Consent

I am in the middle of a series on the subject of "excuses" - explaining how desirism accounts for the different types of excuse.

I am on the excuse of "consent" - where a person claims not to have done something wrong because their alleged victim gave consent.

However, the excuse of consent needs to be built on a more general theory of consent. I will present this general account of consent - according to desirism - over the course of the next two blog posts.


Consent

Many actions are impermissible unless the agent obtains the consent of other parties affected by the action. In desirism terms, people have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to certain act types -such as sex and other act-types violating the body of another and the use of their property - when performed without the consent of the other.


Desirism and Consent

We are building on the proposition that desires are the only reason for action that exist. People have reason to act so as to objectively satisfy the most and strongest of their desires. This is accomplished in part by using social tools such as praise and condemnation to promote in others those desires that tend to objectively satisfy the desires of the agent, or to inhibit desires that tend to prevent the objective satisfaction of the desires of the agent.

Each of us has many and strong reasons to have others obtain our consent when acting in ways that affect our interests. We have reason to make them averse to performing those act-types when they do not have our consent.

At the same time, they have reason to promote in us an aversion to those act types when we do not have their consent. It is not that these act-types are to be prohibited at all times. It is that we have reason to regulate them so that those consistent with our interests are more common, and those inconsistent with our interests are less common.

The most effective way to do that is through an aversion to performing those act types without the consent of those affected. It is not that the agent wants to perform the act but, through force of will, restrains himself when he does not have consent. It is that the agent does not want to perform the act unless he has consent. He hates performing the act-type except under conditions where others have given consent.

People generally have many and string reasons to use social tools such as condemnation to promote such an aversion. This is a part of our moral training.


The Most Knowledgable and Least Corruptible Agent

By definition, each of us can promote the objective satisfaction of more and stronger of our desires by giving the task of deciding what to do to the most knowledgable and least corruptible agent available. This decision maker would be the person who has the most information and the fewest distractions that would otherwise move them to ends that would not objectively satisfy the most and the strongest of our own desires.

For the majority of us, the most knowledgable and least corruptible agent to task with directing our own lives is ourselves. Corruptibility is not even possible - we always act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of our own desires (given our beliefs). An agent's own actions comes from that agent's own desires as a matter of necessity - actions that did not spring from her own desires are not hers.

If an agent's actions go awry, it is because of false or incomplete beliefs. Yet, even here, the agent has spent a lifetime doing research on the facts relevant to the objective satisfaction of that agent's desires. In general, an agent knows more about things that matter to that agent than any other person.

Where actions go wrong, it is generally a result of false beliefs. The act selected is one that would fulfill the most and strongest desires in a universe where the agent's beliefs are true. But the agent's beliefs are not always true, so the agent's actions do not always objectively satisfy the most and strongest of an agent's desires in fact.

Even when agents are clearly wrong on some matters - if, for example, some cult leader has filled their heads with false beliefs about an afterlife and what they must do in this life to get it (usually, serve and obey the cult leader) - it is still safer to trust each person to direct their own life then to eliminate this aversion to consent - and risk giving the cult leader dictatorial control over the lives of others.

In general, each of us has a reason to plant in others an aversion to actions not approved of by the most knowledgable and least corruptible authority on our interests. For each of us, that authority is ourselves. At the same time that each if us has reason to promote an aversion to act -types without consent, others have reason to promote the same aversion in us. Our interests - those things that give us a reason to act - to praise and condemn - comes to include this aversion to act-types performed without consent.


The Consent of the Governed

We do not have a reason to promote universal consent to every single act. In fact, this is an incoherent option, given that we would then need to obtain permission to ask for permission. Thus, the moral role of consent is not universal and absolute. It applies to the most personal and intimate acts to those directly affected. There is a reason to put limits on how far out to go with this aversion.

In some cases, in order to make a decision efficiently and yet to obtain as much consent as possible, we use a proxy for consent. "Let's see if we can efficiently get above a certain minimum threshold of consent - let's say, more than half the people." We take a vote. Governments get their legitimacy from the consent of the governed, but not the unanimous consent of every single citizen.


Guardians and Wards

Of course, some agents are not the most knowledgeable when it comes to their own interests. This is not true of children and some adults who are mentally impaired. They lack the opportunity or ability to form the relevant true beliefs. In these cases, assigning their decisions to the most knowledgeable and least corruptible agent means assigning those decisions to somebody else - usually a parent (unless the parent proves to lack knowledge or corruptibility - sacrificing the interests of the ward either through ignorance, a lack of interest in the ward's concerns, or too much interest in things incompatible with the interests of the child).

The guardian's duty is to act as a proxy for the ward in making decisions - to make the decision the ward would make if the ward were more knowledgable and better appreciated possible future desires.

Every situation where one agent controls the life of another is exploitive to some extent. The guardian will always act to fulfill the most and strongest of the guardian's own desires (given his beliefs). We can seek a guardian whose own desires include strong desires compatible with the interests of the ward, and few desires incompatible with the interests of the ward. However, even in the best of circumstances, that will be a subset of the guardian's own interests. Perhaps a large subset, but a subset nonetheless. He will have other interests, and there will be times when those interests will win out over the interests of the ward. We can rule out behaviors that are often and most obviously exploitive, but it is beyond our capacity to eliminate it.


Duress

A discussion of consent requires that some attention be given to the topic of duress. However, this post is long enough already. Therefore, I will add some comments on duress tomorrow.

Types of Excuses: Denying Harm

I am applying desirism to the moral concept if excuse to show how desirism gives us a working theory of excuse.

Desirism hold that desires are the primary object of moral evaluation. An excuse is a claim that blocks the inference from what looks at first glance to be a state that a person with good desires would not create to the desires of the agent. They aim to show that such a state could have come into existence even if (or in some bases, because) the agent has hood desires.

Some types of excuse admit that the state of affairs created was one that the person with good desires would have avoided. They assert that something else interfered to bring about that state. The "accident" excuse says that the laws of nature were such that the agent could not have avoided the realization if that state. The "false belief" excuse says that a false (but responsibly acquired) belief got into the path between good desires and results.

Another type of excuse denies the assumption that the state of affairs created was one that a person with good desires would have avoided. Denial of harm fits into this category.

For an example consider the case of a kid who has sprayed graffiti on his neighbor's car. This is something that a person with good desires would not do. However, when accosted, the kid reveals that the spray paint comes off with soap and water. He points to the bucket of soapy water and announces that, after playing this trick on his neighbor, he intends to wash his neighbor's car. No harm done. The act is excused.

In effect, the kid is saying, "I am not creating a state that a person with good desires would be averse to creating. It may look like that to somebody who does not have all of the facts. However, the truth of the matter is that this first glance estimate is wrong."

Technically, the term "denying harm" is misleading. A person can commit wrongs without doing harm. A person can lie or break a promise and assert and do no harm. The "no harm" argument in this case would not be a claim that the agent did not actually lie or, "I didn't actually promise." These instances recognize that a person with good desires not only has an aversion to doing harm, she has an aversion to lying or breaking promises as well.

Also, "denying harm" must be understood as denying the risk of harm. The drunk driver who gets home tells his wife, "But I didn't hurt anybody." No harm was done. However, a person with good desires would have had an aversion to creating this threat to the well-being of others. The driver still did not act as a person with good desires would have acted. In this case, we are talking about a denial of risk, not a denial of actual harm.

Denying harm is used in a lot of cases in which it is not legitimate. A rapist may try to claim that, "Women like this kind of treatment. They want it. They may act like they don't, but all women secretly long to be raped." This person is denying that rape does harm or, like lying or breaking promises, is a wrong even when it happens not to cause harm. It represents a violation of autonomy to which a person with good desires would be averse even where no harm is done.

Another way to deny harm is to minimize harm. A person guilty of insurance fraud may claim in his defense, "The insurance company makes loads of money. My fraud was not even enough for them to notice." In saying this, he is saying that he did no harm or, more precisely, too little harm to be concerned about.

However, the agent engaged in insurance fraud still lacked an aversion that people generally have many and strong reasons for promoting. Millions of small harms add up. A substantial portion if the insurance that all of us pays goes to cover countless instances of people doing harm that is "too small to notice." This is not a legitimate defense from condemnation that people generally have many and strong reasons to deliver.

We often see bullies use this technique of denying harm. They will shove, belittle, insult, and ridicule their victim then, when condemned for their behavior, claim, “We were only having a little fun. Can’t anybody take a joke around here?”

