Desires for another's action

Suppose that Alice is a morally upright officer fighting against an unjust aggressor in a bloody war. The aggressor’s murderous acts include continual slaughter of children. Alice has sent Bob for a mission behind enemy lines. Bob’s last message said that Bob has found a way to end the war. The enemy has been led to war by a regent representing a three-year-old king. If the three-year-old were to die, the crown would pass to a peaceloving older cousin who would immediately end the war. And Bob has just found a way to kill the toddler king. Moreover, he can do it in such a way that it looks like it is a death of natural causes and will not lead to vengeful enemy action.

Alice responds to the message by saying that the child-king is an innocent noncombatant and that she forbids killing him as that would be murder. It seems that Alice now has two incompatible desires:

• that Bob will do the right thing by refraining from murdering the child, and

• that Bob will assassinate the child king, thereby preventing much slaughter, including of children.

And there is a sense in which Alice wants the assassination more than she wants Bob to do the right thing. For what makes the assassination undesirable—the murder of a child—occurs in greater numbers in the no-assassination scenario.

But in another sense, it was the desire to have Bob do the right thing that was greater. For that was the desire that guided Alice’s action of forbidding the assassination.

What should we say?

Here is a suggestion: Alice desires that Bob do the right thing, but Alice wishes that Bob would assassinate the king. What Alice desires and what Alice wishes for are in this case in conflict.

And here is a related question. Suppose someone you care about wants you to do one thing but wishes you to do another. Which should you do?

In the above case, the answer is given by morality: assassinating the three-year-old king is wrong, no matter the consequences. And considerations of authority concur. But what if we bracket morality and authority, and simply ask what Bob should do insofar as he cares about Alice who is his friend. Should he follow Alice’s desires or her wishes? I think this is not so clear. On the one hand, it seems more respectful to follow someone’s desires. On the other hand, it seems more beneficent to follow someone’s wishes.

Are desires really different from wishes?

It is tempting to conflate what is worth desiring with what is worth pursuing. But there seem to be cases where things are worth desiring but not worth pursuing:

1. Having a surprising good happen to you completely gratuitously—i.e., without your having done anything to invite it—seems worth desiring but the pursuit of it doesn’t seem to make sense.

2. If I have published a paper claiming a certain mathematical result, and I have come to realize that the result is false, it seems to make perfect sense to desire that the result be true, but it makes no sense to pursue that.

The standard response to cases like 1 and 2 is to distinguish wishes from desires, and say that it makes sense to wish for things that it makes no sense to pursue, but it does not make sense to desire such things.

But consider this. Suppose in case 2, I came to be convinced that God has power over mathematics, and that if I pray that the result be true, God might make it be true. Then the affective state I have in case 2 would motivate me to pray. But the nature of the affective state need not have changed upon coming to think that God has power over mathematics. Thus, either (a) I would be motivated to pray by a mere wish or else (b) wishes and desires are the same thing. But the wish/desire distinction does not fit with (a), which leaves (b).

I suppose one could claim that a desire just is a wish plus a belief that the object is attainable. But that makes desires be too gerrymandered.

Wishful thinking

Start with this observation:

1. Commonly used forms of fallacious reasoning are typically distortions of good forms of reasoning.

For instance, affirming the consequent is a distortion of the probabilistic fact that if we are sure that if p then q, then learning q is some evidence for p (unless q already had probability 1 or p had probability 0 or 1). The ad hominem fallacy of appeal to irrelevant features in an arguer is a distortion of a reasonable questioning of a person’s reliability on the basis of relevant features. Begging the question is, I suspect, a distortion of an appeal to the obviousness of the conclusion: “Murder is wrong. Look: it’s clear that it is!”

Now:

2. Wishful thinking is a commonly used form of fallacious reasoning.

3. So, wishful thinking is probably a distortion of a good form of reasoning.

I suppose one could think that wishful thinking is one of the exceptions to rule (1). But to be honest, I am far from sure there are any exceptions to rule (1), despite my cautious use of “typically”. And we should avoid positing exceptions to generally correct rules unless we have to.

So, if wishful thinking is a distortion of a good form of reasoning, what is that good form of reasoning?

My best answer is that wishful thinking is a distortion of correct probabilistic reasoning on the basis of the true claim that:

4. Typically, things go right.

The distortion consists in the fact that in the fallacy of wishful thinking one is reasoning poorly, likely because one is doing one or more of the following:

1. confusing things going as one wishes them to go with things going right,

2. ignoring defeaters to the particular case, or

3. overestimating the typicality mentioned in (4).

Suppose I am right about (4) being true. Then the truth of (4) calls out for an explanation. I know of four potential explanations of (4):

1. Theism: God creates a good world.

2. Optimalism: everything is for the best.

3. Aristotelianism: rightness is a matter of lining up with the telos, and causal powers normally succeed at getting at what they are aiming at.

4. Statisticalism: norms are defined by what is typically the case.

I think (iv) is untenable, so that leaves (i)-(iii).

Now, optimalism gives strong evidence for theism. First, theism would provide an excellent explanation for optimalism (Leibniz). Second, if optimalism is true, then there is a God, because that’s for the best (Rescher).

Aristotelianism also provides evidence for theism, because it is difficult to explain naturalistically where teleology comes from.

So, thinking through the fallacy of wishful thinking provides some evidence for theism.

Desire and disposition

According to a standard view of desire, if one desires that p, then one is disposed to bring it about that p. But suppose I desire that p be brought about without my being in any way causally responsible for it. That is a recognizable desire. But it is not one that it is coherent to be disposed to bring about, is it?

Or is it perhaps just a wish?