Two kinds of desire strength

Suppose I am designing a simple vacuuming robot not unlike a Roomba, but a little more intelligent. I might set up the robot to have multiple drives or "desires" including the drive to maintain well-charged batteries and to maintain a clean floor. The robot, then, will use its external and internal sensors to obtain some relevant pieces of information: how much dirt remains on the floor, how low its battery charge is and how far away from its charging station it is. I now imagine the processor uses the dirt-remaining value to calculate how much it "wants" to continue vacuuming and the battery charge sensor and the distance from the charging station to calculate how much it "wants" to recharge. These two want-values, together with any others, then go to a decision subroutine, whose specifications are as follows:

1. When one want-value is much greater than the sum of all the others, go for that one.
2. When (1) is false, choose randomly between the want-values with choice probabilities proportioned to the want-values.

(Why not simply go for the strongest desire? Maybe because some randomization might prevent systematic errors, like areas distant from the charger that never get cleaned.)

Suppose now that the robot suffers from a hardware or software failure that in high temperature conditions makes the decision subroutine count the floor-cleaning want at double weight. Thus the robot cleans the floors more when it's hot in the house, even when it is short of battery charge.

Suppose it's a hot day, and the robot's sensor calculations give respective values 2.2 and 4.0 to the floor-cleaning and battery-recharge wants. Then in one perfectly intelligible sense the battery-recharge want is almost twice as strong as the floor-cleaning want. But most of the time in this state, the robot will continue to clean the floor, and in that sense the floor-cleaning want is somewhat stronger than the battery-recharge want.

We can and should distinguish between the nominal desire strengths, which are 2.2 and 4.0, and the effective desire strengths, which are 4.4 and 4.0, due to the buggy way the decision procedure handles the cleaning want when the temperature is high. We might also, in a more theory-laden way, call the desire strengths as they feed into the decision subroutine the "content strengths" and the desire strengths as they drive the decision the "motivational strengths."

In fact, what I said about nominal and effective strengths can be generalized to nominal and effective desires full stop. After all, we can imagine a bug where in the decision procedure under some conditions the memory location holding the cleaning-want value is overwritten with the memory location holding the present temperature. In positive temperature situations, this can result in the creation of an effective desire to clean the floors in the complete absence of a nominal desire for that, and in negative temperature situations, it can create an effective desire not to clean the floors, even though there is a nominal desire to clean them.

Surely our own decisions are subject to a similar distinction. Even if in fact the nominal and effective strengths of our desires are always equal—a very implausible hypothesis, especially in light of the apparent ubiquity of akrasia—the two could come apart.

By definition, one does tend to act on the effective desires and the effective desire strengths. But surely it is nominal desires and nominal desire strengths that more affect how one should act by one's own lights. When a discrepancy happens, it is a malfunction, a failure of rationality.

If one wants to connect this post with this one, the distinction I am making here is a distinction between two kinds of degrees of preference on the content side. So if that post is correct, we really have a three-fold distinction: the conscious intensity, the content (or nominal) strength and the motivational (or effective) strength.

I suspect that when we think through this, some Humean theses about action and morality become much less plausible.

Responsibility and desires

Consider four cases. In each case, you know that Jones, an innocent person, is drowning and will survive if and only if you throw her a life preserver in the next two minutes. But in each of the four cases there are further facts that you know:

1. The life preserver is locked down with a mind-reading device that will open if and only if you have a desire to eat a tarantula. You lack that desire and your character is such that you are unable to form that desire in two minutes.
2. The life preserver is locked down with a mind-reading device that will open if and only if you have a desire to eat a tarantula. You lack that desire, as well as lacking a desire to rescue Jones, and your character is such that you are unable to form either desire in two minutes.
3. Same as 2, but the the mind-reading device will open if and only if you have a desire to rescue Jones. You lack that desire and your character is such that you are unable to form that desire in two minutes.
4. The life preserver is not tied down, but your character is such that you can only rescue Jones if you desire to rescue Jones. You lack that desire and your character is such that you are unable to form that desire in two minutes.

In case (1) you are not being directly responsible for failing to rescue Jones. You might, of course, be derivatively responsible, if, say, you had foreseen that the case would arise sufficiently early in the game you had foreseen that the case would come up and failed to make reasonable efforts to self-induce a desire to eat a tarantula. Such efforts could have involved reflection on the bragging rights one would gain from eating a tarantula, but it would take more than two minutes to succeed—it's too late now, anyway. With such a back story, you would be derivatively responsible for faiing to rescue Jones on the basis of your responsibility for being unable to have a desire to eat a tarantula. The case is no different from the life preserver being locked down with an ordinary lock that you have no key for and are unable to smash or pick. You have no direct responsibility, though you might have derivative responsibility if you were responsible for locking down the life preserver.

