The Modal Conception of Ideal Rational Agents: Objectively Ideal Not Merely Subjectively Ideal, Advisors Not Exemplars, Agentially Concerned Not Agentially Indifferent, Social Not Solitary, Self-and-Other-Regarding Not Wholly Self-Regarding

Abstract

Ideal rational agents are ethically ideal. Both Aristotle and Kant unsuccessfully argued for this proposition. Michael Smith argues for this claim by closely examining the requirements for an agent to be ideal. Ideal agents would be objectively ideal in that they would robustly possess and exercise maximal capacities for knowledge-acquisition and desire-satisfaction. They must additionally be agentially concerned as follows. They must have a generally dominant desire not to interfere with the exercise of their knowledge acquisition capacities both in the present and in the future, have a generally dominant desire not to interfere with the exercise of their desire-satisfaction capacities in the future, and have a generally dominant desire to do what they can to help ensure that they develop and maintain these capacities. An ideal agent in a world with other ideal agents has a generally dominant constitutive desire not to interfere with the exercise of anyone's knowledge acquisition capacities, a desire not to interfere with anyone's exercise of their desire-satisfaction capacities, in present and future. And ideal agents must have a generally dominant constitutive desire to do what they can to help ensure that everyone develops and maintains these capacities. These properties make ideal rational agents ethically ideal.