Specific Claims About Desires

So, here you are, an agent in the world, surrounded by other agents, in which the following are true:

(1) Desires are the only reasons for action that exist.

(3) A desire is only a motivating reason to act for the person who has it.

Which means that nobody around automatically has any motivating reason to consider your desires when performing their actions, whatsoever.

I want to go into the implications of this but, before I do, I need to refine this first statement a bit. I need tos specify some more facts about desires.

(1a) Desires are propositional attitudes. That is to say that desires are mental states (attitudes) that take as their attitude a proposition (a sentence, capable of being true or false, such as "I am helping a sick child").

(1b) desires are motivating reasons in the sense that they motivate agents to intentionally choose actions that - if their relevant beliefs are true and complete - will realize (make real or make true) the propositions that are the objects of those desires (e.g., to make true the proposition, "I am helping a sick child").

Note that we are talking here about an agent's intentional actions - the actions that an agent chooses to perform or chooses to refrain from performing.

That desires motivate an agent to make a proposition true (realize a state of affairs in which the proposition is true) explains why agents are not motivated by experience machine options. A person with a desire to help sick children, if given the option of entering an experience machine that will stimulate her brain in ways such that she thinks that she is helping sick children - is almost entirely uninviting. This is because the experience machine cannot make the proposition, "I am helping a sick child" true, so it does not objectively satisfy the desire.

Luke Muehlhauser and I discuss this subject in Eposide 15 of Morality in the Real World

So, for the first stastement, it would be more precise to say:

(1) Desires are the only motivating end-reasons for intentional actions that exist.

Desires identify the ends or goals of intentional action - what the agent is aiming for - and motivate agents to realize (to make real) those ends.

So, let me restate your situation.

Here you are, an agent in the world, surrounded by other agents, in which the following are true:

(1) Desires are the only motivating end-reasons for intentional actions that exist.

(3) A desire is only a motivating end-reason for intentional action for the person who has it.

Which means that you are surrounded by agents choosing intentional actions who do not automatically have any motivating end-reasons for choosing intentional actions that realize the propositions that are your ends. In fact, they may have motivating reasons to choose intentional actions that will prevent the realization of your ends.

There ends might include propositions such as, "You are happy and healthy," but could also include propositions such as, "You are enduring a great deal of suffering" or they may seek states of affairs in which your suffering is a byproduct - and they might not care.

What can you do about it?