The claim of “just having a little fun” requires the prediction that the victim will, in the end, approve of the action. The neighbor who ultimately laughs at the graffiti painted on his car and who is then grateful to have his car cleaned has the capacity to excuse the practical joke. The student whose books are knocked out of his arms or who has a sign stuck to his back cannot reasonably be thought of as endorsing the behavior after the fact. Conceiving of this behavior as “a game” is a rationalization of cruelty. The claim of "no harm or wrong done" does not change the fact that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn this cruelty.

Yet another way of denying harm is through the cliché, “What he does not know does not hurt him.” A person lies to her friends about what a classmate did. The classmate is expected never to find out about this and never to realize that this lie was told. A few people stop and point and laugh, but the victim of this slander does not discover that she is being laughed at. Consequently, when the liar is confronted with her lie, she responds, “I did no harm.”

Actually, harm can be done to a person without their knowing about it. If Person A gives Person B $1000 to give to Person C, and Person B pockets the money, Person C has been harmed even though he never learns that he would have otherwise had $1000. He is still $1000 worse off than he would have been if Person B had acted as a person with good desires would have acted. Person A has been harmed as well. He sought to create a state in which Person C had $1000, and his attempt to realize such a state has been thwarted.

People generally have reason to condemn the type of behavior that Person B engaged in, so Person B cannot use the claim of “no harm done” as a defense. The claim is utterly false, and the claim does not remove the reasons that people have to condemn that type of behavior.

The same is true of people telling falsehoods about us behind our backs. We have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to that type of behavior. It is an aversion that would motivate people to refrain even independent of their belief that it is "harmless". Consequently, denying harm is not a legitimate defense from condemnation.

There are times in which we may appear to do harm, or to lie or to break a promise. It is reasonable to understand how somebody can look on our actions at first glance and see them as creating states that a person with good desires would avoid creating. One of the defenses against condemnation is to show that the appearance is deceiving. The act does not create the harm or the wrong the person thinks it does. This response applies the excuse, 'No harm (wrong) done." However, it is only valid when it removes the reasons that people generally have to promote an aversion to that type of behavior.

Types of Excuses: False Belief

This week, over at the desirism wiki, I will be adding several pages fleshing out the moral concept of an excuse. Desirism has a lot to say about this practice - explaining why it takes the form it does. It is not just a random set of unfounded moral institutions. It makes sense in directing the use of praise and condemnation towards desires people generally have many and strong reasons to promote or inhibit.

In the week ahead, I will discuss the excuse of false beliefs, the denial of harm, the general principle of consent, consent as an excuse, and the "greater good" excuse.

I will start with the excuse of false belief.

In general, an excuse is a claim that blocks the inference from some prima facie wrong action to the conclusion that an agent acted in a way different from how a person with good desires would have acted.

False belief, as an excuse, attributes the action to a false belief rather than a bad desire.

For example, a traveler at an airport picks up a suitcase and walks away with it. The luggage belongs to somebody else. We may well imagine that some thief is grabbing luggage and taking it. However, our traveler in this case took a piece of luggage that he honestly thought was his. The rightful owner of the suitcase discovers, after all the other passengers had left, that there is one suitcase remaining that looks like hers, but it is not hers.

The traveler would respond to the accusation that he took property that did not belong to him by claiming that he made an honest mistake. He thought the suitcase was his.

Desirism holds that morality is primarily concerned with evaluating desires. However, our intentional actions are not a result of desires alone. Desires interact with beliefs to form intentional action. People choose those intentional actions that would objectively satisfy the most and strongest of their desires in a universe where their beliefs are true. When their beliefs are not true, they risk performing actions that fail to fulfill their own beliefs and desires.

Our traveler in this case performed an action that would have objectively satisfied his desires in a universe in which the suitcase he picked up was actually his suitcase. He is not showing the absence of an aversion to taking the property of another - an aversion that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote. He wanted to take his own suitcase. False beliefs thwarted his intentions. Now he has to spend time taking this suitcase back to the airport and finding his own.

However, can we really count this as an excuse?

After all, if a person has an aversion to taking the property of another, and they can reasonably predict a situation will arise where they could take the wrong suitcase, the responsible person would take pains to make sure he gets the right suitcase. He checks the name tag, or attaches some identifying object to the bag to help to guarantee that it is his own, or both.

If a traveler does not do this, and ends up with a bag other than his own, we may still condemn him for his carelessness. We may condemn him for not caring enough to avoid the situation where he walked out with the wrong suitcase. "Be more careful next time," the owner snarls, justifiably so, when she gets her own luggage back.

"I didn't know the gun was loaded," is an attempt to use the excuse of false belief. However, this excuse fails. Even if it is a sincere mistake, the possibility of being wrong can do such great harm, and the possibility of doing good is so small, we are morally required to assume that a gun is always loaded. In these situations, "false belief" never becomes a legitimate excuse, because a person with good desires would never create such a risk.

The potential harm of false belief implies an obligation that care be taken to avoid harms. The greater the harms that could result, the stronger the obligation to ensure that one’s beliefs are well founded. If the harms are great - if, for example, the situation is one where false beliefs could result in failure to prevent widespread global destruction of land, property, and health, the people with the false beliefs may still be properly condemned - and a person's defense of his belief shows carelessness, she may be soundly condemned.

This would be a case in which an agent's behavior shows that she did not care enough about this potential harm to make sure that their beliefs about this harm were properly secured.

False belief is not sufficient to excuse an agent from wrongdoing. The false belief must not be an irresponsible belief. An irresponsible belief also shows lack of an aversion to the harmful states that a false belief could create.

However, there is certainly a realm in which people make honest mistakes. Sometimes other people pay for our mistakes. If the false belief was responsibly acquired, the person can honestly say that, “My behavior is grounded on a false belief that even a responsible person would have had.” When this is true, false belief can be used as an excuse, the behavior does not imply that the agent had desires that people generally have reason to inhibit through condemnation, and condemnation would not be appropriate.

Types of Excuses: Accident

In my wiki on desirism I am seeking to explain how desirism handles various elements of our moral experience. Yesterday, I argued that an excuse is a claim that takes what appears at first glance to be a state that a person with good desires would have avoided creating, and blocks the inference that the agent who created it deserves condemnation or punishment.

I identified six types of excuses - accident, false belief, denying harm, consent, greater good, and deserved punishment. I wish to discuss each of these in some detail, starting with the excuse of "accident".

“Accident” is a type of excuse where an agent claims, in effect, that a person with good desires could not have done something other than what the agent did in a given circumstance.

For example, a car goes through a stop sign runs over a pedestrian. At first glance, this appears to be a case in which the driver did something that a person with good desires would not have done. The person with good desires would have an aversion to a state in which the pedestrian is laying on the ground injured. This aversion would have motivated the agent to take steps to prevent that from happening by stopping and then continuing through the intersection after determining the way is clear. This agent did not stop, and obviously did not make sure that the intersection was clear before going through it. Therefore, he did not act as a person with good desires would have acted. At least, this is how it appears at first glance.

However, the driver responds to our accusation with the claim of “accident”. He claims that the brakes failed and that, even though he tried to stop, he was not able to.

A claim of “accident” is a claim that a person with good desires could not have prevented the creation of the adverse state. His aversion to creating such a state would have been impotent in the actual circumstances.

Let us assume that an examination of the brakes shows that they did, in fact, fail. The driver applied the brakes in a timely fashion. Nothing happened. No other option was available in the time permitting to avoid hitting the pedestrian. In this case, the claim of “accident” is substantiated. In fact if we assume that the brakes had been tampered with, desirism leads us to conclude that the driver of the car is not guilty of creating a state in which a pedestrian was injured. The person who tampered with the brakes is guilty of creating that state. This state would not have existed if the desires of the person tampering with the brakes would have been good desires.

In this case, let us assume that the brakes had not been tampered with. They had simply failed.

Desirism tells us that the question of culpability (of blameworthiness) has not yet been answered. We have another question to answer. Would a person with good desires have prevented the brakes from getting into a state in which they failed.

We can see here, as well, that a discovery that the brakes had been tampered with would exonerate the driver (unless the driver is the person who tampered with the brakes).

We also recognize a moral distinction between the following two scenarios:

Scenario 1: The driver had bought the car about 10 years ago and never had the brakes inspected or maintained.

Scenario 2: The driver was on his way home after having the brakes inspected – an inspection where the mechanic working on the brakes made a mistake that caused the braking mechanism to fail.

