I would like to open up a discussion of Desire Utilitarianism.

As I understand it, desire utilitarianism differs from classical utilitarianism in two ways:
1. Instead of saying we should act to bring about consequences, it says we should desire to bring about consequences.
2. It says that the positive consequence that we should aim for is desire-fulfilment. (As opposed to happiness or preference satisfaction).

But before I say any more, I'd like to allow faithlessgod and others to explain the concept and discuss its advantages and disadvantages.


edit: I've changed statement 2 to fulfilment, so that it refers to the state of the world, not the conscious feeling.

Hiya Ryan glad to oblige

I will be as brief and as non-technical as possible.

DU in one line "Morality is about using praise, blame, reward and punishment to encourage desires that tend to fulfil desires and discourage desire that tend to thwart other desires".

The utility here is desire fulfilment. A desire is an attitude to make or keep a state of the world true. A desire is specified by its conditions of fulfilment. When these conditions are met it is fulfilled, when they are prevented it is thwarted. Fulfilment and thwarting are external to the desire (and mind if one insists) they are about the status of states of the world. Hence desire fulfilment is an empirical approach looking at the material and physical effects of desires being fulfilled and thwarted.

Traditionally a desire is regarded as an end and cannot be reasoned about, one can only reason about the means to achieve this end. DU deals with this in 2 ways.

First the utility is not just about desire fulfilment, since fulfilling a desire might thwart another one. This brings about the question about the desirability of a desire. When the scope of desirability is that of the person alone (only their other desires), this is a question of prudence. When the scope of desirability is all and any affected desires - equally considered, then this is properly a question of ethics and morality. So a desire can be evaluated ethically by treating it as a means and seeing its effect on all other desires - whoever has them and with equal consideration - which is the universal default position. If value is the relation between desire and possible states of the world (which is the target of the desire) and utilitarianism is about maximising of the utility value, then the moral value of any desires is whether it fulfils or tends to fulfil all other desires. That is the second portion of the 1 line description above.

Secondly since one cannot use reason to change desires (allowing that one can use reason against contingent beliefs related to that desire) one has to use emotive and expressive means - praise, condemnation, reward and punishment to encourage desires that tend to fulfil other desires and discourage desires that tend to thwart other desires. Hence the first part of the 1 liner above.

I could go on but that is the basic groundwork I would rather be driven by questions and challenges to answer what is of interest, if anything, to other forum members here.

Its other main advantage, apart from it's empirical basis, is that in normative ethics is that it unites any positive benefits of deontology,otherwise dealt with by traditional rule utilitarianism - desires are rules that are difficult to over-ride; and aretics or virtue ethics - since it is a form of virtue consequentialism.

Now to answer Ryan's questions:

RyanCarey wrote:I would like to open up a discussion of Desire Utilitarianism.
1. Instead of saying we should act to bring about consequences, it says we should desire to bring about consequences.

The desires are the consequences, this is a version of desire consequentialism e.g. if someone has a desire that tends to thwart other desires, the use of social forces can lead to that person not acting on that desire with the beneficial consequence that they do not thwart other desires.

RyanCarey wrote:2. It says that the positive consequence that we should aim for is desire-satisfaction. (As opposed to happiness or preference satisfaction).

Note that In DU satisfaction and frustration is regarded as inner psychological states, fulfilment and thwarting as external physical states. I will assume you meant desire fulfilment here. Now DU is based on the most standard accepted version of philosophical psychology or practical reasoning which in one line states that "People seek to fulfil the more and strongest of their desires". The goal of DU is to encourage everyone, as they seek to fulfil their desires, that they do not chose desires that tend to thwart other desires and do chose desires that tend to fulfil other desires. It uses social forces to do this and focuses only those desires that can be affected by such forces - malleable desires. Do not confuse this with Desire Fulfilment Act Utilitarianism which would say that everyone should aim for maximising desire fulfilling desires. This is the key issue that differentiates it from a Singer, Mackie, Griffin or Hare version of Preference Satisfaction. (The terminology here comes from James Griffin BTW).

