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Plato famously described the mind as a chariot, an analogy that has been set up and knocked down more times than Ricky Hatton. Its critics rarely offer a persuasive replacement, however, so it’s interesting to read the late Sir Stuart Hampshire’s very different explanation:

Let it be accepted that we have to borrow the vocab that is to describe the operations of our minds from the vocab that describes the public and observable transactions of social life. The picture of the mind that gives substance to the notion of practical reason is a picture of a council chamber, in which the agent’s contrary interests are represented around the table, each speaking for itself.

The chairman, who represents the will, weighs the argument and the intensity of the feeling conveyed by the arguments and the intensity of the feeling conveyed by the arguments, and then issues an order to be acted on. The order is a decision and an intention, to be followed by its execution. This policy is the outcome of debate in the council chamber.

This analogy is intended to reinforce Hampshire’s contention that the natural place for moral judgements is in deliberation. He writes:

It has been a mistake of moral philosophers in the tradition of British empiricism to concentrate attention on the judgements we make as criticisms of the behaviour of others, or on comments that we may make on our own past conduct.

Also a recurrent error in much modern psychology.

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