In the first scenario, we can still conclude that the driver lacked the interest that people generally have reason to promote of preventing the state in which the pedestrian got ran over. The driver who is averse to creating such a state would demonstrate their concern by acting in ways that would prevent such a state. Failure to get the brakes inspected on a regular basis implies a lack of concern with avoiding the states that failed brakes could create – a lack of interest in the welfare of others that others generally have many and strong reasons to promote. This driver can still be condemned.

In the second scenario, the “accident” excuse would be valid. The driver demonstrated a proper concern for preventing the state in which the pedestrian was hurt, and got caught in a situation where even a person with good desires could not have prevented the creation of such a state. Unless, of course, there is evidence to show that mechanic was “unreliable but cheap” and the driver had selected him for that purpose. This, too, indicates that the driver was more concerned with saving money than with preventing a situation in which a pedestrian has been struck and injured – which is not the desire set that people generally have reason to promote.

All of these features of the “accident” excuse are implied by the assumption that we are looking for the desires involved in creating such a state, looking to determine if anybody acted on desires other than those that people generally have reason to promote or inhibit. We are looking for whether the driver was concerned enough to avoid such a situation to go through the intersection carefully and to have his brakes inspected by a qualified inspector. We are looking at whether somebody else tampered with the brakes or a careless mechanic had damaged the brake system.

All of this represents an attempt to trace an accident back to some desire that people generally have reason to inhibit (or aversion that people generally have reason to promote) through condemnation and punishment. Please note that the effect is meant to apply not only to the person who is condemned or punished, but to serve as a lesson whereby others in society also adopt those attitudes that may serve to prevent similar events in the future.

If it is the case that the unfortunate event truly resulted from circumstances such that people with good desires could not have prevented the result, then it may be tragic, but there is no justification for condemnation.

It was an accident. Those things happen. It's nobody's fault.

Excuses

One of the claimed strengths of desirism is its ability to explain the elements of our moral life such as non-obligatory permissions, supererogatory actions, and negligence.


One of these elements of our moral life involves what is called an "excuse".

An excuse is a claim that aims to shield an agent from condemnation for what appears on first glance to be a wrong act. A good excuse successfully shields the agent, while a poor excuse fails to do so.

If we accept the central claim of desirism - that desires are the primary object of moral evaluation - we can see excuses as claims that attempt to block the inference from what appears to be an act that a person with good desires would not have performed to the desires of the agent. In short, an excuse claims, "It may appear to be the case that a person with good desires would not have performed such an act. However, a more careful look at the facts of the matter shows that this is not the case."

Accident: A car goes through an intersection and hits a pedestrian in a crosswalk. This creates a state of affairs that a person with good desires would have sought to avoid. The agent in this case claims it was an accident - the brakes failed. That is to say, "I could not have stopped the car, even if I had wanted to." In fact, an examination of the car shows that the brakes had been tampered with. The agent is excused.

False Belief: A traveller at an airport grabs a suitcase and starts walking off. Another person stops her and says, "That is my suitcase." In fact, an examination shows that she is right. The first passenger finds her own bag - which is nearly identical to the one she took. A person with good desires does not walk off with the property of another. However, if an act can be explained in terms of a mistaken belief, then this blocks the inference to bad desires. Please note, however, that a proper awareness if the harms of false belief would motivate a good person to double-check his facts. Recklessly formed belief betrays a lack of concern in avoiding these types of harms.

Denying Harm: A kid is discovered spraying graffiti on his neighbor's car. This is something that a person with good desires would not do. However, when accosted, the kid reveals that the spray paint comes off with soap and water. He points to the bucket of soapy water and announces that after playing a trick on his neighbor, he intends to was his neighbor's car. No harm done. The act us excused. Technically, though, "harm" is too broad a word. More accurately, this excuse involves denying that one is creating a state of affairs that a person with good desires would avoid creating. It often involves harm, but not always.

Consent: A man violently slap and shoves a woman. This is something a person with good desires would not do. Somebody walking by who witnesses such an act would, at first glance say that the man did something wrong. However, it turns out that the two are actors. The woman has agreed to let the man slap her (not too hard) in the course of rehearsing or performing a scene. She has given her consent. The man is excused. Even a person with good desires can slap a woman under these circumstances.

Greater Good: A person arrives late for an appointment. A person with good desires has an aversion to making others wait. Eventually, the tardy person calls those who are waiting. She reports that the car in front of her as she drove to the meeting struck and seriously injured a kid on a bicycle. Being a doctor, she stopped and gave aid to the injured child. A good person would, indeed, have an aversion to making others wait, but her desire to help an injured child would be stronger. Her lateness is excused.

Desert: A man takes another man and pushes him into a small room, closes, and locks the door. This is something a person with good desires would not do to another person. However, in this case, we discover that the person confined to the room has a history of violent assaults against others. He has been convicted of these crimes in a court of law where he had been given a fair opportunity to defend himself and explain his actions. The agent who locks the person in his cell makes the claim that the criminal deserves to be punished. He offers this as his excuse.

What all exciuses have in common is they take an action from which it appears to follow that a person with good desires would have done something differently and says, "In fact, a person with good desires would not have done something differently."

A person with good desires would have an aversion to running over pedestrians in a sidewalk, taking somebody else's suitcase, spray-painting graffiti on a neighbor's car, slapping a person, being late for an appointment, or confining a person to a small room against his will. However, there are events that a person cannot prevent no matter how good his desires are. Actions are based not only on desires but beliefs, and false beliefs generate what appear to be wrong actions. The agent may have taken steps to avoid the harms that would activate the aversion in a person with good desires, or obtained the consent of those who would be harmed. The person with good desires may have been forced by a stronger aversion (to letting a child suffer or die) to set aside a weaker aversion (being late for an appointment). The agent may be acting within an institution of reward and punishment.

Excuses exist as a part of our moral life because the ultimate claim in morality is, "A person with good desires would not have done what you did." There are cases in which this appears at first glance to be true, where a closer examination of the facts reveals that it is not true. Claims that attempt to bring forth these additional facts are called "excuses". A good excuse actually does block the inference. A poor excuse claims to block the inference but does not succeed.

There is much more to be said about each of these six types of excuse. Each will be covered separately in much greater detail.

Non-Obligatory Permissions

I propose that one of the strengths of desirism is the way it handles various features of our moral life. In saying this, I am not saying that it handles our moral intuitions - an accomplishment that I chalk up more to attempts to rationalize our prejudices than to account for right and wrong action. In this, I am saying that it accounts for such things as the three moral categories for action (obligation, prohibition, and non-obligatory permission), excuses, the role of praise and condemnation, supererogatory actions, moral dilemmas, and types of culpability.

In this post, I wish to discuss how desirism handles non-obligatory permissions.

Non-obligatory permissions are those actions that a person may perform, but has no obligation to perform. It refers to choices such as which career to enter, which television shows to watch, what to eat, and whom to marry. In these areas, a person can do as he or she pleases - and there are many and strong reasons to hope that different people choose different things.

The term "non-obligatory permissions" is used to distinguish them from obligatory permissions. Repaying a debt is both obligatory and permissible. Telling the truth under oath is both obligatory and permissible. In fact, it is not unreasonable to argue that everything that is obligatory is also permissible. (There is one sense in which this is not the case that will be covered separately under "moral dilemmas".)

Some theories have trouble with non-obligatory permissions. Act-consequentialist theories such as classical utilitariansm allows for one obligatory action (the action that produces the best consequences) and a long list of prohibited actions (everything else).

Act-consequentialist theories try to make room for non-obligatory permissions by arguing that we often do not have the ability to know which action is best. However, this permissibility is based on ignorance. It vanishes as soon as the ignorance is removed. It does not allow for genuine non-obligatory permissions.

Desirism, on the other hand, holds that there are some desires that people generally have no particularly strong reason to promote or inhibit and, in some cases, people have reason to prefer that others adopt a range of desires. These are in addition to desires that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote or to inhibit.

Imagine a couple in which one of the partners prefers white chicken meat over dark, while the other prefers dark meat. When they cook a chicken, the first partner gets the breasts, while the second partner gets the legs and thighs. These two people have desires that are in harmony with each other. Not only is there no particular reason to promote a universal desire for white meat or dark meat, there are actually reasons to prefer that each partner have different tastes. With the current situation, there is no competition for "the good pieces" of chicken, and neither person has to settle for second best.

On a larger scale, identical tastes in food result in scarcity and competition. If we all had a strong preference for the same food, one of the effects would be that the preferred food would have to be grown on more and more marginal lands. All of the best land would be used up quickly, followed my land that is not quite so good, and, ultimately, land poorly suited to growing the desired food gets used.

