tronvillain

ManM, I suppose what would prove my position wrong would be people desiring something that does not give them pleasure (or at least less pain). I see no signs of this, and suspect that it is simply how people are built.

ManM

tronvillain,
What sort of behavior would you consider to be evidence of someone desiring something that did not give them pleasure?

tronvillain

Well, behavior indicative of people desiring something that that causes them only pain. I have trouble thinking of behavior that would actually indicate this that is not completely insane (wanting to throw yourself down stairs despite the fact that the thought makes you fear and pain and misery), but that is perfectly consistent with my position.

ManM

tronvillain,
Well, I think this is stacking the deck a bit. What about the case of a person desiring something that causes more pain than pleasure?

bd-from-kg

tronvillain:

It seems that the question we’re really discussing here is:

What sort of thing can be a motive for an act?

My position is that the motive is always a preference for one state of affairs over others – namely, the preference for the state of affairs A that one believes would result from doing X over the state of affairs B that one believes would result from doing Y. But as to what it might be about A and B that makes one prefer the one to the other, my position is that it might, in principle, be pretty much anything. (To be sure, most of us would regard certain kinds of preferences as irrational, but that’s another question, which will be dealt with later.)

We must also distinguish between the aspects of A that we value because they produce, or make it possible for us to produce, certain results, and aspects that we value in themselves, or for their own sake. The latter we say are “intrinsically desirable” and call them “intrinsic goods”; we also say that producing such a thing is an “ultimate” aim of doing X (as distinguished from a proximate aim, which we also call an "instrumental good”). Clearly an instrumental good is desired (as such) only as a means to one or more ultimate ends, and thus cannot be properly said to be the true objects of our desire. So we also say that our “real” or “ultimate” motive for doing X is our desire for the ultimate ends that we expect it to produce, and we call a desire for an ultimate end an “ultimate desire”. Thus in terms of this terminology, the preference for A over B must be based, in the final analysis (according to my account) on our preference for the ultimate ends or intrinsic goods that we believe would result from doing A over the ones we believe would result from doing B. Or to put it another way, we choose to do X rather than Y because we desire the ultimate ends that we expect to achieve from doing X more than we desire those we expect to achieve from doing Y.

[Note: In using terms like “ultimate ends” and “intrinsic goods” I am not implying that there is some “ultimate reality” or “objective truth” regarding whether these things are “really” good or desirable; they are intended only as descriptions of how the things in question are regarded by the agent – specifically, that he desires them “in themselves” or “for their own sake”.]

Now you have attacked this account in two quite different (and incompatible) ways. First, you have claimed that, while this account is correct in saying that the motive for choosing to do X rather than Y is that one desires the ultimate ends one would expect to achieve by doing X more than the ultimate ends one would expect to achieve by doing Y, but that the kinds of things that can be “ultimate ends” is very limited: they consist only of our own (possible) future mental states or subjective experiences. Most importantly, they cannot consist, even in part, of other people’s mental states or subjective experiences. Second, you have claimed that this account is radically in error in that it is mistaken in locating the motivation for our acts in our preference for the expected effects of the act itself. In reality, you argue, the ultimate motivation for doing anything is the immediate pleasure we obtain from choosing to do it.

In this post I’m going to take a detailed look at the second claim. That is, I’m going to discuss:

Is the pleasure one expects to derive from making a choice the “real” motive for the choice?

Before proceeding, let’s be clear on exactly what the distinction is between saying that the motive for doing X is the desire for the immediate pleasure derived from choosing to do X and the desire for the results one expects to result from actually doing X. (I had thought that difference between these two claims was so clear that it should hardly be necessary to belabor it, but you have denied that there is any distinction between them, so apparently it is necessary.)

When I say that the motive for doing X is the immediate pleasure derived from choosing to do X, I refer to the pleasure (if indeed there really is anything that can properly be called pleasure involved) that attends the making of the decision itself. This pleasure, such as it is, necessarily precedes the actual act (though perhaps only by a millisecond), since one obviously has to decide to do something before doing it. But even if one insists that the decision and the act can be simultaneous (an idea which, frankly, I find unintelligible), one can clearly make a distinction between any pleasure that results from one’s deciding to do X (and would occur even if one were somehow physically prevented from actually doing it) and any pleasure that results from actually doing it. In addition, of course, there will normally be results of an act that occur well after the act itself, and some of them will be things other than the pleasure of the agent.

Now let’s look at why I say that you have made this claim. One of my arguments against the first claim (that the only thing any one ever ultimately desires is his own future mental states or subjective experiences) was based on a scenario where Bob chooses to save a life every time he spends $100 (though he won’t know anything about it) rather than getting $100 himself. In this scenario Bob’s memory of having made this decision is erased immediately after making it.

As I pointed out earlier, if Bob decides to choose the first option, all of the desirable effects on Bob’s mental states will occur before (or at best, at the time) that he agrees to it. Any differences that occur after this point favor the second option: taking the $100. So if you are going to maintain that the “real” reason for Bob’s choosing the first option is some difference it will make to his mental states, this difference must occur before or at the time that he makes the choice. Your reply to this point was:

Here you are clearly explicitly endorsing the claim I’m discussing here.