I've just discovered a pitfall of being an absent-minded admin - accidentally clicking 'edit' instead of 'reply' and not noticing until I see that the post I was replying to has mysteriously disappeared. I've tried to put back your reply exactly as it was, fg (thank gawd for the Back button), but you'll probably want to check it (and sorry!)...

Anyway:

fg wrote:The goal of DU is to encourage everyone, as they seek to fulfil their desires, that they do not chose
desires that tend to thwart other desires and do chose desires that tend to fulfil other desires. It uses social forces to do this and focuses only those desires that can be affected by such forces - malleable desires.

Not to nitpick, but presumably encouraging these desires is the method rather than the goal? It seems obvious that in a world in which everyone's desires conflicted you could fulfil far fewer desires than in a world with more harmonious agents... so persuading people to hold benevolent desires is automatically a good thing to someone whose goal is maximising desire fulfilment.

Do not confuse this with Desire Fulfilment Act Utilitarianism which would say that everyone should aim for maximising desire fulfilling desires. This is the key issue that differentiates it from a Singer, Mackie, Griffin or Hare version of Preference Satisfaction. (The terminology here comes from James Griffin BTW).

I must admit I've never understood this difference too well. Can you go into more detail between what you see the difference as, and maybe provide an example situation where feeding in DU would give different results to feeding in PU?

Arepo wrote:I've just discovered a pitfall of being an absent-minded admin - accidentally clicking 'edit' instead of 'reply' and not noticing until I see that the post I was replying to has mysteriously disappeared. I've tried to put back your reply exactly as it was, fg (thank gawd for the Back button), but you'll probably want to check it (and sorry!)...

No probs its fine, don't worry.

Arepo wrote:Not to nitpick, but presumably encouraging these desires is the method rather than the goal? It seems obvious that in a world in which everyone's desires conflicted you could fulfil far fewer desires than in a world with more harmonious agents... so persuading people to hold benevolent desires is automatically a good thing to someone whose goal is maximising desire fulfilment.

In DU individuals do no have an explicit or single goal to maximise desire fulfilment. All their desires are their goals to be fulfilled. DU's goal is to encourage good and discourage bad desires, given that everyone seeks to fulfil the more and stronger of their desires. It understands and utilizes this but does not make impossible demand of making the more and stronger of everyone's desires to be to maximise desire fulfilment.

Arepo wrote:

Do not confuse this with Desire Fulfilment Act Utilitarianism which would say that everyone should aim for maximising desire fulfilling desires. This is the key issue that differentiates it from a Singer, Mackie, Griffin or Hare version of Preference Satisfaction. (The terminology here comes from James Griffin BTW).

I must admit I've never understood this difference too well. Can you go into more detail between what you see the difference as, and maybe provide an example situation where feeding in DU would give different results to feeding in PU?

Note that Fyfe tends to exaggerate he differences between DU and stereotypical PU - as most people mean the latter. I tend to look for similarities in more sophisticated versions of PU.

Hare's PU in application will be pretty much the same as DU. They differ in terms of foundations - Hare's is non-cognitivist requiring a more complex anti-realist explanation of how moral statements work. DU's is simpler, easier to explain and avoids non-cognitivism, which conflicts with everyone' beliefs - unless exposed to meta-ethics - that moral statements are cognitive -capable of being true or false.

Singer's PU looks more like act utilitarianism (in Practical Ethics anyway) and his is based on the intrinsic value of preferences, DU says there are no intrinsic values. One could find differences here in application.

Mackie's PU is definitely an act utilitarianism he claims as much in "Inventing Right and Wrong". His preferences are pretty much identical to desire fulfilment except he does not directly evaluate the desirability of desires. This, like Singer, could diverge from DU is application.

Griffin's Informed Desire Fulfilment used the same basic value model but filters it through an ideal observer to get informed (rational) desires- these are the ones to maximise. DU does not rely on impractical fictions like Ideal Observers and is rule not act utilitarianism.

