Facebook group: Desirism

I have created a facebook group for Desirism.

I am hoping to draw people to this who would be willing to link to items of relevance to the theory - articles in neuroscience, moral philosophy, and application in the real world.

I do not want desirism to be a product to be bought or sold. A group created to promote desirism makes the perhaps unwarranted assumption that it is correct and worth promoting.

It is, instead, a theory (or, perhaps more accurately, a hypothesis) with propositions that are true or false and, if true, having implications in the real world.

Those implications have to do mainly with how we direct social forces such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. It concerns questions about how to direct physical violence and how to organize a just community.

Unlike most miral theory, desirism does not come with a set of answers. There is no list of commandments. Nor does it try to identify an ultimate good from which all other good is derived. It explains good as a relatioship between states of affairs and desires. However, a person needs to determine what desires exist to determine what is good.

It describes moral good in terms of desires that people generally have reason to promote using social tools such as praise and condemnation. This eans that an act of moral praise or condemnation can be justified (or unjustified) be asking, "Am I promoting desires (or aversions) that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote?" and "Can I defend that conclusion?"

One of the topics of the desirism group is to look at acts of praise and condemnation and to question their justification.

I think there is a lot of interesting and important discussion to be had.

Thus, the creation of the facebook group:

Desirism.