In my defense of desire utilitarianism I sometimes use an imaginary case of a parent given two options by a captor. One option is that the parent's child will be tortured mercilessly while the parent will be lead to believe that the child is living a healthy and happy life. The other option is that the child will be given a healthy and happy life while the parent will be made to believe that the child is being tortured mercilessly.
A great many people claim that they would choose the option where they falsely believe that their child is being mercilessly tortured, while the child is in fact living a healthy and happy life. I use this to argue that people do not make choices based on what will make themselves happier.
Instead, I argue that a 'desire that P' motivates an agent to choose those options that will generate states of affairs in which P is made or kept true. In this case, the desire that one's child be healthy and happy motivates parents where that desire is sufficiently strong to choose the option in which the proposition, "My child is healthy and happy," is true.
Carrier makes a move in place of this that the parent is instead choosing to be a particular kind of person.
The mother has a choice really not between two fates for the child, but between two fates for herself: will she become (in her moment of deciding) the sort of woman who would choose Option 1 or the sort of woman who would choose Option 2?
First, what does it mean to be "the sort of woman who would choose Option 2"? In one sense, this sounds a lot like the case of a person who makes a carefully detailed and precise plan to perform a spontaneous action.
The type of person the person in this example should be is the type who chooses the welfare of her child without thinking about being any sort of woman. The "type of person" that I am talking about is one who, given a choice between an option in which her child is mercilessly tortured versus one in which the child is left to live a healthy and happy life will choose the latter without a single thought to the question, "What type of person do I want to be?".
The person who is more concerned with the well-being of her character and not the well-being of her child (except insofar as the child is a means of displaying or acting like a person of good character) has already taken severe demerits with respect to the quality of her character.
Second, what make one ‘type of person’ better than another anyway? One person might want to be the type of person who would do anything for the welfare of her child. Another might want to be the type of person who is the autocratic ruler of as much land and as many people as he can get control over. Another might admire the character of Jack the Ripper, or to be the leader of his own personal cult where sheepish followers allow him to use them to fulfill whatever desires he has without protest or complaint.
If I am trying to choose what type of person I want to be, how do I weigh the options? And what justifies the choice?
If these options are going to be evaluated in terms of maximizing happiness, then I have to ask why happiness has value, and nothing else. This returns to a long-standing question that I have had against happiness theories – what is it that gives happiness value and nothing else?
Desire fulfillment theory does not give value to only one thing. Rather, it holds that a desire that P is a reason for action that exists to realize a state of affairs in which P is true. A desire to be happy would be a mental state that would motivate an agent to act to realize a state of affairs in which, "I am happy" is true.
So, desire fulfillment theory can answer the question of why happiness has value – because people have a desire for happiness. However, there is no reason to believe that happiness is the only thing a person is capable of desiring. Not only are they capable of desiring other things, they do desire other things. In fact, the realm of possible desires is as varied as the realm of possible beliefs. If a person can believe that Q, then he can desire that Q for any Q.
So, if we are not going to use desire fulfillment to account for the value of happiness, how are we going to account for it? And how are we going to exclude everything else?
5 comments:
Reality vs. Fantasy
Alonzo Fyfe said... The type of person the person in this example should be is the type who chooses the welfare of her child without thinking about being any sort of woman. The "type of person" that I am talking about is one who, given a choice between an option in which her child is mercilessly tortured versus one in which the child is left to live a healthy and happy life will choose the latter without a single thought to the question, "What type of person do I want to be?".
This is an impossible scenario. You cannot but think what sort of person you become, nor can this be something you ignore as if it were irrelevant. It's the very defining feature of a conscience to care whether you are evil or good, selfish or compassionate, shallow or considerate, a good mother or a vile one. Thus, wanting the world to be such that people don't think about these things or don't care about them is simply wishing in vain.
Moral facts must exist in the real world, and their truth must derive from reality. Otherwise, they won't be meaningfully true. Thus, fantasizing about how you wish things were is of no use in getting at the moral facts of the world.
The fact of the matter is, if the woman didn't care what sort of person she was, by definition she wouldn't care whether she was a good mother or a vile one (etc.), which entails she wouldn't care about the real fate of her child. You might not like that, but that's the way things are. And if you want to demonstrate to people that anything is true regarding how they ought to behave, you have to appeal to the way things are.
For myself, had I a choice, I wouldn't want to live in a world where no one cared whether they were good or evil, compassionate or cruel, honest or dishonest. The causal consequences of that apathy would produce such a nightmarish world, I do not really understand why you would want the world to be that way.
