Soc Choice Welfare (2005) 24: 343361

DOI: 10.1007/s00355-003-0309-8

When is a goal rational?

Karin Edvardsson, Sven Ove Hansson
Department of Philosophy and the History of Technology, Royal Institute of
Technology, Teknikringen 78B, 100 44, Stockholm, Sweden
(e-mail: {ked; soh}@infra.kth.se)

Received: 9 July 2003/Accepted: 10 November 2003

Abstract. In decision theory goals are usually taken as given inputs to the
analysis, and the focus is on nding the most ecient means to achieve the
goals. But where goals are set with the purpose of achieving them, it is
important to know what properties they should possess in order to be successful (or achievement-inducing). Four such properties (or rationality criteria) are discussed, namely that goals should be precise, evaluable,
approachable and motivating. Precision and evaluability are epistemic
properties that concern what the agent may know. Approachability is an
ability-related property that concerns what the agent can do. Motivity is a
volitional property that concerns what the agent wants to do. Goals may
satisfy the rationality criteria to a greater or lesser extent. Some goals are
achievement-inducing mainly because they guide action towards the end-state
well, others mainly because they motivate the agent to act towards the realization of the end-state.

1 Introduction
Setting goals, both nal goals and interim targets, plays an important part in
many decision processes. However, although decision theory encompasses a
vast literature on eciency and optimization in relation to given goals, not
much has been written by decision theorists on goal-setting. A possible reason
for this may be that, as John Searle has pointed out, our intellectual culture has a
quite specic tradition of discussing rationality in terms of means and ends.1

Searle (2001), p. 5.

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This tradition may have its roots in a statement by Aristotle that deliberation is
always about means and never about ends. 2 Modied versions of this statement
have been put forward by several writers in our own time. Hence, Herbert
Simon writes that reason is wholly instrumental. It cannot tell us where to go;
at best it can tell us how to get there. It is a gun for hire that can be employed in
the service of whatever goals we have, good or bad.3 Bertrand Russell states
that reason has a perfectly clear and precise meaning. It signies the choice of
the right means to an end that you wish to achieve. It has nothing whatever to do
with the choice of ends.4 Similarly, Maurice Allais writes that it cannot be too
strongly emphasized that there are no criteria for the rationality of ends as such
other than the condition of consistency. Ends are completely arbitrary. To
prefer highly dispersed random outcomes may seem irrational to the prudent,
but for somebody with this penchant, there is nothing irrational about it. This
area is like that of tastes: they are what they are, and dier from one person to
the next.5 In decision theory goals are usually taken as given inputs to the
analysis, and the focus is instead on what means are most ecient in achieving
the goals. It is also very often assumed that the goals, or ends, in question are
fairly well-determined, and that it is not the task of decision theory to dwell
upon the contents of these goals.6
Nevertheless, as the quote from Allais shows, there is still room to
deliberate about the non-substantial, or structural, properties of ends.
Allais himself, however, nds only one such property, namely consistency.
Till now, most discussions on the non-substantial properties of ends
have taken place in management theory. Despite having emerged in the
private business eld, the idea of management by objectives (MBO) is
today embodied in many public sector areas, such as education, health and
environmental policies.7 A crucial part of MBO concerns goal-setting, and
some writers have purported to trace down the non-substantial properties
that characterize private and public management goals. These accounts
include requirements that goals should be clear, concise and unambiguous,

Nicomachean Ethics 1112b 1112. Note however that it has been pointed out that
this standard attribution may be a misunderstanding of Aristotle, and that the passage
should not be taken simply as an instance of ordinary means-ends reasoning, see for
instance Annas (1993), p. 88 and Richardson (1997), p. 58.
3
Simon (1983), pp. 78.
4
Russell (1954), p. 8.
5
Allais (1979 [1952]), p. 70.
6
Deliberation on the substantial content of goals is often taken to be the task of moral
philosophy. The traditional division of labour between decision theory and moral
philosophy is questioned in Hansson (2001).
7
The term management by objectives was introduced by Peter Drucker in 1954. It
usually denotes goal-setting applied to the macro (organizational) level. See Drucker
(1954), p. 62 .

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345

within the competence of man, challenging, measurable, evaluable, integrative, complex, dynamic, transdisciplinary, applicable, participatory and
understandable.8 A set of conditions that is often put forward in management literature is summarized in the acronym SMART.9 According to
the SMART conditions, goals should be (S)pecic, (M)easurable,
(A)chievable or sometimes (A)ccepted, (R)ealistic and (T)ime-bound.
In our view, it emerges from management literature that, in addition to the
requirement of consistency which Allais mentions, there is a wide range of
non-substantial properties of goals that should be taken into account in an
analysis of rational goal-setting. However, no systematic philosophical account of these properties and their relations seems to have been made.
Properties are often suggested without or with only a marginal discussion on
the function of goals and the reason behind goal-setting. In this paper, an
outline of such an account will be proposed.
Before presenting our analysis of rational goals we introduce some preliminary remarks about the starting-points and delimitations of our analysis
in Sect. 2. In Sect. 3 we discuss what goals are for and introduce the central
term achievement-inducing. Based on the ndings of section 3 we then
introduce four rationality criteria for goals in Sect. 4. In Sects. 57 we specify
what we mean by each of these criteria and why they can be used as rationality criteria for goals. The relationships that hold between the criteria are
discussed in Sect. 8. In Sect. 9 we give our conclusions.

