Alonzo Fyfe

"Intersubjectivism" as a moral theory is typically understood as the theory that right and wrong are determined by people's shared subjective judgments. What is "wrong" in a given community is what its members would all agree (subjectively) was wrong. If 90% of the people viewed X to be wrong, and 10% viewed that X was right, then X would be neither wrong nor right for that community, because there is no intersubjective agreement.

Some people sometimes use the term "intersubjectivism" to refer to a theory that considers all subjective states, but does not look for shared states. Utilitarian theories that seek to maximize pleasure or preference satisfaction would fall under this definition. Under this definition, desire-fulfillment theory would be "intersubjective". However, because most people who hear the term will immediately assume the first definition, which would generate error and confusion, I avoid this second definition.


"Preference utilitarianism" lacks any precise definition of its terms. What is a 'preference', and what does it mean for a preference to be 'satisfied'?

Desire utilitarianism has more precise definitions.

A desire is one of two mental states -- the other being belief -- that exist in the form of propositional attitudes.

A "Belief that 'P'" is a mental attitude towards the proposition 'P' is a mental attitude whereas 'P' is thought to be true. A person who "believes that 'P'" will act as if 'P' is true.

A "Desire that 'P'" is a mental attitude towards the proposition 'P' whereby the agent is motivated to act so as to make or keep the proposition 'P' true. Any state of affairs in which 'P' is made or kept true fulfills the desire that 'P'.

The other main difference is that those who defend preference utilitarianism tend to hold that preference satisfaction is a state that has intrinsic value. It is, in fact, the only thing that has intrinsic value. As a result, all other acts are right or wrong according to their ability to maximize that which has intrinsic merit.

Desire utilitarianism holds that nothing has intrinsic value -- indeed, intrinsic value does not exist. The claim that people seek to maximize fulfillment of their desires given their beliefs, and seek to act so as to fulfill theor desires, is a statement about what people do -- a part of a theory of action. It then adds to this facts about -- if I am aiming to fulfill my desires, and your desires are maleable, then I have a reason to cause you to have desires that will help to fulfill my desires, and to inhibit in you desires that tend to thwart my desires. It then makes sense that a community of such individuals would have a language for describing desires that tend generally to fulfill other desires and to tend to promote those desires. Accordingly, it makes sense for a community of such individuals to have a language for describing desires that tend to thwart other desires and to tend to inhibit those desires. Whereas praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment are effective tools for molding desires, they would tend to call for using these tools to promote desire-fulfilling desires and inhibit desire-thwarting desires.

There is no 'intrinsic value'. If there is a universe with an agent who desires that 'P', then any state in which 'P' is true will fulfill that agent's desires (that agent is motivated to act so as to make or keep 'P' true). He will view such a state has having value. However, from the point of view of "the universe", it does not matter whether agent desires that 'P' and 'P' is true. Desire fulfillment has no intrinsic value. Rather, desire fulfillment itself only has value insofar as desire fulfillment is the object of a meta desire.

Hiero5ant seems to also want to add that this cannot be a description of what morality is unless everybody already knows and consciously aware that this is what they are doing when they use moral terms. I consider this no more valid than to say, "Water cannot be H20 because, if it were H20, then everybody who knows about water (every culture that ever existed that talked about water) would already know that it is H20, and they don't, so it isn't."

It does not take a great deal of mental sophistication for a creature with a desire that 'P' to realize that, if there is other creatures in his environment, he is more likely to make or keep 'P' true if other creatures have a desire that 'Q' wher 'Q' -> 'P', then he would if those other creatures have a desire that 'R' and 'R' -> 'not-P'. Whereas praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment are the means for alterning desires, he will see a benefit to using these tools to promote Q and inhibit R.

It requires another step in mental sophistication to realize that the original agent's own desire that 'P' was, itself, the product of him being praised, condemned, rewarded, and punished by others. Thus, his own desire that 'P' will tend to be a desire that tends to fulfill the desires of others.

