One quibble I have is that desires are not propositional attitudes. When I am hungry, it is not as if I have the desire that P become true where P is "Food is in my stomach." I'm just hungry. The proposition P comes into the picture when I attempt to communicate my hunger or when I take steps to alleviate it. But it's not essential to the hunger--the desire--itself.
That's inessential to the fundamental claim however.
A more pressing objection I might raise is that, under desire utilitarianism, there seem to be an incalculable number of possibly ethical desire scenarios. It would not be possible to decide between them on the basis of desire utilitarianism alone.
Look at the question of rape, for instance. Alonzo Fyfe would have us imagine that, if we had a knob controlling the total desire to rape, turning it all the way down would minimize frustrated desires. But why should we have a knob controlling the desire to rape, rather than the desire not to be raped? If we were to diminish aversion to rape, surely this, too, would minimize frustrated desires.
Perhaps it's not possible to diminish the desire not to be raped--we should only consider desires that we can possibly diminish. If this is the case, then desire utilitarianism does perhaps forbid the desire for rape, murder, etc. However, I think there are other examples which we could give of undecidables.
For example, should a woman desire to be financially independent of the male members of her household? On the one hand, this stymies some of the desires of the woman, though certainly not all. Most people, I think, desire adequate food, shelter, clothing, and other comforts, which she would have, and desire not to struggle for them, which she wouldn't. She may well not have time, should she be working, to raise her children as she would like. She may not be able to In this light, even some of the desires of the woman would be stymied by her financial independence.
However, her desire would also stymie the desire of men to work for adequate pay to feed their families. By introducing extra competition into the work force, it would reduce everyone's financial stability, potentially stymieing the desires of many for adequate food, clothing, and shelter.
It is not obvious to me that woman's liberation is preferable, under desire utilitarianism, to patriarchy. It is perhaps somewhat arbitrary that women stay at home rather than men, but this does not seem to me to be an adequate response, so long as one section of the population stays financially dependent.
lukeprog
· 9 months ago
I'll hold off on replying until I do the interview. Thanks for your questions and objections.
Chuck
· 9 months ago
For what it's worth, the question of who should stay home is almost never going to be arbitrary. Until there are kids in the picture, no one has to stay home. Once there are, one of them will have a job that pays more. The other might have a job that can be done from home.
Also, men can't breast-feed.
Chuck
· 9 months ago
Here's my question.
In order to eat meat, an animal has to die, so is eating meat wrong?
tinyfrog
· 9 months ago
Admittedly, I wasn't paying enough attention to the podcast to get a full understanding of it, but my question is this: how does desire utilitarianism balance the desires of different species? For example, presumably, animals wouldn't want to be killed for food. (And they certainly would not want to be hunted in a forest - where they tend to die a slow death from blood-loss after being shot with an arrow or gun.) Yet, we kill them. On the other hand, we would find the idea of killing humans for food to be evil. Why the inequality between human and animal desires? How is killing animals "right"?
hewhocutsdown
· 9 months ago
I'm not seeing how one can make the jump from:
* I have desire X and you have desire Y to
* desire X is preferable to desire Y due to it's capacity to fulfill more desires than it thwarts.
This seems, at best, highly subjective - as is illustrated by your case of the community of sadists and the abused child. If you argue for the abuse of the child in this context, but against in a context where child-abusers are a minority, than 'morality' is merely subject to the sentient creatures in a given environment.
If you argue against, what principle or extra information are you using? It is not obvious at all that abusing a child thwarts more desires than it fulfills - how are we measuring thwarted/fulfilled desires? Without a mechanism for testing this, it's merely a new moral subjectivity.
After all, how can we argue with this that homophobia, slavery, sexism, etc are morally superior without subjecting each of them to the above test and comparing the results? It could be that some are indeed, morally superior using the mechanics of desire utilitarianism, which would cast your examples into the same fire you cast the prior arguments for morality into.
Whether or not you believe in the devil, I'm happy to play his advocate. ;)
matt
· 9 months ago
I would like to see abortion explored some. This seems to be one of the hardest test for an ethical system, as it seems to divide pretty evenly. (and not just in the popluation, usually in our own consciences.) It would seem desire utilitarianism would tell us that the desire to have abortions is a bad desire, because if it were reduced to 0, then nobodies desires would be thwarted, especially those who value the unborn. And perhaps to a lesser degree the future desires of the unborn.
It brings up another question. Should we consider past and future desires? We have to consider past desires I would think, otherwise there would be no problems killing a sleeping man with no loved ones. No present desires are being thwarted in that scenario. (Or maybe the desires of most people not to see sleeping people murdered are?.. i dont know this desire stuff can be very hard to measure and factor.) Or do we not kill the sleeping man, because he will have a future desire to live? In this case, can we not say the same about embryos?
