Desire-Based Value

Do you know how you are having a conversation - debating some issue - and you don't get a chance to clearly explain what it is you meant? After the conversation you think of all of the things you should have said or would have said if not for some interruption.

Well . . . I have a blog . . . and thus an opportunity to say the things I would have or should have said. Not that the person I was talking to will see it, but it gives a chance to present an understanding of my views and a response that I have had time to carefully consider.

It concerns the idea that a scratch on one's finger can be worse than the destruction of the world. This specific example did not come up in discussion, but it is a classic expression from David Hume about the rationality (or, more accurately, the arationality) of value. Reason does not dictate our ends. It only dictates the means to realizing those ends. Depending on a person's interests, it is possible that a person can have a desire that he not suffer a scratch on his finger and yet have no interest in whether the whole of humanity is destroyed (as long as the destruction does not leave him with a scratch on his finger).

The actual discussion took place before class. The position that I did not have time to express fully goes like this.

Let us assume that you and I both have an aversion to our own pain - and nothing else. You have a version to your own pain. I have an aversion to my own pain. That is all we have.

Now, rank the following options from best to worst.

(1) Neither you nor I are in pain.
(2) You are in pain, but I am not.
(3) I am in pain, but you are not.
(4) Both of us are in pain.

The utilitarian would say that (4) is the worst option - from some sort of objective and impersonal point of view.

Desirism, in contrast, answers this question by saying, "It depends."

Desirism looks at reasons for intentional action. In virtue of your own version to your personal pain, you have an equal reason to avoid 2 and 4, and to be indifferent to 1 and 3. This is because the proposition "I am in pain" is true for you in 2 and 4 and false in 1 and 3. Since this is the only thing you care about (ex hypothesi), then this is your only criterion for preferring one over the other.

Similarly, I would rank 1 and 2 equal and above 3 and 4, which I would also rank equally.

This is true in the imaginary world in which you and I only have the one concern.

But we do not live in that world.

In the real world, we do have other concerns. Most of us are concerned about the welfare of others. Furthermore, even if we consider only our aversions to individual pain, we have reasons to cultivate and promote these concerns in others. I have a reason to cause you to have an aversion to me being and pain, and you have a reason to cause me to have an aversion to you being in pain. In this way, you will be motivated to avoid states of affairs in which I am in pain, and I am motivated to avoid states of affairs in which you are in pain.

In the real world, there are reasons to say that (4) is the worst option. However, this is only in virtue of the desires we have and those we have reason to promote. It is not true in virtue of (4) being intrinsically worse than the other options. From the point of view of the universe, all four options have equal value - which is, they have no value at all.

These concerns that prompt us to rank (4) as the worst option are not all of the concerns we have. We each have other concerns. You may have a desire that P1, a desire that P2, and a desire that P3. I could have a desire that Q1, a desire that Q2, and a desire that Q3. We could then have to determine if propositions P1, P2, P3, Q1, Q2, or Q3 are true in states (1), (2), (3), and (4). These will be important in determining the overall value to each person.

If there were an imaginary person who had a desire that R, where R is, "both you and I are in pain", this person would rank (4) as the best option. (2) and (3) would be tied for second place and (1) would be the worst of all possible worlds. We have reason to hate this person. We have reasons to take actions to prevent him from acting on his desire. We have reasons to use the tools of praise and condemnation to try to turn him into a being that has an aversion to us being in pain. However, insofar as his current desire is that we both be in pain, this is the state of affairs he has the most and strongest reason to bring about. This is the ranking he would assign.

The claim that (4) is intrinsically worse is false. The real situation is far more complicated than that.