Response To Morality In The Real World, Episode 9Though no previous objections seem to have been resolved, CSA’s ongoing Morality in the Real World podcast took a turn for the better in Episode 9, where Luke and Alonzo ponder the quantification of desires. For what it’s worth, Alonzo has written on willingness to pay before.
Early in my foray into desirism, I decided that an empirical schema for measuring desires was absolutely necessary in order for the theory to have any practical, real-world import. How else can we check against intuition? If desirism is indeed an empirical, objective theory as its defenders assert, then why not cut all the moralspeak and crunch some numbers? I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I believe my method – while certainly rudimentary and in need of further work – is a far better tool for quantifying desires than the overly simplified analysis Luke and Alonzo used in Episode 9.
Open Response To Alonzo FyfeIn Luke’s post Morally Permissible Slavery, Alonzo Fyfe of Atheist Ethicist has implied moral defects in my character, here. The backstory: commenter antiplastic said this to Luke Muehlhauser, who replied not by addressing antiplastic’s objection, but by attempting to cast doubt on the sincerity of both antiplastic and myself to understand the theory. IOW, Luke chose to make it personal instead of keeping it professional. Then, Alonzo chimed in, lambasting antiplastic with what were in my opinion uncalled-for accusations about antiplastic’s character. Then, of course, when I came to antiplastic’s defense, Alonzo turned him judgment towards me.
My response follows, written to Alonzo.
Atoms, Morality, Desirism & LanguageThat desirism is “not a moral theory” is a common objection, one that its founder Alonzo Fyfe handles in a systematic way. Today, I will try to explain why I’m skeptical of Alonzo’s response to this objection. I suppose it would be best to dive right in with some actual examples of the objection:
“Why Shouldn’t Desirism Be Considered Respectable?”In the thread of Something That Made Me Thing Of Desirism, commenter James Gray asks a salient question to bossmanham:
Great post here. This may be one of the reasons desirism hasn’t moved beyond the sphere of internet atheists who enjoy it. It falls to the same or similar objections that Bentham and Mill’s utilitarianism falls to. [bossmanham]
Utilitarianism is a respectable theory that has gone far beyond the sphere of internet atheists. So, why shouldn’t desirism then be considered respectable and worthy of going beyond such a sphere? [James Gray]
I began a reply of my own, only to realize it quickly grew to post-length. Frankly, I believe several reasons exist, and keep in mind I’m not assuming desirism as comparable to Mill or Bentham’s utilitarianism. Here’s just a quick rundown:
Something That Made Me Think Of DesirismI was crawling the interwebs tonight when I came across the following snippet, taken from this introductory article on philosophical realism. In summarizing the debate between realists and non- or anti-realists, the authors describe J.L. Mackie’s argument for moral error-theory:
12 Objections To DesirismAccording to desirism, there is no such thing as intrinsic moral value. Rather, moral values of good, bad and permissible are determined by a desire’s relation to other desires [which I find odd in itself, as desires don’t affect people unless acted upon, but let’s leave that aside for the moment]. If this is the case, then isn’t it possible to have a state of affairs where racist and sexist desires are morally good? [cf. Cartesian’s Nazi example] On the other hand, if under all circumstances we deny the existence of a state of affairs in which racist and sexist desires can be morally good, isn’t the only valid conclusion that racist and sexist desires are examples of intrinsic moral wrongs? When are racism and sexism morally good? According to desirism, there is no such thing as intrinsic wrong. Rather, moral wrongness is determined by one desire’s relation to other desires. If this is the case, then there must be a state of affairs in which racism and sexism are morally good. If we deny the existence of a state of affairs in which racism and sexism are morally good, then we seemingly accept the notion of intrinsic right / wrong.
Cartesian’s Nazi ExampleMonths back on CommonSenseAtheism.com, commenter Cartesian offered the following argument against desirism, and I felt it was appropriate to repost here on the promise that I find the original link. Though I assure you I copied it verbatim, I agree that it’s professional to use first-order sources wherever possible, and promise to find the link. There’s also a technical reason I want to post it here instead of CSA. I’ve noticed that links to individual comments don’t work. That is, even when I used the direct URL for a particular comment, the post still loads with the page at the top, which forces the user to search for the quote his or her self. For this reason, it’s good to quote sources numerically at CSA, i.e. “So-and-so’s fifteenth on post X…”
At any rate, here’s Cartesian’s Nazi example:
Suppose the Nazis had killed or brainwashed anyone who disagreed with them, and succeeded in conquering the world. They keep a handful of Jewish people around in zoos, just to torture. Suppose the most popular television show in Naziland features ordinary Nazis — selected by lottery from among the Nazi population — torturing these Jewish people just for fun. The billions of Nazis in the television audience absolutely LOVE it. It’s like American Idol to them. They look forward to it all week. It’s what they want most in life: to see those Jewish people tortured. These Jewish people are kept in a pretty sorry mental state (due to nearly constant torture, and perhaps even some drugs), so that each of their desires not to be tortured is weaker than each of the Nazis desires to torture them.
You and your friend Jerk live in Naziland. Jerk is a typical Nazi: he really badly wants to win the lottery so he can appear on this television show and torture some Jewish people. You, on the other hand, don’t. You’ve done some thinking lately, and you’ve concluded that torturing people just for fun is awful, and you want no part of it. (Naturally, you keep these opinions to yourself, for fear of being taken in for “re-education.”)
Clearly, in this situation, your desire is good and Jerk’s desire is bad. But, in this situation, only Jerk’s desire tends to fulfill more and stronger desires than it thwarts. (His desire, if satisfied, would fulfill the very strong desires of billions of blood-thirsty Nazis, while thwarting the weaker desires of only a few Jewish people.) Your desire, however, actually tends to thwart more and stronger desires than it fulfills. So, according to desirism, *your* desire is bad and *Jerk’s* desire is good.
But that gets things exactly backwards. So desirism is false.
I agree wholeheartedly, and submit that’s an apt explanation of why good must mean something more than, “tends to fulfill the desires in question” or “tends to fulfill more than thwart other desires” or however else one wants to phrase it.
Questioning Fyfe’s Desirism III: My Stated Position On DesirismI 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,
Conducting Single-Agent Evaluations With The Hierarchy-Of-Desires MethodWe discussed the method and some preliminary objections here. I think the best way to illustrate the method’s strengths and weaknesses would be to just dive in and play around with it.
It is my opinion that any moral theory worthy of being considered “the best” should be able to guide both isolated individuals and interactive groups towards the “moral good” at any given time. So, I’ll begin by considering the effects of any particular desire on the affected desires of an isolated individual, in order to specifically determine whether or not the particular desire tends to fulfill or thwart other desires. My hypothesis was that if desirism’s definition of good is sufficient, the numbers should line up with our moral intuitions most of the time.
Proposed Method For Meaningful Evaluations In Desire UtilitarianismWe’ve been discussing the moral theory called desire utilitarianism or desirism lately, and unfortunately, I’ve noticed a tendency towards oversimplified evaluations that lack correspondence to real-world ethical scenarios.
For example, we might debate whether the desire to exterminate a minority is good or bad, according to the theory of desirism. Presuming we agree the desire to exterminate another human being thwarts their desires, proponents of “extermination is bad” might point to this fact and attempt to affix an across-the-board value of “bad” to that desire. Other people dream up all sorts of wild and fanciful “what if” scenarios that purport to disprove the theory: “if extraterrestrials with horrible taste in music threaten to exterminate us unless we worship Milli Vanilli, then worshiping Milli Vanilli is good.”
If only it were that easy.