Now, in case (2), we will want to blame you. You wouldn't have rescued Jones even if you could. But while that does imply a defect of character, it is not a case of direct responsibility for failing to rescue Jones. Again, you may have derivative responsibility if you are responsible for having failed to get started earlier at self-inducing a desire to eat a tarantula. But if you're not responsible for your inability to have a desire to eat a tarantula over the next two minutes, you're not responsible for failing to rescue Jones. Though you might be responsible for failing to want to rescue Jones.

Case (3) isn't significantly different from case (2). If the mind-reading device requires you to have a desire that you are unable to form over the next two minutes, you're not directly responsible for failing to rescue, though again you may be derivatively responsible if you are responsible for your inability to have that desire.

But now consider case (4). Again, this is a case where you are unable to rescue Jones unless you form a certain desire to rescue her in two minutes, and you are unable to form that desire. The same thing as above should be true: you are at most derivatively responsible for failing to rescue Jones. And derivative responsibility requires that you be antecedently responsible for something else, in this case your inability to have over the next two minutes a desire to rescue Jones.

We need one more reflection. If you are not directly responsible in case (4) when you know the facts about your character that are given in (4), you are also not directly responsible in case (4) when he is ignorant of these facts. (You might be responsible for failing to try to induce a desire, but not for failing to induce it or for failing to rescue.[note 1])

There is a lesson here. If you are unable to do something because you're unable to have a mental state, then you're at most going to be derivatively responsible for failing to do it. Moreover this principle should not be limited to failure but needs to be applied to positive action as well: if refraining from an action would take a mental state that you are unable to gain in the time required, you're at most going to be derivatively responsible. But derivative responsibility must ultimately come from direct, non-derivative responsibility. However, if compatibilism is true, then all the things we are responsible for are determined by our motivational states. In no case like that, though, can we have non-derivative responsibility. That was the lesson of the above cases. So if compatibilism is true, there is no non-derivative responsibility, and hence there is no responsibility.

Intensity of desire

Here are three things I would like:

1. Not to be kidnapped by aliens today for medical experiments.
2. To own the Hope Diamond.
3. To own a minivan.

My preferences go in this order. I'd choose not being kidnapped by aliens over the Hope Diamond and over a minivan, and I'd choose the Hope Diamond over the minivan, since I would sell the Hope Diamond and buy a minivan and many other nice things. But the intensity of my feelings goes in the other direction. I have a moderately intense feeling of desire to own a minivan. I have very little feeling of desire to own the Hope Diamond, and I find myself with even less in the way of feelings about being kidnapped by aliens, though imaginative exercises can shift these around.

So when we talk of the strength of a desire we are being ambiguous between talking of the intensity of the feeling and degree of preference. One might think of the degree of preference as something like a part of the content of the desire—the desire representing the degree to which one is to pursue something—while the intensity of the feeling is external to the content.

Those of us who think of emotions in a cognitive way, and who think there are many normative facts about what emotions one should have given one's situation, may be tempted to think that the intensity of the feeling should match the degree of preference. But that is mistaken. There are perfectly good reasons why my desire for the Hope Diamond and for not being kidnapped by aliens today should be less intensely felt than my desire for a minivan. The minivan is an appropriate object for my active pursuit, for instance, while I have little hope of getting the Hope Diamond and little fear of being kidnapped by aliens.

Maybe, then, the intensity of the desire should be proportional to the role that the desire should play in one's pursuits? That's an interesting hypothesis, but not clearly true. Let's say that you are told that you will be executed if and only if 2^9288389−1 is prime. At this point it seems quite right and proper to have an intense that this number not be a prime. But there is nothing you can do about it; barring Cartesian ideas about God and mathematics, there is no pursuit that you can engage in that can make it more or less likely that the number is a prime.

A better story would be that the intensity of the desire should be proportional to some kind of a salience. One way of the desire being salient is that it should play a heavy role in one's present pursuits. But there may be other ways for it to be salient.

There is, anyway, a spot of spiritual comfort in all this. Sometimes people worry that they do not desire God as much as they desire earthly things. But a distinction must be made. Preferring earthly things to God is clearly bad. But having a more intense desire for an earthly thing than for God may not always be a bad thing. For sometimes one must focus on an earthly task for God's sake, and a means can be more salient than the end.

Grounding grounding

Suppose Bill is a bachelor and Marcus is married. I claim that <Bill is a bachelor> stands in the same relation to <Bill is a never-married marriageable man> as <Marcus is a bachelor> stands to <Marcus is a never-married marriageable man>. But the propositions about Bill are true while those about Marcus are false. Since grounding is a relation that holds only between truths, the relevant relation that the two pairs of propositions have in common is not the grounding relation. It is something else. Call it ontological explanation, following Dan Johnson's dissertation. (Since, I think, explanation is factive, so that only truths can be explained, and they can only be explained by truths, ontological explanation isn't explanation strictly speaking.)