As with other natural processes (and, actually, moreso than with some) we have clouded this one under myth and superstition. Original theories of moral value have suggested intrinsic value, God, categorical imperatives, all aiming to understand this process. People have incorporated these myths into their belief structure. However, these are still myths. The fact that people believe that morality has to do with intrinsic value, God, categorical imperatives, and the like and use these concepts when they discuss morality does not imply that they are real, or that morality has anything to do with these entities in fact.

BillyTheKat

I like the idea in DU that good can be described as (I'm paraphrasing) any desire which fulfills all other desires, but I wonder if there's a calculus to establish a good desire quantatively? For instance, is there a minimum number of desires which need to be fulfilled before a desire can be considered to be good? Can there be a ratio of fulfilled desires to thwarted desires in which a desire can still be considered good?

Also, what is a malleable desire, and how do we acquire them?

Finally, if DU is meant to be descriptive as well as prescriptive, how does it take into account the variance in frequency of behaviour (ie. everyone behaves differently, even in similar situations)?

Alonzo Fyfe

BillTheCat

I get this question a lot. Please consider this post that I gave to an earlier request along these lines:

Evaluating Desires


A maleable desire is a desire that can be strengthened or weakened by environmental factors -- especially praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. The concept of a "learned desire" or an "acquired desire" would work, except that some of these desires (e.g., a desire for sex) are not acquired as a result of social interaction. They are, instead, modified (e.g., an aversion to non-consenting sex).

"Fixed" desires (such as an aversion to pain) are not a part of morality. Morality includes the concept of "ought" implies "can" -- which entails "'cannot' implies 'it is not the case that you ought'." Morality is concerned with those desires that we can change.

It makes sense, doesn't it? To seek to alter desires that cannot be altered (or to a degree that is impossible) seems a bit futile, does it not?


People have different beliefs and desires. People act so as to fulfill their desires, given their beliefs. Alter the beliefs and desires, and you will get different behavior under different circumstances.

In fact, I have an argument that some variation is actually good -- it reduces conflict. If I desire A, and you desire A, and there is a shortage of A, then we are in conflict (which means desire-thwarting). If, on the other hand, I like A, and you like B, you can have your A, and conflict is avoided. When it comes to eating chicken, my wife likes white meat (and reaches first for a breast) while I like dark meat (and I take the drumstick). Our different desires cause us to act differently, but our differences are compatible, resulting in more desire fulfillment than we would have if we liked the same thing.

WarrenandTrumbull

A good place to look would be lacanian psychoanalysis... They talk about our desires (esp. our "lacK") in relation to ontological unity. books by Jacques Lacan. Havent read much of it yet but it's fairly popular in my rhetoric department.

Alonzo Fyfe

Yes, there are other options to belief-desire-intention theory. Furthermore, you have writers such as Paul and Patricia Churchland who have argued that there are problems with the thesis that we have beliefs and desires. They argue that BDI theory is a primative pseudo-theory which will soon be replaced by a more modern theory, the way that the geocentric theory of the solar system has been replaced.

On this issue, I have opted for the option of trusting the experts. BDI Theory is still the most widely used theory for explaining and predicting intentional action and, though there may be problems with it, experts in the field have, for the most part, found alternatives to be deficient in some way.

Furthermore, BDI theory is the theory of our everyday language. My challenge to Hiero5ant to explain actions in terms of some other set of concepts relies, in part, on this fact -- that everybody (even those without technical training) employs BDI theory with the same practiced ease as they use physics to ride a bike or catch a ball. I believe that Hiero5ant will discover that he can explain actions in terms of beliefs and desires with the same ease.

Note: I actually have not encountered anybody who actually has an alternative to BDI Theory. So-called alternatives have turned out to be theories about the beliefs and desires that people have and how to change them, rather than theories that actually explain action in terms other than beliefs and desires. Lycacian psychoanalysis fits this description. It is a theory about what desires we have and how they form. It is not a theory that offers an alternative to beliefs and desires in explaining human action.

