Questioning Fyfe’s Desirism III: My Stated Position On Desirism

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I thought I should take a quick break from discussing the method to clarify my position on desirism. I'm not angry or irritated or anything like that, neither is this any sort of a "point fingers" post. I just want to clarify where I'm at concerning desirism [which is pretty much right where I've always been]. Else, we might have more misunderstanding, when I'd really rather just get a good discussion going.

In general, I'll argue that it's counterproductive to think in black-and-white terms of being "for" or "against" a given theory. In any given field, theories are more like "dynamic knowledge" than neatly-packaged, easily-reducible entities, and people often have mixed attitudes about them. It is both possible and common for an individual to support one or more of a theory's tenets, while maintaining reservations concerning others. Other times people feel they may have something valid to contribute. That's exactly the case with my attitude towards Alonzo Fyfe's desirism. Recently at CSA, Alonzo Fyfe wrote,

There are those who think that desire utilitarianism contains the hidden moral premise, "Thou shalt consider all of the desires that exist." They object to desire utilitarianism on the grounds that there is no way to justify this fundamental moral principle. They challenge me to to provide them with a justification as to why they should consider all the desires that exist. They anticipate that I will fail and, on the basis of that, assert that they have punched a fatal hole in desire utilitarianism.

As an impartial reading of my posts on desirism explains, I'm not one of those people. I'm not implying Fyfe's sentiments were about me, I just want to express the fact that I agree with Fyfe's sentiments. This is why I started using the term "affected desires." The term "all desires" tends to confuse people and [AFAICS] it's not in Fyfe's original language, at least, not the introductory paper here. When Fyfe says good is "such as to fulfill the desires in question," I'm confident he means "such as to fulfill the affected [or relevant] desires." Fyfe elaborates with an example which seems to support the claim that we are to evaluate the affected desires, not necessarily all desires:

If your child just got hit with a wild pitch and is laying unconscious next to home plate, desire utilitarianism would not have you impartially consider the interests that others have in continuing the game. Those desires . . . when your child is laying unconscious . . . should not matter. If they do matter, then the father not only foreits any claim to call himself a good father. He looses any claim to call himself a good person. To put it loosely, he needs to get his priorities (his desires) in order.

As a father, I can understand where he's coming from. In the case of the wild pitch, every desire relevant to the father would tell him to care for his child, unless of course he is an uncaring or selfish father, as of course Alonzo alludes to. I was never under the impression that we were supposed to evaluate the effect of any particular desire against all other desires, as in literal all, [denoting both affected and non-affected desires]. Rather, I've been going by what to me was the commonsense assumption that we are to evaluate any particular desire or desire against all affected desires within the best of our ability, where "our" refers to the subset of affected agents.

Now, I can foresee an instance where a particular desire might actually affect literally all other desires that exist, e.g. some desire or desires that affect the entire population of human beings [i.e. the desire to deflect an impending meteor], but those seem to be the exception and not the rule, and may Fyfe or anyone else can correct me if I've went wrong. Also,

That said, that I agree with Fyfe on the "all desires" thing doesn't mean I didn't have a few questions about other parts of the post, but I'll save those for over there — if even at all.

That said, I would now like to confess to an oversight on my behalf. I've been using the phrases "particular desire(s)" and "desire(s)-in-question" to refer to the desire(s) we are evaluating in any given instance. I realize a potential for confusion there, as in Alonzo's definition cited, "desires in question" [presumably] refers to the affected desires, whereas when I say "desire(s)-in-question," I'm referring to any particular desire(s) being evaluated. We'll deal with this some more in the next post on the method.

I took great pains to note the aspects of Fyfe's theory that I agreed with, and my introduction and subsequent posts contain significant affirmations that anybody can go back and read. Yes, I believe desirism's definition of good is currently insufficient. That other desires are fulfilled [overall] is certainly an important part of any meaningful definition of good, but it simply cannot be the only or even the primary aspect of our definition. At least, that's the way I still see it.

As far as desirism is concerned, I'm not necessarily a lover or a hater. I'm just some random writer who supports a handful of the theory's tenets, while maintaining reservations concerning another [smaller] handful. I think the theory has some merit, but I also think it has some weaknesses.

So, for the record, that's my stated position on desirism, and it holds until stated otherwise.


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