Abbreviate "<x is a bachelor>" as b_x and "<x is a never-married marriageable man>" as n_x. Then, necessarily, for every human being (at least) x, n_x ontologically explains b_x. Let B be Bill and M be Marcus. Then, n_B ontologically explains and grounds b_B, while n_M ontologically explains but does not ground b_M.

Moreover, we are in a position to offer a grounding for the proposition <n_B grounds b_B>. This grounding is given by the contingent truth n_B and the necessary truth <n_B ontologically explains b_B>. So at least in this case, the grounding truth is itself grounded in a truth about Bill together with a necessary truth of ontological explanation.

So at least sometimes we can find a grounding for grounding truths partly in terms of ontological explanation truths. This gives some evidence that ontological explanation facts are more primitive than grounding facts.

Is this pattern in general true? Is it the case that if p grounds q, then p together with <p ontologically explains q> grounds <p grounds q>? Not if ontological explanation is like Johnson thinks it is. For Johnson thinks that that if a ontologically explains b, then a is metaphysically necessary and sufficient for b. But p can ground q without being necessary for q: that I am sitting grounds that I am sitting or standing.

Perhaps we can modify Johnson's account by holding on to the sufficiency while dropping the necessity. Then we will have something like ontological explanation where a ontologically explains b only if a is metaphysically sufficient for b. In that case, the general pattern might hold. What grounds that <<I am sitting> grounds <I am sitting or standing>>? It is <I am sitting> and <<I am sitting> ontologically explains <I am sitting or standing>>. Of course, the falsehood <I am standing> also ontologically explains that I am sitting or standing.

If this is right, then we can get below the hood on grounding: the more primitive notion is ontological explanation (modified from Johnson's account as above). If Johnson is right to require necessity, we still can get below the hood on grounding in some cases.

Here is one reason all this might matter. Consider propositional desires other than beliefs. Let's say Marcus wishes he were a bachelor. It is important, both to Marcus and to the analysis of the situation, that <Marcus is a bachelor> is ontologically explained by <Marcus is a never-married marriageable man>. There is something about being never-married, or being marriageable, or being a man, or a combination of these that implicitly appeals to Marcus. (Likewise, ontological explanation seems potentially relevant to Double Effect.)

One could try to handle the stuff about ontological explanation by using counterfactual grounding. The relation between n_x and b_x is that n_x would ground (or would necessarily ground) b_x were n_x true. But it is implausible that such a counterfactual fact is prior to the grounding fact if x is Bill.

Reasons and desires

A plausible theory of desire is that x desires A if and only if x is disposed to pursue A (perhaps we should add "as such", to get around Daniel Stampe's worries, or maybe do a functionalist tweak on it and add some "typically" qualifiers). Now it seems that I am disposed to pursue A explains why I pursue A but does not directly justify or give reason for pursuing A. (It could indirectly do so if, say, I promised you to act on my dispositions in some case, or if my therapist told me that it would be good for me to act on more of my dispositions.) Moreover, dispositions to pursue are precisely the sort of thing that itself calls out for reasons. So even if desires, on this view, were reason-giving, that would only be shifting the bump under the rug in an unhelpful way.

That said, there is a view on which one could hold fulfilling because it is good for an entity to be active in accordance with its nature, and it is in the nature of desiring beings to act on their desires. On this Natural Law view, one could hold to something like a dispositional theory of desire (with teleological tweaks) and still think that desires are reason-giving. But it would be very odd to think in a case like this that desires are the only reason-givers. After all, there are other ways of being active in accordance with our nature.

The main alternative to dispositional theories of desire is to see desires as an awareness of, belief in or attention to normative (putative) states of affairs, such as there being a reason to do something or something's being good. On such a view, the reason-giving force of desires is parasitic on the reason-giving force of something else. In fact, this is true in the Natural Law view I offered above, too.

So it really does seem very plausible that if desires are reason-giving, their reason-giving power is parasitic on the reason-giving force of something other than desires.

Desires

On a standard view of desire, necessarily, one has a desire for A if and only if one has a tendency to pursue A. But even if this is true, it does not answer the question of what a desire is. One could identify the desire for A with the tendency to pursue A. But that would be mistaken, because the desire explains the tendency, while the tendency does not explain itself.