However, a variety in the taste for food results in the opportunity to grow a wide variety of food, with different foods suitable for different climates. Land that is unsuitable for one food can be used to grow something else. There is less overall competition, and fewer people have to settle for second best while everybody else is fighting over what is best.

The same analysis applies to finding a career or a mate. A society would tend to be much less well off if everybody liked being an engineer and hated teaching. There would be a lot more competition for engineering jobs. This competition may force some people into teaching against their will. A lot of these teachers would be poor teachers because their hearts are not in their work. They would rather be engineering something.

In a society where some people like engineering and some people like teaching, more people get to enter a profession that they actually like, and fewer people need to select a second-best option.

These are cases where people generally have reason to give people the liberty to choose among a wide variety of options and to hope (and encourage) people to choose different options. This implies giving people freedom among a range of likes and dislikes.

This is not a non-obligatory permission built on ignorance. This is a genuine non-obligatory permission - a freedom for the individual to choose based on personal likes and dislikes where there is no reason to condemn and many reasons to promote a range of likes and dislikes.

Non-obligatory permissions arise from the fact that morality is primarily concerned with the evaluation of desires, and the fact that there are realms in which people generally have reason to allow and even encourage people to choose based on a variety of desires.

The Roots of Desirism: David Hume

There will be a section in the Desirism wiki I am creating that will compare the claims of desirism to those of a number of philosophers. Much of what desirism claims, for example, can be found in the writings of 18th century Scottish philosopher, David Hume.

For example, desirism holds that desires are the primary object of moral evaluations. Actions are to be evaluated on the derived status of whether they are or are not those actions that a person with good desires would perform.

Furthermore, good desires are determined by whether the desire tends to objectively satisfy other desires, either directly or indirectly.

In David Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Section IX, Hume writes:

It may justly appear surprising that any man in so late an age, should find it requisite to prove, by elaborate reasoning, that Personal Merit consists altogether in the possession of mental qualities, useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others.

The mental qualities that Hume refers to are character traits – traits such as modesty, charity, kindness and the like. The way to determine the value of a character trait is to determine its impact on our moral sentiments (which desirism holds to be false). Furthermore, the favorable impact on our moral sentiments is determined by whether the trait in question is agreeable to the self, useful to the self, agreeable to others, or useful to others.

If these “character traits” are taken to be desires, and their agreeableness or usefulness to self or others is taken to be the degree to which a desire tends to objectively satisfy directly or indirectly one’s own desires and the desires of others, we get from Hume a statement that is very close to desirism.

Desirism would agree that whether we approve or disapprove of something depends on its (subjective) impact on our own desires. However, desirsm answers this issue with G.E. Moore’s distinction between what people do approve of and what people should (or have reason to) approve of.

What people do approve of is what impacts their sentiments given their beliefs. What they have reason to approve of, and what they have reason to cause others to approve of, and what others have reason to cause them to approve of, is found in the criteria of usefulness and agreeableness to self and others.

Reason Is the Slave of the Passions

Hume wrote in A Treatise on Human Nature.

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

There is a lot of controversy about what exactly Hume was trying to say here. However, in this sea of interpretations, there are some that come close to what desirism claims.

Desirism holds that there is no truth content to desires and no way to evaluate a desire as “correct” or “incorrect” on its own. We can only evaluate a desire in terms of its effects in aiding or interfering with the objective satisfaction of other desires. Desires, in this sense, are the root of all values – even when it comes to evaluating (other) desires.

Beliefs have a truth value. A belief is correct when there is a fact of the world that corresponds to a belief. An agent’s belief that an invisible ancient dragon watches his every move is an accurate model of the world in which he lives if it happens to be the case that there is an invisible ancient dragon that watches his every move.

A desire may be objectively satisfied if the proposition identifying what is desired is true. However, there is nothing in this that identifies a desire as being “correct” or “incorrect”.

When it comes to deciding on a course of action, desires determine the end or goal of the action. Desires dictate where the action is headed – what the final objective is. Once desires have set the goal, beliefs go to work selecting the means to reaching that goal. In this sense, beliefs work to serve desires. Reason is something that belongs to the realm of beliefs. Its purpose is to help belief to carry out the commands of desires.

Consequently:

Tis not unreasonable for me to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. A Treatise on Human Nature.

After saying this, it is relevant to note that there is a potential for conflict among desires. In these cases, reason may argue that, to fulfill the will of some desires, other desires should either be strengthened or diminished. Reason can dictate that a person is better off with no desire to smoke – given that such a desire must either be frustrated, or satisfied to the frustration of other desires brought about by poor health, a long and debilitating illness, or an early death.

Thus, perhaps we should modify the quote above to say that it is not necessarily unreasonable to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of one’s finger. However, given that the destruction of the world, even if desired, would thwart other desires, an agent may be better off discouraging in himself as well as in others a fondness for the destruction of the world.

However, even in this type of case, the motivation to rid oneself from a desire – the sentiment that marks some desires as bad or best gotten rid of - does not come from reason alone. Here, too, reason is continuing to play its role as servant to the other desires – the master desires – with which the judged desire comes into conflict.

One way often used to understanding this difference between beliefs and desires is as follows: If a proposition that is believed not true in the world, we should change the belief. However, if a proposition that is desired is not true of the world, we have a reason to change the world.

This is not to say that Hume was fully committed to the theory identified here as desirism. He expressed some of its key elements. However, he also made some mistakes.

As mentioned above, desirism denies that morality depends on the sentiments of the evaluator.

Furthermore, desirism allows that moral claims have a truth value that reason can help us to determine. There is a fact of the matter as to whether a desire tends to be agreeable and useful to self and others that reason can help us to determine.

It is still the case that these moral facts cannot exist in a world without passions. Relationships between states of affairs and desires (passions) cannot be known by reason or by any other means in a world where no passions exist. However, in a world where there are passions, the relationship between objects of evaluation and those passions are knowable.

Many would say that this conflicts with Hume. However, this may not be the case.

There is a point at which Hume discusses relationships between objects of evaluation and desires where he states:

Take any action allowed to be vicious: Willful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In whichever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action.

Yet, if you were to continue this to the very next sentence – the words people cut off in trying to argue that Hume denied the possibility of moral facts – one gets:

Here is a matter of fact; but it is the object of feeling, not of reason.

That is to say, relationships between objects of evaluation and the sentiments are matters of fact. They can be expressed as true propositions. The truth of the proposition can be known in the same way that any other proposition can be known. However, they are facts about feelings and their objects. They are not facts about objects independent of feelings and discoverable by reason alone.

Desirism is quite comfortable with these claims.

Concepts of Value: Illness and Injury

In my last post, I presented a general theory of value and claimed that all value-laden terms can be represented by that theory.

In this post, I wish to put that into practice by applying the general concept of value to the specific concepts of illness and injury.

According to the general theory of value, all value exists as a relationship between states of affairs (objects of evaluation) and desires.

A desire is a propositional attitude. A “desire that P” gives a person a motivating reason to bring about states of affairs in which the proposition “P” is true. All value-laden claims are claims about what people have a reason to realize or to avoid. Consequently, all value-laden terms capable of being true describe a relationship between the object of evaluation and some set of desires that answers the following four questions:

• What is this term used to evaluate?

• What desires are relevant in making this evaluation?

• Does the object of evaluation objectively satisfy or dissatisfy the relevant desires?

• Does the object of evaluation objectively satisfy or dissatisfy desires directly or indirectly or both?

Here, I wish to apply this general theory to the concepts of “illness” and “injury”.

Nothing counts as an illness or an injury unless it is bad in some sense. In other words, they are necessarily things that people have reason to avoid. This fact is built into the very meaning of the terms. The general theory of value on which desirism is built handles these concepts as follows:


(1) What are the objects of evaluation for this term?

Ultimately, they are used to evaluate changes in physical and mental functioning – or deviations from the norm with respect to physical and mental functioning - depending on whether we are talking about physical or mental illness or injury.

More specifically, an injury is a change or deviation in physical or mental functioning that is brought about by a macro cause - a cause that can be seen. Whereas an illness is a change or deviation in physical and mental functioning brought about by a micro cause – a cause that is invisible such as a bacteria or a genetic disorder. Consequently, if a person gets trampled by a horse that breaks the person’s leg, the person has been injured. If the person gets bitten by a mosquito and gets malaria, then that person has gotten sick – has acquired an illness.


(2) What desires are relevant in evaluating these objects of evaluation?

