On Desire 2018. Part 13: Objections to Dispositional and Doxastic Desires

We are moving on to another article on desire:

Friedrich, Daniel (2017), “Desire, Mental Force, and Desirous Experience.” In Deonna J. & Lauria F. (eds). The Nature of Desire. Oxford University Press.

“Desire, it is often said, is a pro-attitude”. This is how Daniel Friedrich begins his article.

He begins by looking at a couple of ways of understanding this, and providing reasons to reject this. The dominant views are: (1) desiring p disposes us to act in ways designed to realize p, and (2) desiring p entails a positive evaluation of p. These are the “doxastic” and “evaluate” theories of desire.

As a point of contrast, I have been arguing that desiring p entails an assignment of value to p being made or kept true. This is distinct from both of the theories presented above, which can be seen in the way it handles the objections.

Dispositions to Act

Friedrich begins by mentioning the same objections to the “dispositions to act” thesis discussed in Oddie (2017). We can imagine Radioman, who simply has a disposition to switch on radios. This mere disposition – something more of a habit or a tic – does not fit what we are talking about when we talk about desires.

Of course, what is missing is that there is no assignment of value to “the radio is on” being made or kept true. Add this, so that Radioman sees the radio being on as an end in itself – something to be done for its own sake – and we get something nearer to a desire.

However, the claim that a desire is an assignment of a value to p being made or kept true is not the same as believing that p is good or perceiving that p is good. To see this, we need to examine the doxastic view.

Beliefs that P Is Good

An alternative to the view that to desire that p is to be disposed to bring about p is the view that to desire that p is to believe that the realization of ‘p’ is good.
Friedrich brings up several objections to this doxastic view.

First, Friedrich brings up nihilists who believe that nothing has value yet who still has desires. He also brings up people who have a “desire that p” but who believes that p is bad. We can include in this the desires of the addict.

On the assignments theory, there is nothing problematic with a person believing that nothing has value yet still having a brain that assigns negative value to being in pain or positive value to having pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Nor is there any problem with a person having a desire that p and, at the same time, an aversion to having a desire that p, recognizing that his desire that p motivates him to act in ways that thwarts his other desires, that others have an aversion to people having a desire that p, or that others have many and strong reasons to condemn and punish those who are disposed to make or keep ‘p’ true.

Second, Freidrich brings up the objection that a believe that ‘p’ is good seems to require more intellectual sophistication than it is reasonable to assign to animals and small children who, nonetheless, have a desire to eat or an aversion to being in pain. There does not seem to be much sense in saying that one’s pet has a belief that being in pain is bad or that protecting one’s offspring from harm is good.

None of this sophistication is required of an animal that simply assigns being in pain a negative value – and thus works to prevent such states to the degree that she can recognize what might cause them.

Third, Friedrich reports that “beliefs are subject to the norm of truth”. To believe that p is to believe that ‘p’ is true. So, to desire to have pumpkin pie with whipped cream is to believe that having pumpkin pie with whipped cream is good, which means believing that “pumpkin pie with whipped cream is good” is true. Now, we need a theory to explain what it is for p to be true. And, if it is true for our agent Alph, is it true for everybody?

If you imagine there is an elephant in the room, you do not fall short of any inbuilt standard if there isn’t. But if you believe that there is an elephant in the room, your belief falls short of an inbuilt ideal if the closest elephant is in the zoo three miles away.

If one believes that p is good then one is “falling short of an inbuilt ideal” if p is not, in fact, true. So, now we need to determine what it is for p to be, in fact true.

When it comes to assigning a value to ‘p’ being made or kept true, there is no inbuilt assumption of truth. If ‘p’ is true, the desire motivates the agent to keep it true. If ‘p’ is false, the desire motivates the agent to make it true.

A common move to answer this kind of objection to the doxastic view is to say that value is like perception – that desiring that p is like perceiving that p is good.

Yet, perception also seems to have an inbuilt standard of truth. If one perceives that there is an elephant in the room then this perception is suspect if there is no elephant in the room. We still need to ask what is required to make, “There is an elephant in the room” true.

To be fair, one of the objections to the assignment view is that the assignments seem arbitrary. There is no fact of the matter to back them up, so one assignment is as good as another. This is true. Though, it is also the case that the relationships among desires are not merely a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact that addiction tends to thwart other desires and believing this is not the case will not prevent it from being true. People, who have this arbitrary aversion to pain that evolution happened to give them, as a matter of fact have a reason to cause others to have an aversion to causing pain.

Of course, these are the theories that Friedrich rejected as well. The interesting part will be to look at the theory that Friedrich supports.

On Desire 2018. Part 12: The Desires of Young Children and Animals

Young children and animals have desires. They have hunger, thirst, and an aversion to pain at the least. Cats have a desire to chase and catch things that are like prey. Herd animals have an aversion to cats.

Oddie addresses a concern that says that this is a problem for his “appears to as being good” thesis of desire. “Appears to as being good” seems to be beyond the cognitive capacities of infants and animals – which would leave them without desires. Specifically, it is unlikely that any animal or infant has an understanding of the concept “being good” that would be necessary for anything to appear as being good.

In response to this, Oddie suggests two possible answers.

For his first possible answer, Oddie notes things can appear a certain way to us even though we do not have a concept to describe it. He uses color as an example, noting that, “We experience a far richer palette of colors, for example, than we have the conceptual tools to characterize.” In fact, we cannot even ask the question, “What is that?” unless we had a prior ability to pick “that” out so that we can investigate and think about it.

The second possible answer, he draws on the ideas of Friedrich and Lauria that something can “appear round” in many different ways. It can look round. It can feel round. Using the example of a bat he claims that something can also sound round – though he could also use the example of rolling a marble around in a box.

Similarly, one can argue that there are different modes of presentation of a state of affairs. In the perception of S, S is presented as being the case. In the desire for S, S is presented as being good. One and the same state can be presented in these two different ways. The perception that S and the desire that S take the same object but present S in different ways. (p. 51).

This defense still leaves me with two questions.

The first question springs from noting that, nowhere in this section, did Oddie mention “fittingness”. It is possible for something to “appear good” without its goodness being, in any way, fitting, in the same way that something can appear round or appear red without any claim of roundness being a fitting shape or redness a fitting color. The idea that the brain, in assigning a negative value to “I am in pain” makes it “appear bad” can simply be a basic description that this is how the brain works. From here, survival of the fittest will determine if this particular assignment of value (or this particular way of drawing an assignment of value out of the environment and experience) will get passed to the next generation.

The second question deals with the fact that I do not know what “appears good” is supposed to mean. Specifically, rather than introspecting on my own desires, I am curious to know how I understand that somebody else has a desire. I cannot see how some particular thing “appears” to them. All I can see is their observable behavior and, from that, try to infer whether a desire provides the best explanation.

With respect to colors, such as red, I cannot tell how “redness” appears to other people. However, I can look at what other people point to and call “red” and, from that, make predictions regarding what other things people will call red. I can get pretty good at it – predicting what other people will call “red” with exceptional reliability, without having the slightest idea of how “red” appears to them.

When it comes to desire, I have a problem. People are in substantial agreement concerning what they call “red.” There is no such substantial agreement with respect to what they desire. It would make my job easier if everybody pointed to the same thing and called it “good” or “desired,” but they do not. This is in spite of the fact that, when two people point to the same thing and give it two different evaluations, every other appearance is (quite nearly) the same.

When I turn that knowledge inward, that is where I learn to explain and understand my own behavior as the pursuit of certain ends. I may discover that those ends have something in common, but the word is attached not to this appearance, but to what I can know that I share with other creatures who have desires – a disposition to pursue certain ends or goals. We may not have the same goals, but we do have goals.

This is now I know that young children and animals have desires. It is not by knowing how things appear to them – something I cannot know. It is because the best method I have for explaining and predicting their behavior is to understand them as agents who are disposed to perform goal-directed action. They act with a purpose – an end – to realize (or to prevent the realization) of certain states of affairs. This represents more than just a disposition to act. It represents a disposition to plan – to alter one’s behavior in ways that will realize an end even in environments that provide different means.

On Desire 2018. Part 11: The Death of the Death of Desire Principle

The “Death of Desire” principle notes that a desire, once fulfilled, ceases to exist. Another way in which it is phrased is to say that a person cannot desire that which they know to be the case.

Here, I must admit, this simply seems wrong. It is easiest to see with respect to aversions. My desire that I not be in pain does not cease to be exist simply because I am currently in a state in which I am not in pain. My fear of deep water does not vanish when I am not in deep water. In fact, the persistence of these “desires that not-P” even when not-P is true provides the motivation to make sure that not-P does not become true. It is my aversion to pain when I am not in pain that causes me to make sure that I avoid future pain. It is my fear of deep water even when I am not in deep water that keeps me out of deep water.

In the case of positive desires – desires to realize a state rather than to prevent the realization of a state, it makes sense that evolution would equip us with desires that fade when they are realize. After all, desires command action. It makes sense that evolution would equip us with desires that fade when they are fulfilled so that we can move on to the next project. We eat until we have obtained the nourishment we need, then we go on to do something else. We are thirsty until that point at which we have consumed enough water to restore a healthy balance. We desire sex until we have reached an end that makes reproduction possible (at least males do), and we explore until we have discovered whatever it is we were exploring to discover.

