The Warfare Is Mental

“Why Shouldn’t Desirism Be Considered Respectable?”

October 4, 2010

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:

Your Opinions Requested: On Is/Ought

June 19, 2010

A buddy of mine often reminds me of how much he likes short posts, so here's a quick one on a philosophical classic: the Is/Ought distinction.

In my experience, the person who says, "You ought to do X" in response to some desire Y is saying something that reduces to, "I believe that if you do X, you shall fulfill desire Y." Example: your desire is to go surfing, and your neighbor offers you a ride to the beach. If you take the ride (X), you'll likely fulfill the desire to go surfing (Y). One might say you ought to take the ride. This is ought in the pragmatic sense.

What would make "you ought to take the ride" true? In my opinion, it is the juxtaposition of 1) the fact of a desire to go surfing, and 2) the means of fulfilling that desire.

However, in my experience, the person who says, "You ought not X" in response to some desire Y is saying something that reduces to, "Even though it would fulfill your desire Y, X is not the right thing to do." Example: you desire your neighbor's goat, and when your mother discovers your intentions, she uses the tool of condemnation to plant within you an aversion to stealing. IOW, she says some variant of, "you ought not X." This is ought in the moral sense.

In your opinion, what would make "you ought not steal your neighbor's goat" true?

Common Sense Atheism: Index

June 12, 2010

I’ve decided to compose an index of posts I’ve made substantial contributions to at Common Sense Atheism from January 1st, 2010 to the date of this post, 6-11-2010. (NOTE: the index is now current through November 16th, 2010) It is not necessarily meant to be exhaustive, e.g. I omitted threads where I only made a single comment or two. I’ll be updating this list, as well as expanding on key posts where I think certain arguments deserve a closer look, and eventually distilling the best arguments into the homepage.

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

April 19, 2010

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,

Conducting Single-Agent Evaluations With The Hierarchy-Of-Desires Method

We 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 Utilitarianism

April 13, 2010

We’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.

Questioning Fyfe’s Desirism, II

April 11, 2010

In the thread that followed the Introduction, we discussed,

The type-token distinction as it applies to desires;
The DFAU/DU distinction;
The concept of strength as it applies to desires;
Thomas Reid's objections 1 and 3, and faithlessgod's replies (indexed in Desirism Notes);
Peripheral issues such as DCT, my use of useful, etc.

I'd say more than enough has transpired to warrant a second post, and I'd like to discuss:

How the discussion with Thomas Reid, TaiChi and faithlessgod has impacted my position;
Why my primary objection to desirism remains;
The hierarchy of desires concept;
Old questions that remain unanswered;
New questions that resulted from our discussion.

Responding To faithlessgod’s Desirism

April 10, 2010

In a recent discussion at Luke's, faithlessgod defended desirism thusly:

My version of the analysis: We need to evaluate the desire to torture (or exterminate etc.) some group. We compare the presence of the desire to its absence. If it is present and fulfilled what is this causal desire’s material and physical affects on other desires? The other desires are those that are affected by making the target of the causal desire true, that is to bring about any state of affairs where the proposition expressed by the causal desire is made true. These are the affected desires. What is the affect on them? The desire not be tortured or not to feel pain or an aversion to torture or pain is directly thwarted. If this causal desire is absent, then the affected desires are not thwarted. Therefore it is a directly desire-thwarting desire.

I apologize to those eager to discuss Staume's book; I assure you that I'm eager as well. It's just that I felt my response to faithlessgod was relevant enough to merit being transplanted over here. It's pretty clear to me that his argument has non-trivial problems, but as always, let me know if you think I've missed something, or, if you think faithlessgod's desirism differs significantly from Fyfe's.

Desirism Notes

March 28, 2010

In lieu of jumping straight into my second post on Fyfe's desirism, I thought I'd spend some more time talking through my own understanding of the theory. My goal is – again – to show that my understanding of desirism's premises, scope and definitions is sufficient to establish both the positive and negative appraisals I pay to the theory. I have a strong desire to avoid meaningless discourse on this or any topic, and though other commenters can always misconstrue our statements no matter how articulate we write them, I believe that demonstrating an impeccable understanding of the theory is the best insurance against that problem.

Questioning Fyfe’s Desirism: Introduction

March 21, 2010

With a minor caveat or two, I tend to agree with Dostoevsky that, “Without God everything is permissible.”

Alonzo Fyfe hosts Atheist Ethicist, a blog focused on, well.. atheism and ethics. Alonzo defends the moral theory of desire utilitarianism, sometimes referred to as desirism, and I took this to be his introductory-level article on the theory.

It so happens that I accept many if not most of Fyfe’s starting premises. I’ll also freely concede that I (and arguably every other person in the world) will make decisions according to the basic tenets of the theory. To recast a classic Dylan song in desirist language, everyone aims to fulfill some desire, from the selfless servant to the wandering nomad to the greedy capitalist. Even the most ascetic monk struggling to eliminate desire (tanha) acts to fulfill a desire: the desire to spiritually mature.

In the rest of this introduction, I hope to illustrate that I’ve understood Fyfe’s core premises as he himself delineates them, and addressed desirism accordingly, both of which are preconditions for any worthy response.

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