Why is this Important?

6.   Consider, if I say, "I am hungry," I am in a state-of-being that I want to free myself  from.  The hunger itself is neither rational or irrational (perhaps ur-rational) but my hunger is not only an imperative to act, but my hunger in effect makes possible the rational question, "how best do I free myself from this state of being?"  Note that my hunger need not necessarily pose the rational question.  Given the imperative to act, I could act from mere instinct or habit, but therein too lies a distinction.  The more instinctual my response, the more mechanistic my response, the more physiologically or psychologically determined my response, the less it is open for ethical or moral consideration, a consideration which necessarily implies a freedom to act in ways that are praise or blameworthy, which in turn implies, if not the exercise of rationality, at least the possibility of rational deliberation.

7.  Consider again, if I say, "I am hungry," I am in a state-of-being that I want to free myself from.  The hunger is here now, present to me, but the shift from "I am" to "I want," a desire that is present to me, but it is also a temporal dislocation, the desire for a future state-of-being that is not yet.  Here, I want to ask a more fundamental question regarding the "I," the so-called "self."  To say that "I am in a state-of-being" is not to wholly identify with that state-of-being.  Though it arises from the depths of my physiological being, though it presents itself as a psychological imperative, I am in a state of hunger, but the hunger is not me.  The temporal dislocation implies a "me," a self that is not the given intentionality, but rather a self free to act, which in turn implies a self praise or blameworthy for those acts.

8.  Intentionality implies a psychological determinism of motive and measure -- that state-of-being from which I must free myself is given.  To the extent that I am sentient, I am sentient not only of "being hungry," but of being hungry as an imperative, being in a state-of-being that could be otherwise, a state-of-being I must act upon to make it otherwise, but the question follows "just how am I to do so?"  To the extent that I am sentient, I am sentient of my freedom to act instrumentally in a myriad of ways, some of which will be more efficacious than others, some of which will not be efficacious at all, some of which will have ancillary consequences wholly unrelated to the pure efficacy or utility, the pure instrumentality of the instrumental act, but which have consequences must nevertheless be considered in any form of rational deliberation.  I am free to act instrumentally in a myriad of ways, but ultimately, as the imperative bears down on me (subjects me to its subjectivity) I must decide, I must act, and I do this (and not all that) and doing this (and not all that) makes all the difference.