This provides some understanding of where the idea that a desire ends when that which is desired has been realized. However, it is a mistake to attribute this to all desire.

Even in the case of some desires persist. The desire that one’s offspring is healthy and happy persists even when one knows that one’s offspring are healthy and happy. One’s desire to be a novelist persists through the writing of several novels.

Oddie brings up as an example Hillary Clinton’s desire to become president. Then (in his hypothetical alternative universe) Hillary does become the first female president of the United States. She can no longer become the first female president of the United States because she is the first female president of the United States. The desire disappears. However, being the first female president of the United States still appears good to her. This argument creates an objection to Oddie’s thesis, since this is an example where an agent can no longer desire that P (to become the first female president of the United States), but this still appears good to her. If a desire is an appearance of something as good, then there can be no appearance of good if the desire is dead.

Oddie answers this objection by stating that there is a thin desire that persists through the election, but we give different names to the different parts. At the start, Clinton has a perspective desire (a desire for a perspective state) of being the first female president of the United States. Then, she wins the election, and the perspective desire becomes a satisfied desire that she is president of the United States. Indeed, if the desire did not continue to exist, then she could not be experiencing the satisfaction of the desire the day after the election – not if the desire no longer existed to be satisfied.

The fact that Clinton can be satisfied with winning (if she wins) and disappointed with losing (if she loses) suggests that something of the desire survives the election. It does not, in fact, die. It simply changes its name.

The assigned value theory of desire would have the same response. The brain assigns a particular value to being the first President of the United States. This motivates the agent to make or keep the proposition true. When Hillary wins the election, the desire changed from making the proposition true to keeping it true. The desire did not die. It simply shifted to a new, appropriate object.

On Desire 2018. Part 10: Unexperienced Value

I found this part of Graham Oddie's paper difficult to write on. I think it is because I found a hard time getting my thoughts into the correct context.

That paper, by the way, for anybody who may have forgotten, is: Oddie, Graham (2017). "Desire and the Good: in search of the right fit." In Deonna J. & Lauria F. (eds.), The Nature of Desire. Oxford University Press.

So, here is my attempt to understand this part of the paper:

The “admirable” demon example, discussed in the previous section, showed that it was possible for it to be the case that people ought to (or that it would be good to) admire someone (who otherwise threaten to do great harm) to prevent great harm even though that someone was not admirable. At least, this was true in the "Deontic" and "Axiological" versions of FA - but not in the Representational version.

(Representational FA) X is V if and only if it is representationally accurate for one to take attitude F(V) to X.

The “solitary goods” problem is meant to show that the left-hand side of such a biconditional is true, then statement cannot be state-entailing or belief-entailing.

The biconditional we are going to work with here is Oddie's conception of "good".

S is good if and only if favoring S is fitting.

Oddie wants to show that this is false if "S is good" is state-entailing ("S is good" implies "S exists"), or belief-entailing ("S is good" implies "Agent believes 'S is good'")

He will then show that the appearances thesis meets these criteria.

So, what are these “solitary goods”?

Solitary goods are those that exist without anyone’s being around to respond to them fittingly.

I mentioned that I found this difficult to understand. Does this mean that nobody exist who can respond to them fittingly? Or does this mean that such a person exists, but is unable to respond to them fittingly (e.g., because the object is at the center of the Sun where nobody can experience it)? If the former, then does the person have to exist at the same time as the object that has value? For example, what would we say of a situation where I respond fittingly to something that will not exist until 10 years after I die?

In this biconditional, “favoring” is to S being good what “admiring” is to X being admirable or desiring is to D being desirable.

So, the solitary goods case asks whether it is possible for “S is good” to be true, and “favoring S is fitting” to be false.

I would say “yes” to this and present as my examples the object of every desire that evolution, the environment, and experience has planted as a chip in my brain. The awfulness of that sore throat that results when my body is fighting off a flu, the taste of pumpkin pie with cool-whip, sex, Jimmy Buffett music, and a long, hot shower. All of these are good. Favoring these are not fitting – they are simply what the chips that evolution, the environment, and experience have planted in my brain.

However, for the sake of discussion, let us limit our focus to the same types of goods we discussed in the previous section – the admirable, the desirable, and the moral. These are goods that people generally have reasons to promote universally. I will bring forth my example from the previous section – the aversion to causing others pain (under the assumption that everybody has an aversion to pain).
Does this have a problem with solitary goods?

Oddie gives us an example:

Consider an apparently good state, E, that happy egrets exist. Conjoin E with the state F: that there are no past, present, or future favorers. Suppose that the conjunctive state E & F is also good.

Well, when I am asked to suppose that there are no past, present, or future favorers, I have to ask, “What about the happy egrets?” If happy egrets exist, then there are present favorers. If there are no present favorers, then happy egrets do not exist. Imaging such a universe in which E & F are good is like imagining a married bachelor named Jim or a round square that is pink.

Perhaps I think I can make this work if I consider an apparently good state – that G.E. Moore’s beautiful planet exists. Though it is beautiful, it contains no evaluative creatures. It has flowers and rainbows clean mountain streams, but no animals. In fact, in this universe, no evaluative creatures exist, have existed, or will exist.

Now we have a situation in which E (a beautiful world exists) & F (there never has been, is, or will be an evaluative creature) are both true. Combining E and F does not create a contradiction.

I would argue that it would be false to say that E & F (or E alone, for that matter) is good. For it to be good, there must be a creature with a reason to bring it about – an evaluating creature. However, this is not a logical requirement. It is a contingent fact about how value actually comes about. I can imagine – even if it is not real – an intrinsic value property attached to E alone and E & F combined that makes this combination logically possible.

However, this clearly does not entail a state in which somebody favors E & F. I already stated that we are imagining that value is an intrinsic property, and value as an intrinsic property does not imply an evaluator. Only value as a relational property between objects of evaluation and valuers requires a valuer, and this is not logically necessary. It is only metaphysically necessary.

So, “good” is not state-entailing.

And, if we can do without he evaluator, “good” is not belief entailing either.

I can agree that “S is good” is not state-entailing on the grounds that much of what we are concerned about in evaluating something as good concerns reasons for bringing it about – and bringing it about might not even be possible. For example, it would be good to be 30 years younger. However, my being 30 years younger does not obtain. So, “my being 30 years younger” is good does not imply “I am 30 years younger”.

To support Oddie’s claim that goodness is not belief-dependent, I can return to our village filled with people who have an aversion to pain. For them, a universal aversion to causing pain would be good – they certainly have reason to bring about such an aversion. However, it is good regardless of whether anybody in the community believes that this is the case. They may be totally in the dark concerning the merits or even the possibility of promoting an aversion to pain. Perhaps a malevolent demon has falsely informed them that condemning those who cause pain will bring divine wrath or bad luck. Yet, given the facts of the case (they have an aversion to pain and a reward system that makes it possible to promote an aversion to causing pain in others) this universal aversion to causing pain is good.

I am not certain that anything I wrote here makes sense of the original argument. I struggled with it. I have given it my best shot and this is what I came up with. Something can be good without anybody believing that it is good. Something can be good without anybody favoring it (though, perhaps, like “causing pain”, it may be something they should favor or, in this case, disfavor). Nothing can be good without somebody valuing something, but his is not a logical entailment. This is just how the universe works.

Yet, I am rejecting the claim, “S is good if and only if favoring S is fitting.” This makes sense for a certain kind of goodness, but not for all goodness. There is still the goodness that evolution, environment, and experience simply assigns to certain states, where there is no fittingness.

On Desire 2018. Part 09: The "Admirable" Demon

This commentary on Graham Oddie's paper is turning out longer than expected. Still, I have come to value the technique of creating commentaries.

For reference, so that you do not need to go hunting for it, the previous nine posts have all had to do with: Oddie, Graham (2017). "Desire and the Good: in search of the right fit". In Deonna J. & Lauria F. (eds.), The Nature of Desire. Oxford University Press.


In a universe apparently filled with demons, Oddie postulates that, “an evil demon threatens the world with some terrible outcome unless you admire him.” In this case, there is a sense in which you ought to admire him, but that the demon is not admirable.

This creates a problem for “Deontic FA”, which Oddie defined as:

(Deontic FA) X is V if and only if one ought to take attitude F(V) to X.

Because, here, one ought to admire the demon (to prevent the terrible outcome), but the demon is despicable. The right side of the biconditional is true, but the left side false, so the biconditional does not hold.
Oddie identifies a similar problem for “Axiological FA” where, “the demon threatens to bring about the worst outcome unless you desire that outcome,” thus, “it is clearly better for you to desire the worst outcome than not.” Yet, it is still the worst outcome.

To answer these problems, Oddie considers a type of response that comes from Olson (2009) and Ewing (1959) that suggests that there are multiple definitions of ‘ought’. It is like the claim that “Georgia is one of the United States” is true when talking about the region north of Florida, but false when talking about the country on the east side of the Black Sea bordering Russia. The biconditional does fail under the definition of “ought” that appears in the objection, but there is another definition where the biconditional still holds.

Ewing presented some additional detail by claiming that one sense of “ought” refers to what people generally have reason to condemn (they have reason to condemn the person who fails to admire the demon). He distinguishes this from the ‘ought’ that is fitting to admire. It is in the first sense that the biconditional is false, while it remains true in the second.

