Responding To faithlessgod’s Desirism

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.

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