You also said earlier about this scenario:

Here again is a clear, explicit endorsement of this claim: the reason that a person would choose the first option is not that he prefers the expected results of agreeing to it to the expected results of agreeing to take the $100; it is that he expects to obtain more immediate pleasure and satisfaction from choosing to agree to it than he would get from choosing to agree take the $100.

Now what’s wrong with this notion? Well, the first problem with it is that it is meaningless. The motive for an act is supposed to give one some insight into why the agent did what he did, but in this case the motive for any act whatsoever is always the same. Thus, if Brown shoots Cooper and I ask what his motive was, according to this view the correct answer is “he expected choosing to shoot him to give him more pleasure than choosing not to shoot him.” This is not exactly helpful. It’s rather like answering the question “Why did Brown shoot Cooper?” with “Because the muscles in Brown’s body contracted in such a way that his hand ended up grasping the gun and pointing it at Cooper, and then the movement of his fingers activated the firing mechanism”. This may all be perfectly true, but it is not an explanation of why Brown shot Cooper; it is merely a long-winded way of saying that Brown did shoot Cooper. Similarly, if you say that Brown’s motive for shooting Cooper was that he expected choosing to shoot him to give him more pleasure than choosing not to shoot him, you haven’t really given a motive you have merely chosen an awkward way of saying that Brown shot Cooper.

Another way of putting it is that this claim, if true at all, is tautological. To say that someone is more pleased by the prospect of doing X than by the prospect of doing Y is to say nothing more than that he preferred doing X to doing Y. And of course, if he did choose to do X, we know by definition that he must have preferred doing X to doing Y, and vice-versa. Now there’s nothing wrong with tautological statements, but we must remember that nothing follows from tautologies but more tautologies. Thus if you use the “fact” that “The motive for an act is always that the agent expected choosing to do it to give him more pleasure than choosing not to do it” to conclude that “No acts are ‘truly’ altruistic”, it follows that the latter must also be tautologically true. In other words, you are using the term “altruistic” in a sense such that it is logically impossible for any conceivable act to be “truly” altruistic. Which means that you are saying nothing about actual human behavior; it would be true no matter how people behave, or why – i.e., no matter what motivates their behavior in the ordinary sense.

I made this point in a somewhat different way in my last post:

You replied:

Well here’s how you made it. Recall your statement, “...people will tend to choose option one over option two because the pleasure and satisfaction it gives them right now...”

The point here was that someone who chose the first option was not “really” being altruistic, because even in this case their motive would be self-interested. But what does this argument really amount to? Well, you say that someone who chooses the first option will do so because the prospect of saving children’s lives pleases them more than the prospect of receiving $100. As I pointed out, and as you agreed emphatically, this is the same thing as saying that he would prefer the state of affairs in which many children’s lives were saved to the state of affairs in which he receives $100. But this says nothing more than that he has a motive for choosing the first option, or to put it another way, that he has an interest in the outcome. And what you’re saying is that this in itself makes his choice self-interested, and therefore not “truly” altruistic. This is exactly the argument that I said you were making.

Now let’s turn to my claim that the argument is tautological. Strictly speaking, (1) is probably not tautological; perhaps it’s meaningful to talk about acts that have no motive at all. But we are certainly not talking about such acts. So (1) can be taken as defining the kinds of acts we are talking about. (2) is obviously tautological. (3) is a definition of “self-interested”. (4) is a definition (or an immediate consequence of a definition) of “altruistic”.

As to what’s wrong with this argument, it’s really pretty obvious. Calling an act “self-interested” does not ordinarily mean that one has an interest in the outcome; it means that its motive or purpose is primarily that it is expected to benefit the agent. (Actually it normally means even more than this: it means that the benefit to the agent does not consist of any pleasure or satisfaction that he may obtain from its desirable effects on someone else. But we’ll waive this for the moment, since in the case at hand we have stipulated that there are no such effects on anyone else that the agent will know about.) If instead we were to define an action as “self-interested” if the agent has an interest of any kind in the outcome, we will have defined all acts that have any motive at all as self-interested. This is clearly not what this term ordinarily means (although you are free to define it this way if it pleases you). Finally, to say that an act is not altruistic if it is self-interested in this sense is to say that an act is altruistic only if it has no motive of any kind. And this does indeed seem to be what you’re saying, except that you prefer to use the cumbersome phrase “truly altruistic”, as if there might be acts of which it can truly be said that they are altruistic, yet are not “truly altruistic”.