As Oddie argues, “Representational FA” does not have this problem since, regardless of the merits of what an agent ought to do or it would be good for the agent to value, it remains true both that the demon is not admirable, and that it is not representationally accurate for one to take the attitude of admiring the demon (though it may be prudent or even obligatory to do so).

However, I still do not know what “representational accuracy” is.

We could be working under an assumption that representational accuracy requires representing the admirable quality as an objective, intrinsic property of “deserving-admirationness”. This could make the most sense of how we use the term, but it could lead us straight into an error theory. All claims of admirability would then be false since we are representing things as having a property that nothing actually has.

The tension found in Deontic FA and Axiological FA would be minor compared to this error.

I am not saying that representational accuracy requires this and that we must reject Representational FA as a result. I am saying that this is one way it can go. Another alternative is that representational accuracy is found precisely in Deontic FA – that to accurately represent admirability one represents it in terms of what people ought to admire.

Furthermore, I do not see reason for concern in the responses from Olson and Ewing mentioned above. The fact that the word “Georgia” refers to both a state and a country may generate some confusion, but it does not provide a reason to prefer a theory of “Georgia” that holds that some propositions are true of “Georgia” in the one sense and false of “Georgia” in the other. That is not a problem – it is simply a fact about the language we have invented.

Given uncertainty over what “representational accuracy” consists in and that the ambiguity of a term like “ought” need not be much of a problem, I would like to look more closely at what Oddie called “Deontic FA”.

In the previous section I described a community containing individuals who all had an aversion to pain and a capacity to create in others an aversion to causing pain by using rewards such as praise and punishments such as condemnation. The members of this community have reason to call “admirable” those who go out of their way to avoid causing pain to others, and to call “deplorable” those who do not. These are terms of praise and condemnation and, as such, are useful in creating a community where individuals have this aversion to causing pain that people generally have reason to promote universally.

Let us add the admirable demon to this community. He apparently has a desire to be admired. To get what he wants he is threatening to harm others unless they admire him. Given that others have an aversion to pain, he threatens to cause others pain unless they admire him (and not necessarily limit that pain to those who do not admire him).

This demon does not have a trait that people generally have reason to promote universally. To admire this demon is to promote universally the trait of being willing to harm others unless he is admired. In fact, the agent (not the demon) in holding that such a trait is admirable would have to also believe that she herself should adopt this trait – that she should also be disposed to cause pain if she is not admired. The same can be said of all her neighbors.

At this point, I need to admit to a shift in what I have called “admirable”. In the original example, we were talking about admiring a demon who wishes to inflict pain if he was not admired. Here, I am talking about admiring a trait. More precisely, we can combine the two by saying that one is admiring a person in virtue of a trait. We cannot simply admire the demon. We must have a reason to admire him – something we admire him for.

The demon’s demand, if not carefully worded, would leave us with a loophole. While the demon is deplorable in virtue of his being willingness to inflict pain unless he is admired, perhaps he is also an extremely gifted painter who can be admired for what he can put on a canvas. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and raped Sally Hemmings repeatedly – her non-consent being grounded both on the fact that she was a slave and, at the start of the affair, a young teenager. Insofar as this was true, Jefferson was not admirable. Yet, he may still be admired for his skill at eloquently presenting principles of and enlightenment.

In terms of examining Deontic FA, this would be cheating. The counter-example assumes that there is no other trait for which the demon can actually be admired. However, the fact that our admiration is focused on traits, and on individuals only in virtue of the fact that they exhibit admirable traits, does require that we specify what is going on with the demon.

With these considerations, I would offer an alternative to Deontic FA as follows:

(Deontic FA) X is V in virtue of X having trait T if and only if people generally ought to promote universally T by taking attitude F(V) to X in virtue of X having T.

To have a genuine counter-example to this version of Deontic FA, one would need a case in which the demon exhibited a trait that would not be counted as admirable, and yet for it to be a trait that people ought to promote universally by praising those who exhibited it and condemning those who did not. The demon’s trait of being disposed to cause pain unless he is admired is both despicable, and not a trait that people ought to promote universally. It is not a counter-example.

This defense of a form of Deontic FA does not defeat Representational FA. Recall that the objection raised against Representational FA concerned its lack of specificity when it came to cashing out “representational accuracy.” We can now cash out representational accuracy in terms of representing a person as having a trait that people generally ought to promote universally using praise and condemnation. The demon is deplorable, and it is representationally accurate to deplore the demon.

We can apply the same analysis to “delightful.” There are things we have reason to want people to take delight in – the laughter and the accomplishments of one’s children. There are things we do not want people to take delight in – the suffering and failure of one’s children. People generally have reason to encourage delight in some states and not in others.

At the same time, people sometimes use the term to refer to things that people do not have reason to promote delight in – a delightful meal or concert where there is no fault in others who not only take no delight in the but find them horrible. The use of “delightful” in these cases generally represents an error. In some cases, it may be an exaggerated compliment, “This is so good that those who do not delight in it are somehow defective.” In some cases, it is snobbery and prejudice, “Though there is no reason to promote a delight in this universally, those who do not delight in it are inferior beings – defective in some way.” These uses of the term do not obligate us to come up with a theory in which these uses report facts.

Oddie ends his discussion by drawing some lessons for the theory of the good.

This delivers a constraint on fitting attitudes (namely that they be capable of being representationally accurate) that will narrow the range and nature of the fitting responses to evaluative attitudes in general and to the thin evaluative attribute of goodness. The fitting response to a state’s being good must be a presentation of that state as good.

I have not given any reason to reject Oddie’s analysis of goods for which there is a fitting response – a response that people generally have reason to encourage universally. However, I am including under the concept of “goodness” those states that fulfill desires – the aversion to pain, hunger, thirst, certain food preferences, basic environmental comfort (temperature preferences), and the like – that evolution, environment, and experience have planted in our brains. In fact, I am using these desires as the foundation for the fittingness of such things as the aversion to causing pain.

, and that evolution and experience has planted in the brain. am using a broader definition of desire, and of good, than Oddie. I am including as desired the value chips planted in our brains by evolution and the regular course of biological development. In my description of the community of individuals with an aversion to pain, the evolutionarily acquired brain chip of aversion to pain, the admirability of honesty, and the delightfulness of a child’s achievements.

In the sample community seeded initially with people who have an evolutionarily acquired aversion to pain and a reward system, these are what make the aversion to causing others pain admirable. Without the evolutionarily acquired aversion to pain, promoting admiration of those who avoid causing pain would be pointless. Without a reward system, it would be useless.

On Desire 2018. Part 08: Desirable, Admirable, and Delightful

Continuing my series on Oddie, Graham (2017). "Desire and the Good: in search of the right fit." In Deonna J. & Lauria F. (eds.), The Nature of Desire. Oxford University Press.

Oddie’s key focus in his theory of "desire" is on the idea of “fitness”.

This will require that we look more closely at the idea of fitness.

The fitting attitude account tells us that the delightful is not just what people happen to take delight in or what people typically take delight in, but in what it is fitting to delight in.

Oddie provides us with three conceptions of this which he generated by “commandeering” a similar topology presented by Toppolet (2011):

(Deontic FA) X is V if and only if one ought to take attitude F(V) to X.

(Axiological FA) X is V if and only if it is good to take attitude F(V) to X.

(Representational FA) X is V if and only if it is representationally accurate for one ought to take attitude F(V) to X.

In these sentences, FA stands for a fitting attitude such as admirable. We can read Deontic FA as saying, for example:

Honesty is admirable if and only if one ought to take an attitude ‘admiring’ to honesty.

Oddie does not specify any preference for either of these three formulations here. He saves that task for when he discusses objections, where he sides with the representational view. I fear that I am going to have problems with the representational view because I do not know how to cash out the phrase “representationally accurate.”

At this point, he seeks only to specify the options. I will do the same. However, I want to say a bit more about these formulations as seen from the assignments perspective.

Again, there is nothing here that we can see as an objection – just a clarification.

For illustrative purposes, allow me to take Deontic FA.

The initial examination of the assignments theory of desire would seem to suggest that honesty is admirable if and only if people admire it. However, this is clearly problematic. There have clearly been cases in the past where at least some people have admired cruelty or ruthlessness in getting what one wants, yet that did not make these admirable qualities. However, there is a way of getting something that fits more closely to what Oddie has in mind out of the assignments theory.

Consider a hypothetical community whose members have an evolved aversion to pain; evolution planted wiring in their brains such as to assign a negative value to states of being in pain.

Let us further assume that the beings in this community have what we may call a “mesolimbic pathway” – a reward system. By means of reward and punishment (including praise and condemnation) inflicted on agents, people can create in those agents an aversion to causing pain. In addition, people can acquire these aversions by observing others being rewarded or punished, or even hearing about them in a story where those who avoided causing pain were praised and those who did not were vilified.

Now, we have this fact: People generally have a reason to promote in others universally an aversion to causing pain. Nobody at the start of this community has an aversion to causing pain. However, this does not prevent it from being trued that they have a reason to create such an aversion. In fact, it may be the case that nobody has even yet figured out, "You know, if we all were to reward and praise those who refrain from causing pain, and punish and condemn those who do not refrain, we can promote universally an aversion to causing pain." Yet, this will not change the truth of the claim.

We can understand honesty in this way.

