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58
DISCUSSIONS
EVANS OFF TARGET
BY F. C. T. MOORE
In his recent paper "Aristotle on Relativism", PQ 24 (1974), 193-203,
Mr J. D. G. Evans reminds us of the Aristotelian puzzle (Nicomachean
Ethics r 4) about whether the object of wishing (of Pou'5X)lS, the faculty
concerned with the ultimate grounds for action) is the good (in which case
a person who chooses wrongly does not wish what he wishes), or what
appears good to each person (in which case, on Evans's account of Aristotle,
there would be no way of evaluating different wishes). Aristotle's solution
is that in the case of the good man the object of his wish (that which appears
good to him) is the same as the unqualified object of wish (that which is
good), whereas in other cases these two do not coincide.
Evans illustrates his comments on Aristotle's solution by the analogy of
shooting at targets. To avoid the paradoxes by which unsuccessful shooting
would be proved not to be shooting at all (since all shooting is necessarily
directed at the target), and all shooting would be proved successful (since
all shooting is necessarily directed at its target), Evans claims that we should
distinguish for any shot its target (the "qualified target") from the target
(the "unqualified target"): only in some cases (namely, cases of successful
shooting) do these coincide. But this treatment of unsuccessful shooting is
not only implausible, as Evans concedes (p. 201): it is absurd. For an unsuccessful shot is precisely not one which hits a target (even a "qualified
target").
The distinction between qualified and unqualified targets is not itself
absurd: it is the distinction between what a person is aiming at, and what
what he takes to be the target, and what really
he is to aim at-between
is the target. But it is entirely separate from the distinction between successful and unsuccessful shots: a successful shot is one that hits the (qualified
or unqualified) target, and an unsuccessful shot is one that does not. Mistaking the target does not make a man a worse shot, and if he hits what he aims
at, he is not unsuccessful in shooting, but unsuccessful in identifying the
target.
In the case of wishing (the Aristotelian pou6X6]7l), the parallels would
be as follows: the unqualified target would correspond to the unqualified
good (that which is determined as good in some way independently of a
particular wisher), and the qualified target to the qualified good (that which
is determined as good simply by being the object of a particular man's wish)
-while wishes would be "successful" and "unsuccessful" according as the
man attained the good or not, or attained his object or not.
Evans assimilates the (plausible) claim that there is a distinction between successful and unsuccessful wishing which should be preserved by
any account of wishing, to the question-begging claim that there is an
independent criterion by which a person's ultimate goals (the objects of his
wishing) could be judged correct or incorrect (and by which he could there-
EVANS
OFF TARGET
59