Now let’s look at the notion that the “real” motive for doing something is the desire for the immediate pleasure derived from choosing to do it from another point of view. Let’s go back to the “Bob and the $100 scenario”. The point of this example was that Bob must desire that children’s lives be saved as an “ultimate end” or “intrinsic good”; your answer to this was that the “real” motive for his choosing the first option was the pleasure that choosing it gave him. But why would the prospect of making the choice that would save children’s lives please him? Obviously, because he regards saving children’s lives as desirable in itself – i.e., as an ultimate end. No other explanation makes the slightest sense. So the fact (if true) that he is pleased by this prospect (even though he won’t know anything about it when it happens) itself shows that I’m right – that Bob regards the saving of children’s lives as an ultimate end.

In fact, this can be stated as a general principle: If someone is more pleased by the prospect of achieving state of affairs A than state of affairs B, it can only be because he desires the ultimate ends that he expects to achieve from doing X more than he desires those he expects to achieve from doing Y. This is really quite obvious. For example, suppose that you happen to know that Kenny greatly prefers apple pie to spinach, but you notice one day that he chooses spinach over apple pie. Now suppose that when you ask him why, he replies: “Of course I know that I’d enjoy the apple pie more than the spinach, but I find that I get more pleasure from contemplating the prospect of choosing the spinach than I do from contemplating the prospect of choosing the apple pie”. Wouldn’t you conclude that he is either lying or has gone completely mad? You would have to be a complete lunatic to get more pleasure from contemplating choosing X than from contemplating choosing Y if you desire the results of doing Y more than you desire the results of doing X.

Thus the theory that the “real” motive for choosing the first option (saving children’s lives) over the second (getting $100) is that one is more pleased by the prospect of choosing the first option than by the prospect of choosing the second implies (unless one is a lunatic) that one desires saving children’s lives more strongly as an ultimate end than one desires $100 (or whatever ultimate end one expects to achieve with the $100).

Now let’s look one more time at your strange notion of “true altruism”:

But the “element of selfishness” that you see in choosing the first option is precisely that the person who chooses it must prefer the saving of the children’s lives to the $100. In other words, preferring the good of others to one’s own is self-interested because it is a preference! Or in other words, the very thing that makes such a choice altruistic is what makes it “not ‘truly’ altruistic”. This is such a perverse abuse of language that it is hardly worth further discussion.

(Note: I plan to follow soon with further discussion of the first claim: that the only thing that people can (or at any rate actually do) desire as ultimate ends is their own mental states or subjective experiences.)

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

tronvillain

This is ridiculous. You write an essay, I respond to it point by point, you write another essay... I'm sick of it. I suppose that, like The Antichris, I will simply have to disagree with you.

bd-from-kg

tronvillain:

I'm don't know what you're complaining about. My next-to-last post replied to all of the significant things you'd said in your previous post. My last one didn't, but I said plainly that I intended to follow with another, which will address all of your significant points that weren't convered in this one.

Admittedly my last post was on the long side. That's because the mistaken view that it refutes is widely held, so it seemed worth covering in some depth even though you haven't really made a big issue of it.

Also, it's not always practical or desirable to reply to each post point-by-point. The argument can get hopelessly fractured and it becomes impossible to keep track of the discussion as a whole and how each point relates to it. I try to keep things organized while still replying (possibly out of order) to all points that I consider significant.

bd-from-kg

tronvillain:

A brief comment on your exchange with ManM:

But this is a repetition of the very fallacy that Pryor explained early on in the passage I cited: although it is arguable that you always get some pleasure from choosing to do something that will get you what you desire, that doesn’t mean that this pleasure is itself what you desire. (In fact, it seems to me that it is logically impossible that this pleasure can be what you desire.) Thus the question is not whether there are any acts that do not as a matter of fact bring some pleasure to the agent, but whether there are any acts that are not done for the purpose of bringing pleasure to the agent – or in other words, whose motive is something other than a desire for pleasure.

What ManM was asking is whether there is any behavior at all that you would count as evidence that you’re wrong; that people do sometimes desire things that they do not expect to give them pleasure. There are many examples of people seeming to do this. (Often, but not always, the motive seems to be to give pleasure to others.) But by now it seems clear that you will reject all such examples on the grounds (supported by no evidence whatsoever) that in every case the real motive must have been to give the agent pleasure, however implausible this may seem. It really seems as though this assertion of yours is unfalsifiable in principle. Which means that it is not an empirical claim, but an article of faith.

Are you prepared to show that it is not an article of faith by offering some actual evidence that in all cases where an act appears to be motivated by a desire for something other than the agent’s pleasure, the real motive is the agent’s desire for pleasure after all?

tronvillain

As I said, I am sick of this. Declare yourself the winner if you like.

tronvillain

I will try and stop responding, but I thought I would point something out about our positions:

You: Intrinsic goods give people pleasure and satisfaction because they are intrinsic goods.

Me: Intrinsic goods are instrinsic goods because they give people pleasure and satisfaction.

I am not sure there is actually a significant difference between these two positions.

One of the things that bothers me about your essays it that you base them on strawmen. Take the question you ask when addressing "my" second claim: Is the pleasure one expects to derive from making a choice the “real” motive for the choice? That is not my position, yet you act as if it is and proceed to argue against it at length. I can't tell whether this is deliberate or simply a misunderstanding.