Honesty is admirable if and only if people generally have on balance many and strong reasons to promote an attitude of ‘admiring’ to honesty.

For the same types of reasons that the people in my hypothetical community have for promoting an aversion to causing pain, we can make an argument that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote, universally, an admiration for honesty. In this sense, honesty ought to be admired, even where the fundamental desires are evolutionary designed “brain chips” that assign values to such things as avoiding pain, caring for one’s offspring, hunger, thirst, sex, and environmental comfort.

This gives me a way of making sense of the claim I made in the previous section that maintaining a fiction of independent goods is a bad thing. People generally have many and strong reasons to promote, universally, an aversion to promoting the fiction of independent goods. The reasons come from the fact that people get criticized for having brains that make value assignments different from those of others. Recall that the problem is that those others see these value assignments as reliable indicators of a type of goodness that does not exist. This is true even though many of those reasons come from the “brain chips” evolution and experience has planted in people’s brains.

Nothing here so far provides a reason to Oddie’s fittingness thesis. It provides a useful analysis of terms like “admirable”.

Oddie does go on to consider three objections. The first of these will lead him to accept "Representational FA" as defined above. I wish to consider his objections and suggest a problem with Representational FA in the next section.

On Desire 2018. Part 07: Radioman and Radiowoman

The story of Radioman and Radiowoman is used to argue for an evaluation theory of desire as opposed to a disposition-to-act theory of desire.

An evil demon has given Radioman a disposition to act. By means of a chip planted in Radioman's head, every time he walks near a radio he will reach out and turn it on. It is something like a habit – something the agent simply does in a given circumstance. A radio is within reach, out goes his hand, on goes the radio. If we ask him if he wants the radio to be on, he would say he does not. He has no interest in the radio being on and, in fact, he hopes that there is no radio nearby so that he will not end up turning it on.

Radioman has no desire to turn on radios.

The purpose of this example is to illustrate that our concept of desire is not a concept that attaches itself merely to a disposition to act. Here is a disposition to act, but it is not associated with a desire, so the concept of a desire points someplace else. It is a mistake to associate the concept of a desire with a mere disposition to act.

In this, the thought experiment does its job. Whatever desires are, Radioman does not have one.

Radiowoman represents the evaluative theory of desire. She also reaches out and turns on a radio when one is near. However, she does so because she sees the radio being on as something good.

She has the same behavioral disposition as Radioman, but this is because the radio's being on seems good to her, she feels drawn to the prospect, it is alluring. And when she hears the radio come on she feels satisfied by that.

Radiowoman, in contrast to Radioman, has a desire to turn on radios. Thus, demonstrating the merits of the evaluative theory of desire.

Now, we are asked to consider what would be the case if Radiowoman discovered that she has these sentiments about turning on radios because a demon put a chip in her head.

Suppose Radiowoman were to find out about the etiology of her desires. Then she would know that they are not reliable indicators of goodness. Rather, they are systematic illusion of goodness. They are like the Mueller-Lyer illusions that, once you know about them, give you no reason at all to believe that the lines that appear unequally really are unequal. And even if she knows nothing of the peculiar etiology of her desire, Radiowoman’s desires are defective.

This is one way to look at it, but I think it runs into problems.

The aversion to pain can quite accurately be described as a chip in the head foisted on me, not by an evil demon, but by evolution. The wiring that causes me to assign negative values to certain sensations caused by damage to my body was not an intelligent designer.

Rather, the wiring came into existence because that wiring kept my ancestors alive and helped them to produce viable offspring. Random mutation, natural selection, and luck dictated the specifics of the wiring. None of this requires any mention of an external 'good' (or 'bad') of which the pain is a reliable indicator. The only thing it is a reliable indicator of is that which was a part of an evolutionary package that caused my ancestors to have viable offspring.

It does not follow from this that, upon recognizing this fact, and denying the existence of any type of 'good' for this aversion to pain being a reliable indicator of, that I lose my reasons to avoid pain. The aversion to pain – the awfulness (the negative value) assigned to states of affairs in which the proposition 'I am in pain' is true – simply is a reason to avoid pain all by itself.

My hunger and thirst have a similar etiology. Not only did evolution plant in my brain hunger and thirst chips, those chips are programmed with preferences for those kinds of food that helped keep my ancestors alive. That was a function of their environment – which foods were healthy, which were poisonous, which provided enough calories to survive, and which provided other necessary nutrients.

A different evolutionary history would have resulted in different tastes. However, knowledge of this etiology and that there is no “good” out there for it to be a reliable indicator of does not make a pumpkin pie with Cool Whip heaped on top lose any less delicious or remove my reason to eat a slice if I can.

One can still postulate an external good for these evolution-designed brain chips to be reliable indicators of. The problem is that they are not needed. As Street (2005) argued, the best scientific theory scientific theory has evolution modifying these brain chips – modifying their assignments of value – using only random mutation and natural selection.

Whether there is an external good for our desires to be a reliable indicator of is an important philosophical question. However, like some other philosophical questions such as the existence of God or free will, some people strongly desire that the “reliable indicators of the good” hypothesis is true. Radiowoman sounds like a person with a particularly strong desire that her desires track some sort of external good. If this is true, she may be very upset to discover that this is not the case – as upset as others are when confronting arguments against the existence of God or of free will.

At the same time, maintaining the idea that our desires are reliable indicators of some external good has its own undesirable consequences. Some people get the idea that their value assignments match up with some external good. From this, they infer that those who do not perceive this goodness are defective. They denigrate such people, calling them “sick” or “perverse,” and dismiss their interests as concerns that cannot only be ignored (since they are interested in no real external good), but intentionally frustrated (since, in their perversion, they are motivated to realize that which is bad). Such has been the fate, for example, oh homosexuals whose brains simply attach positive value to same-sex relationships. This is a problem.

At this point, somebody may be tempted to accuse me of an inconsistency. In the previous paragraph, I used the term “undesirable” as in “bad to desire.” A critic may point that this seems inconsistent with the idea that there is no truth for desires to reliably refer to – no “ought to be desiredness” in the universe for our desires to track. If this criticism was sound, this would be a problem.

I will look at that question next.

On Desire 2018. Part 06: Desiderata of a Theory of Desire

Graham Oddie claims that there are three things to ask for from a theory of desire. He argues that such a theory must be non-belief entailing, desire entailing, and ubiquitous.

See: Oddie, Graham (2017). Desire and the Good: in search of the right fit. In Deonna J. & Lauria F. (eds.), The Nature of Desire. Oxford University Press.

Not Belief-Entailing

One of the “desiderata” that Oddie defends for desires I’d that they not be belief-entailing. One of his arguments for this is that, analytically, it simply seems to be the case that it is possible to believe that something can appear good without being good. In an analogy to other types of perception, he compares this to the way in which something can appear round but not be round or appear red and not be red.

The assignment thesis would meet this standard. In fact, I would argue that we have no special access to our own desires. Instead, we theorize as much about our own desires as we do the desires of others. Consequently, we can be mistaken about what we desire – about what our brains assign value to – just as we can be mistaken about what other people desire.
Granted, we have much more information about our own desires. We have not only a long and continuous history of observations to draw upon, but we also have access to additional information such as the emotions stirred within us upon contemplating and realizing certain states of affairs. Consequently, we usually know our own desires better than we know the desires of others. But that knowledge is not without error.

At the same time, our awareness of our own desires can be muddled by the fact that they are ours. There are certain desires that we do not want to have, and others that we do. This encourages us to favor interpretations of our own conduct that allows us to assign the best possible motives to ourselves and blind us to our faults.

This gives us both sides of Oddie’s non-belief entailing claim. Our brains can be assigning values to states of affairs without our believing that they are good, and we can believe that something is good even though our brains assign no value to it.

Desire-Entailing

To be desire-entailing it would have to be the case assigning a value V to the realization of proposition P entails desiring that P. There would not be a case in which the brain assigned a value to the proposition ‘P’ being true where the agent did not have a desire that ‘P’. Nor would there be a case in which the agent had a desire that P where the brain did not assign a value to ‘P’ being true.

Of course, this is exactly what needs to be shown. In looking at the various objections that Oddie addresses to such theories, I hope to bring out this fact.

What is needed here is an example of some state of affairs that meets the conditions described here that would not fit the common-sense account of an agent having a desire. My inability to think of one can just be my inability to think of the account I am defending being false.

Though, even if somebody finds one, I still have a response. I could counter with the claim that the counter-example includes a false assumption and that we would be better off modifying our concepts than rejecting the thesis. This would be a reductionist/revisionist response.

Ubiquitous

We have evolved with dispositions to assign value to many things that sustain life and promote evolutionary fitness. From the aversion to pain to hunger and thirst, to what tastes good and tastes bad, to the comfortable of a room, to the company of friends, to the desire for sex and concern for our offspring, assigned values to ends govern our lives.

We also have a reward system whereby we acquire new desires and aversions, and mold existing ones, based on our experiences. This is how we come to like or dislike philosophy, Jazz, poetry, and pushpin. Here is where we learn our prejudices and, I would argue, many of our moral sentiments such as a disapproval of slavery and a fondness for virtue.
All of these involve assigning values to ends.