Perhaps, then, the desire is not the tendency, but the desire is defined as the immediate cause of the tendency, whatever that immediate cause might be. This suggestion is preferable to simply identifying the desire with the tendency. An interesting consequence of the standard view of desire conjoined with this identification is that necessarily every tendency to pursue A has a cause. This need not, however, be taken to commit us to a general Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). For it might well be that the notion of a behavioral tendency entails the existence of a cause, and indeed of a unitary one. If George on one occasion pursued A for one cause, on another he pursued A for another cause, and so on, that would not add up to a desire for A, and, if this is not to be a counterexample to the standard view, it would also not add up to a tendency. A tendency requires a unitary cause.

If this is right, then the standard view very neatly fits with a definition of a desire as the immediate cause of the tendency. But if we think about it, it's easy to come up with counterexamples. What if George has a tendency to pursue A because whenever the question comes up, Dr. Black zaps his brain in such a way that George pursues A. There is thus a pattern of pursuit of A, and this pattern has a unitary cause, namely Dr. Black. But Dr. Black is not identical with any of George's desires. Moreover, in a case like that, I think, we would not want to say that George has a desire for A.

Alright, so we need to modify the standard view, or at least to clarify the notion of a "tendency". Only internally-rooted tendencies count. But that's not good enough. For suppose that George's liver has a weird mutation such that it grew the neuro-zapper that Dr. Black was using, and the liver regularly zaps George's brain so that George ends up pursuing A. Now the tendency to pursue A is internally rooted in George. But it's not internally rooted in the right place. It's supposed to be internally rooted in George's mind. But that, too, wouldn't do. Suppose for simplicity (and contrary to fact—but I think the argument is very suggestive even without the false assumption) that George's mind is identical to his brain, and that his olfactory center grew the same neuro-zapper. Now the tendency is internally rooted in George's mind, indeed, but in the wrong part of the mind. Moreover, easy thought experiments show that not only must the tendency be rooted in the right place in George's mind to qualify as entailing the presence of a desire, but it must be rooted in the right way. In what place and in what way? Surely only one answer is possible: the tendency must rooted in one of George's desires, and the rooting must be of the right sort for desire-based motivation. The "right sort" condition will ensure that the tendency must be rooted in George's desire for A.

So, our standard account now says that one has a desire for A if and only if one has a tendency to pursue A that is caused in the right way by a desire for A. This isn't very helpful as an account of what it is to have a desire, is it? But it's not completely vacuous. The definition entails that a desire for A causes a tendency to pursue A.

A false principle concerning desire

I am not the first to discover this particular fallacy—in fact, part of this post is based on ideas I got in conversion from somebody who got them from something he read. But the ideas are no less fun for being mainly not mine.

Consider the following argument for psychological hedonism, the doctrine that the only thing we pursue is pleasure:

1. Whenever we pursue something other than pleasure, we pursue it because it gives us pleasure. (Premise)
2. Therefore, what we really pursue is the pleasure it affords to us.

Not only is (1) false, but (2) does not follow from it. The following inference is invalid:

3. We pursue x because it gives us y.
4. Therefore, what we really pursue is y.

In fact, taken literally, (4) contradicts (3), since if "what we really pursue" is y, and y is not x, then we are not pursuing x (to pursue is the same as to really pursue). But even if we weaken (4) to:

5. Therefore, we pursue y

the inference is still invalid. If I am trying to find a woman who offers water to my camels (cf. Genesis 24), it does not follow that what I am really pursuing is water for my camels. Perhaps I just want the kind of woman who gives water to my camels. Likewise, one might want a particular fig tree in the garden because it yields figs, not because one wants the figs, but because yielding figs is largely constitutive of the health of a tree, and one wants only healthy trees in the garden.

Perhaps the inference works better if we replace (1) by:

6. Whenever we pursue something other than pleasure, we pursue it only because it gives us pleasure.

It's easier to see how (2) might be thought to follow, but (6) now begs the question against the non-hedonist. In any case, the inference is still logically invalid.

In fact, it is even incorrect to conclude from the claim that I seek x solely because it yields y that I want y at all. Suppose that, whimsically, I desire a magical hat that yields rabbits. I only want the hat because it yields rabbits—my whim is that I want to have rabbits pop into existence out of a hat. I can want such a hat for such a reason without having any desire for the rabbits. The rabbits themselves are a nuisance, and I would have no interest at all in rabbits that come into existence in any way other than out of a hat.

It might be objected that then I don't want the hat just because it yields rabbits, but I want the hat because it is a hat that yields rabbits, and so this isn't a counterexample to the inference type. But if so, then the non-hedonist need only say that she doesn't want x just because it yields pleasure, but she wants an x because it is an x that yields pleasure.

The fallacy here also occurs in the Lysis in the argument that if I am friends with x because x yields y, then what I am really friends with is y.