There is a tendency to evaluate changes or deviations in physical and mental functioning relative to the desires the people commonly have. Consequently, a person may be considered sick if he acquires some change in mental functioning that people generally have reason to avoid. However, it is generally difficult to maintain a lot of the implications that come from an illness or an injury claim by sticking to this definition. Under this definition, a person can be injured or sick and have actually no reason to get better. This is the case when the person’s own desires differ from those that people generally have. When we say that a person is sick or injured, we generally mean that the person herself has a reason to avoid or to get out of that state (even if that person does not realize it).

Consequently, it makes more sense to say that illness and injury evaluate changes in physical and mental functioning relative to the desires of the agent. They are changes in functioning, whether by a macro cause or a micro cause, that the agent herself has reason to avoid. This is the only way to support the implication that the person in question has a reason to avoid the illness or injury. We could use a term that defines illness or injury according to what most people want. However, if we went this route, we would not be able to tell from the mere fact that a person has gotten sick or being injured that something bad (something that he had reason to avoid) had happened to him.


(3) Are the relevant desires objectively satisfied or dissatisfied by the object of evaluation?

It is built into the very definition of the terms “illness” or “injury” that whatever they are, they tend to thwart the desires of the people who have them. Thus, the people who have them have a reason to get themselves out of that state (whether they are able to or not). It is in this sense that illnesses and injuries are necessarily bad.


(4) Are the relevant desires objectively satisfied or dissatisfied directly or indirectly by the object of evaluation?

In the case of an illness or injury, it does not matter whether the change or deviation in physical or mental functioning objectively dissatisfies desires directly or indirectly. Both types of relationships are relevant.

An illness or injury might be thwart desires directly simply by being uncomfortable. A throbbing pain or a persistent cough can simply be unpleasant, and directly give those who have it a reason to want to be rid of it.

Or, an illness or injury might thwart desires indirectly. Blindness and deafness make it the case that the agent has no access to potentially useful information. An amputated arm will make it difficult to perform any number of tasks – thus thwarting desires that one would have otherwise been able to fulfill. The concepts of “illness” and “injury” do not care about whether the thwarting of desires is direct or indirectly, only that the object of evaluation is responsible for thwarting (or preventing the objective satisfaction of) desires.


Application: Is homosexual desire a mental illness?

Using this model, we can then answer questions such as whether homosexuality is an illness.

Somebody who believes in the existence of intrinsic values or of reasons for action that exist independent of desires might wrongly conclude that homosexuality is an illness. However, these conclusions are grounded on false premises. The only values that exist are desires – they provide the only reasons for action in the universe (that we know of).

Homosexual desire has the same tendency to thwart other desires as heterosexual desire. Perhaps less, given that heterosexual desire creates a risk of unwanted pregnancies that rarely comes from satisfying homosexual desires. However, we clearly cannot say the same thing about incestuous desires or sexual desires involving children – both of which tend to thwart a great many desires.

Since we can know the relationship between homosexual desires and other desires as a matter of fact, we can know whether homosexuality is an illness as a matter of fact. We can also know whether people generally have many and strong reasons to promote or inhibit homosexual desire as a matter of fact – or if they <i>thinki> they do – a fact about which people can be and many are in fact mistaken.

The Four Components of Value

I am continuing my work on my Desirism Wiki. I figure it really does need a place for a general theory of value.

Desirism is built on a theory of value that holds that value exists in the real world as relationships between states of affairs and desires. Different types of value claims describe different types of relationships between different states of affairs and desires.


On this account, value claims are objectively true or false. The relationships exist as described or they do not. Furthermore, whether a value claim is true or false can be substantially independent of the beliefs or sentiments of the person making the claim.

At the same time, there are no objective values in the sense of values independent of desires.

Note: the fact that it is possible for value claims to be objectively true even though there are no objective values is just one example of the terminological quagmire that moral philosophy must navigate. Another example is that moral philosophy allows intrinsic value to depend essentially on extrinsic properties. We will get to this case further below.

Specifically, any true value claim contains four elements:

First, it makes reference to some object of evaluation. It is going to take some state of affairs (e.g., one in which some painting exists, one in which somebody experiencing a sunset, or one in which a prisoner is being tortured) and identify it as "good" or "bad". In all true value claims, something is being evaluated.

To call something "good" or "bad" in the generic sense implies that some reason exists for acting in a way that realizes or avoids realizing that state of affairs respectively. Good things are to be realized. Bad things are to be avoided.

Desirism holds that desires are the only reasons for action that exist. Other types of reasons for action that have been proposed - divine commands, intrinsic values, categorical imperatives - none of them are real. Therefore, any claim that they provide agents with reasons to act so as to realize or prevent the realization of some state of affairs is false.

Thus we get the second component of true value claims - they make reference to a set of desires and describe a relationship between the object of evaluation and that set of desires.

What is the nature of this relationship?

There are two types of relationships between states of affairs and desires - direct and indirect.

In both cases, we begin with the claim that desires are propositional attitudes. That is to say, they can be expressed as a statement that takes the form, "Agent desires that P" for some proposition P.

A desire that P is objectively satisfied by any state of affairs in which P is true.

So, when we evaluate a state of affairs S, relative to some desire that P, we are looking at whether P is true in S. When P is true in S, an agent with a desire that P has a reason to act so as to realize S.

Note that, among the set of possible desires, an agent may have a desire that not-P (or, in other words, an aversion to P). If an agent has a desire that not-P, and P is true in S, then, in this case, the agent has a reason to prevent the realization of S.

This leads to the third component in the concept of value: Does the object of evaluation objectively satisfy those desires?

For the agent with a desire that P, is it the case that P is true in S? If P is true in S, then S objectively satisfies the desire that P and the agent has a reason to act so as to realize S. If, on the other hand, P is not true in S, then the agent has no reason to bring about P. Finally, when the agent has a desire that not-P, and P is true in S, the agent has a reason to act so as to prevent the realization of S.

All of these are accounts of direct relationships between a desire and an object of evaluation.

Many authors refer to this as "intrinsic value". However, this easily leads to confusion. Another common definition of "intrinsic value" is "value independent of all extrinsic properties". Yet, we see that direct value in this sense very much depends on a set of extrinsic properties - it depends on desires.

One way to avoid this confusion is to call the relationship above "direct value", and to leave the term "intrinsic value" for "value independent of extrinsic properties". In this sense, intrinsic value does not exist. However, direct value exists.

Some people want to call value independent of extrinsic properties "objective value." J.L. Mackie had this definition in mind when he argued that there are no objective values. He goes to great pains to make it clear that he is talking about objective, intrinsic prescriptivity.

This gets confusing because we can certainly make objectively true or false claims about the relationships between things - that is to say, about extrinsic properties. "Objective values" in Mackie's sense, do not exist. However, objectively true value claims are still possible - as Mackie himself admits.

Direct value, as described here, is to be contrasted with indirect or instrumental value.

An instrument is a tool that can be used to bring about or preserve something else that has value. An agent has a desire that P. P is true in S. In order to realize S, the agent needs to use tool T. In this situation, T has instrumental or indirect value. The agent has a reason to act so as to acquire T.

Objects are not the only things that have instrumental value. Institutions, laws, relationships, and just about anything can be useful in bringing about a state S where P is true in S.

Desires themselves are useful in this sense - they have value as tools. There are some desires which, if common in others, make it easier for an agent to realize S. Insofar as an agent has a desire that P, and P is true in S, and desire D1 helps to bring about S, the agent has a reason to promote desire D1.

Similarly, there are some desires, if common in others, that make it more difficult to realize S. Insofar as an agent has a desire that P, and P is true in S, and desire D2 commonly gets in the way of bringing about S, the agent has a reason to inhibit desire D2.

This, then, is the fourth component of value. Does the object of evaluation objectively satisfy a desire directly (have direct or "intrinsic value")? Or is it something that can be used to realize a state of affairs that objectively satisfies a desire (has instrumental value)?

In summary, then, four questions get answered in any true value claim.

(1) What are the relevant objects of evaluation?

(2) What are the relevant desires?

(3) Do the objects of evaluation objectively satisfy or objectively dissatisfy those desires?

(4) Do they objectively satisfy or dissatisfy those desires directly or indirectly?

All value-laden terms can be evaluated according to this set of criteria. Moral terms (e.g., right, wrong, good, evil, obligatory, permissible, prohibited) are one set of value-laden terms among many. Moral terms have their own set of answers to these questions. Other value-laden terms (e.g., useful, beautiful, healthy, illness/injury, dangerous) have a different set of answers to these questions. We can distinguish different value-laden terms by identifying the differences in how they answer these four questions.

Desirism and Emotivism

I am continuing to use this blog to construct the first draft of text that will go in to a wiki on Desirism

Here is a look at what desirism says about emotivism.