2 Some preliminary remarks

Annas goal is to become a professional football player, The goal of
the villagers is to remove this log before lunchtime, The goal of the
government is to reduce unemployment by 2.3% before the end of this
year. Clearly, goals can be set by dierent agents and for various reasons.
Common to most cases of goal-setting is that the goal is set because the
very setting of it furthers the desired end-state to which the goal refers.
Hence, in typical cases a goal is set with the purpose of achieving or at
least approaching it. This is the form of goal-setting that we will be
concerned with here, and we will refer to it with the term achievementinducing. Admittedly, there are also cases when someone sets a goal
without intending or wanting it to be achieved or approached. A supervisor may set an unrealistic goal for a subordinate in order to make her
fail, and a government may set unrealistic goals solely in order to impress

Odiorne (1969), p. 25, Carroll and Tosi (1973), p. 72, Raia (1974), p. 25, Pihlgren and
Svensson (1989), p. 42, Slocombe (1998), p. 484. See also Rombach (1991), pp. 4750
and Ehn and Sundstrom (1997), pp. 136143.
9
See for instance van Herten and Gunning-Schepers (2000), pp. 89 and Ds 2000:63,
p. 54.

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on its neighbouring countries.10 Such untypical cases, in which goals are

used as means for other ends, will not be treated in this paper.
When we claim to propose criteria for rational goal-setting this is
admittedly a somewhat misleading terminology. Goal-setting has both a
procedural and an end-state aspect. The procedural aspect concerns the
process through which the goal is arrived at, and the end-state aspect the
outcome of that process, namely the goal itself. In this paper we focus on the
goal itself. By a rational goal we mean, literally, a goal that is rational, not
one that was arrived at through a rational process. Hence, we do not purport
to say anything about the actual process of setting the goal, for instance
whether the goal was set according to the rules of an identied authority
system or whether the arguments used in the process were rational.11
Since our analysis is based on the assumption that goals are set in order to
achieve or approach them, it could rightly be asked if we are treating goals as
instrumental. The answer to this question will depend on exactly how the
notion of instrumentality is dened. When something is called instrumental
this usually means that it is employed as a means to achieving something else,
not as a means to achieving itself. Therefore, our analysis of goals does not
treat them as instrumental in the standard sense. It would not be wrong,
however, to describe the studied property as one of auto-instrumentality, a
special type of instrumentality that is not covered in most discussions of
instrumentality or means-ends relationships.12
Goals seldom come alone. In most social situations we operate with several goals, some of which may be included in structured systems of goals.
Some of the most important issues in goal-setting arise only in multiple-goal
situations. Goals may conict with each other, or be mutually supportive.
They can be ordered in terms of priority, and some goals may be subsidiary to
others. In our view, however, the more basic issues that arise already when
only one single goal is under consideration need to be treated before those
that arise in systems containing several goals. Therefore, the present paper is
devoted to single-goal issues, and multiple-goal issues are deferred to a later
occasion.

10
A goal can of course also be set not with the purpose of achieving it but to achieve
some similar but less demanding goal. A government may for instance set the goal
reduce unemployment to 1% within two years while the true goal is to reduce
unemployment to 3% in that period. In our view, such goals are part of goal systems
and will be dealt with at a later occasion for reasons indicated below.
11
Another procedural aspect of goal-setting that we do not deal with here is whether a
self-set goal is likely to be more achievement-inducing than a goal set by an external
agent. There is however some empirical evidence in favour of such a claim. See for
instance Carroll and Tosi (1973) pp. 78.
12
Strictly speaking, auto-instrumentality is not self-referential. The word goal can
denote either (a) the objective to achieve a specic state of aairs (S) or (b) S itself.
Auto-instrumentality means that the goal in sense (a) is instrumental to the goal in
sense (b). Neither the goal in sense (a) nor the goal in sense (b) is instrumental to itself.