Reign_Cryogen

Yeah, 'round here you have to refer to it as "U-238."

Alonzo Fyfe

Sorry, Hiero5ant

I did not see this thread when it was originally posted, and the "bump" occurred while I was on vacation myself for an extended period of time. So, this has been my first opportunity to respond to the opening post.

If it would please the court, I would like to disregard the intervening posts and focus on the opening post as if I had just encountered it -- which happens to be the case.


Do desires exist and, if so, what are they?

This theory is linked to the belief-desire-intention theory of intentional action. That theory states that intentional actions are caused by an interaction of beliefs and desires.

Beliefs and desires are propositional attitudes -- attitudes towards a proposition.

For a given proposition 'P', a "belief that 'P'" is the attitude that 'P' is true. A "desire that 'P'" is an attitude that 'P' is to be made or kept true. If I believe that my child is healthy, then I regard the proposition "My child is healthy" to be true. If I desire that my child is healthy, then I am motivated to a degree identical to the strength of the desire to act so as to make or keep the proposition, "My child is healthy" true.

Hiero5ant raised the question of whether desires are things or events.

In fact, they are neither. They are states. An example of a "state" is illustrated with the concepts of solid, liquid, or gas. "Solid" is not a 'thing' (though some things are solid). 'Solid' is not an 'event' (though some events involve solid things). So, we are not dealing with either things or events. However, statements about the state of a thing are still objectively true or false.

Not-coincidentally, another area where the concept of a "state" is used is in computational theory. Turing's machine is a mathematical model that relates the input into a machine to its state to generate output. Given different states in a computer (e.g., a state in which 'integer = 1' compared to a state in which 'integer = 10') identical input (print integer) will result in different output (either '1' or '10', depending on the state).

Of course, the most obvious example of a computer in two different states is the example of a computer that is on, versus the example of a computer that is off. These two different states tend to yield huge differences in how a computer will behave for two people who press exactly the same keys in exactly the same order.


How Desires Work

Now, Hiero5ant asked a number of questions about what desires are or how they work. However, in addressing these questions, one of the things that I need to ask is whether he can offer a theory of intentional action (a theory that can be used to explain and predict human behavior) that (a) does not make use of the concepts of beliefs and desires, and (b) can be used to predict and explain that behavior?

One of the characteristics about theories is that we can be readily assured that any existing theory has problems with it. We do not have perfect knowledge. After Newton published his theory of gravity, others immediately saw problems. It failed to predict and explain the orbit of Mercury, for example. The fact that there are problems with a theory is not, in itself, reason to abandon the theory -- unless there is a better theory available.

Hiero5ant is unable to provide this "better theory", I wager. On those grounds, I will admit that there are questions still to be answered regarding the belief-desire-intention theory of human action. However, it is the best theory we have available at the moment. There is no better theory for me to use.

Any person reading this who thinks that we should toss out any theory that leaves us with unanswered questions should be prepared to toss out every theory. Somewhere, within any theory, at some level, there are still questions to be answered.

Now, with regard to Hiero5ant's list of questions.

"Is my desire to eat chinese for lunch that day the "same as" my desire to eat lunch at all that day?"

Desires, as I said, are propositional attitudes. The proposition 'P' = "That I eat" is not logically identical to the proposition 'Q' = "That I eat chinese", therefore a desire that P cannot be identical to a desire that Q. A desire that P is identical to a desire that Q if and only if P is identical to Q.

To determine which desires are in effect, you examine a person under different situations. Will the person eat a hot dog? If eating a hotdog will fulfill his desire, then he does not have a desire that 'Q'. Instead, he has a desire that 'P'.

Now, he could have a desire that 'P', and a desire that 'Q' at the same time. Such a person will eat a hot dog if one is available and there is no chinese food to be had. However, in a situation where he has both chinese food and hot dogs available, he will eat the chinese food. Eating the chinese food fulfills both the desire that 'P' and the desire that 'Q', whereas eating the hotdog fulfills only the desire that 'P'.

