Slote, Michael - The Tanner Lectures on Human Values

64 <strong>The</strong> <strong>Tanner</strong> <strong>Lectures</strong> on Human Values
of satisficing involved is not (merely) the kind familiar in the
economics literature where an individual seeks something other
than optimum results, but a kind of satisficing that actually rejects
the available better for the available good enough. Although the
individual with the wish would be better off if he wished for
more, he asks for less (we may suppose that if the wish grantor
prods him by asking “Are you sure you wouldn’t like more money
than that?” he sticks with his original request). And if we have
any sympathy with the idea of moderation, of modesty, in one’s
desires, we shall have to grant that the satisficing individual who
wishes, e.g., for less money is not irrational. Perhaps we ourselves
would not be so easily satisfied in his circumstances, but that
needn’t make us think him irrational for being moderate in a way,
or to a degree, that we are not. 5
But at this point some doubt may remain about our description
of the moderate individual’s response to being granted a
wish. It is not obvious that an individual who wishes for less than
the most money (or comfort or well-being) he could ask for is
satisficing in the strong sense defended earlier. He may make the
seemingly modest wish he does because he is afraid of offending
the wish grantor or in order to avoid being corrupted (or rendered
blasé) by having too much wealth, and thus motivated, he will
not exemplify the sort of satisficing moderation whose nonirrationality
I have tried to defend: he will be seeking what is best
for himself under a refined conception of personal good that goes
beyond mere wealth or material comfort. 6
With this I can absolutely agree. An individual who asks for
less than she could may indeed be motivated by factors of the
5
In fact, it is hard to see how any specific monetary wish can be optimizing
if the individual is unsure about his own marginal utility curve for the use of
money. To that extent, we are neressnrily satisficers in situations where we can wish
for whatever we want, unless, perhaps, we are allowed to wish for our own greatest
future well-being in those very terms. If satisficing were irrational, would that mean
that anything other than such an explicitly optimizing wish would be irrational?
6
Some of these points are made by Philip Pettit in reply to an earlier paper of
mine, See his contribution to the symposium “Satisficing Consequentialism,” Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society (supplementary volume, 1984), p. 175.