The High Road

In this chapter, I begin to show how the inner animal view meets the constraints I laid out. What is the relation between your instinctive part and your deciding part? It cannot be that of rider to horse, because that would be an internalized brute force view. I argue further that it cannot be that of ruler to citizenry, as in Korsgaard’s constitution model of the soul, because that makes the difference between inclination and will too shallow. Instead of looking for familiar analogies, I claim, we should accept that this relation is sui generis, while still articulating a conception that meets the three constraints. Here I focus on non-voluntariness and deliberative role. I explain why it is challenging to meet these constraints jointly. I then show how the inner animal view can be developed so as to meet both. Your inclinations are non-voluntary because they are guided by your instinctive mind, which is different from your deciding mind. They can nevertheless play a deliberative role, because you can take your inner animal’s thinking as raw material and “incorporate” it into a maxim that you can regard as worthy of your choice.