more versatile in forming true beliefs in novel circumstances. What appears to be true/good is simply a product of the type of subsystems we have, given our evolutionary history. The fact that it appears to be true that a partially submerged stick is bent is simply an upshot of the type of visual system we happen to have. If instead of light waves, which are subject to refraction, our visual system actually detected delta-waves, which are not subject to refraction, then our visual systems would not tell us that partially submerged sticks are bent. Likewise, the fact that I may desire sweets (perhaps contrary to my better judgement) is also primarily the product of my evolutionary history.

Given how natural selection works, our subsystems offer the types of evaluations that they do because they tended to get things right in the environment of our biological ancestors. However, when we are confronted with unfamiliar circumstances (ones that our ancestors may not have frequently encountered) there is a greater chance that one or more of our subsystems would get things wrong. Rational deliberation serves as a corrective against the fallibility of our subsystems which (though open to modification via training) cannot be adapted at the rate that our agent-level evaluations can. In brief, agent-level evaluations increase our chances of getting things right in novel circumstances since they may serve as a corrective against the errors of our less plastic sub-agential evaluations. This gives rational animals a clear advantage over proto-rational animals in arriving at true beliefs and good actions.