So apart from Hare, DU and PU can differ. If Hare has a position which does differ with any of the other three, it is likely that DU might differ in the same way, although there may be a different explanation as to why.

Faithlessgod, I've noted that you draw a distinction between fulfilment (state of the world) and satisfaction (feeling). That's good. And it shows me that DU is more similar to preference utilitarianism than to classical utilitarianism. So if I could politely ignore parts of your post to focus on the moment at which I think you diverge from preference utilitarianism

Faithlessgod wrote:First the utility is not just about desire fulfilment, since fulfilling a desire might thwart another one. This brings about the question about the desirability of a desire. When the scope of desirability is that of the person alone (only their other desires), this is a question of prudence.

So it appears to me that investigation of desire fulfilment moves you from preference utilitarianism to DU.

If I could clarify terminology: you begin by considering desire fulfilment alone to be of inherent value. That is, it's our moral end.
Other events are valuable only instrumentally (as means).

If I understand you correctly, we might better restate what you've said like this: Desires can be thwarted by other desires. Desires are both inherently and instrumentally valuable. If only one person holds a desire, then we may sacrifice this desire in order to optimise desire fulfilment.

This all seems pretty obvious to me. Please tell me if anything's wrong. Now this jump to praise and condemnation alone does not follow at all, imo. To me, if we can specify how utility might be achieved in this way, we need to have a reason for it. For example, why not specify that this utility is not to be achieved through homosexual sex? Sorry if this post has come across as rude, but I genuinely want to understand your DU as best I can.

The problem I have with any sort of relative morality is that it's really just talking about desires and reality being the same. There's no reason to change the latter rather than the former. Considering that the former is (as far as we know) contained entirely within what's no more than tiny pink sprinkles on an insignificant blue dot orbiting around a glowing white dot that makes a small sparkle in a glowing spiral that ... which makes up the latter, it's a lot easier to change the former. Let's go around trapping everyone in little brightly lit cages so they all like big, dark, empty spaces, like the kind that makes up the vast majority of the universe.

RyanCarey wrote:Faithlessgod, I've noted that you draw a distinction between fulfilment (state of the world) and satisfaction (feeling). That's good. And it shows me that DU is more similar to preference utilitarianism than to classical utilitarianism. So if I could politely ignore parts of your post to focus on the moment at which I think you diverge from preference utilitarianism

Sure. I only argue that DU is a type of PS and so am for PS in general over CU. The internal divergence between DU and PS is to overcome some external criticisms of stereotypical PS IMHO. To put PS on firmer ground so to speak. This is not about rejecting PS.

RyanCarey wrote:

Faithlessgod wrote:First the utility is not just about desire fulfilment, since fulfilling a desire might thwart another one. This brings about the question about the desirability of a desire. When the scope of desirability is that of the person alone (only their other desires), this is a question of prudence.

So it appears to me that investigation of desire fulfilment moves you from preference utilitarianism to DU.

Not yet. Hare is the possibly the only PS theorist that makes this as explicit when he says

"this is done by showing how a wise educator, seeking to maximise the satisfaction of all preferences indiscriminately, weight for weight, would try to cultivate some and discourage others. He would cultivate those whose satisfaction is compatible with, and discourage those whose satisfaction militates against, the satisfaction of preferences as a whole. Thus he will discourage sadistic desires, cultivating the disposition to think intuitively that they are evil (as they are)."[Hare: Utilitarianism and Double Standards (1992) pg.311]

Further Desire Fulfilment - with the distinction between (inner) satisfaction and (external) fulfilment - was originally develop by James Griffin who is well recognised within the academic community as a leading PS theorist. He sought to clarify the notions of "preference" and "satisfaction". However I disagree with his variant of PS - "Informed Desire Fulfilment" - but unless someone supports his approach it would be distracting here to discuss why.

RyanCarey wrote:If I could clarify terminology: you begin by considering desire fulfilment alone to be of inherent value. That is, it's our moral end.