Emotivism says that a moral claim such as "abortion is murder" or "you have an obligation to repay your debts" is not a sentence with a truth value. It is, instead, an expressive utterance - such as saying, "Abortion, yuck!" or "Three cheers for repaying one's debts!"

Another component of emotivism is that the emotive outburst is meant to cause others to share the same reaction. In doing so, it does not use reasoned argument from true premises. Instead, it uses some form of coaxing or emotional persuasion to get others to have the prescribed attitude towards that which is being evaluated.

Desirism begins by questioning the claim that emotive statements lack a truth value. For every emotive statement, there is a corresponding truth-bearing proposition that says the same thing.

For example, Jose is offered a lunch consisting, in part, of refried beans. He turns up his nose at the refried beans and says, "Yuck." The claim is that emotive utterance has no truth value. Yet, it corresponds to the proposition, "Jose hates refried beans." This latter statement does have a truth value.

Furthermore, it is just as objectively true or false as a statement of the form, "Jose has a scar on his wrist from when he fell off of his bike."

Desirism denies that moral statements are merely expressions of personal likes or dislikes - arguing that they are instead expressions that concern malleable desires that people generally have reason to promote or inhibit. However, even if they were merely expressions of the likes and dislikes of individuals, they would have a truth value.

The issue of whether moral claims express personal preferences will be handled separately under the subject of "subjectivism".

On the question of whether moral claims are utterances that attempt to cause in others to acquire a particular emotional reaction to a state of affairs, and to bring about this attitude through something other than reasoning from true premises, desirism holds that this is true.

Moral utterance are not only truth-bearing propositions, they are - at the same time - an attempt to use the social tools of praise and condemnation to effect a change in the emotions (desires) of others as they relate to the object of evaluation.

The purpose of moral praise is to act on the reward mechanism in the brains of others to strengthen the desires that lead to the praised act and a desire for the praised act itself. The purpose of moral condemnation is to act on the same system to promote aversions that would motivate agents to avoid the type of act being condemned.

Thus, we have the use of tools other than reasoning from true premises (praise and condemnation acting on the reward system) in order to cause others to adopt a particular attitudes (desires). This is a primary function of moral praise and condemnation.

At this point it is important to note that praise and condemnation not only serve to alter the attitudes of the person being praised or condemned. They have an effect on others. Mirror neurons cause people to experience events as if they are happening to themselves rather than others. They are a key component of empathy. If a person cuts his finger, another who merely witnesses the cut will have a mental reaction that is similar to having his own finger cut.

Consequently, praise not only reinforces the desires of the person praised. It also reinforces similar desires in those who witness the praise. This explains why moral praise is often delivered in front of an audience - through award ceremonies and public testimonials - so that the praise can have an effect on society as a whole.

The story of praise or condemnation does not even have to be real. One can make up a story in with a character who is praised or condemned for some action and use that to mold the character, at least to some extent, of those who engage with the story. Thus, parables become a useful tool for teaching moral lessons.

However, none of this calls into the question the possibility that the moral utterance - the act of praise or condemnation - can, at the same time, be a truth-bearing proposition.

The factual component of moral claims, combined with their ability to imoact desires even as stories, makes it possible for people to sensibly use moral claims even in situations that traditioal emotivism found hard to defend. For example, making miral ckaims about past events (e.g., Churchill had no right to promise eastern Poland to the Soviet Union) still reports a fact (a person with good desires would not have done such a thing), and can still have an impact molding current desires to make it less likely that a current or future leader will perform a similar act.

Consider the case of an emotional utterance, "That is a lie!". This is a truth-bearing proposition. It states that the accused agent asserted to be true something that the agent at the time actively believed to be false. This statement itself is either true or false. It is possible to refute the claim, "That is a lie," by showing that the agent sincerely believed what he said.

Yet, the proposition, "That is a lie!" can, at the same time can be delivered with a certain emotive force. One can be clear, from tone and context, that the person who says, "That is a lie," is, at the same time, condemning the person who is uttering the lie, and urging others to have the same attitude towards that type of behavior.

This condemnation does not change the truth-bearing nature of the proposition being uttered. The statement is still either objectively true or objectively false. Furthermore, it can well be the case that, if the accusation was false, the condemnation would not be justified. It is not the case that an utterance must be cognitivist (truth-bearing) or non-cognivist (incapable of being true or false).

It can be both.

Moral claims are both.

Beliefs, Desires, Actions, and Ought

How are "ought" statements handled according to desirism?

I am in the first week of a project of rebuilding a Desirism wiki. Any assistance anybody might want to provide would be appreciated - particularly given that a lot of people have a lot of relevant knowledge that I do not have.


So far, I have presented skeleton account of desirism on which to build, and an equally sketchy account of desires.

Today, my topic is the relationship between ought statements and mental states.

When you say that an agent “ought to have done something differently,” this has to imply that the agent ought to have had different beliefs, or ought to have had different desires, or both. An intentional action springs from an agent's beliefs and desires such that, given the specifics of the situation, if the beliefs are held constant and the desires are held constant, then the action would not change.

Prescribing Beliefs

A woman, on a long run in the hot sun, takes a drink of what looks like clean water. Another person who knows that the glass did not contain water but a colorless, transparent, tasteless liquid that causes nausea and cramps tells the runner, “You should not have done that.”

This is not a moral judgment. He is not condemning the runner for drinking out of the glass - not in this case, anyways. Instead, he is telling the runner, “Given your actual desires, an agent with true and complete beliefs would not have drank from that glass. Your desires, all things considered, are not going to be objectively satisfied by that action.”

When a statement that an agent ought to have done something else is reduced to a statement that the agent ought to have believed something else (or an agent with true and complete beliefs but the same desires would have done something else) the prescription is not moral - it is practical.

The hallmark of beliefs is truth. An agent chooses the action that would fulfill the most and strongest of her desires in a world where her beliefs and true and complete. The runner decided to drink from the glass because, in a world where her beliefs were true and complete, drinking from the glass would have quenched her thirst and produced no ill effects. Whether an action is actually successful depends substantially on whether the beliefs are accurate. If they are, then the action will produce the intended results. If not, the agent risks an unsuccessful action.

Prescribing Desires

A woman on a long run in the hot sun, sees a wallet sitting on a table. She picks up the wallet, takes out some of the cash, and puts it in her pocket, returning the wallet to the table. Another person, who had been watching the wallet from a hidden location, and tells the runner, “You should not have taken the money.”

In this case, we may assume that a person with the same desires, but true and complete beliefs, would have still taken the money. Those true and complete beliefs would include the belief that the watcher is simply doing research and has no intention of thwarting the agent's desires in any way. She has no aversion to taking the money. Her only deterrence, let us assume, would be an interest in avoiding punishment. So, let us imagine a situation in which she will not be punished.

Still, it makes sense to make the moral claim, "She should not take the money." She is guilty of theft, and theft is a moral crime.

In this case, the claim that she should have done differently is not a claim that a person with true and complete beliefs would have done something else. It is a claim that a person with the right desires would have done something else.

What counts as a "right desire?"

Desires, unlike beliefs, do not have anything like a truth correspondence. There is nothing like a correct or incorrect desire. Instead, our evolutionary past has disposed us to desire that which pursuing or avoiding had allowed our ancestors to be biologically successful.

Our tastes for food, for example, is not tuned to any type of intrinsic goodness. We have a taste for food that kept our ancestors alive long enough to have children and raise them to the point that they can have children. Broccoli is good for us, but it was not as good for our ancestors as lots of calories when one could get them. Alcohol - unlike stagnate water - is substantially germ free.

The fact that we are disposed to desire that which kept our ancestors alive does not imply that these desires are in any way correct or right. Indeed, as we are seeing, the desires that kept our ancestors alive in their environment might not be too healthy for us in our current environment. What this points out is the fact that there is no correct or incorrect thing to desire. We like what we like. Some of us will have offspring who will grow up to have offspring, and some of us will not. There is no "intrinsic value" to one option or another.

So, in the absence of intrinsic value or an inherent correctness to desire, how can we make sense of talking about the "right desire"?

There is still the fact that there are some desires that people generally have reason to promote, and some desires that people generally have reason to inhibit. Furthermore, desires are malleable, and can be strengthened or weakend through praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. So, there are desires that people generally have reason to respond to with praise and rewards, and desires that people generally have reason to respond to with condemnation and punishment.