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347

3 Achievement-inducing goals
As indicated above, our starting-point is simple enough. We assume that
goals are set with a purpose to achieve them, at least to some degree. By a
rational goal we mean a goal that it is rational to set with the purpose of
achieving it. Hence, in this paper rationality will be closely tied to the notion
of functionality. A rational goal is a goal that performs its achievementinducing function well. In the light of this, our analysis of rational goalsetting will take the form of an investigation into what criteria a goal should
satisfy in order to be achievement-inducing.
For a goal to be achievement-inducing it must both guide and motivate us
to act in ways that further the desired end-state to which the goal refers. A
goal is action-guiding when it directs and coordinates action, over time and
between agents, towards the desired end-state. This action-guiding function is
perhaps most evident when a group of agents sets a goal, or when an agent
sets a common goal for one or several other agents. In these situations the
goal, which is known among the agents, is achievement-inducing because it
coordinates actions temporally and between the agents.13 For instance, assume that in a country with a multi-party system where elections are made on
the basis of proportional representation a group of voters who traditionally
vote for the Social Democratic Party have as their aim to produce an altogether socialist government in the majority position. This can either be done
when the Social Democratic Party obtains more than half the number of
votes, or when the Social Democratic Party together with the Left Party
obtains more than half the number of votes. Since the former alternative
seems improbable, some of the voters in the group might consider it advantageous to vote for the Left Party just to assure that an altogether socialist
government in the majority position can be formed. On the basis of the goal
the voters can coordinate their voting informally so as to produce the desired
outcome.14
In some situations the goal is also action-guiding because it makes the
behaviour of every single agent somewhat predictable to the others, at least in

13
See Bratman (1987), p. 28 . for a similar discussion on plans and planning.
According to Bratman, by making plans we (1) avoid the need for deliberation at the
time of action, and (2) coordinate our activities over time and between us in ways
compatible with our limited capacities to deliberate and process information.
Temporal and social coordination of action facilitates the achievement of complex
personal and social goals that we would not otherwise be able to achieve without
inordinate cost.
14
The same would apply in rst-past-the-post electoral systems such as the British,
where MPs are elected through single member constituencies. In such a constituency
the goal of some minority of Liberal Democrat voters may be to produce a nonconservative government. Instead of wasting their vote on their own candidate and
risking that a conservative MP will be elected, they may choose to vote for the stronger
Labour Party candidate just to facilitate the formation of a non-conservative
government.

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the sense that it disqualies some actions. The goal is a ltering device. It
orients the agent towards goal-relevant activities and away from goal-irrelevant ones.15 In a situation where the publicly stated goal of A, B, C, and D is
to jointly travel from London to Bath before 10 PM tonight, As actions
become predictable to B, C, and D, at least in the sense that there is a
multitude of actions that B, C, and D can reasonably expect A not to perform, such as taking a ight to Japan. Because B, C, and D can rely on As
behaviour to some extent, they can themselves perform actions whose outcome is dependent on As specic behaviour.16
A possible objection against this reasoning is that goals can have at most a
subordinate role in guiding and coordinating actions, something which is
instead primarily done with another type of intentional objects, namely plans.
If this objection is correct, then our mode of analyzing goal-setting is on
shaky grounds. Therefore, before proceeding with our analysis we need to
have a clear picture of the relation between goals and plans.
The dierence between a goal and a plan is in principle simple. Whereas a
goal species an end-state to be achieved, a plan species a sequence of
actions to be taken. Admittedly, there are intermediate, or mixed, forms
between goals and plans. Goals are often supplemented by action plans, and
plans typically include goals. Hence, Kaufmann denes a plan as a set of
goals and rules that denes the expected contribution of each actor to a chain
of actions in order to reach a desired outcome.17 On the other hand, a
system of goals that contains a series of time-xed subgoals may be dicult to
distinguish from a plan. However, the existence of such intermediate or mixed
forms does not invalidate the distinction between goals and plans. The distinction is clear although its application in individual cases may cause
problems.
A major reason why goals need not be inferior to plans in terms of guiding
and coordinating action, is that they are often better equipped to mobilize the
creative capacities of agents. This is indeed one of the major arguments in
favour of management by objectives.18 A plan prescribes a certain sequence
of actions and usually does not leave much scope for creativity and improvisation. A goal, on the other hand, typically states a desired end-state and
leaves it to the agent to determine the appropriate actions to be taken in order

15

For instance, experiments show that individuals who are given a list of words will
recall them better when told that the goal is to memorize them, than if they are told
that the goal is to nd typographical errors. See Locke and Latham (1990), p. 92.
16
Nozick (1993), pp. 912 has a similar discussion on the ltering function of
principles.
17
Kaufmann (1986), p. 218.
18
Pihlgren and Svensson (1989), p. 17. Very often complex planning systems are
deemed to be insuciently exible for the demands of modern society. MBO is
understood as not only increasing goal realization through improved means-exibility,
but also decreasing the amount of time and money spent on administrating complex
planning systems.