If you mean by "inherent" what I have called intrinsic then no, there are no inherent (intrinsic) values of any kind, so desire fulfilment cannot be our "moral end". Mackie's Argument from Queerness I think demolishes any such claims and certainly none are made here. All value could possibly be, if not intrinsic, is extrinsic - relational. Neither desire simplicter nor Desire Fulfilment are intrinsically valuable. The state of affairs that is the target of a desire is valued, the means to bring this about are valuable, the desire specifies what is valued but is not valuable in its own right and neither is desire fulfilment itself - that is just is very descriptive and accurate that label for this relational value. The utility in DU is desire fulfilment and is driven by extending what is in everyone's individual interest - namely their own desire fulfilment - arguing that the world can so be better off with increasing desire fulfilment over its opposite increasing desire thwartment. This is not so much a moral end as rather implicit in how people already go about dealing with their lives. DU comes in to explain how to deal with clashing fulfilment of desires and leverages how everyone already does this and shows how we all can benefit by better understanding how we already modify and influence each other's desires.

RyanCarey wrote:Other events are valuable only instrumentally (as means).

Intrinsic has multiple meanings. In the modern literature an end in itself is now called final rather than intrinsic (and in comparison to instrumental means) so one can ask ask if any final ends are intrinsic and DU answers no without denying final ends. Since in DU moral value is about the universal desirability of a desire - whether it is a final or instrumental desire - it treats all such desires as means - instrumentally - to see if they are morally valuable or not. This is possibly the most important insight in DU so to repeat this and say it slightly differently, the ethical approach here requires treating any desire as a means to evaluate it based on its affect on any and all desires that could be affected by its fulfilment (or not). This is because of means-ends rationality, where one can reason over means but not ends. DU shows how to reason over ends - by treating them as means to other ends, which ends depends on the question being asked prudence, patriotism, group and so on. The ethical question seems to be the default to treat anything that could be affected as an end but the only things that can be changed ethically are malleable desires, hence desire consequentialism.

RyanCarey wrote:If I understand you correctly, we might better restate what you've said like this: Desires can be thwarted by other desires.

Yes

RyanCarey wrote:Desires are both inherently and instrumentally valuable.

No, there are desire-as-means and desire-as-ends - instrumental means and final ends but none are inherently (intrinsically) valuable.

RyanCarey wrote:If only one person holds a desire, then we may sacrifice this desire in order to optimise desire fulfilment.

No DU is not about sacrifice, that is altruism. DU is about getting people to want to have certain desire-as-means and desire-as-ends over alternatives, so that no sacrifice is involved in fulfilling those desires. It is not a sacrifice if you want to do it.

RyanCarey wrote:This all seems pretty obvious to me. Please tell me if anything's wrong.

Hopefully the above makes this position clearer.

RyanCarey wrote:Now this jump to praise and condemnation alone does not follow at all, imo.

The considered use of existing social forces to the more coherent (in analysis) and consistent (in practice) goal of DU is what it is all about. How else can one get another to want to do what you want. People do this already all the time, DU shows how this can be used to everyone's benefit.

RyanCarey wrote:To me, if we can specify how utility might be achieved in this way, we need to have a reason for it. For example, why not specify that this utility is not to be achieved through homosexual sex?

I am really not sure what you are asking now. If someone has a desire for homosexual sex and they find a consenting partner for this then they are mutually fulfilling each other's desires. I fail to see how this utility can be used to deny the fulfilment of such desires- or any other mutually fulfilling desires performed by mutual consent which are not dependent upon anyone else's desires. You will have to explain your point some more.

RyanCarey wrote:Sorry if this post has come across as rude, but I genuinely want to understand your DU as best I can.

Rude? I had not imagined the mere possibility of that thought entering my mind for consideration. You will have to try much, much harder for any of your thoughtful questions to appear rude.