The person who is more concerned with the well-being of her character and not the well-being of her child (except insofar as the child is a means of displaying or acting like a person of good character) has already taken severe demerits with respect to the quality of her character.
This is not true. It is a person who doesn't care if they are kind or cruel who has taken demerits with respect to the quality of her character. A person who wants to be kind and not cruel has quality of character.
Like so many philosophers, you conflate wanting to be kind with having no concern for the recipients of kindness. That is illogical. By definition, wanting to be kind (and I mean actually kind, not merely acting the part) entails concern for the recipients of kindness. In other words, the woman who wants to be compassionate and not selfishly cruel, in part wants to be that sort of person because she cares about her child's well being.
I've actually explained this, with references to the scientific literature, in Sense and Goodness without God, so I won't repeat the details here.
Reality vs. Concept
Second, what make one ‘type of person’ better than another anyway? One person might want to be the type of person who would do anything for the welfare of her child. Another might want to be the type of person who is the autocratic ruler of as much land and as many people as he can get control over. Another might admire the character of Jack the Ripper, or to be the leader of his own personal cult where sheepish followers allow him to use them to fulfill whatever desires he has without protest or complaint.
And the moon might be made of cheese. And faeries might live under my bed. And Scientology might be the one true religion. I have little respect for "mights." Reality is about is, not might.
Per my discussion in comments to your other post (Beliefs, Desires, and Happinessr), in factual reality, none of the people you describe exist but the first: everyone, when correctly informed and reasoning coherently, will agree with the first on your list and none of the others. Psychology has been amassing evidence in confirmation of this. People become like the others on your list only because of false beliefs or invalid reasoning. But people who become that way even after rectifying their beliefs and reasoning haven't yet been found.
But still, there can be such people in theory (see Sense and Goodness pp. 342-45). They are just irrelevant to the question of how we ought to behave, because we aren't them. And if you met those kinds of people, you would have no more luck getting them to govern their behavior by appealing to your desire utilitarianism, than I would by appealing to goal theory. In fact, so, too, any moral theory, even Christian theism. A defect that necessarily obtains for all moral theories, can thereby refute none.
I don't even consider it a defect, it's just annoying, since it's logically inescapable for any moral theory, and thus is just the way things are.
If I am trying to choose what type of person I want to be, how do I weigh the options? And what justifies the choice?
Read Sense and Goodness for a detailed answer.
Moore's Open Question (Again)
If these options are going to be evaluated in terms of maximizing happiness, then I have to ask why happiness has value, and nothing else.
Any sentient organism logically must have some ultimate contentment state that it seeks, which thus causes all other desires as utilitarian mechanisms to achieve that contentment state in a complex environment. If it lacked such a motivator for its desires, it would have no desires (because it would have no reason to have any), and thus would do nothing, hence it would just lie down and die, a la Serenity, as I said before.
That organism will call that ultimate contentment state by a word that we would translate as "happiness," because that's the word we use for that state in us. In most civilized beings, this contentment state would be achieved by a highly similar architecture of desires (for reasons of natural selection that I explain in my book). It's possible some rare cases will not follow this pattern (a la Aliens and Starship Troopers, the examples I use in my book), but such will be monsters, with an alien morality, who will be completely unresponsive to any of our moral arguments, whether Fyfe's or mine or anyone else's. But it will still subordinate all its desires to the master desire of seeking the contentment state, and thus even it will pursue happiness above all else.
As this is logically inevitable for all naturally evolved sentient beings (for as noted, otherwise it would be naturally selected out of existence), that is why "happiness has value, and nothing else," although I wouldn't put it that way: many other things have value because they promote happiness, thus it's not a false dichotomy between only happiness having value and everything else having none. Hence...
there is no reason to believe that happiness is the only thing a person is capable of desiring.
...is a straw man. I never said this, nor does my theory entail it. People are obviously capable of desiring all kinds of things. The question is why.
Desire fulfillment theory does not give value to only one thing. Rather, it holds that a desire that P is a reason for action that exists to realize a state of affairs in which P is true.
But what happens when we desire different things at the same time? And why do we desire anything at all? If you cannot answer those questions, your theory is incomplete. And if you have an answer to them, odds are it will look suspiciously like mine.
Just think to ask, why should we adhere to the desires we have? For example, if you had a harmless desire to chew string, you still would have to ask, "Why should I even bother fulfilling this desire? Why don't I just give this up?" The answer will always land you where I am: because fulfilling the desire satisfies us. QED.
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