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349

to realize that end-state. As a consequence, new and more ecient ways to

achieve the goal can be discovered, tested and adopted. Therefore, in many
cases goals can guide and coordinate actions more eciently than plans.
Although action-guidance and action-coordination are essential parts of
the achievement-inducing function of goals, they are not all that is needed to
induce achievement of a goal. In order for the agents to achieve the desired
end-state it is not sucient that they know how to reach it. They must also be
motivated to perform the actions necessary to reach it. Therefore, a goal can
be achievement-inducing in virtue not only of its action-guiding but also of its
action-motivating capacity. In many social situations the action-motivating
function of a goal is the major reason for setting it. When a political leader
tells her party that our goal is to have 20% of the votes in next years
election, this is not done in order to improve their knowledge about how to
win new voters, but rather to increase their enthusiasm and thereby intensify
the eort.
Whereas the action-guiding capability of a goal is a matter of rationality
according to most accounts of rationality, it can be argued that its actionmotivating capability is a more emotive issue that cannot be subsumed under
the heading of rationality. In our view, this argument unnecessarily restricts
the scope of rationality considerations. Readers who prefer a more restricted
usage of the word may prefer to use the terms functional and functionality when we talk about rational and rationality.

4 Setting rational goals

We can now turn to our main task, namely that of specifying rationality
criteria for goals. This will be done in accordance with the general assumption
outlined in Sects. 23, namely that a goal is rational if it performs its
achievement-inducing function well. Our criteria for rational goals will be
based on the discussion in the previous sections on what goals are used for,
namely to guide, coordinate and motivate action.
Goals function centrally in our deliberation about what to do.19 Hence,
when discussing rationality criteria for goals, it is useful to bear in mind that
the criteria are selected on the assumption that goals are set and used by
agents. There are at least three major aspects involved in goal-based human
action according to which the rationality criteria may be structured. They are
related to what the agents know, what they can do and what they want to do.
The rst of these aspects is the epistemic one, which concerns what the
agents know. We propose two rationality criteria to reect this aspect of goalbased action: that goals should be precise and that they should be evaluable.
A goal has to be reasonably precise in order to be at all meaningful. A goal

19

Richardson (1997), p. 49.

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K. Edvardsson, S. O. Hansson

such as achieving a better society is not very useful for action-guidance

unless it is supplemented with more precise instructions.
A goal may be precise even if it is not possible to know if it has been
achieved. An example of this is the goal to reduce a pollutant in the atmosphere to levels far below what can be measured. We cannot use a goal for
ecient action-guidance unless there is some way for us to know to what
extent it has been achieved. We call a goal evaluable to the extent that such
knowledge is possible. Evaluability includes, but is not restricted to, accessibility to evaluations in the classical sense, namely specially organized audits
to determine, among other things, the level of goal-attainment.
The second aspect is the ability-related one, which concerns what we can
do. It is reected by the requirement that goals should be attainable, or at
least approachable. A rational goal is a goal that it can be rational to set with
the purpose of achieving it. This presupposes that it is possible to achieve or
at least to approach the goal. A goal such as to become a shaman with true
magical powers will have to be classied as non-rational for this reason.
Hence, one of our criteria is that a goal should be attainable at least to some
degree, in other words that it should be approachable.
The third and nal aspect is the volitional one. It concerns what we want
to do, which is reected by the requirement that goals should be motivating.
In order for a goal to full its achievement-inducing function, it should
motivate us to act in the direction of that state. In other words, goals should
be action-motivating.
The relationship between the aspects and criteria is illustrated in Fig. 1.
It is easy to see that the four rationality criteria are far from independent.
For instance, a goal has to be precise in order to be evaluable. As we shall see
there is also an interesting, but more problematic, relationship between the
requirements that a goal should be attainable or approachable and that it
should motivate us to act. Therefore, the rationality criteria do not form a set
of independent requirements. We will return to the relationship between them
in Sect. 8.
One of the requirements of goals that have been mentioned in the
decision-theoretic literature is that they should be logically consistent.20 We
agree that this is a necessary criterion for a rational goal. It is indeed a
prerequisite for the criteria of precision and attainability. An inconsistent
goal such as increase the number of students at state colleges by 2% and
reduce the number of students at state colleges by 5% before the end of
2005 is certainly not precise enough to be achievement-inducing, and it
obviously cannot be attained or even approached in a meaningful sense.
However, despite the importance of this requirement we do not discuss it at
length, since we consider it to be a rather weak criterion of rational goals.
Many goals are consistent without being particularly action-guiding or
action-motivating.

20

Allais (1979 [1952]), p. 70.