Hi Daniel

DanielLC wrote:The problem I have with any sort of relative morality is that it's really just talking about desires and reality being the same. There's no reason to change the latter rather than the former. Considering that the former is (as far as we know) contained entirely within what's no more than tiny pink sprinkles on an insignificant blue dot orbiting around a glowing white dot that makes a small sparkle in a glowing spiral that ... which makes up the latter, it's a lot easier to change the former. Let's go around trapping everyone in little brightly lit cages so they all like big, dark, empty spaces, like the kind that makes up the vast majority of the universe.

I fail to see what any of this is to do with the thread at hand. There is a moral relativist you might like to debate on this, who I am debating with myself on the "naturalistic basis of right and wrong" thread.

I take two main points from your post, Faithlessgod:
1. that you do believe in final ends. (And that I mustn’t call them inherent or intrinsic around you anymore)
2. That you confirm DU is very similar to preference utilitarianism

It seems you took offence to my use of the phrase “sacrifice a desire”. I meant “omit to fulfil”.

On topic:
Once we assume utilitarianism, it's obvious that we must cause positive consequences by influencing others. Manipulating others' desires can increase utility. I don’t think anyone disputes this. Maipulating desires should, however, be done if and only if it will increase utility. And manipulating desires are one of many types of action.

So, If you merely consider the act of manipulating desires equally to other acts, why do you bother with this new name Desire Utilitarianism? There's nothing revelationary about the idea that consequences can result from human interaction.

Or do you exclude all acts that do not involve manipulating desires? Do you restrict action to the manipulation of desires alone? If so, you are no longer a consequentialist. You are combining consequentialism (you should satisfy preferences) with deontology (but only through manipulating desires). And when you accept one deontological rule, why should you not accept more? Why not accept a rule that prohibits homosexual behaviour? Why not accept a rule that advises you to use Macs not PCs? It's arbitrary and unethical and this is what I was trying to explain last post.

RyanCarey wrote:I take two main points from your post, Faithlessgod:
1. that you do believe in final ends. (And that I mustn’t call them inherent or intrinsic around you anymore)

Yes because they exist. Whether you or I or anyone else believe in them or not, they exist. And importantly they are commonly misunderstood as implying there is something intrinsic to these ends - this is an error. I am an error theorist like Mackie in this respect - to intrinsic value, but a success theorist with respect to relational value (arguably Mackie was too).

RyanCarey wrote:2. That you confirm DU is very similar to preference utilitarianism

I have never denied that. However when it comes to utilitarianism there are a minimum of two or three dimensions to classify any model. The utility dimension, the 'act focus' dimension and the naturalist dimension say.
1.In terms of utility this is desire fulfilment - a clear specification of what some PS theorists might mean by PS but certainly not all and its recursive application to itself to generate moral value is barely mentioned and rarely emphasized by any well known theorist (that quote by Hare in my previous post is one of the few have found anywhere by anyone that is reasonably close to this position here).
2.Different PS models have different 'act focus' such as act-, rule-, indirect-utilitarianism. DU emphasizes a different 'act focus' hence desire-utilitarianism is to be contrasted to those aforementioned three 'act focus' types.
3.PS cover naturalist and non-naturalist dimensions too - Moore and Hare giving very different non-natural answers and DU oppositely endorsing this.

DU is specific position over these three dimensions (and other if we were to explore this further) in contrast to other versions of PS and other utilitarianisms in general.

RyanCarey wrote:It seems you took offence to my use of the phrase “sacrifice a desire”. I meant “omit to fulfil”.

No-one has come remotely near to offending me in this forum
The distinction I made was important to understand how DU works.

RyanCarey wrote:Once we assume utilitarianism, it's obvious that we must cause positive consequences by influencing others. Manipulating others' desires can increase utility. I don’t think anyone disputes this. Maipulating desires should, however, be done if and only if it will increase utility.

The point is DU views this as upside down. We already reciprocally mutually influence desires, now utility is satisficed by changing the way we do this by being more aware of the implications on everyone's desires.

RyanCarey wrote:And manipulating desires are one of many types of action.