An argument concerning abortion

Note: Portions of the argument below sound like I accept consensual euthanasia. I don't: intentionally killing juridically innocent persons, whether they consent or not, is wrong. But I don't make use of this belief in the argument, and my argument is in large part aimed at people who do not share this belief of mine on euthanasia.

This post is divided into three sections, the first giving a standard argument against abortion, the second giving a standard response, and the third arguing that the standard response is unsatisfactory, at least if one allows that one can rationally desire to die, a thesis that I am not sure of, but that few people who are not already pro-life will deny.

Part I: A standard argument against abortion: This takes two steps. First, one shows that a typical fetus would have a future of the same sort that we do were she not killed. This may involve metaphysical arguments to establish that the future is indeed the fetus's future in the sense that the fetus is identical with the adult human being. (I argue like this here.) The second step is to show that at least one of the reasons that it is wrong to kill you or me is that it would undeservedly deprive you or me of this sort of future, so that it is wrong to kill a typical fetus for exactly the same reason.

Part II: One standard response: Grant, at least for the sake of discussion, the claim that the fetus would have a future like ours, but deny that the undeserved deprivation of a future life like ours makes the killing wrong. Instead, what makes it wrong to kill someone is that doing so goes against the person's interests, which are defined in terms of the desires that the person has (on a crude version of the response) or would have in ideal mental circumstances (on a less crude version of the response), desires whose fulfillment requires the continuation of life. The reason for going for the "ideal desire" view is some version of the example of the suicidal teenager: it is wrong to kill the suicidal teenager even if the teenager lacks all future-directed desires. But, one argues, in ideal mental circumstances, the teenager would want to live, so a better story is the ideal desire one.

Part III: A response to the response: It is not the case that what makes it wrong to kill x is that x actually or ideally has desires that require the continuation of life. For suppose George does not actually or ideally desire the continuation of life. He is miserable, abandoned by all friends, no longer capable of engaging in any of his past projects, in the grip of a painful terminal illness. It seems not that implausible to suppose that George could rationally desire to die, so that he not only actually but also ideally has the desire to die. We may also suppose that he has no fulfillable ideal desires incompatible with the desire to die. Now some strongly pro-life people will deny the idea that one can rationally desire to die, but I suspect there are very, very few pro-choice philosophers who will dispute this. Moreover, even someone completely opposed to euthanasia can hold that it is rational to have the desire to die as long as one adds that it is wrong to act on that desire (other than maybe by praying for death).

So, to recap, we suppose, and few pro-choicers will deny us this assumption, that George rationally, consistently and ideally desire to die. By the response in Part II, what makes it wrong to kill people is actual or ideal desires that require future existence. But George doesn't have such desires, and hence it follows that is not wrong to kill him. But this is absurd.

A reader might say: "So, you've shown that if you accept Part II, you accept the permissibility of euthanasia. Almost everybody who is pro-choice already accepts the permissibility of euthanasia, so this is no reductio." But that would be a mistake. For I did not say that George consents to being killed. All I said is he desires death. It is one thing to desire something and another to consent to it (see this post). And I suspect that most pro-choice folks will agree that it is wrong to kill a non-consenting innocent adult, even if that adult desires to be killed. For it is the consent rather than the desire that matters here. Why would George not consent? Here, a myriad of possibilities is available, including religious views, views about the sanctity of life, views about the way that killing him would dehumanize the killer, etc.

So it is not enough to establish the lack of actual or ideal desires presupposing future life to show that a killing is permissible. Step II fails.

Could we say that the fetus consents to being killed, so that we could say that it is permissible to kill someone lacking actual or ideal desires presupposing future life if the victim consents to being killed? No: the fetus plainly does not consent. Could we say that the fetus would consent if it could be asked? We have no reason to suppose that. In the typical case, the fetus would be asked to give up a future like ours with no compensating benefit to the fetus, and there is no reason to suppose a positive answer to a deal like that. Alternately, perhaps, we could handle the consent question in the way we handle it in practice: appoint a proxy. But note that a proxy cannot have a potential conflict of interest, and in the case of abortion, the mother does have a potential conflict of interest—if she's considering abortion, this is not unlikely to be the case because she takes the pregnancy to conflict with her interests or the interests of her significant other or of her other children. Rather, the proxy has to be one who considers primarily what is good for the individual that she is a proxy. I suspect that, given "future like ours" considerations, in typical cases such a proxy will not agree to abortion.

Could we instead say that the fetus does not dissent from being killed, and it's permissible to kill someone who (a) lacks actual or ideal desires presupposing future life, and (b) does not dissent from being killed? That requirement seems too weak. It would be wrong to shoot George without positive consent from him (if he's capable of giving it) or presumed consent or proxy consent, I think.