Summary

When it comes to meeting Oddie’s desiderata for a theory of desire, the assignment theory can hold its own. It is not belief entailing, since the fact that the brain has assigned a value to a proposition ‘P’ being true implies nothing about what the agent believes. It is desire-entailing directly from the fact that if the mind attaches a value to a proposition ‘P’ being true does imply that the agent desires that P. And it is ubiquitous since the whole of our intentional behavior is directed to realizing propositions ‘P’ to which our minds have assigned value.

On Desire 2018. Part 05: Objects of Evaluation

I have argued that desires are assignings of value.

Assignings of value to what?

Oddie considers two options: propositions vs. states of affairs – thought they are closely related.

See: Oddie, Graham (2017). Desire and the Good: in search of the right fit. In Deonna J. & Lauria F. (eds.), The Nature of Desire. Oxford University Press.

Despite the apparent diversity of types of widely presumed that the objects of desire, like the objects of belief, all hale from some uniform ontological category. And the prevailing view is the objects of desire (and of belief) are propositions, or closely related entities like states of affairs.

Yet, he asserts that the difference between these are not relevant to his thesis, but chooses states as the ultimate object of evaluation.

I am inclined to go along with this. More specifically, I would argue that a “desire that P” assigns value to a state of affairs in virtue of ‘P’ being true. Thus, a person with an aversion to pain (a desire that I not be in pain) attaches a value to any state of affairs in which ‘P’ (I am not in pain) is true.

However, there is a point that seems a bit confusing that I would like to clarify. Oddie writes, “Whenever a desire seems directed at something non-propositional—like a hokey-pokey ice-cream, Kyoto, or happiness—what makes it true that one wants this or that is that one wants to stand in some appropriate relation to this or that.”

This is certainly true for a large and important set of desires. Yet, this seems to be saying that this is true of all apparently non-propositional desires. On that interpretation, the statement would not be true. A person who cares about another person, a species, or an ecosystem often has no interest in her relationship to that object of evaluation. Rather, she desires that the person is well, that the species not go extinct, or that the ecosystem persists in its current state.

This is not an objection to Oddie’s thesis. What matters is that there some proposition that serves as the object of the desire. THAT the person is healthy and happy, THAT the species not go extinct, and THAT the ecosystem be preserved in something near its current state are adequate propositions for the propositional account. These go along with desires such as a desire THAT I am eating hokey-pokey ice cream, THAT I am in Kyoto, or THAT I am happy.

Ultimately, I would argue that the desire assigns a value to some proposition being true. That proposition could (and quite often does) describe a relationship between the agent and something else (that I am eating hokey-pokey ice cream). It could simply describe some state of affairs without referring to the agent (that Antarctica be preserved). The desire motivates the agent to make or keep the proposition true.

What else does a good theory of desire? Oddie lists three desiderata. I will turn to those three next.

On Desire 2018. Part 04: Perceiving vs Assigning Value

What is a desire?

According to Graham Oddie (2017):

Desire = The fitting response to the good.

On the way to this destination, Oddie defends an evaluative theory of desire – whereby to desire something is to evaluate it as being good. This, he argues, has two main options:

There are two possibilities within this approach: that desires are value judgments (doxastic value seemings) and that desires are value appearances (non-doxastic value seemings). I defend the second of these, the value appearance thesis. To desire something is for it to appear, in some way or other, good.

Of these, Oddie defends the second option.

To Oddie's account, I want to divide this second option into two sub-options.

Desires are value-perceivings:. A desire that P perceives ‘P’ being true a value as an end in itself, which motivates the agent to act so as to realize states in which ‘P’ is true.

Desires are value-assignings. A desire that P assigns a value as an end to ‘P’ being true and, thereby, motivates the agent to act so as to realize states in which ‘P’ is true.

I am going to be seeking to defend the second option. To do this, I would like to run the assignings option through the same obstacle course that Oddie set up for the appearance option generally to show that it can handle these problems, as well as list some additional advantages for the former.

I do not want this thesis to be confused with the theory of projectivism. Projectivism holds that we project qualities onto an object as if the object has those qualities. This assumes that the projection is some type of error or mistake.

The situation is more like that which happens when you are in a car that is supposedly stopped. You see a vehicle in the next lane move backwards relative to your car and, for a moment, you are confused. Both descriptions are equally accurate, and the situation can only be resolved by calculating movement relative to some third thing, such as the Earth.

Similarly, when something appears to have value all we see is that it has value.

All we perceive is that something has value. We do not see that it has value as an intrinsic property, nor do we see that it has value in virtue of it being assigned. If the value seems to be an intrinsic property, it is because the perceiver is adding assumptions that are not found in the appearance. To work out these answers, we must look at other facts to determine which explanation makes the most sense.

So, something appears to have value. Is this value perceived or assigned?

I find it difficult to match the perceivings options to my understanding of how the rest of the world works. It seems to require that there is a good independent of desire that is either known through reason alone or seen directly. It is a property of things that commands that people have a particular reaction (motivation) towards that good. J.L. Mackie (1977) labeled this “objective, intrinsic prescriptivity” and argued that it is such a strange entity that there is reason to doubt that there is such a thing.

Sharon Street (2005) adds strength to Mackie’s objection by pointing out that that the theory of evolution creates problems for any theory that places values “out there” to be known about or perceived. Evolution has molded our motives to whatever produces biological fitness. Our biological ancestors had more to gain by being disposed to act in ways that produced evolutionary fitness than to correctly perceive some good independent of fitness.

The assignment view would have it be the case that evolutionary pressures selected assignings of value that promoted genetic fitness. Our aversion to pain evolved to cause is to avoid states of affairs that would result in the types of injuries that would have prevented our ancestors from having and raising children. The desires for sex, for food and drink, our food preferences, all came about because the random genetic mutations and survival of the fittest selected some candidates over others.

If our genetic history had been different, if we had evolved in different environments, and if the fortunes of fate had worked out differently, we would have evolved into creatures that assign values differently.

We see evidence of this in the fact that animals, too, assign values to certain states. A dog’s aversion to pain and a cat’s desire to hunt and catch anything that flitters about are examples of natural selection creating brains that assign value to these ends. Each preference that we find in nature is a preference that we could have had if we had evolved along the same lines.

Oddie will confront the issue of animals and infants having desires later in his paper, so we will get back to this issue.
Of course, not all assignings of value are genetic. In fact, among humans in particular, many are learned.
We know some things about how values are learned and they, too, seem to support the assignings view over the perception view. Rewards and punishments (including praise and condemnation) act on the mesolimbic pathways in the brain – the reward system – to encode rules of behavior in, primarily, the pre-frontal cortex. Our experiences cause us to like that which produces a positive reward, and to form aversions to that which produces a negative reward or, in psychological terms, a punishment.

In effect, this system takes as input the experiences of the agent and produces as output alterations in the value assignments that the brain makes, thus altering behavior.

In this way, a person can come to like philosophy or opera, can hate sushi or card games. The different experiences of different individuals results in different assignings of value for different agents.

In contrast, the perceivings theory seems to require that different agents should all perceive the same value in things – the value that it actually has. Those who do not perceive something correctly has a perversion or some other sort of defect. Mackie (1977) argued that the different assignments among individuals and among cultures is evidence against objective intrinsic prescriptivity. Though there are ways in which it can allow two different people can assign different values to the same thing and neither be wrong, these are far more complex than the simple explanation of the assignings view – that people with different histories (evolutionary and experience) simply come to assign different values to things.

These give reasons to support the assignings view over the perceptions view. The next question that I want to address is: assign value to what?


Mackie, J. (1981). Ethics. Inventing Right and Wrong. Penguin Press.

Oddie, Graham (2017). Desire and the Good: in search of the right fit. In Deonna J. & Lauria F. (eds.), The Nature of Desire. Oxford University Press.

Street, Sharon (2005). A Darwinian dilemma for realist theories of value. Philosophical Studies 127 (1):109-166.

On Desire 2018. Part 03: Oddie's Desires

In his essay, "In Search of the Right Fit", in Federico Lauria; Julien A Deonna (eds), The Nature of Desire, New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017], Graham Oddie begins with a discussion as to what counts as a desire.

Oddie writes that the prevailing view that the object of a desire is a proposition. I have written that a desire is a propositional attitude: a desire that P is an attitude towards the proposition P. However, I am not so inclined to say that a proposition is the object of a desire. A person does not fall in love with a proposition, nor is he inclined to take a proposition as his reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

Setting aside that issue for the moment, Oddie describes the standard problem with the idea of understanding desires as propositional attitudes. A person's desire for ice-cream, for example, does not, at least on its surface, express an attitude towards a proposition. However, it can easily be translated into a propositional attitude. The person who desires ice-cream desires "that I am eating ice-cream."

From this, Oddie draws the conclusion that the objects of desire are states.

Oddie is defending a value appearance theory of desires. Consequently to desire a state is to have it be the case that the state appears to be good. To desire that I eat ice cream is to view the state that I eat ice cream is good.

Oddie recognizes that there are some objections to this view, and we will be discussing them in future posts. For the moment, our concern is only a concern with what a desire is.

I would defend a view that a desire assigns a value to a state of affairs where the proposition that is the object of that desire is true. So, a desire that I am eating ice-cream assigns a positive value to states of affairs in which the proposition "I am eating ice-cream" is true. My aversion to pain assigns a negative value to states of affairs in which the proposition "I am in pain" is true.