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351

Fig. 1. Criteria for rational goals

5 Epistemic properties
A goal can be action-guiding only when the agent knows what the goal is and
to what extent her own actions lead her closer to fullling it. This requires
that the goal is both precise and possible to evaluate. Of these two criteria,
precision is more fundamental, since evaluablility depends on it. In order for
it to be possible to evaluate whether a goal has been achieved or not, the
content of the goal must be (reasonably) clear. An imprecise goal cannot be
subject to constructive examination, assessment and critique.
The requirement that goals should be precise can be divided into three
subcriteria, namely directional, completive, and temporal precision. A goal is
directionally precise if it is specied in what direction one should go in order
to reach the goal. Consider the following example:
(1) The number of unemployed in this country should be substantially decreased.
Assuming that the notion of an unemployed person is suciently precise, (1)
is precise in the sense that it can be unequivocally determined whether or not
it has been approached. If unemployment has decreased, then the goal has
been approached or achieved, otherwise not. However, (1) does not tell us to
what degree the goal should be reached. It lacks completive precision. The
following variant of (1) satises both directional and completive precision:

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(2) The number of unemployed in this country should be decreased to at most

3% of the working age population.
An important part of the requirement that goals should be precise is missing
in both (1) and (2), namely that the goal should be temporally precise, i.e., it
should be specied at what point in time the goal should be reached.
(3) The number of unemployed in this country should be substantially decreased by the year 2010.
(4) The number of unemployed in this country should be decreased to at most
3% of the working age population by the year 2010.
(3) is directionally and temporally precise, but lacks in completive precision.
In (4) all three requirements are satised.
The degree to which a goal has to be precise in order to be operative varies
with the social context in which the goal is applied. Imprecise goals often
result from compromise and negotiation, where several conicting opinions
are involved in the decision-making process. By using imprecise terms that
each party may interpret as she sees t, agreements are more easily made.
Admittedly, given that the goal-setting procedure has as its only aim that all
parties involved should agree on a common standpoint, adopting imprecise
goals could be rational. However, goals that serve such political functions
well may not serve the operative functions equally well, since they may fail to
be suciently precise to be achievement-inducing.21
When a goal is set by one social actor to guide the activities of another
actor, the need for (explicit) denition is often greater than when the goal is
set by the very same person who is going to implement it. In such social
contexts the goal needs to be communicable. This is also one of the conditions
that are sometimes mentioned in the MBO literature.22 At this point the
epistemic aspect of goal-based action becomes evident. When we say that a
goal is precise we mean that it is precise for those who have the task to
implement it. In this sense, the notion of communicability is included in our
concept of a precise goal.
The requirement that a goal should be evaluable is relevant to its
achievement-inducing function in a number of ways. There is evidence in
management and psychology literature to suggest that feedback, or
knowledge of results, improves performance towards the goal (see Sect. 7).
The general idea is that a goal regulates performance more reliably when
feedback is provided. Feedback mechanisms, however, operate on slightly
dierent levels. Firstly, information from goal evaluations is crucial for

21

Chen (1990), p. 97.

Raia (1974), p. 25 argues that goals should be written in a way which clearly
communicates their intent to all of the relevant parties. Slocombe (1998), p. 484
argues that ecosystem management goals should be understandable, i.e. explainable
and implementable in a consistent way to dierent people and groups (our italics).

22

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353

determining whether a certain course of action should be maintained,

changed, or given up. Since goals have no immanent control mechanism to
ensure the conformity of particular actors, such evaluation is necessary in
order for the agent to adjust his or her actions towards the goal.23 Secondly, decision makers are often not able to gather and process all relevant
information before the goal is set, and information from evaluations is
necessary in order to revise the goal itself. Thirdly, it has been argued that
feedback enhances motivation within the agent so that she makes an eort
to act in ways that further the goal. This argument will be dealt with in
Sect. 7. Fourthly, evaluation and feedback mechanisms are prerequisites for
establishing accountability. This is particularly manifest in cases where an
agent or institution sets a goal for another agent or group of agents. An
agent can hardly be held responsible for failing to achieve a certain goal
unless it is reasonably clear how much is expected from the agent within a
given period of time. Therefore, it can be expected that performance towards the goal improves when the goal is suciently evaluable for
accountability to be established.
Successful goal evaluation presupposes that the intended end-state is
specied. This requirement is met when the goal is precise in our sense
described above. But since evaluation is an assessment of the outcome at
hand in the light of the set goal, successful goal evaluation also presupposes that it is possible to establish the actual outcome, or state at hand.
The agent must be able to determine where she stands in relation to the
goal. If my goal is to reach Stockholm by the end of the day, I must be
able to determine whether or not this is the city I am actually in by the
end of the day. However, in many situations it is not enough to be able to
determine whether or not the goal has been fully achieved. In the example
above, it is not enough that I am able to determine that I am in Stockholm. Before I have arrived there, I must also be able to tell whether I am
travelling in the right direction or not, and how far I have left to go. In
particular, if a goal is distant, or dicult to fully achieve, we need to be
able to judge the degree of success in approaching the goal. In other
words, degrees of partial attainment must be distinguishable.
Several measurement methods could be used to determine the extent to
which a particular goal has been achieved. In many practical cases, netuning of the goal may be less important than the choice of how to
measure partial success.24 Hence, the success of the goal abolish the use of
pesticides in agriculture before the year 2020 could be determined in a
number of ways. One measurement method is reduction in the sale of
pesticides, another is reduction in treated area. These two ways to measure

23

cf. Kaufmann (1986), p. 220.