A final option (Frank Beckwith suggested something like this): Perhaps the pro-choice opponent can say that having (actually or ideally) desires, or desires of a certain sort, is part of what makes one a person, and so it is not the case that killing someone who has the desire for life is wrong because it goes against that desire, but what makes it wrong to kill is that it is a person who is non-consensually killed. If one takes this view, then it seems one gets a completely different account of the wrongness of killing from that given in Part II. It is not the having of desires presupposing future life that makes it wrong for one to be killed (at least if innocent), but, simply what makes it wrong to kill x is that x is a non-consenting person. Her desires are beside the point: only the consent matters here. However, this account of what is wrong with killing is inferior to the Marquis account in Part I. For it fails to show how killing someone is different from doing other things that the person does not consent to, such as patting on the shoulder. Patting on the shoulder may be wrong without consent (though probably not always wrong), but is clearly much less of an evil than killing someone. Nor is it that the victim actually or ideally has ideally a stronger desire not to be killed than not to be patted, or that she more strongly dissents from being killed than from not being patted, since neither of these might be true, at least if we assume that one can rationally desire to be dead.

So it seems to me that it is hard to rescue Part II, and hence the Marquis argument's claim that if a fetus has a future like ours then it is wrong to abort the fetus survives.

Baptism of desire and closeness of description

Baptism is, in New Testament times, necessary for salvation. Scripture is clear on this. However, from the early centuries, the Church has recognized that baptism need not involve water--the martyr is baptized by blood even if she has not been baptized with water. This idea has been generalized into the notion of a baptism of desire. Someone who wants to be baptized but has been unable to receive the sacrament (e.g., because she is imprisoned apart from anybody willing to baptize her) is incorporated into the mystical body of Christ through her desire (when? at the hour of death? at the time when she desires it? I don't know).

A later development is that of an implicit desire for baptism (see this article by Cardinal Dulles). One philosophical difficulty, however, is in making precise sense of an "implicit" desire. One approach is to use counterfactuals. George implicitly desires baptism if it is the case that were George fully informed, he would desire baptism. This approach, however, seems to require Molinism to work if what we desire is in part dependent on our free choices. Besides, this suffers from many of the standard problems that come up in the case of hypothetical desire satisfaction accounts of welfare.

The better approach is to say that George implicitly desires baptism provided that he actually desires baptism but under some relevantly close other description. If memory serves, me this is the approach Msgr. Van Noort uses to account for the possibility of the salvation of the heathen in his superb Dogmatic Theology, though I do not recall his developing it with sufficient theoretical detail.

The problem now is of what counts as a "relevantly close" description. Van Noort's example, if memory serves, was of the non-Christian who concludes that there is a God and that he is a sinner, who is sorry for his sins and who desires God's means of forgiveness, trusting that God has such means. Unbeknownst to him, baptism is God's means of forgiveness, and so he desires baptism.

"God's means of forgiveness" is a sufficiently relevantly close description of baptism. But it does not seem true that any description will do. Suppose George, on a whim, desires to have happen to him the events described on page 113 of some random book he sees on a shelf but has never opened, so he has no idea of what is on page 113. That book happens to describe a baptism on page 113. Plausibly, that description doesn't count as relevantly close (though we could also imagine George having a religious experience that tells him that what is on page 113 is desirable, and then there might be relevant closeness, though the description will shift: what he really wants to have happen to him are "the events described on page 113 as recommended to him by God"). One reason, maybe the reason, that that description doesn't count as relevantly close is that no element of faith, hope or love need be involved if that is the description. It is just an accident--at least as regards his will (Providence can never be discounted)--that the object of desire is identical with baptism. As far as his will goes, he might as well have whimsically desired to have happen to him what is described on page 187, which let us suppose is a Satanic ritual.

So on this account, the problem of implicit desire for baptism is the problem of closeness of description. This is a problem that comes up in other contexts--it comes up in the context of love (do I really love Patrick if I "theoretically" love the smartest person in New York and Patrick is the smartest person in New York) and of double effect (if I intend to kill the first mammal I see in the zoo, and the first mammal I see and kill in the zoo is the zookeeper, did I intentionally kill a human being?) The problem of closeness of description is difficult in all of these contexts. But the fact that the problem comes up in other contexts suggests that we should not abandon the implicit desire account just because of this problem.

My earlier mention of faith, hope and love is suggestive. Desiring baptism under some descriptions is tied to faith, hope and love. Desiring it under others is not. Maybe it's not so much a question of the content of the description as of the spirit in which one desires. What makes a description relevantly close may be that it is a description of desire such that one is desiring under the description in faith, hope and love. It is necessary that the description in fact be a true description of baptism (or maybe something close enough?), but closeness is measured not in terms of content. Can such a solution be given to the other two closeness problems?