Let us say that he hates hot dogs. He has an outright aversion to eating hot dogs. He will still eat hot dogs when he gets hungry enough. That is, when the desire that 'P' is sufficiently stronger to his desire that 'not - R' where R = "That I am eating a hot dog."

I would like to point out that this case does not involve one in which the agent performs any type of desire calculus. As soon as the desire to eat is stronger than the aversion to hot dogs, then the agent will, in fact, eat the hot dog. No calculus is required.

The agent, in this case, no more needs to do calculus to decide to eat the hot dog, then a billiard ball needs to compute the vector sum of all of the forces acting on it before it will move.

There is nothing bizarre in any of this. This is how we do, in fact, talk about human action. The mother says to the father whose child has shut himself in his room, "He will come down when he gets hungry enough." She is making a statement about how the child's desires will affect his actions, and it is probably a true statement.

If this is not a good way of accounting for intentional action, I would like to see a theory that does not make reference to beliefs and desires do a better job. There may be some problems with this theory in how it handles certain problematic cases -- problems that will require modifications to the theory. However, unless and until that better theory is presented, we have no choice but to use the best theory that we have available, and this is it.


Interpersonal Comparison of Desires

The next question is, how do we get from here to morality?

What follows is going to be taken largely from the link that I provided above about how to compute desires. Let us start with one being in a universe with one desire. I typically use as my example a desire to scatter stones. Let us assume that there is a limited number of stones to scatter. After scattering the stones, the only way the agent can fulfill his desire to scatter stones is if he goes through the task of gathering stones together. Only after he has done this work can he go back to the desired activity of scattering stones.

In doing this simplified universe, I am doing nothing different from what the physicist does when he asks a student to imagine a universe with one object and one force acting on that object. It makes no sense to say, "But, professor, your example is not relevant in the real world, because the real world does not contain one object with one force acting on it. It contains countless objects and countless forces -- so many that we cannot possibly hope to use your theory to explain and preduct the actual movement of real objects on the real world. So, everything you can say is nonsense. It is a waste of time."

No, it is neither nonsense nor a waste of time. It is a useful tool for explaining the basic principles of physics.

Let us now introduce a second entity, and give the first entity the power to select what desire the second entity will have. He has two pills -- a green pill, and a red pill. The green pill will cause the second agent to desire to gather stones, while the red pill will cause the second agent to desire to scatter stones.

It is obvious that it makes the most sense for him to give the other agent the green pill. If he does, then the second agent will get to work gathering stones (because he desires to gather stones), and this will save the first agent from having to do this work himself. The first agent can then spend all of his time scattering stones without worrying that he will run out of stones to scatter.

This decision does not require that the first agent perform any type of calculus. He does no need to assign numbers to anything. He simply recognizes the fact that if the second agent has a desire to gather stones than he will have plenty of stones to scatter.

Now, let us complicate the universe, and add 100,000 people, each with either a desire to gether stones or a desire to scatter stones. Person 100,001 pops into existence. Should that person be given a green pill, or a red pill?

Again, no complex calculus is required. The people simply need to look around. "Are we gathering stones faster than we are scattering them, or scattering them faster than we are gathering them?" This will give them their answer. If there are people with a desire to scatter stones waiting for stones to be gathered, and fighting over the few that are, then the best option would be to give the new person a green pill, so that he can contribute to the effort to gather stones.

Now, let us take a community in which a resource (e.g., oil) is becoming increasing scarce. One of the objections is that we have no numbers that we can use to compare desire fulfillment. Actually, we do -- that is price. As the demand for oil increases, price increases. The increasing price of oil measures the increase in the thwarting of desires caused. Just as people in the hypothetical universe see an increased scarcity in stones waiting to be scattered as reason to give people a desire to gather stones (and to not desire to scatter stones), the increasing price of oil indicates that it makes sense to strengthen people's desire for things that do not require oil, and to weaken their desire for things that do require oil.

