Good Desires, Good People, and Right Action

There are good and bad desires.

In my last post I discussed what it takes for something to be good.

Specifically:

X is good = X is such as to fulfill the desires in question.

But what about desires themselves? Doesn't this mean that anything can be good or bad so long as it is desired? If somebody desires to torture a child, and "good" = "is such as to fulfill the desires in question", then it is good to torture a child.

I answered this in part in that previous post. The person's desire to torture a child is not the "desires in question" we refer to in making these types of evaluations. But there is more that can be said.

Desires themselves can be good or bad.

To see this, all you need to do is fit a desire into the original formula.

A desire is good if and only if it is such as to fulfill the desires in question.

So, take this "desire to torture children" and plug it into the formula. Clearly, this desire is a desire that tends to thwart other desires. That would make it a bad desire. More to the point, people generally have many and strong reasons to weaken or prevent the realization of this desire. To whatever this degree this desire exists, to that degree the interests of other people are put at risk. That gives them reason to call this a "bad desire" and to condemn instances in which this desire appears.

Let's say you could press a button and, from that moment on, a desire to torture children (a "desire that I am torturing a child") no longer exists. Can anybody give me a reason not to press the button? Even somebody with a desire to torture children would almost certainly have more reason to press the button than not to. The effect of the button means that the person himself would no longer have a desire to torture children, so he would no longer be tormented by an unfulfilled desire. He would be more like the rest of us - enjoying the types of lives the rest of us can enjoy who have no desire to torture children.

The desire to torture children is a bad desire.

Compare this to the desire to keep promises. Let's say we could press a button and wipe out the desire to keep promises. People could no longer be relied upon to keep promises. That would make the promises themselves worthless. The institution of promise keeping is a very useful institution, allowing us to better predict the behavior of others, make better plans, agree to deals where we carry out our part at one time with the expectation that the other person will carry out their part at a later time (even after they already get what they want). All of this would be lost. So, the desire to keep promises is a desire we have reason to encourage in others.

The desire to keep promises is a good desire.

A desire to keep promises is a desire people generally have reasons to want everybody to have. It is one of several desires of this type. We have reason to want to live in a community filled with people who have a desire to tell the truth, to repay debts, to leave other people's property alone unless one has the owner's consent. These, too, are good desires. In fact, there is a close relationship between the types of desires that people generally have to promote universally and the rules of morality. This is not a coincidence.

There are good desires, and there are bad desires.

Remember, "good" = "is such as to fulfill the desires in question". Since there are good and bad desires, there are cases in which the "desires in question" can be "good desires and the absence of bad desires."

A person tells a lie. We can ask: "Would a person with good desires and lacking bad desires have told a lie in those circumstances?"

Maybe he would. Perhaps he is hiding Jews in his attic and the Nazi soldiers come to his door asking about the Jews who used to live next door. Or perhaps he is hiding runaway slaves in a secret room in his basement. In this case, a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would probably lie. In fact, to lie in this type of case might be considered an obligation. It is what a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would have done.

Mind you, the person with good desires and lacking bad desires would still have an aversion to lying. It would simply be outweighed by other considerations. A desire to protect innocent people from harm. An aversion to being a party to an injustice. These are the desires that would motivate the person in this case to lie.

Though, actually, these types of cases are rare. For the most part, people generally have reason to promote universally an aversion to lying. A person with good desires and lacking bad desires would tell the truth in most circumstances. There are many and strong reasons to condemn - even to punish (Perjury) - those who lie in these every-day circumstances.

The same thing goes to taking the property of others without their consent. We have reason for people generally to have an aversion to doing this type of thing. We call it theft (or robbery) and, for good reason, condemn and punish those within whom this aversion to taking property without consent seems to be lacking. However, this aversion can be outweighed by other circumstances. One of those likely circumstances is when people generally can come to an agreement (in a democratic society) that taking the wealth from those who have a great deal and use it to alleviate the suffering of the very poor. There are few reasons to condemn this type of action - and many reasons to praise it (to consider the act obligatory such that one is condemned for NOT supporting these types of institutions).

So . . . there are good and bad desires . . . and it makes sense to evaluate actions, institutions, laws, governments, and the like according to whether they are things that "a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would have done in the circumstances". We can use these judgments to direct praise or condemnation, thus promoting the desires that people generally have reason to promote, and inhibiting desires that people generally have reason to inhibit.