An 18th order desire

I guess I have a 18th order desire. This desire is to have a 17th order desire. Why would I want to have a 17th order desire? Because it would be so cool to have a desire of such a high order. And I could pull out my 17th order desire at parties with other philosophers and impress them. So I've got both an instrumental and a non-instrumental reason for my desire. And I wouldn't be surprised if this desire turns out to be settled.

I am not quite so desirous of having a 16th order desire. Sure, it would be kind of cool to have a desire of such high order, but I think prime number order desires are cooler.

What's the point of this little tale? Simply that higher order desires, no matter of how high an order, can be just as frivolous--and probably even more frivolous--than the typical first order desire. There is, thus, little reason to privilege higher order desires over lower order ones, giving them some kind of an authority whereby they get to define our welfare.

Maybe you'll question whether anybody can really have that 18th order desire. Well, I'd like to have that desire, and maybe I actually do, if only so I could honestly brag about it (that's not actually an instrumental reason of the crassest sort, because of the "honestly"). And that means that I I've already got a 19th order desire, namely the desire to have the 18th order desire mentioned at the beginning of this post. I wouldn't be surprised if this 19th order desire lasted for quite a while.

And, hey, it would be quite cool to have nth order desires for every prime number n, and to have no non-prime order desires except for the first order (I guess we need to have the first order ones to make sure we don't forget to take care of our bodily needs). Suppose I actually want that, and that desire is settled, reflected upon, etc. Then here we have an infinitieth order desire--and as frivolous and unimportant as desires get.

Or maybe you'll object that these very high order desires are very weak. Sure. And it would be a mark of insanity if they were very strong. But that underscores my point that there is nothing deeply rationally special about high order desires.

Can morality be a system of hypothetical imperatives?

We have, it seems, a hypothetical imperative to brush our teeth:
(1) Brush your teeth if you want them to be healthy.
Suppose I do want my teeth to be healthy. What normative status does (1) have?

First, I could suppose that (1) has no relevant (the reason for "relevant" is that every fact are normative) normative force at all. It is simply a statement that:
(1a) Brushing teeth conduces to the health of teeth.
On interpretation (1a), a hypothetical imperative isn't an imperative at all--there is no 'ought', just an 'is'. However, it seems we get an imperative once we combine (1a) with the desire to have my teeth by healthy. But it makes no logical sense to "combine a statement with a desire" to get an imperative. That I have a desire is not a relevantly normative fact about me--it's just an 'is'. Rather, on this interpretation, we are implicitly presupposing an imperative like:
(2) Fulfill your desires (ceteris paribus).
(Or maybe more plausibly, we should work in terms of goals rather than desires--exactly the same points apply.) And this imperative is not hypothetical in the relevant sense (it's conditional in respect of the "ceteris paribus", but that's not the relevant sense of "hypothetical")--its force cannot be dependent on what our desires are, at pain of vicious circularity. So, on this interpretation, hypothetical imperatives are not really imperatives, but we get imperatives when we combine them with some imperative like (2).

The second option is that (1) is genuinely relevantly normative: it expresses a genuine imperative. The imperative is conditional, but in that respect it does not differ from:
(3) If you have promised to whistle Yankee Doodle, you should whistle Yankee Doodle (ceteris paribus).
I do not think that when people are talking of "hypothetical imperatives" they simply mean "conditional imperatives". That isn't the relevant sense of "hypothetical". The duty to keep promises if you've made any is conditional, but not relevantly hypothetical--it applies no matter whether you desire it to or not.

Now the folks who say that morality is a system of hypothetical imperatives do not simply mean that all moral truths are conditional in form. Rather, they mean that the imperative force of morality comes from us adopting morality as a goal or having a desire to live morally. But all this once again presupposes something like (2), of which the imperatives not to murder if you want to be moral and to brush your teeth if you want to be healthy are consequences.

So, it seems to me that hypothetical imperatives presuppose categorical (in the relevant sense) ones like (2). And (2) is not all that plausible, I think. But suppose (2) is true. Then, we can ask what the status of (2) is. Why should I follow my goals? Why should I do what I want? I suspect that any plausible justification of (2) will be broadly moral in nature, based on some notion of human desires as reflective of the good, or of humans as having a duty to be true to themselves. Otherwise, it is not plausible that (2) should have any real authority. (And of course it would not do to ground the authority of (2) in terms of a higher order desire to follow my desires.) If so, then the notion of morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives has imploded.

Emotions and the spiritual life

To say that love is a feeling and the like is really an un-Christian conception. This is the esthetic definition of love and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But from the Christian point of view love is the work of love. Christ's love was not intense feeling, a full heart, etc.; it was rather the work of love, which is his life. - Soren Kierkegaard, Journal X.1 A 489 (1849)

If you make use of your reason, you are like one who eats substantial food; but if you are moved by the satisfaction of your will, you are like one who eats insipid fruit. - St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, 46.

