On desire-fulfillment (DF) theories of wellbeing, cases of fulfilled desire are an increment to utility. What about cases of unfulfilled desire? On DF theories, we have a choice point. We could say that unfulfilled desires don’t count at all—it’s just that one doesn’t get the increment from the desire being fulfilled—or that they are a decrement.
Saying that unfulfilled desires don’t count at all would be mistaken. It would imply, for instance, that it’s worthwhile to gain all the possible desires, since then one maximizes the amount of fulfilled desire, and there is no loss from unfulfilled desire.
So the DF theorist should count unfulfilled desire as a decrement to utility.
But now here is an interesting question. If I desire that p, and then get an increment x > 0 to my utility if p, is my decrement to utility if not p just − x or something different?
It seems that in different cases we feel differently. There seem to be cases where the increment from fulfillment is greater than the decrement from non-fulfillment. These may be cases of wanting something as a bonus or an adjunct to one’s other desires. For instance, a philosopher might want to win a pickleball tournament, and intuitively the increment to utility from winning is greater than the decrement from not winning. But there are cases where the decrement is at least as large as the increment. Cases of really important desires, like the desire to have friends, may be like that.
What should the DF theorist do about this? The observation above seems to do serious damage to the elegant “add up fulfillments and subtract non-fulfulfillments” picture of DF theories.
I think there is actually a neat move that can be made. We normally think of desires as coming with strengths or importances, and of course every DF theorist will want to weight the increments and decrements to utility with the importance of the desire involved. But perhaps what we should do is to attach two importances to any given desire: an importance that is a weight for the increment if the desire is fulfilled and an importance that is a weight for the decrement if the desire is not fulfilled.
So now it is just a psychological fact that each desire comes along with a pair of weights, and we can decide how much to add and how much to subtract based on the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the desire.
If this is right, then we have an algorithm for a good life: work on your psychology to gain lots and lots of new desires with large fulfillment weights and small non-fulfillment weights, and to transform your existing desires to have large fulfillment weights and small non-fulfillment weights. Then you will have more wellbeing, since the fulfillments of desires will add significantly to your utility but the non-fulfillments will make little difference.
This algorithm results in an inhuman person, one who gains much if their friends live and are loyal, but loses nothing if their friends die or are disloyal. That’s not the best kind of friendship. The best kind of friendship requires vulnerability, and the algorithm takes that away.
Do you have an opinion about which representative(s) of DF theory presents the strongest case for it?
ReplyDeleteDoes Buddhism adhere to DF? 🤔 Isn't the standard Buddhist picture that unfulfilled desires cause suffering, and so we ought to reduce our desires as much as possible? (Achieving bliss, or Nirvana, when we truly desire nothing.)
ReplyDeleteIf so, then it seems the DF strategy Pruss gives is more sophisticated. And yet even this more sophisticated account is problematic. (Selecting desires based on the fulfillment they give you is morally dubious. We ought to desire what's best for others.)
Without any serious reading on Buddhism, I can't say definitively. But I doubt Buddhism accepts DF. Buddhism may accept a version of desire-non-fulfillment theory of ill-being. But wouldn't the theory of wellbeing be that one is well off to the extent that one has achieved detachment, or maybe that one has achieved the nirvanic consequences of detachment? In particular, even if all one's desires ARE fulfilled, as long as one has desires, likely the Buddhist will say that one is well off, because the fact that one has desires makes one vulnerable to suffering, while wellbeing requires an invulnerability to suffering.
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