Instead of handing out green and red pills, we hand out praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. While the price of oil increases, condemnation for those who engage in activities that use oil increases, in order to bring down the desire for those activities, and reduce the desire-thwarting that results. The use of hybrid cars and other fuel-saving measures garnishes increased praise. As the situation gets worse, condemnation and praise yield to punishment and reward.

In doing this, we recognize that some forms of oil-usage is more desire-fulfilling than others. So, the use of fuel in emergency vehicles is not condemned, while the use of fuel for less-desire-fulfilling alternatives is condemned. The person with the SUV who only drives it on the city streets is condemned.

This appears to me to be a very accurate way of explaining and predicting how moral language works. Applying this theory, I have had no difficulty understanding what is going on when people make moral statements. The person who engages in desire-thwarting actions motivated by desires that can be inhibited through condemnation is condemned. the person who engages in desire-fulfilling actions motivated by desires that can be strengthened through praise is praised. This is done to reduce the incidents of desire-thwarting desires, and to promote the incidents of desire-fulfilling desires.

Even religion dances to this tune. Why must we not disobey God? Because disobeying God is desire thwarting. God will not only thwart the desires of those who disobey Him (and fulfill the desires of those who obey), God will also thwart the desires of others associated with those who disobey. Because we have removed God from the schools in this country, or so it is said, God has removed his blessing of our country and allowed terrorists to strike. The disobedient do not only have their own desires thwarted, they remove God's blessing from everybody and put everybody at risk. Thus, disobeying God is wrong. Whereas God will bless those people who worship Him and enforce His will. Thus, obeying God is desire-fulfilling. It is right.

Or so the claim goes.

Again, these claims do not require a calculus of desires to make sense. You do not have to teach differential calculus to an individual to get him to understand what will happen if we allow people to displease God. You do not need a degree in set theory to understand that people generally have a reason to hand out green pills for truth telling rather than red pills for lying, for condemning rape, or for praising those who come to the aid of others in an emergency.

I think that regular people can handle these equations quite well.

And, if they tend to enter into sometimes violent disagreements in the less obvious cases, that, too, can be explained.

Alonzo Fyfe

There is a question that I did not answer yesterday that should be answered.

The same types of questions can be asked about the desires that animals have, the desires of future generations, the desires of entities on the far side of the universe, the desires of those with moles on their left thumb.

In all cases, the answer is the same.

That which is objectively true of these desires are relevant. That which is not objectively true of these desires is fiction. Any premise that attributes anything to these desires that is not objectively true begins a game of "make-believe" or "let's pretend".

So, the question then becomes, "What is objectively true of these other desires?"

A dead person has no desires. We can easily include all of the desires of the dead in our calculations, but that count would be 'zero'.

However, the living are seeking to fulfill their desires. Those desires include desires about what will happen to their property once they are dead. The living have a reason to create in each other a desire to obey the last wishes of those who have died. So, we have such an aversion. Given that we cannot ask a person who has died, "Okay, now, what do you want us to do with your stuff?" we have a set of institutions whereby individuals can leave instructions that can be reliably determined to be their last wishes. We comfort ourselves that those institutions are in place and working because the wishes of those who have died before us are respected.

There is objective truth, and there is objective falsity.

"Subjectivism", in its classic moral sense, is like religious faith.

(Note: This analogy will not apply to some types of subjectivism. Indeed, under some definitions, I count as a subjectivist. However, it does apply to what most people mean when they call themselves moral subjectivists.)

"Common subjectivism" is an attempt to assign validity to propositions that are objectively false. The subjectivist himself admits that his statement has no bearing on reality -- that it does not refer to anything real. They admit that they cannot offer evidence or proof in support of what they believe. They assert that it is the type of thing for which evidence and proof are not possible. In short, these are claims that the subjectivist accepts without any evidence whatsoever -- just like articles of faith.

Those who hold to a "fact/value" distinction explicitly state that their "value" statements are not fact.

Well, if they are not fact, then they are fiction (myth, superstition, make-believe).