Not sure what you are getting at here. Of course there are many types of action, but the only action that concerns us is intentional action and all intentional action requires a minimum of at least one desire. Without desire there is no intentional action. DU looks at and directly addresses the grounds of any and all intentional action.

RyanCarey wrote:So, If you merely consider the act of manipulating desires equally to other acts, why do you bother with this new name Desire Utilitarianism?

I think you are getting confused, maybe as an analogy you should consider that desires are 'orthogonal' to actions? I do not consider these "manipulations" equally to other acts, I am addressing the influencing of desire which deals with the grounds of any intentional act.

RyanCarey wrote:There's nothing revelationary about the idea that consequences can result from human interaction.

Huh? That's why we are all consequentialists here, aren't we? I am not following your point at all.

RyanCarey wrote:Or do you exclude all acts that do not involve manipulating desires?

Again this is puzzling, do I exclude acts not involving influencing desires with respect to what? You are for some reason focusing on acts and this is unclear why.

RyanCarey wrote: Do you restrict action to the manipulation of desires alone?[

There are many ways of influencing desires summed up in the catch phrase "praise, condemnation, reward and punishment" which emphasizes the use of social forces operating over malleable desires. Not sure what you mean by restrict action here again with respect to what goal i.e. what desire to you wish to fulfil?

RyanCarey wrote: If so, you are no longer a consequentialist. You are combining consequentialism (you should satisfy preferences) with deontology (but only through manipulating desires). And when you accept one deontological rule, why should you not accept more? Why not accept a rule that prohibits homosexual behaviour? Why not accept a rule that advises you to use Macs not PCs? It's arbitrary and unethical and this is what I was trying to explain last post.

Sorry none of this makes any sense. You will have to explain your point more carefully. I have already answered your homosexuality question I cannot see why you have brought it up again here - did you not understand it? Now you are talking about "arbitrary and unethical" which you did not mention in the last post. What is arbitrary here and what is unethical?

What seems arbitrary is the selection of praise, condemnation, reward and punishment. Saying "act only through manipulating others' desires" sounds like deontology to me. I don't see why we should bring about consequences only through these kinds of actions. Why not bring about consequences by working to earn money and then donating this money to the poor, for example? It seems like desire utilitarians aren't allowed to become vegetarian because it's not praise, condemnation, reward or punishment.

I think the missing piece of this puzzle is going to involve philosophy of the mind. I suspect desire utilitarians hold an unorthodox belief that we cannot control our actions yet we can control our desires. Or something like that. Is this the case?

Now I am beginning to understand your latest point

RyanCarey wrote:What seems arbitrary is the selection of praise, condemnation, reward and punishment.

The position of DU in analysing, say, moral codes is to to reduce and prevent the arbitrary implications of those codes on social forces and DU seeks provide a critique of them and coherent basis to consistently - that means non-arbitrary - apply these social forces. If You are claiming DU is arbitrary in this respect you have to present an argument to that effect not just an assertion. This is especially so as your claim goes against one of the main benefits of DU - which is to deal with arbitrary codes! If you say if fails to achieve this goal or does so worse than alternatives then you need to explain why. Nothing you have said yet or below makes any such case.

RyanCarey wrote: Saying "act only through manipulating others' desires" sounds like deontology to me.

You said that not me. Influence is better than 'manipulate' - which is only one way of influencing - and you makes this strange inclusion of 'only'. Why is this only type of action possible? Very, very odd. DU is addressing desires directly and actions indirectly- as they relate to desires. Now the above considered as a rule is nothing to do with DU. What this has to do with deontology I do not know.

RyanCarey wrote: I don't see why we should bring about consequences only through these kinds of actions.

Hmm. You still are exhibiting a strange misunderstanding of this. Successfully influencing desires will lead to updated intentional actions leading to different and hopefully more desirable results. Consequences of interest here are brought by intentional actions. There is no limit on what those actions are, only on whether they are appropriate or not, DF provides that answer.