The view that feelings, emotions and desires are irrelevant to the moral life has fallen on hard times. Defenders of Kant go out of their way to argue that Kant held no such view (and are probably right to do so), as if holding such a view were a terrible disqualification. The idea that on some moral view it is better to visit a friend out of a consciousness of duty than out of friendly feeling is taken as a reductio of that view. Typical utilitarians ground the moral life in feelings, emotions and desires (happiness is taken to be pleasure or the satisfaction of desire). Aristotelians see the process of moral growth as in large part a process of making one's feelings, emotions and desires conform to moral reality--feeling to do virtuous deeds and all that.

On the other hand, there are significant strands of the Christian spiritual tradition that say that feelings, emotions and desires are irrelevant at least for those who are no longer beginners in the spiritual life (e.g., St. John of the Cross), or bad since they distract us from purely spiritual contemplation (e.g., many but not all the Desert Fathers). And much of the Christian spiritual tradition recognizes feelings, emotions and desires as often dangerous and distracting. It is tempting to dismiss these pronouncements as flowing out of a mistaken view of human nature, out of neo-Platonic intellectualism, and sometimes these pronouncements do indeed thus flow, but it is worth remembering that many of the spiritual writers are very empirical. They see in their own lives and the lives of others around them what works and what does not work in the task of submitting every deed and every thought to God, of doing everything out of love alone.

I do not dispute the claim that human perfection includes perfection of the emotions, feeling and desires, that it is good to feel compassion for the suffering, that it is good to desire what is good and to desire to avoid evil, that it is good to enjoy virtuous activity, and all that. But I think we need to be careful to hold on to the truths contained in the parts of the spiritual tradition that are much more cautious in approaching to the emotional life, especially in light of how empirically grounded the wisdom of this tradition is. The Desert Fathers were not theoreticians--they lived in the desert, they weaved baskets, they struggled with temptation, they guided and were guided.

In our fallen state, our feelings and desires do lead us astray. Making a habit of visiting friends out of the pleasure of their company, rather than out of the duty of friendship, may well make it more probably that we will not visit them when the visit is not pleasant. The six lesser deadly sins--lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath and envy--are all grounded in particular emotions. And at least some instances of pride are so as well. Now it is possible to fight these deadly sins by developing a more balanced emotional life, fighting gluttony with a deep emotional appreciation of moderation, fighting sloth by developing a balanced appreciation of good work, and so on, and indeed in the state of human perfection the virtues opposed to the deadly sins would have such emotional components, it is far from clear that this is the most effective way of fighting the deadly sins. It may be for some of them--thus, developing an appreciation of goods happening to others might be the best way to fight envy. But for others, something like the ideal of ataraxia, being unmoved by feelings and pleasures, might be rather more effective.

And then there is the wisdom of John of the Cross. Popular stereotype would not make one think of this passionate Spanish mystic as a defender of the centrality of reason to the Christian life. But in five separate Sayings of Light and Love, St. John indicates that what is most pleasing to God is that we act in accordance with reason, regardless of our feelings. And this is essential once one recognizes--as the lives of holy men and women like John of the Cross and Teresa of Calcutta abundantly show--that a dark night is a crucial part of spiritual maturation, a night in which most of the feelings that move the beginner in the spiritual life are absent. In the dark night, if one is to survive, one has no choice but to do what is right by reason, which reason is enlightened by the dark light of faith.

Feelings, emotions and desires are useful to the beginner in both the spiritual and the moral life. In the spiritual life, they make easy sacrifices that need to be made, which sacrifices one is not yet mature enough to make on the grounds of reasonable love alone. Love, of course, is not a feeling, emotion or desire--it is a committed determination of the will towards the good of and union with the beloved. There are emotions characteristic of love, but they are not always present with love. In the moral life, we may need moral feelings to help us come to the truth about things. Our repulsion at killing may help us come to accept that we ought not to commit murder. Altruistic helpfulness may help us to come to accept that we have duties towards neighbor. But once we have the truth about the moral life, this helpfulness is radically diminished, and the fallible emotions may in fact often be more harm than good, at least in this earthly life. (And, of course, if we have the Catholic faith, then we basically have the truth about the central aspects of our moral life, and we can derive many other truths from that.)

So I think that the Desert Fathers who embraced ataraxia--"affectlessness", we might translate it--as an ideal were wrong about human nature as it is ultimately meant to be, but it is far from clear that they were wrong, or at least far wrong, about the best way to proceed given what fallen nature is like.