It has been argued that the focus of goal-based evaluation practice has shifted away
from the question of how to state an objective properly, to the question of how the
objective is to be measured. See for instance House (1980), p. 27.

24

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K. Edvardsson, S. O. Hansson

partial success may lead to the choice of quite dierent means to achieve
the goal.

6 Ability-related properties
It is a common accusation against goals that they are unrealistic, or
utopian. Utopian goals are no good, it is claimed, because they cannot
be achieved. In his classic defence of piecemeal social engineering, Karl
Popper argues that the setting of step-by-step goals that may be adjusted to t
future economical, social, and technological change, is preferable to utopian,
or holistic, social engineering.25 Since the piecemeal social engineer reforms
society by carefully comparing the achieved results with the expected results,
she is able to adapt to the uncertainties of the human factor. The utopian, on
the other hand, due to her wish to remodel the whole society at once and her
unpreparedness to adapt to unavoidable surprises, is forced to control all
unwanted eventualities that follow from this uncertainty by institutional
means. She must extend her programme so as to embrace not only the
transformation of society, according to plan, but also the transformation of
man.26 Thereby, Popper argues, the utopian social engineer creates a
totalitarian society.
The notion of a utopian goal is generally used in a rather imprecise way.
Popper and other critics have mostly conceived utopianism as a rather rough
binary distinction: a goal is either utopian (unrealistic) or it is not. An attempt
to specify the concept was made by Larry Laudan in Science and Values
(1984) with reference to goal selection in scientic contexts. In order to assess
scientic goals Laudan introduces a set of conditions, according to which
utopian goals should be abandoned. He distinguishes between three forms of
utopian goals. Goals can be demonstrably utopian, semantically utopian,
and/or epistemically utopian.27 A goal is demonstrably utopian when it
cannot possibly be achieved, given our understanding of logic or the laws of
nature.28 A goal is semantically utopian if we cannot precisely characterize it
in a succinct and cogent way. Imprecise and ambiguous goals are therefore
utopian. Finally, a goal is epistemically utopian when we are unable to specify
a criterion for determining when it is achieved, even though we may be able to
give a perfectly clear denition of the goal.
Laudans category of semantically utopian goals corresponds to those
goals that, in our terminology, lack severely in precision. His epistemically
utopian goals coincide largely with the goals that do not satisfy our criterion

25

Popper (2002 [1957]), pp. 5869.

Popper (2002 [1957]), p. 64. For a discussion of Poppers argument see Paden (2000),
pp. 412413.
27
Laudan (1984), pp. 5253.
28
Laudan (1984), p. 52.
26

When is a goal rational?

355

of evaluability. His remaining category, the demonstrably utopian goals, is

an extreme category of unrealistic goals, namely those that it is impossible to
reach due to the limitations given by logic or by the laws of nature. Laudans
denition of this last category is interesting because it allows for two dierent
types of utopian goals: (1) goals that are known to be both impossible to fully
achieve and to approach, and (2) goals that are known to be impossible to
fully achieve, but yet known to be approachable.29 The goal create a perfectly just society would not be utopian in the rst sense because there are
some acts that we may perform which will in fact increase social justice. The
goal of social justice is an approachable goal. However, given our understanding of human nature it could be characterized as impossible to fully
achieve, and hence still utopian in the second sense.
In our view it is essential for the analysis of the utopianism of goals to
recognize that a goal may be achievable in part even though it cannot be fully
achieved. By far the most important utopian goals in actual social practice are
those that it is dicult, or perhaps impossible to fully achieve, but which can
still be approached. In our view this makes it more adequate to treat the
requirement of attainability as a distinction that comes in degrees: goals are
more or less attainable. Goals that are only partially attainable are sometimes
more successful than fully realistic goals, due to their capacity to motivate
action (see Sect. 7). We propose that the term approachable be used as an
alternative to attainable, in order not to lose sight of the relevance of
partial attainment.
There are (at least) three dimensions of approachability, each of which
comes in degrees. These are the dimensions of closeness, certainty and cost.
Since the three dimensions are closely interconnected, a full description of
realism will have to be fairly complex.30 For most practical purposes, however, it will be sucient to distinguish between these three aspects of
approachability and to analyze given goals in terms of each of them.
The dimension of closeness is the most obvious dimension. It concerns
how close to the goal it is possible to come. Hence, although the goal abolish
unemployment most likely cannot be achieved, it makes a big dierence if
we are capable of coming close to it (perhaps reducing unemployment to 1
percent) or if we can only make a small step towards it.
According to the certainty dimension, the degree to which a goal is
attainable depends on the degree of certainty with which it is known that the
goal is possible to achieve. This is largely a matter of our knowledge of future
events such as technological, economical and social development. The degree
of certainty with which we may judge the goal ground-level ozone concen-

29

cf. C ntora (1999), p. 23.

One option would be to treat certainty as a function of the other two dimensions.
For each degree of closeness and each cost, this function assigns a degree of certainty
(credibility), denoting how certain (credible) it is that one can come that close to the
goal at that cost.