To say, "You ought not to have taken the money" is to say, "You ought not to have the desire set that would have caused you to take the money." This does not mean that the desires are incorrect in the same way that beliefs can be incorrect. Instead, it means that the desire set is one that people generally have reason to respond to with condemnation and punishment. In fact, the claim, "you should not have taken the money" is not only a statement that the agent has a desire set the people have reason to respond to with condemnation. It is - at the same time - an act of condemnation.

In saying that the agent ought not to have had the desire set that would have motived her to take the money, it is important to keep in mind the fact that desires are persistent entities. You cannot simply turn them on and off like a switch. Even if you could, the next question to ask is: what character traits would be sitting in the background to motivate turning a particular desire on or off - and can that desire be turned on and off?

Consequently, when we evaluate a desire, we must evaluate its effects on the wide range of regular every-day circumstances a person may find themselves in. It may well be the case that a desire set that objectively satisfy other desires in certain rare circumstances would thwart other desires in a wide range of every-day circumstances in which people routinely find themselves. It this case, people generally have little reason to praise the act that objectively satisfies other desires. Instead, they have reason to condemn it - to avoid the desire-thwarting effects that would arise in the every-day circumstances that people often find themselves.

Summary

To say that a person ought to have done something different implies either that a person with true and accurate beliefs would have done something different, or that a person with good desires would have done something different, or both.

The first option relates to practical ought - it prescribes a course of action that will better allow the agent to realize that agent's desires. It aims to direct the agent to potentially more successful actions.

The second option relates to moral ought. It aims to use social tools such as praise and condemnation to promote desires that people generally have reason to promote, and inhibit desires that people generally have reason to inhibit. One of the aspects of doing this is that it embeds the praise or the condemnation in the moral statement itself. Consequently, a moral claim not only prescribes a particular desire set, it employs the tools of praise and condemnation that aim to bring about the prescribed desire set.

What Is a Desire?

I am rebuilding my desirism wiki. I am doing so by submitting here (for your review and comment) the text that I will be adding over there.

Today's topic: What is a desire?

This topic will take a lot of work. I am hoping that there are people out there who would not mind sharing some of their special knowledge - providing me with references that supports, refutes, or refines the points made below.

Beliefs and desires are the proximate causes of intentional action. When you ask why somebody did something, you expect an answer that provides you with the relevant beliefs and desires that explain that action. Not only must it explain that specific action, but it must make that action consistent with other actions that the agent has performed and be able to predict potential future actions.

"Why did you choose to invest in that articular mutual fund."

The answer may involve wanting a high rate of return and believing that the mutual fund will provide it. The answer might include some interest in social responsibility. Perhaps a family member works for the company and the investor wanted to support her, or the investor values investing in developing economies and believes that the mutual fund focuses on those types of investments.

It is important to note that beliefs and desires explain and predict observable events in the real world. While there is some dispute about the merits of this form of explanation. However, in our every-day world, we currently have nothing better.

So, what are these entities that explain intentional action?

Beliefs and desires are mental states. They are properties of the mind-brain - physical properties of physical objects in the physical universe.

Beliefs and desires are functional properties - properties that describe what is going on (or can go on) within an object. In this, the mind-brain is much like a computer, storing data (beliefs) that might or might not be true, assigning value to certain states, and using that data and those values to determine output (behavior).

Beliefs and desires are known as "propositional attitudes". This means that they describe attitudes towards propositions.

A proposition, in turn, is the meaning component of a sentence. It is a statement capable of being true or false. “Jenny is visiting her mother in Iowa” is a proposition. It is a statement. It might be true. It might be false. "Jenny is in Iowa visiting her mother" is a different sentence, but it is the same proposition. It says the same thing.

A belief is the attitude that a proposition is true.

I will often express a belief in the form, "A believes that P", where "P" is some proposition. A person who believes that P will plan his actions for a universe in which "P" is true. If "P" happens to be false, this will usually have an adverse effect on the agent's success.

So, if I believe that Jenny is in Iowa visiting her mother, and I desire to talk to Jenny, and I know her mother's phone number, then I should conclude that I can reach Jenny by calling that number and I have a motivating reason to call that number. If that belief is false, I am wasting my time calling that number.

A desire is a motivational drive to make a proposition true or to keep the proposition true.

If I want Jenny to visit her mother in Iowa, this gives me a motivating reason to act to make the proposition, "Jenny is visiting her mother in Iowa" true. I may try to persuade Jenny to visit her mother. I may purchase her airplane ticket. What I am looking for is an action - given my beliefs - that is likely to make it true that Jenny is visiting her mother.

It is important to stress here that what matters is the objective satisfaction of a desire - creating a state where the proposition that is desired is objectively true in the real world. (Note: This is a state that I have called in my previous writing "desire fulfillment" - yet it seems that the professional academic literature on desires has settled on the more cumbersome phrase, "objective desire satisfaction").

This is to be understood in contrast with "subjective desire satisfaction" - which is the (potentially false) belief that a desired proposition is true.

A parent may believe that his child is safe at a friend's house. At that moment, unknown to the parent, she may be the victim of a violent attack. The parent's desire that their child is safe is subjectively satisfied (he believes it is true) but not objectively satisfied (true in fact). Of the two, intentional action aims for objective satisfaction (making a proposition true in fact), not subjective satisfaction (making oneself believe that it is true).

Each person is motivated only by his or her own desires (and beliefs).

This is a truth that egoists note, but that they do not understand. Egoists note that agents always act solely on their own desires. They then confuse this with the claim that everybody acts for their own benefit. When challenged by a case in which a person acts to benefit others, they will answer, "She is still doing what she wants." This is true. However, if what she wants is the well-being of another person, this is not egoistic selfishness. It is the very definition of altruism.

Even if it were possible for my desires to motivate your actions – for my desires to cause your limbs to move and to realize states of affairs that I am motivated to bring about – those actions would not be your actions. An action can not, at the same time, be your action and come from my mental states. If those actions come from my mental states (or the degree to which they come from my mental states), they are my actions, not yours.

A mind control device that would allow me to take over your body and commit a crime would not make you guilty of that crime. Because the crime did not spring from your beliefs and desires, it is not you action. It is my action. I am the person to be held responsible, not you.

When we morally evaluate an action, we are actually evaluating the mental states behind that action. If I am controlling your body, the causal states are mine, not yours. It is my mental states that are being evaluated, not your physical action.

A Desirism Wiki

I need to get started on a project that I have been putting off for far too long - a site that summarizes desirism and the conclusions that can be drawn from it.

I have started this project before - but it is difficult to do both that project and this blog at the same time. I always end up putting my time into the latter and neglecting the former.

Therefore, my new strategy will be to not have these two projects compete. I will write and post here what I will add to the wiki site the next few days.

Your comments here will be useful. If you know of some useful information - some research to consider or some objection to be weighed, or some question to be answered, please include it.

Of course, the best start to (re)building that desirism wiki is with an overall summary of desirism - what would be its opening page.

Desirism - The Basics

Desirism is a moral theory that holds that desires are the fundamental object of moral evaluation.

Actions are evaluated according to whether or not they are the actions that a person with good desires would perform. Note that the moral value of an action does not depend on the desires that actually motivated it - but on whether a person with good desires would have done the same thing.

Specifically, there are three moral categories for intentional action:

1. Obligatory: That which a person must do.
2. Prohibited: That which a person must not do.
3. Non-obligatory permission: That which a person may or may not do as suits their interest.

Desirism accounts for these three moral categories as follows:

1. Obligatory: That act which a person with good desires would perform under those circumstances. A person has a moral obligation to repay debts or tell the truth under conditions where a person with good desires would repay debts or tell the truth.
2. Prohibited: That act which a person with good desires would not perform under those circumstances. Taking the property of another without consent is prohibited where a person with good desires would not take the property.
3. Non-obligatory permission: An act that a person with good desires may or may not perform. There is a variety of shows that a person with good desires may decide to watch, and a variety of foods one may decide to eat. With some exceptions, having good desires does not dictate a specific show to watch or specific food to eat.

A good desire, in this sense, is a desire that people generally have reason to promote.

Desires themselves are the only reasons for intentional action that exist. That is to say, they are the only entities in the world that identify an objective or goal and direct intentional action towards that goal.

Some desires are malleable. They are not hard-wired into the brain. They are acquired - learned - through experience. That is to say, it is possible for one person to alter the desires of others by using the mechamisms through which desires are learned, strengthened, or weakened.

To "have reason to promote" a desire is to have a desire that the desire being promoted would objectively satisfy.

Some desires are desires that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote. That is to say, there are many and strong desires out there that the desire in question can objectively satisfy. These are the "good desires" referred to above.