Contrary to what this view states, Oddie asserts:

Other kinds of entities can have value: a hokey-pokey ice-cream, Kyoto, the Goldberg Variations, persons, species, and ecosystems are all apt subjects for evaluation.

This is something I would deny. What has value is the state, "I am eating hokey-pokey ice-cream" or "I am visiting Kyoto" or that "this species not go extinct". These are states in which certain propositions are true.

Of course, it is true of hokey-pokey ice-cream that "it is such as to fulfill the desires in question." That is, hokey-pokey ice-cream is such as to fulfill the desires of those who like to eat it. This, I would argue, is a legitimate sense of "good" or of value. However, it is just another way of saying that an agent has an attitude to a proposition and such a state would fulfill that desire. Kyoto is such as to fulfill the desires of those who want to visit. The existence of a species is such that it fulfills the desires of those who want it to continue to exist.

Here, Oddie writes something that I take to be mistaken:

What makes it true that one wants this or that is that one wants to stand in some appropriate relation to this or that.7

He attributes this view to D. Lewis, (1979, ‘Attitudes De Dicto and De Se’, Philosophical Review, 88, 513–543).

Here, I will have to disagree. A desire that a species continue to exist - that it not go extinct - is simply a desire that "this species is extinct" remain false. There is nothing in this desire that concerns a relationship between the agent and the state in which the proposition is true.

I have used the example of Alph who has a desire that a beautiful planet exist. He is standing next to a button. Push the button and the planet will pop into existence, and Alph will pop out of existence. If this is Alph's only desire - that such a planet exist - then he has a reason to press the button and no reason not to.

This is, so far, consistent with Oddie's value appearance thesis without postulating any type of intrinsic value. The brain, in assigning a negative value to a proposition being true, makes it appear to be the case that state of affairs in which that proposition is true have value (as long as they can be recognized as such a state). We have Oddie's appearance theory of desire without the nonsense of intrinsic values.

The next task is to see if this account handles the situations that Oddie might raise against it.

On Desire 2018. Part 02: Desires as Dispositions to Act

The first reading for the summer is: Graham Oddie, "In Search of the Right Fit".

In this paper, Oddie spends some time on a view presented by R. Stalnaker, ((1984). Inquiry. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.):

To desire that P is to be disposed to act in ways that would tend to bring it about that P in a world in which one’s beliefs, whatever they are, were true.

Off of the top of my head, I would say, "Yeah, that's right."

This just goes to prove that I need to be more careful. I am sometimes not as precise as I need to be.

Oddie brings up the objection:

[I]magine that a malevolent demon plants a chip in Radioman’s brain so that whenever he believes of any radio within reach that he can turn it on, he turns it on. Ipso facto, on the dispositional account he desires radios within his reach to be on. Two questions: First, does Radioman have a reason, even a weak one, to go around turning on radios? No, he just finds himself turning the damn things on. . . . Second, does Radioman even have a desire that radios within reach be on? He doesn’t like the sound of radios blasting, and he would be just as happy if radios didn’t exist at all. And he has no desire to have radios within reach so that he can have them blasting away.

Well, no. He doesn't have a desire. He sees a radio, and the chip takes over his muscles so that he reaches out to turn on the radio.

Actually, I don't think this is a fair presentation of Stalnaker's thesis. Radioman's reaching out to turn on the radio is not an "action" in the sense required in the Stalnaker's quote. It certainly is not an action in my understanding of the quote. This is because Radioman is not turning on the radio as an end in itself or as a means to an end. It is more like a heartbeat, or sweating. It is something that happens, not something that Radioman does.

In order to count as a "desire that P", it must be the case that the realization of P is an end or goal - something for the sake of which means are sought.

In Desire 2018: Part 01, I mentioned the distinction between the motivational theory of desire versus the evaluation theory of desire. The motivation theory says that desires are motivating reasons. The evaluation theory says that a desire is a perception of some state of affairs as good.

The idea that desires identify ends may not fully support the evaluation model, but does explain part of its appeal over the motivation model. Desires are more than just dispositions to act. They provide reasons to act. They take a state of affairs and assign a value to that state. For example, the aversion to pain takes the state of affairs, "I am in pain" and assigns it a negative value. In this way the avoidance of pain is an end - something for the sake of which other things (e.g., taking a pain relief pill, refraining from putting one's hand in a bed of hot coals) are means. Assigning a value to an end is more than just being disposed to realize an end.

So . . . this is going to be an important part of the nature of desire - a "desire that P" assigns a value to the realization of P.

This does not require that value exist as something independent of desire - that value is something that we perceive. Indeed, it is fully consistent with the theory of evolution to say that we evolved to be creatures that assign a value to a state such as, "I am not in pain" and, with that value assigned, then begins to look for ways of preventing the realization of such a state. We evolved to assign values to having sex, eating, being in a comfortable temperature. We learn to assign values to such things as studying philosophy, reading science fiction, taking long hot showers. Through praise and condemnation, we teach each other to assign values to such things as taking the property of others without consent (a negative value), repaying debts (a positive value), and helping those in need (a positive value).

But this becomes a key point. A desire that P is not just a disposition to act so as to realize P. It is the assigning of a value to the realization of P (a positive or negative value) such that it becomes a goal of our intentional actions.

I gotta remember that.

On Desire 2018. Part 01: The Two Dogmas of Desire

My summer project for the summer of 2018 hereby begins.

I will be reading through:

Federico Lauria; Julien A Deonna (eds), The Nature of Desire, New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017]. This is a collection of articles on . . . well . . . on the nature of desire. This will figure into a chapter of my thesis having to with . . . um . . . the nature of desire.

I will be writing commentary as I go through the articles. This is my way of keeping notes.

One of the contributors to this anthology is University of Colorado Philosophy professor Graham Oddie - who will likely be on my dissertation committee.

The first item discussed in the introduction to the anthology is the two conceptions of desire.

There is the motivational conception; desires are motives to do something.

And there is the evaluative conception; desires consist in perceiving certain states as good (and, thereby, motivating the agent to realize such a state).

Within desirism, I have tended to defend the first of these conceptions. There is no "good" to be perceived in the second sense - no value living out there in the world. There are only (evolved or learned) dispositions to realize or prevent the realization of certain states of affairs. We like high-calorie, high-cholesterol food because our ancestors who liked it lived longer and had more children than those who did not. We have an aversion to pain because evolution favored ancestors with an aversion to pain. There is no independent "good" to be perceived.

So, I am going to be siding with the motivational theorists and against the evaluative theorists.

Oops . . . Graham Oddie is an evaluative theorist.

But he apparently defends an evaluative theory that is consistent with the denial that values exist in the world independent of the mind. His view is agnostic between the claim that we have simply evolved to see certain states of affairs as good - that, in a sense, we evolved to perceive this illusion of goodness, or whether this goodness actually exists.

A quick note: This summary may not fit Oddie's work. I have only begun his article in the anthology, so I cannot yet report on it reliably.

Still, I will be given an opportunity to test one of the core claims of desirism, that a desire that P is a mental state that motivates the agent to act so as to make or keep true the proposition 'P'. This, I take it, is a motivational state theory.

By the time this summer is done, I should have a pretty good understanding of desires, which should fit nicely into my thesis.

Alston on the Moral Justification of Belief

I have written my last paper of the school year.

I did not write it as an assignment. Rather, there was a discussion during the last day of my Metaphysics and Epistemology Pro-Seminar class concerning the ethics of belief.

The argument under consideration says that we cannot be held morally accountable for our beliefs because they are not under our voluntary control. And we can only be held responsible for things over which we have voluntary control. (Not entirely true, as revealed by the existence of moral luck, but let's set that aside.)

So, we can't be held responsible for our beliefs.

I objected, "But, accountability involves more than intentional action. There is recklessness and negligence. In these cases, the agent does not intend to bring about a bad state of affairs, but is an unintended side effect of things they do for other reasons."

The professor's response was, "That would be a good paper topic."

So, I wrote it.

The paper is called Epistemic Negligence

The paper is a commentary on: William Alston, "The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification," Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988): 257-99.

It's link to desirism springs from a thesis put forward by James Montmarquet, (“Epistemic Virtue”, Mind, 96(384): 482–497) in 1987 that what he defines as conscientiousness is the desire to believe that which is true and not believe that which is false. This desire, it seems to me, is one that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote universally (indeed, far more universally than it currently exists). Thus, it would count as a good desire in desirism terms.