30

356

K. Edvardsson, S. O. Hansson

trations should not exceed 120 lg/m3 as an 8-hour average in 2010 to be

realistic depends on our knowledge of factors that may inuence future ozone
concentrations, such as the amount of emitted freon, the possible cumulative
eects of prior emissions, the economic and technological means of handling
these, and possible future technological innovations that may be used to
redress the deterioration of the air quality. Because we have insucient
knowledge about factors such as these, it is dicult to assess the degree of
attainability attributable to the goal in question. The degree of attainability
attributable to the goal is also contingent upon the situation in which the goal
is set, and may change as the situation changes. The goal to increase the
companys prot by 5% before the end of 2004 may seem a perfectly
attainable goal at the time of its setting, but may in fact turn out to be less
attainable or approachable if the general economic situation deteriorates, for
instance if there is a recession.
The cost dimension concerns the costs associated with the attainment of a
goal. Some goals may be realistic in the sense that they are possible to achieve
but only at a very high cost. A goal that would require half the countrys
GNP would be attainable only in a very weak sense. In the present context,
the notion of costs should of course be taken in a wide sense, and should
include all disadvantages that are associated with the achievement of a goal,
also those that are not easily expressed in economic terms.

7 Volitional properties
As we have seen in Sect. 3, goals can be achievement-inducing both by
guiding and by motivating action. Action-guidance is not sucient for the
goal to be achieved. The agent must also be motivated to act towards the
goal. Therefore, the rationality criteria discussed above should be supplemented with an additional criterion: a rational goal should motivate the right
kind of action. The volitional aspect of goal-based human action concerns
what we may want to do, or accomplish, and it focuses on the motivation that
goals may give rise to in agents.
Several objections could be made against our argument that the rationality criteria should be supplemented with this fourth criterion. One could
for instance argue that all goals are internally motivating since the end-states
to which they refer are always desired by the agent. In short, we do not have
to require that goals should be motivating, they simply are motivating. This
may very well be the case when an agent sets a goal for herself, since it would
indeed be strange for an agent to set a goal she does not desire to achieve. But
many goals are set by a person or institution for some other agent or group of
agents. Such goals are not in all cases internally motivating.
A second objection may be raised, namely that inducement to action
should come from sources other than the goal itself. Action could get started
on many grounds, for instance by way of legally enforced rules, threats, or by
giving favours to those who further the goal. On this view, the rationality

When is a goal rational?

357

criteria that apply to goals should not include motivating force. In our
opinion, although motivation to act may come from other sources than the
goal itself, this is no reason why it should not also come from the goal itself.
Therefore, it makes sense to retain this fourth criterion. Findings in management and psychology literature also provide support for the argument that
a motivating goal increases performance towards the desired end-state.31
The motivation that a goal may give rise to in the agent can be characterized according to degree of intensity, or durability, or both. The intensity
of the motivation that a goal gives rise to is in typical cases reected in the
degree of eort that the agent displays in furthering the goal. Its durability is
reected in the extent to which this eort is maintained over time. Intensity
and durability are independent criteria. Motivation may be intense and shortlived, or moderate and durable.
What makes goals motivating, in terms of intensity or durability, is of
course largely their content. But as established earlier, we are only interested in the non-substantial properties of goals. So we leave the content of
goals aside, and focus instead on how the motivating force of goals relates
to the previously introduced non-substantial properties. In psychology and
management literature, studies show that goals are more action-generating
when they are explicit and specic, and that such goals are more likely than
do-your-best goals to intensify eort towards the later part of long work
periods.32 There is also evidence to suggest that specic and challenging
goals lead people to work longer at a task than other goals, and that
employees in initially low motivation groups catch up to high motivation groups when they are given specic goals to accomplish.33 As regards the criterion of evaluability it has been argued that goals that are
accompanied with outcome feedback can have a positive eect on performance.34 This is believed to originate from the motivational eect that
individuals experience when they are able to determine where they stand in
relation to the goal.35 As regards the criterion of approachability it is on
the one hand generally assumed that a dicult, or challenging goal, increases performance.36 On the other hand, some studies suggest that a goal
which is considered to be too dicult to achieve decreases performance
slightly.37 The lesson to be learnt from these eld experiments is probably

31
Locke and Latham (2002), p. 707 argue that the goal-performance relationship is
strongest when an agent is committed to her goal.
32
Jungermann et al. (1983), p. 234 and Locke and Latham (1990), p. 88.
33
Locke and Latham (1990), p. 90 and Bryan and Locke (1967), p. 277.
34
Locke and Latham (2002), p. 708.
35
McCalley and Midden (2002), p. 591. For a discussion of the relationship between
feedback and performance see also Carroll and Tosi (1973), pp. 57, Locke and
Latham (1990), pp. 173205, and Hall and Kerr (2001), pp. 201203.
36
van Herten and Gunning-Schepers (2000), p. 89, Locke and Latham (2002), p. 706.
37
Stedry and Kay (1966), p. 465.