Desire utilitarianism is hard to grasp intuitively sometimes, but then again so is general relativity, it doesn't change its truth value. Maybe if i explored it more i could answer my own questions, but for now i must admit my reasoning when it comes to this subject seems to be a bit confused. I start thinking about this persons' desires, then these peoples', then those peoples', and i get lost, like its some giant impossible math equation. Maybe what would be most helpful, are many examples. From simple stuff like smoking cigarettes, to injecting heroin, to capital punishment, and euthanasia. What does DU tell us about these things? But I will leave it to you to put the questions to him in a more articulate way. I mostly just want lots of examples. I understand there may not be any easy answers tho.
All Comments
That's inessential to the fundamental claim however.
A more pressing objection I might raise is that, under desire utilitarianism, there seem to be an incalculable number of possibly ethical desire scenarios. It would not be possible to decide between them on the basis of desire utilitarianism alone.
Look at the question of rape, for instance. Alonzo Fyfe would have us imagine that, if we had a knob controlling the total desire to rape, turning it all the way down would minimize frustrated desires. But why should we have a knob controlling the desire to rape, rather than the desire not to be raped? If we were to diminish aversion to rape, surely this, too, would minimize frustrated desires.
Perhaps it's not possible to diminish the desire not to be raped--we should only consider desires that we can possibly diminish. If this is the case, then desire utilitarianism does perhaps forbid the desire for rape, murder, etc. However, I think there are other examples which we could give of undecidables.
For example, should a woman desire to be financially independent of the male members of her household? On the one hand, this stymies some of the desires of the woman, though certainly not all. Most people, I think, desire adequate food, shelter, clothing, and other comforts, which she would have, and desire not to struggle for them, which she wouldn't. She may well not have time, should she be working, to raise her children as she would like. She may not be able to In this light, even some of the desires of the woman would be stymied by her financial independence.
However, her desire would also stymie the desire of men to work for adequate pay to feed their families. By introducing extra competition into the work force, it would reduce everyone's financial stability, potentially stymieing the desires of many for adequate food, clothing, and shelter.
It is not obvious to me that woman's liberation is preferable, under desire utilitarianism, to patriarchy. It is perhaps somewhat arbitrary that women stay at home rather than men, but this does not seem to me to be an adequate response, so long as one section of the population stays financially dependent.
Also, men can't breast-feed.
In order to eat meat, an animal has to die, so is eating meat wrong?
* I have desire X and you have desire Y
to
* desire X is preferable to desire Y due to it's capacity to fulfill more desires than it thwarts.
This seems, at best, highly subjective - as is illustrated by your case of the community of sadists and the abused child. If you argue for the abuse of the child in this context, but against in a context where child-abusers are a minority, than 'morality' is merely subject to the sentient creatures in a given environment.
If you argue against, what principle or extra information are you using? It is not obvious at all that abusing a child thwarts more desires than it fulfills - how are we measuring thwarted/fulfilled desires? Without a mechanism for testing this, it's merely a new moral subjectivity.
After all, how can we argue with this that homophobia, slavery, sexism, etc are morally superior without subjecting each of them to the above test and comparing the results? It could be that some are indeed, morally superior using the mechanics of desire utilitarianism, which would cast your examples into the same fire you cast the prior arguments for morality into.
Whether or not you believe in the devil, I'm happy to play his advocate. ;)
It brings up another question. Should we consider past and future desires? We have to consider past desires I would think, otherwise there would be no problems killing a sleeping man with no loved ones. No present desires are being thwarted in that scenario. (Or maybe the desires of most people not to see sleeping people murdered are?.. i dont know this desire stuff can be very hard to measure and factor.) Or do we not kill the sleeping man, because he will have a future desire to live? In this case, can we not say the same about embryos?
Desire utilitarianism is hard to grasp intuitively sometimes, but then again so is general relativity, it doesn't change its truth value. Maybe if i explored it more i could answer my own questions, but for now i must admit my reasoning when it comes to this subject seems to be a bit confused. I start thinking about this persons' desires, then these peoples', then those peoples', and i get lost, like its some giant impossible math equation. Maybe what would be most helpful, are many examples. From simple stuff like smoking cigarettes, to injecting heroin, to capital punishment, and euthanasia. What does DU tell us about these things? But I will leave it to you to put the questions to him in a more articulate way. I mostly just want lots of examples. I understand there may not be any easy answers tho.