A summary of the article:

• Richard Feldman, ("The Ethics of Belief," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. LX, No. 3, May 2000) seems to have somewhat misrepresented the views of William Alston. Specifically, he paid little attention to Alston’s distinction between “indirect voluntary control “ and “indirect voluntary influence “.
• “Indirect voluntary control” concerns choosing to realize a state (e.g., to have a belief, to kill Vic) as an end or a means to a further end - by doing something else (e.g., studying, shooting Vic). For example, flipping a light switch to turn on a light, where turning the light on was intended as an end or a means to some further end.
• “Indirect voluntary influence” involves influencing a state as an unintended side effect of an intentional action, such as killing a patient by mistakenly removing the wrong (healthy) kidney.
• “Indirect voluntary influence” captures the deontological categories of knowing, reckless, and negligent wrongdoing - deontological wrongs where the wrongs were not intended.
• Alston recognized (correctly) that we have indirect voluntary influence over our beliefs. That is, there are intentional actions we can perform that influence our beliefs.
• Alston did not seem to recognize that indirect voluntary influence implies indirect voluntary control. When we are aware that an action has an influence, we may choose the action because of its influence, thus choosing the effect either as an end or a means.
• When we have indirect voluntary influence, we are still morally responsible for those unintended, perhaps unforeseen, and possible wrongs (e.g., harms) of our intentional action (e.g., reckless and negligent harms the agent did not intend). So, indirect voluntary influence over our beliefs still leaves us morally responsible for reckless and negligent acquisition of beliefs.
• In comparing epistemic to deontological justification Alston selected the deontological category of "permission" or "permissible action". An action is permissible if it is not prohibited.
• The epistemic counterpart to this would be epistemic permission: A belief is justified if it is not prohibited - if it is not held in violation of epistemic rules.
• Alston recognized that, for epistemic justification, this is too broad. Many permissible beliefs are not justified. He provides examples of permissible unjustified beliefs e.g., testimony, cultural traditions.
• I suggest a stricter standard - a standard required as a defense against negligence that I call a “non-culpability standard”.
• The non-culpability standard applies when one’s voluntary actions risks harming or wronging others.
• When this type of risk obtains, standards get more strict - stricter than the permissibility standard allows.
• I show how the non-culpability standard handles the cases Alston presented against the permissibility standard.
• However, there is a potential problem with the non-culpability standard. The culpability standard is not fixed - the greater the magnitude and certainty of harm, the stricter the standards. Epistemic justification, in contrast, has not been held to be variable in this way.

Motivation vs Evaluative Theories of Desire

I am starting a book on the nature of desire.

It begins by presenting two conceptions of desire.

One is the view that desire is a motivational state - a disposition to (and reason to) act so as to realize that which is desired.

The competing view sees desire as an evaluative state - a disposition to see something as good.

In addition to aiming toward satisfaction in the way explained, desires are often said to aim at the good, just as beliefs aim at the truth. One way of understanding this slogan is to interpret it as follows: one cannot desire something without “seeing” some good in it. Call this the “guise of the good” thesis.

Now, I have attached the term “good” to “that which will fulfill the desires in question.” However, one must be careful about the direction of fir here. Is something good because it is desired? Or is it desired because it is good?

To answer this question, I think that all we need to do is to look at the desires of animals - a dog’s aversion to pain. Does it make sense to think that Fluffy, who broke a leg due to getting it caught as she fell off the cabinet, perceives the pain as bad? I find it difficult to even think of Fido as judging this dog food better than that, or the ram in the forest judging the doe as attractive. Desires and aversions are much simpler than this. They are mental states motivating the agent to realize certain states of affairs.

When humans started to acquire intelligence, discovering that they favored some states over others - preferred the taste of some food, preferred to be warm on a cold winter night, wanted food and sex, it is not unreasonable to think the the goodness was in the thing wanted and not merely a motivation to realize some state. It is as natural as thinking that the Earth is the center of the universe. However, if we think about it a bit, we can see that this is not the case. The bird with a disposition to sit on its eggs to keep them warm is not "aiming at the good". She is simply doing what she likes, and has evolved to like to sit on her eggs to keep them warm. Ancestors who evolved this disposition had more eggs survive to become birds which became this specimen's ancestors.

So, things are good because they are such as to fulfill the desires in question. And malleable desires are good to the degree that they tend to fulfill the desires in question. That fits the relationship between desire and goodness better than the evaluate state theory.

On Objectivity and Theories of Value

I wrote this in response to a facebook inquiry.

However, I do not think you will need the context to understand the claims being made. It concerns the objectivity of value and the measure of theories of value.

I tend not to use terms like “objective” because they are ambiguous in a way that leads to confusion.

Objectivity is not a property of things, it is a property of propositions. A proposition is objectively true or false, or subjectively true or false (as in “true for me”).

Or you can talk about something being an object. Objects in this sense are distinguished from such things as events, states of affairs, and properties.

Actually, I do not think that anybody denies that value is a property. Objects, states of affairs, and events are good or bad. Value is a property they have.

There are intrinsic properties (mass, size), and relational properties (heavier than, larger than). There are also "functional" properties - properties that relate input to output. Evolution, erosion, digestion, and intention are functional properties.

All of these types of properties are real - including relational properties. Location is a relational property. So is time (age). Velocity is a relational property (as is acceleration). You cannot talk about these things without talking about A in relation to B.

Not only are relational properties real, they can be a part of scientific inquiry. “Orbits” is a relational property, but we can have a scientific theory of orbits.

Desirism holds that value is a relational property - a relationship between states of affairs and desires. Morality is a specific type of value property - the relationship between malleable (capable of modification using praise and condemnation) desires and desires that people generally have.

Propositions describing relational properties are objectively true or false. “Jim is taller than Sally” is objectively true or false. “People generally have many and strong reasons to reward/praise those who keep their promises and punish/condemn those who do not” is objectively true. But it is an objectively true statement about a relational property, not an object.

Now, let us talk about theories.

We have two theories of planetary movement. We have the “angel” theory and the “gravity” theory.

Comparably, we have two theories of morality, an “intrinsic prescriptivity” theory and "desire modification" theory.

The “angel” theory really does not explain anything. It does not explain why some planets move faster than others. It does not explain why the angels pushing Venus and Mercury will push their planets only so far from the sun, then turn around and head back to the sun again. It does not explain the retrograde motion of a mars, Jupiter, and Saturn near opposition.

The “intrinsic prescriptivity” theory does not explain anything about value. It does not explain the wrongness of breaking a promise, or why it is appropriate to respond to wrongdoing with condemnation.

The "desire modification" theory does have an explanation. Condemnation for breaking promises acts through the mesolimbic pathway to encode behavioral rules in the prefrontal cortex to create an aversion to breaking promises - making it less likely that the agent will break promises in the future. In fact, it works the same way also on people who learn about the punishment, helping to promote a universal aversion to breaking promises. People generally have many and strong reasons to promote this universal aversion to breaking promises.

One of the implications of the "desire modification" theory is that if, for example, a railroad worker whose behavioral rules tended to conform well to that which people generally praised and condemned were to have a metal rod blasted through the prefrontal cortex of his brain, this would likely impair his tendency to act in conformity to social rules. (See the case of Phineas Gage.)

What if another theory were to come along that was as good as the "desire modification" theory?

Well, what if another theory were to come along to explain the motion of planets that was as good as the gravity theory? If the theory has the same conclusions then, for all practical purposes, it is the same theory, and there is no reason to choose. If, instead, it produces different conclusions we look at those differences and see if they provide reason to favor one theory over the other. We may look to see if the theory makes predictions that we can test. We may evaluate the theories based on which is simpler - or what fits better with theories in other disciplines. Desirism scores advantages due to its fit with neuroscience and evolutionary theory as well as its fit with observations such as the Phineas Gage case (not to mention the advantage it scores because it actually explains things).

Note that condemnation will function through the mesolimbic pathways to create or modify rules of behavior coded in the prefrontal cortex whether we believe it or not. In this case, it is like global warming. Skepticism or doubt will not stop prevent it from happening.

Again, why not condemn the sun for causing cancer? The reason is because the sun does not have a reward system that would allow us - through condemnation - to get the sun to acquire behavioral rules such as acquiring aversions to act in ways that cause cancer.

Questions on Morality

I came across somebody asking questions about morality that I answered as follows:

Q: “Why are we morally accountable for anything?”
A: Because we are intentional agents – beings who, on the basis of beliefs and desires, act in ways that change the world, where those desires are, themselves, under the influence of praise and condemnation. It makes sense for people generally to promote, universally, desires that tend to fulfill other desires using praise and condemnation.

Q: Should the Sun be put on trial for causing cancer?
A: No. The sun is not an intentional agent acting on desires capable of being influenced by rewards such as praise or punishments such as condemnation.

Q: If all there is to us is matter, then aren't we just meat robots, programmed by nature through evolutionary mechanisms, and acting according to our nature just like all physical objects do?
A: Actually, very few physical objects act on beliefs and desires where desires can be molded using praise and condemnation.

Q: What is the foundation of your beliefs about right and wrong?
A: Your use of the term “foundation” begs some important question. I have a theory of right and wrong – which, like all good theories, is the theory that best explains and predicts the phenomenon of morality.

Q: Why is something wrong?
A: Definition: An act is wrong if and only if a person with good malleable desires and lacking bad malleable desires would not have preformed the act in those circumstances. Malleable desires are desires that we can mold using praise and condemnation. In virtue of this fact, it makes sense to reward/praise actions so as to promote good desires and punish/condemn actions to promote good aversions or inhibit the formation of bad desires.

Q: One can say stealing is wrong, but what about it makes it wrong?
A: The fact that people generally have many and strong reasons to use praise and condemnation to promote universally an aversion to taking property without consent.

Q: What fact about the universe justifies your belief that it is indeed objectively wrong?
A: Those pieces of evidence that support the belief that people generally have many and strong reasons to use praise and condemnation to promote universally an aversion to taking property without consent.