358

K. Edvardsson, S. O. Hansson

that a medium degree of approachability is most eective in motivating

agents to act.

8 Combining the criteria

It is now time to return to the argument put forward in Sect. 3 of this article,
namely that a goal can be rational (functional) in virtue of being actionguiding and in virtue of being action-motivating. It holds for each of the four
criteria outlined in Sects. 57 that ceteris paribus improved satisfaction of the
criteria makes a goal function better in the achievement-inducing sense. In
some cases, however, conicts may arise between two or more of the criteria.
Probably the most common type of such conicts arise from the fact that
some of the properties that make a goal guide action may also make it less
motivating. Consider the following example. A football team desires to be
one of the semi-nalists in this seasons National Cup. This goal can be
formulated for instance in the following two ways:
(1) The team shall win 12 out of 20 games with at least two goals advantage, 3
out of 20 games with at least one goal advantage, and never lose a game
with more than one goal.
(2) The team shall beat all opponents hands down.
Which of these versions makes the goal most achievement-inducing? The goal
as stated in (1) is probably action-guiding to a larger extent in that it tells us
more about what is required in order to get to the semi-nals. On the other
hand, it is not unlikely that the goal as stated in (2) is more action-motivating.
In this case action-motivation is probably the more important property of the
goal, and it can therefore be argued that (2) is to be preferred. An example of
the opposite situation is the following. The government desires to achieve an
air quality that is good enough not to cause asthmatic problems.
(3) In order to reduce asthmatic problems a level of 5 lg/m3 for sulphur
dioxide as an annual average and a level of 20 lg/m3 as an annual average
for nitrogen dioxide should have been achieved in all municipalities by
2010.
(4) No more attacks of asthma due to poor air quality!
In this case it could be argued that the action-guiding property of the goal as
stated in (3) is more important than the action-motivating property of (4),
and that (3) should be preferred. The reason for this is that even if (4) is more
action-motivating than (3), it tells us nothing about what should be done to
achieve the goal in question. The same could be said about goal (2) above.
The dierence between (4) and (2) is perhaps that there is a more general
knowledge among football players how to act in order to win a game, than
there is among rms, government authorities and the public concerning how
to act in order to reduce asthmatic problems. As the examples demonstrate,
rational goal-setting requires that the four criteria are balanced from case to

When is a goal rational?

359

case to optimize the achievement-inducing function of the goal. Since goals

are used by agents in specic contexts, factors beyond the goal itself will
determine the extent to which our rationality criteria need to be met in order
to advance goal realization. For instance, in situations where there is a general knowledge of how to reach a specic goal, it is perhaps more fruitful
to focus on the action-motivating function of the goal. Where such knowledge
is lacking the action-guiding function of the goal should perhaps be given
priority to.
One way of balancing the criteria so as to optimize goal realization is to
adopt goal systems in which goals are set on dierent levels in order to
supplement each other. In this way visionary and highly motivating goals can
be operationalized through more precise and evaluable subgoals, or interim
targets.38 This could be done for instance through a hierarchy of goals where
goals on a lower level operationalize goals on a higher level, or through a
coherent system of goals where all goals are mutually supportive. The
important point here is not the dierences in goal system design, but the fact
that for a rational (functional) goal system to accomplish its ends it must very
often harbour both the general and the specic.

9 Conclusion
Our starting point is that a rational (functional) goal is one that it is rational
to set with the purpose of achieving it. Starting out from this basic requirement we have identied four criteria for rational (functional) goals, namely
that goals should be precise, evaluable, approachable, and motivating. We
have ordered these criteria into three categories which reect three aspects
that are involved in goal-based human action. Precision and evaluability are
epistemic properties which concern what the agents know. Approachability is
an ability-related property which concerns what the agents can do. Motivity is
a volitional property that concerns what the agents want to do. It follows
from these criteria that a rational (functional) goal also needs to be consistent.
Each of the criteria that we discuss makes a goal function better in the
achievement-inducing sense. The criteria are, however, often present to
varying degrees in dierent goals and must be balanced from case to case in
order to optimize goal realization. One way of balancing the rationality
(functionality) criteria is to adopt a goal system in which goals on dierent
levels supplement each other so that the system as a whole both guides and
motivates action. However, further empirical research is needed before we can
proceed to the task of analyzing our proposed criteria in relation to goal

38

cf. Barber and Taylor (1990), p. 368. Carroll and Tosi (1973), pp. 6970 argue that
one purpose of MBO is to facilitate the derivation of specic objectives from general
ones so that objectives at all levels in the organization are both appropriate to each
level and also linked to each other.

360

K. Edvardsson, S. O. Hansson

systems. We are currently carrying out such research in a study where we

apply our rationality criteria to the Swedish system of environmental quality
objectives.

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