Reason, Value and Desire

Extract

The general subject of Professor Bond's book, Reason and Value, is, as the title implies, the relation between reason and value, or more precisely the connections between concepts of motivation and value, with reasons as the contested notion in between. Bond offers a thesis that at least appears to go very much against the current trend on these matters. Whereas most recent theorists of note have tied justificatory reasons as well as explanatory reasons to desire, thus holding, in effect, that values are somehow a function of desire, Bond wishes to cut the link between value and desire altogether. The first three chapters are devoted to developing this argument, mainly negatively. He distinguishes between “motivating” and “grounding” (or “justifying”) reasons in the customary way (e.g., Baier distinguishes “explanatory” from “justificatory” reasons to much the same effect'), and argues that “whereas desire or wanting and the reasons tied to it belong to the theory of motivation, where they are central, reason, in the sense of the reason(s) that a person has for or against doing a thing, is tied essentially to value, and the two are not to be confused” (9). “… The existence of grounding reasons (though not of motivating reasons) has no internal or necessary connection with desires of any kind” (37). “… All value is necessarily objective, in the sense that it is never a function of desire (or will); nothing is ever valuable or desirable in virtue of being desired” (84). “Value is not to any extent whatever a function or product of desire” (155).