Now, let us go back and consider these other desires. What counts when it comes to the desires of animals, future generations, people with moles on their left thumb. Well, what is objectively true about these desires? That is what counts.

Anything else is make-believe.

BillyTheKat

Thanks for the link.

Well, no actually, because the distinction between malleable and fixed desires is only superficial. All desires are rooted in physiological impulses to a greater or lesser extent; even the desire for sex can be manipulated to the point that the realisation of the desire appears to bear little relation to the actual desire: look at fetishism; look at Bondage and Domination/Sado-masochistic practices, for instance. which brings us nicely on to pain aversion . Which is not to say that this objection necessarily refutes DU, but is simply to question the necessity of making the distinction between fixed and malleable desires in the first place.

Well yes; I'm sure variance is a good thing. the problem is though, that stating that people have different beliefs and desires is only trivially true in explaining huiman behaviour; well, of course the reason why you eat chicken and I eat quorn is because we have different beliefs and desires about (the consumption of) animals, but so what? What does that tell you about why you eat animals I why I don't? Nothing - it's too vague.

That sounds good to me. It's not that I have a problem with DU as a prescriptive moral theory, but as a descriptive theory it has the fatal flaw of all theories of reasoned action, which, as I've explained elsewhere, is that they carnt be falsified. As such, it's a more attractive theory than claiming gods, souls and other supernatural entities motivate human beings, but little better. Well, okay, TRAs are better for computer modelling than god, souls and other supernatural entities, but nowhere near as effective as behaviorism, or labelling theory, or social learning theory (for example).

Woah there! You go later explain that;
Now, I'm more than happy to accept desires and beliefs as physiological/psychological states, but this is not what people refer to when they use the language of beliefs and desires. For example, the claim, "I want a drink!" might mean anything from, "I am thirsty," through "I am not thirsty but wish to make a rhetorical point about the current state of affairs," to "I am not thirsty but supplying me with a drink is symbolic of your attitude to me," &c &c, but what it doesn't mean is, "My current mental state disposes me to disposes me to find and consume a drink." The language of beliefs and desires is more about effecting certain states of affairs in the real world, rather than recounting mental states of affairs for others.

and again, this is not that any of these points necessarily refute DU as a prescriptive moral theory, but rather to question the point of making these claims in the first place, because it seems like it's about trying to jsutify properties that it doesn't have or obviously need.

Hiero5ant

(Editorial note: composing offline does awful things to formatting. I hope everything is readable.

This thread has also finally started to grow since I started composing this reply, so I hope in the future I can allocate my responses equitably. We'll see.)

Indeed, we’ve been debating metaethics from almost the very beginning, across several threads and a formal debate, which was why some of us were more than a little shocked to hear him recently describe the entire discipline of metaethics as pointless (more precisely, when the definition of metaethics was pointed out, he responded: "I find little reason to attach any significance to meta-ethics.")

Aside from using DU as a stalking horse or foil for explicating some of my own metaethical views (and on IIDB this is an excellent case, since he is one of the few posters to maintain and defend a sophisticated, elaborate, and systematic ethical theory), I would say that my engagement with Alonzo Fyfe has centered around two primary objectives. First, I’ve been showing how certain considerations of noncognitivism render DU untenable as an ethical theory (in contrast to, say Aristotelian virtue ethics, Rawls’s justice as fairness, and Habermas’s discourse ethics – all of which I believe can be explicated and defended in noncognitive terms, but that’s a topic for a whole other thread). Second, I’ve been trying to show how DU represents an acute instantiation of some of the epistemological, ontological, and above all methodological problems that I find endemic to scholastic, “philosophistical�? accounts of first-order morality.

[post-edit: It is important to realize that not only does Alonzo eschew any claims that his theory is an accurate descriptive theory, he also is explicit in denying that it is a prescriptive theory, either. He has repeatedly and adamantly said that prescriptivity is irrelevant to morality, and that any notions that moral claims involve prescriptions or action guiding characteristics are "fictions" that people "ought to stop using". If this attitude towards what constitutes a good philosophical theory of morality strikes you as one that is surreally divorced from reality, you wouldn't be alone.]

