tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post6574855488810349904..comments2023-10-24T04:29:23.693-06:00Comments on Atheist Ethicist: Reasons for Action that ExistAlonzo Fyfehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-6325483935622840702009-06-22T02:39:31.307-06:002009-06-22T02:39:31.307-06:00That's all nice and well, but you muddy the wa...That's all nice and well, but you muddy the waters by then jumping to the conclusion that DU represents well what people have good reasons to do. People are not actually moved by the desire to maximize the harmonicity of desires. They have more specific and diverse desires. While their collective, negotiated, actions will indeed often result in something like DU, they sometimes won't. Most importantly, as a descriptive theory, you need to empirically establish that in fact societies will tend to promote harmony - and you haven't done any empirical research to back that up, only armchair speculating.<br /><br />You are not basing your DU on real empirical research on human nature. We seem to have a sense for fairness and a sense for empathy, but the idea that all desires should be fulfilled equally ignores their separate nature (so that one sense can overcome the other), the existence of other intuitive desires (so that the DU conclusion may collide with, say, our sense of respect), our innate irrationality (so that we won't deduce the "correct" ramification from the two senses), and assumes we want to influence desires rather than other things (like actions) without demonstrative empirical proof.<br /><br />For example, people have respect for other people's autonomy. They don't want to change their desires arbitrarily, forcefully. If a Mad Scientist would come along with a device that would make everyone generous (and, in practice, they did come up with similar things), people would not want to use it, even though it would greatly promote harmony of desires, and even though it is a virtue we want to encourage.<br /><br />If it is demonstrated that keeping women in-doors is harmonious (tending to fulfill more and stronger desires than it thwarts), it would still be wrong - because we value the freedom of women, not just the average desire fulfillment, and am willing to sacrifice desire fulfillment on the altar of freedom and autonomy.<br /><br />Real humans are complex things, that cannot be summed up in single-sentence descriptions. Their desires and reasons for action are more complex than that, and are ultimately a matter for psychology to uncover, not philosophers. DU oversimplifies human nature.<br /><br />Furthermore, you seem to deny your the descriptive nature of your theory. If all you're doing is describing a common should, then there is no "universal" should, in the sense that your "should" is not prescriptive. DU doesn't, cannot, say that I or you "should" not torture a child - rather, it merely points out that society at large will tend to exert social forces opposed to child torturing. [Which is at best a rough heuristic, as it's based on the false assumption that stronger and more common desires dominate, that people are rational, and so on; in practice, things are more complex.] DU therefore poses no guide to our own actions, merely another constraint on them.<br /><br />We are the ones making the moral decisions, not some abstract society. We don't want to allow rape not because it is will lead to disharmony, but rather because the fact that it leads to social disfunction has bred us to despise it. You are confusing the distal cause with the actual one, and placing a description of game-theoretic optima of idealized (and hence, non-human) agents above the real-world reasons for action, our own subjective individual desires (not the global sum of all desires; that's just a datum).יאיר רזקhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15798134654972572485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-24790080677796751162009-06-19T13:02:09.081-06:002009-06-19T13:02:09.081-06:00Alonzo, one of the tenets of DU is that desires ar...Alonzo, one of the tenets of DU is that desires are malleable & persistent. Can you discuss and expound on these concepts?<br /><br />Particularly, I think you have said that not all desires are malleable. How do we know which are which? And you have said that morality is concerned only with the malleable desires. Why? If someone has a desire that is not malleable, but it is causing the thwarting of a lot of other desires, shouldn't we be concerned with that? We can't use our "moral tools" to change that desire, but we can use force to stop it. And isn't that a moral consideration -- whether or not to use force to stop someone from acting upon a desire, even if that desire is not malleable?<br /><br />You have also said that desires are persistent -- and this seems to be the crux of why desire fulfillment act utilitarianism fails. But, it seems to me that not all desires are persistent; in fact, some are very fleeting. And, obviously, if desires are malleable, then they can't be very persistent. Yet, if desires are not persistent, then it doesn't make much sense trying to promote particular desires, since they won't last very long, anyway.<br /><br />So, this definitely seems to be a bit of a quandary for DU -- for DU to work, desires must be malleable, yet persistent -- but not too persistent, lest they not be malleable, and not too malleable, lest they not be persistent.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com