Q: I understand that one could create a moral system that was based with our biology and best interests in mind, but why would that be any more valid than one that wasn't?
A: Arguments are valid or invalid. Propositions are true or false. The proposition, “people generally have many and strong reasons to use praise and condemnation to promote universally an aversion to taking property without consent" is objectively true. (Try proving that it is false, or even that it is just a matter of opinion.)

Desirism and the Prisoners' Dilemma

In decision theory, there is a famous problem called the Prisoners' Dilemma.

You and another person from your country - somebody you do not know - were arrested in a foreign country. You are not guilty of any crime, but the local dictator is looking to make an example of people from your country for propaganda purposes. He wants the two of you to confess to being foreign agents. The other agent has been taken into another room and offered the same deal you are about to be offered.

You have a choice. You can "confess" to being foreign agents, or you can refuse. If you confess, and the other agent refuses, you can go free. The other person will go to prison for 5 years. However, if you refuse, and the other confesses, then you will be the one going to prison, and the other will go free. Of course, if you both confess, then you will both go to prison for 3 years. But, if you will not cooperate with the dictator's plan and you both refuse, he will charge each of you with some lesser crime and imprison you for 1 year.

A chart of the options looks like this:

The reason that this is a puzzle is because, no matter which option the other person chooses, you will get fewer years if you confess. Let us say that the other person confesses. Then, by confessing yourself, you get 3 years instead of 5. Or, imagine that the other person refuses to confess. By confessing, you get to go free rather than spend 1 year in jail.

Yet, if both of you choose this option, then you both get 3 years in prison. Though if you can both refuse to confess, both of you can get out in 1 year. The problem is: How do you get the other person to refuse to confess when, in doing so, he risks having you send him to prison for 5 years while you walk away.

Consider, now, the way that desirism handles this type of case.

Consider, if you will, that the person you were arrested with was somebody you cared about a great deal . . . your child, your spouse, your best friend. Would you confess and send this person to prison for 5 years so that you can walk away? Indeed, I suspect that quite a few of us would not even condemn an innocent stranger to prison for 5 years for our own sake. Of course, if the stranger does not have the same consideration for us - if they "confess" to a crime so that they can walk away and we get the 5 years, we would morally condemn them. We would hold them in such contempt . . . and perhaps plot a bit of revenge when our five years are up. Justice requires it. Morality requires it.

In the context of the Prisoners' Dilemma, desirism offers two types of solutions.

One solution involves promoting a desire to be in the optimum state - in this case, a state of mutual cooperation. Assume for the sake of argument that individuals have such a desire to be in a state of mutual cooperation than it is more valuable than avoiding 3 years of prison. That would change the final payouts to the following:

Now, at least, it is no longer the case that if the other person refuses to confess that you are better off by confessing. You are made better off as well because, by doing so, you create a state of mutual refusal - of helping each other - that you value more than avoiding a year in prison. Yet, if you think that the other person is going to confess, you still have reason to confess as well just to minimize the harm done.

The other solution is to promote an aversion to confessing to something one did not do (and harming another person), and a desire to tell the truth even when a lie would get you out of some serious problem. Let us say that both agents are given an aversion to lying in ways that will harm another with a strength of -2, and a desire to tell the truth equal to 2 units. The negative value experienced here would be the guilt of knowing that you did something to cause an innocent person to be made worse off. The positive value here is pride at knowing that you did the right thing in telling the truth, even though it hurt you.

Now, the payoff chart would look like this:

In this case, you are both spending a year in prison. However, you are both aware of the fact that this was the best option. There is no option that is better. The option of walking away with 0 years of prison, but so much guilt that you would sacrifice 2 years to get rid of it, was a worse option.

These options do not solve the Prisoners' Dilemmas. However, they create a way to prevent them from happening. One does so by altering people's desires so that the cooperative action becomes more attractive and the harmful action becomes associated with guilt and aversion of such strength that it outweighs other positive concerns.

With strong enough moral sentiments, Prisoners' Dilemma types of situations will become quite rare.

On Cotton and Fossil Fuels

Essay assignment: Compare and contrast the cotton industry in the United States in 1850s to the fossil fuel industry in 2018.

Let me start with a point of contrast. There is very little that we can attribute to the fossil fuel industry in 2018 which is as blatantly evil as chattel slavery based on race. Any attempt to say that the current owners and operators in the fossil fuel industry are “as bad as” the owners and operators of cotton plantations in the 1850s would be a mistake.

However, important similarities do exist, and they are matters of moral significance.

Recently, I was asked why I thought the founding fathers, with their belief that all men are created equal and endowed with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, would still endorse slavery. I had argued that the founding fathers believed in the existence of moral facts and meant for the phrase referencing the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be a reference to these moral facts. Yet, they seemed to ignore a very clear application of these moral facts. How could that happen?

I argued that slavery appeared in the Constitution for the same reason that we do not have a carbon tax. There are entrenched interests whose wealth and power depends on a system that would be threatened if they admitted to certain facts.

The fossil fuel industry – its owners, managers, and employees – are engaged in activities that will destroy cities in some cases and, in a few cases, destroy whole nations. They will kill millions of people and cause great deal of suffering to hundreds of millions more.

Yet, they are blind to the moral wrongness of their actions. In the case of fossil fuel production, the owners and operators of the fossil fuel industry do not want to see themselves as villains. Therefore, they blind themselves to facts that would lead to that conclusion. In this case, they are blinding themselves to hard and fast scientific facts.

In the same way that the fossil fuel industry is motivated to accept bogus science in defense of their institutions, the same was true of the cotton industry in 1950. Case in point: The "theory", proposed by Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, 1851, that, while slavery is the natural and comfortable condition for mentally healthy blacks, some blacks suffered from a mental disorder he called "drapetomania," which motivated the slave to attempt to escape slavery. One can prevent a slave from developing drapotomania by treating the slave with some measure of kindness and comfort. However, once afflicted, the best treatment for this illness was said to be a judicious application of a whip.

Certainly, if people who can blind themselves to well-established scientific fact backed up by stacks of evidence, we should not be surprised to discover that people can blind themselves to “softer” moral facts such as the idea that blacks also have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The desire that plantation owners and operators had to see themselves as good people while still preserving the system that gave them wealth and power blinded them to that which, to somebody who could view the situation more objectively, are blatantly obvious moral facts.

The purpose of my reference to the planation system is to point out what can happen to people who are, in many ways, decent human beings. There is little doubt that many plantation owners and operators were, in the bulk of their lives, decent human beings. They loved their children, took care of their elderly parents, helped their neighbors, participated on civic projects. They held to the same principles against lying, repaid their debts, kept their promises, refrained from taking their neighbor’s property without consent, at least so long as they were dealing with other white people. They had many reasons to consider themselves decent human beings.

However, they suffered from a moral blindness that prevented them from seeing themselves as moral monsters with regard to their treatment of a certain part of the population whose interests did not concern them.

Owners and operators of the fossil fuel industry are suffering the same effect.

This, in itself, explains how this problem arises and perseveres in the population of plantation owners and operators in the one case, and fossil fuel industry owners and operators in the other. It does not explain how these ideas are spread throughout a population who (1) do not own slaves, or (2) do not own or operate businesses in the fossil fuel industry.

The notion here is that not all rationalizations are alike. People seeking to rationalize the wrongs inflicted on others in pursuit of their own wealth and power are going to test several different rationalizations. Those that succeed will grow and spread and become more widely adopted, while those who fail will disappear, never to be heard from again. Now that we have the owners and operators of the cotton/fossil fuel industry seeking to dismiss the wrongs they inflict on others, we can look at the techniques they used and ask, “Why are these the ones that succeeded in a wider population?”

Before going on, I would like to add that the owners and operators of the fossil fuel industry has a significant advantage over the owners and operators of the cotton industry. The fossil fuel industry has the capacity to hire public relations firms that know how to create surveys and focus groups who will tell them which messages will work. They maintain lists of contacts with the media that they can use to spread the ideas that the research shows them will work.

What works, among human beings, is a message of tribalism. One needs to pick out or identify a tribe, give it the message that “we” are morally superior to “them” and if “them” wins, then “us” will suffer unduly.

In the case of the plantation owners in the first half of the nineteenth century the tribal message that worked was racism. “We white people are morally superior to them black people. Them black people are only fit to be slaves. Nature and God built them that way. Rest assured, fellow white people, you are more like us than like them. Though, if you allow the abolitionist to win, the abolitionist will make you politically equal to the blacks. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

The fossil fuel industry has found its mark, not in racial tribes, but in political tribes. In the 1850s, it was “supporting slavery and other policies useful to the economic and social interests of the plantation owners made you a member in good standing of the white race,” now it is, “supporting the policies useful to the economic and social interests of the fossil fuel industry makes you a member in good standing of the conservative party”. And, just as the 1850 message was accompanied by the claim that the white race is morally and intellectually superior to the black race, the 2018 message is that the conservative political movement is morally and intellectually superior to the liberal movement.

“They are beneath you – only worthy of the contempt and condemnation of decent people like us – and certainly you would rather be one of us than one of them.”

And that, then, is how the fossil fuel industry of 2018 is like the cotton industry of 1850. It is made up of people whose economic and social status depends on being blind to the moral wrongs of their action, who have adopted a message that feeds into the tribal instincts of a general population to promote an idea that “we” are better than “them” and that to be counted “one of us” you will have to adopt these attitudes useful to preserving the social and economic status of those in this industry.