Well, don’t count intelligibility out of the running as a desideratum just yet…
One doesn’t need an especially robust theory of philosophy of language in order to validate the ordinary language intuition that “you’re just speaking unintelligible gibberish!�? constitutes some sort of legitimate criticism. I don’t think very many people still hew to the Frege/Russel/Tractarian notion that a declarative sentence is meaningful if and only if it expresses in its sense an algorithm or function whereby there are a series of mechanical rules one can follow to determine if it’s true or false. Positivism has yielded some ground to pluralism and plasticity. But I think it’s simple common sense that if the words coming out of someone’s mouth really are unintelligible – if the listener is given absolutely no guidance whatsoever on how to determine whether the words apply in any given situation – then any such theory which relies on being able to tell whether or not someone’s action has the property of “transglorbled gezorgenblatzability�? is a theory that needs some serious patching up.

Ouch! That’s a rather gloomy, cynical view of the enterprise of philosophy. I’ll just have to declare my idiosyncrasy up front and say that philosophy should bear some intelligible relationship to reality… but I guess that’s just me.

I’m coming from a standpoint of noncognitivism. As such, I insist that “the greatest good�? is an ineliminably subjective notion, to the extent that it escapes tautology at all.
Well, that makes two of us.
It depends on what you mean by “outweighs�?. And as far as I understand it, under Alonzo’s theory there is no consideration of “weight�? (at least, not in his explication so far); it looks like under DU you just say “well here’s a hypothetical universe in which there are three desires, A, B, and C. Desire A and B, are Polly and Ben’s desires to eat ice cream, and here’s desire C, which is Jack’s desire not to be tortured, so we have a 2 to 1 ratio, so ice cream wins.�? The definition of “weight�? in DU seems to be exhausted by whether a desire’s fulfillment results in a net gain or loss in universal desire fulfillment. But then, that’s why I’ve been asking the kind of questions I started the thread with.

DU relies on a quantitative measurement, on counting up desires like they were pebbles on the beach. I am trying to say that desires are more like events or processes, like “American culture�?. The question “how many nations are there in the world�? is an intelligible one that admits of a quantitative answer, but the question “how many cultures are there in the world�? is simply pointless. Is there such a “thing�? as American culture? What about “New England culture�?? What about “New England youth culture�?? What about “New England gothic-industrial youth culture�??
It’s very important to put a qualification on this distinction. I am categorically notsaying that it’s not intelligible to use ‘culture’ or ‘desire’ as nouns. What I’m saying is that their use is so subjective and context-dependent that they do not admit of any other than situational operational definition. Having lived in both places, I can say that the culture here in Massachusetts is quite different from the culture in Tennessee. But then I go and read an article about how liberals and conservatives have “two separate cultures�?, or about how the sciences and humanities are “two cultures�?. What should I say? That this cannot be so, because even if you’re a liberal who lives in Nashville, you’re just a member of the “Tennessee culture�?? What about the people here in Boston, some of whom are in humanities, some of whom are in the sciences? How many cultures are there?
To me it’s simply obvious that this question is nonsensical, because cultures are processes and not objects. Likewise, it just seems obvious to me that it’s ludicrous to talk about “the sum of all desires�? in the way one might talk about “the sum of all neurons�?.

Basically what I said above – the human mind is a maelstrom of competing voices, and to say that what gets spat out as an output in the form of “I would really rather prefer you not torture me�? is just some sort of point particle is misguided.

Austin is no pomo. In the immediate context, he takes aim at A.J. Ayer’s view that “we never perceive objects directly, and the man on the street is mistaken when he claims this�?. What struck me as I was reading the rest of Austin’s book was not so much the content of the philosophical view being attacked; I wanted to draw attention to Austin’s “ordinary language�? methodology as applied to what has passed for anglo-american philosophy in many circles for the last half century: reification, hypostatization, word-worship, jargonism, and a disdain for the actual facts of actual language-use.