That people generally have many and strong reasons to promote a particular desire is a knowable fact - one that is substantially independent of the feelings, wishes, beliefs, or attitudes of any one person.

The relevant mechanism for learning desires - acquiring new desires or strengthening or weakening existing desires - is through the reward system. When an action creates a reward, the malleable desires that motivate that action are strengthened. Punishment, on the other hand, modifies desires to motivate agents to avoid that which brought the punishment. Actions that may, at one time, be taken as a means for acquiring a reward or avoiding a punishment may come to be valued for their own sake, independent of the original reward or punishment.

So, when people generally have many and strong reasons to promote a malleable desire, they have many and strong reasons to use the tools of social conditioning - praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment - to strengthen that desire.

Desirism, then, concerns identifying malleable desires that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote, and directing the social tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to promoting those desires. Those who perform the actions of a person with good desires draw praise and are reward, while those who do not perform the actions of a person with good desires draw condemnation and punishment.

The Ethical Atheist Candidate: I Follow Polls

As your (pseudo) elected representative, I promise that I will read the polls and I will use them as an important guide to how I vote.

In our political system, we demand that our elected officials pay no attention to polls. We insist that they tell us what they really believe. Yet, at the same time, we only elect people who tell us what we want to hear, and the way they know what we want to hear is through polling.

In other words, we have set up a system where lying is a job requirement, then we complain about politicians being dishonest. It's like setting up a system where we hire only those people under 5' tall, then complain about the fact that all of them are short.

Techically, the ways by which a politician learns what the people want to hear - and how they want to hear it - involves more than just polls. It involves surveys, focus groups, letters from constituents, political editorials and cartoons, and generally reading the mood if the people. Both political parties have massive machines in place whose very purpose is to tell you whatever it us that will get you - or, at least, a majority of you who vote, what you want to hear.

If you do not vote, these political machines do not care squat what you think. You are dead to them.

We know that these robo-calls, political advertisements, and speeches are constructed with a massive amount of information behind them aiming at manipulating your vote. Yet, a part of that manipulation involves lying to you and telling you that the candidate sincerely believes what the polls tell him to say.

Personally, I do not think that there is anything wrong with a legislator in a democracy trying to figure out what the voters want in figuring out what they are going to support or oppose.

In fact, I think it is a legislator's duty.

As your (pseudo) elected legislator, I represent you. You hire me to be your voice in the legislature. In order for me to speak with your voice, I need to know what your voice is saying. In order to determine what you want, I will consult polls, surveys, and whatever other information is available to me.

Unlike politicians today, I am not going to lie and pretend that I enthusiastically support all of those things. I simply have no interest in playing that game. If I disagree with you, I will tell you. On some issues where we disagree, and I think the issue is important, I will try to convince you to change your mind. However, when it comes to casting a vote, I will remember that I am not there to represent myself. I am there to represent the people who sent me there, and I will vote accordingly.

This means that you should not be surprised to hear me speak in favor of some forms of legislation, yet voting against it. Or opposing legislation that I end up voting for.

For example, I may support a program to fight malaria underdeveloped countries. Yet, surveys show that a great many voters are opposed to foreign aid, and insist that it be one of the first things cut from the budget. In this case, I will try to convince you that we are all a part of this world, and that we are far better off with ah healthy and prosperous Africa than with a violent, sick, and impoverished Africa. I will remind you that these are human beings - sick and dying human beings - most of them children. We have an obligation to help them, if we can - and we can help them.

However, when the vote comes and surveys show that 57% of the people who I represent in the legislature oppose this legislation, that is how I will vote. Maybe, the reason that so many people disagree with me is because I have overlooked an important consideration. Perhaps I have not fully appreciated how a better way to help is through individual contributions to private charities who can spend the money more efficiently, and the ways in which a government pot of money ends up going to special interests groups rather than the people who need help. Or maybe I am right. It does not matter. After presenting my boss with my opinion about what should be done, the survey shows that my boss wants me to vote "no". I will vote "no".

There are limits to what I will do as your employee, however. As an employee in a private business, it would be my duty to carry out my employer's wishes to the best of my ability. However, if that employer should tell me to lead an armed assault on a competitor's warehouse, kill the guards, and haul away everything inside, I would refuse. I my employer should demand that I lie under oath, I would refuse.

Similarly, if, per chance, surveys were to show that you support an armed invasion of an oil-rich country for the purpose of taking control of their oil, I will refuse. If the polls tell me that you favor rounding up Japanese Americans and locking them up in concentration camps, I will vote against it, and leave it to you to fire me. There are some things that are simply wrong, and, even as your (pseudo) elected representative and your employee, I will not do them.

If you want a list of the things I will not do, you can find an excellent summary in the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States - known as the Bill of Rights. It is a most remarkable document - well ahead of its time.

Other than that, I assure you that I WILL listen to what the pollsters tell me. I will pay attention to surveys. I WILL try to find out what my boss wants me to do and, within limits, I WILL try to follow my employers' instructions to the best of my ability. That's would be my job - or a part of my job - as I see it.

The Ethical Atheist Candidate: Militant Moderation

Conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, Progressive, Democrat, Republican


The instant you start a political campaign, people will try to put you in a pigeon hole, and then interpret every sound bite that follows in the context of that hole.

In truth, with these political tribes, people tend to seek membership and identity. To become a member, you need to substantially agree with the dogma of that particular tribe. There may be room for some disagreement around the edges, but by and large you purchase membership in a tribe by conformity.

In this pseudo-campaign, I wish to start a new tribe. This tribe will be known as the Militant Moderates.

Militant moderates hold that no person is so intellectually gifted that they can count on their own infallibility in political matters. Militant moderats reject the common practice of saying, "I cannot possibly be wrong, nobody who disagrees with me can possibly be right. In virtue of my own perfection, I must never listen to or compromise with anybody else. Compromise can only bring something less than perfection."

Militant moderates reject the idea that "Everybody whose beliefs are different from my own is a traitor to humanity. Perhaps we are obligated to tolerate their opinions, but only to the extent that we will not round them all up and kill them - though certainly it would be to the benefit of humanity to do so. While we struggle to resist this tempatation, we will not deny that they are traitors to humanity."

The "militant" part of these militant moderates is that they find the arrogant presumption totally contemptible. They will soundly condemn, in no uncertain terms, anybody whose attitudes follow those described in the two paragraphs above.

Let us not close our eyes to exactly how common those attitudes are. Browse any major news site on the web, or turn on any cable news network, and you will be bombarded with examples of uncompromising arrogance.

This does not mean that militant moderates believe that all points of view are equally valid, or that there is no truth to the matter other than the truths each person invents for themselves. She believes that there are facts. A person can believe all they want in the virtues of a zero-calorie miracle diet, but he'll be dead in a month if he tries it.

However, each one of us is cursed with biases and interests, presumptions and assumptions embedded into our brains since childhood, and only a small fragment of the total amount of information relevant to any major political opinion. While truth exists, these limitations hide truth behind a fog through which none of us - not one of us - can see with absolute clarity.



As I see it, in any negotiation, I can bring to the table my small subset of total human information, along with my assumptions, interests, and biases. It is not as if I can leave them behind.

Others can do the same thing.

We can - and should - recognize that each of us has a far better ability to see the flaws in others' thinking than we do in our own. instead of presuming infallibility, I intend to take advantage of their greater insight into my mistakes by listening to them and learning where I might have gone wrong in my thinking.

At the same time, as a militant moderate, I will reminding others, "You are not an omniscient deity blessed with perfect knowledge and virtue. Do not dare sit there and presume that it cannot possibly be you who are wrong."

I believe in compromise.

I believe that, when a group of people, each with their own assumptions, interests, biased, and small fraction of human knowledge get together, it is to be hoped that they can come up with a conclusion grounded on a larger set of interests, assumptions, and knowledge than that which any one of them could have come up with as an individual.

I believe that anybody who does not believe in compromise is arrogant - and arrogance is no minor character flaw. One quality that every bloody dictator and terrorist has in common is arrogance. One quality that every war is built on is arrogance. The one quality that deadlocks our government and makes us incapable of solving even simple problems is arrogance. Listen the next time congress is deadlocked on an issue and you can see it - you can feel it - in nearly every utterance.

Arrogance poisons everything.

I promise you, as your elected representative, that I WILL compromise. I WILL listen to people who do not agree with me. I WILL respect the fact that they can find holes in my thinking that I am otherwise incapable of seeing due to the blindness of interest and presumption. I WILL remind myself every time somebody else speaks, "You may be right."