What Relations Can Hold among Goals, and Why Does It Matter?

Abstract

Goals are often set as part of clusters of goals. On the assumption that goals are set because we want to achieve them it is interesting to study not only the conditions under which individual goals are rational (functional) but also the factors that combine to determine the rationality of a goal system. This paper argues that to be rational goal systems ought to be coherent, at least to some degree. The paper provides an analysis of goal system coherence and discusses to what extent goal conflicts are problematic from an action-guiding viewpoint.