RyanCarey wrote: Why not bring about consequences by working to earn money and then donating this money to the poor, for example?

How does DU say one can not do this? This makes no sense, DU is about coherently and consistently using social forces to influence malleable desires to act in ways that increase desire fulfilment. Donating money is one way of doing that - increasing desire fulfilment, there is nothing in DU that stops this or any other type of action and this is a very odd objection to make.

RyanCarey wrote: It seems like desire utilitarians aren't allowed to become vegetarian because it's not praise, condemnation, reward or punishment.

This line is such an odd line and just highlights how difficult for it is for me to comprehend how you have come up with such a strange interpretation of DU. And I sill do not know what that interpretation is but it is certainly not DU. On the one hand you seem to be confused over desire and action and on the other hand, the common feature of every moral system - the use of praise, blame, reward and punishment. Maybe you could explain in as simple terms as I have attempted the system you are criticising and we can then compare and contrast that with DU and see if there is any difference.

RyanCarey wrote:I think the missing piece of this puzzle is going to involve philosophy of the mind. I suspect desire utilitarians hold an unorthodox belief that we cannot control our actions yet we can control our desires. Or something like that. Is this the case?

The opposite DU is based on the most orthodox version of the philosophy of action. Beliefs, desires, intentions, actions from Hume to BDI theory (and intelligent agent theory). Only intentional actions can be influenced ("controlled" is limiting and misleading) and since intentions are formed from beliefs and desires, to change intentional action one has to address beliefs and desires. If you have an unorthodox approach that works better than this, then lets see it.

I haven't been following this thread too closely, but I think I understand Ryan's point here:

faithlessgod wrote:

RyanCarey wrote: Saying "act only through manipulating others' desires" sounds like deontology to me.

You said that not me. Influence is better than 'manipulate' - which is only one way of influencing - and you makes this strange inclusion of 'only'. Why is this only type of action possible? Very, very odd. DU is addressing desires directly and actions indirectly- as they relate to desires. Now the above considered as a rule is nothing to do with DU. What this has to do with deontology I do not know.

So the way I think Ryan sees it (which seems logical to me), is that DU at its core basically says one of four things:

1) Maximise desire fulfilment inasmuch as you can do so by manipulating desires via praise, condemnation, reward or punishment (let's shorten this to MDPCRP).
2) Maximise desire fulfilment by whatever means available, with particular consideration to MDPCRP.
3) Maximise desire fulfilment by whatever means available. These might include MDPCRP.
4) Maximise desire fulfilment by whatever means available. This is only possible via MDPCRP.

---

If you claim 1), I think this is what Ryan is calling deontology. I think that's probably the wrong term unless DU actually proscribes fulfilling desires by other means, but it does seem to leave a gap. What can we say about other actions if our ethical system is silent on them? Surely they must have at least secondary relevance...

In other words, if you're going to claim 1), you might as well claim 2).

---

If you claim 2), though, then there's a question of weighting. Do you try to claim, a) reminscently of Mill, that there's a qualitative difference between maximising desire fulfilment these ways vs other ways, or b) that there's only a quantitative difference?

Re a), a qualitative difference is a very powerful thing - it would mean that the tiniest amount of fulfilment gained/lost by MDPCRP is more significant to DU than any amount of fulfilment gained/lost by other means. Me nudging you and whispering 'wouldn't it be funny to put curry powder in one of those cakes' (manipulating your desires towards doing some harm) would be worse than me wandering around a town gunning people down (just doing harm directly, without manipulating anyone's desires).

I'm guessing you won't claim this. If not, then you're talking about a quantitative difference - b).

So re b) you're claiming i) the value of fulfilment caused by MDPCRP is worth more than the value of exactly the same fulfilment caused by any other means or you're claiming ii) that MDPCRP is simply a more effective method than any other of fulfilling desires.

i) Has much the same problem as a), in a less extreme form. You're saying that of two otherwise identical consequences, we should prefer the one caused by MDPCRP. Given this discrepancy, you're also saying that of two very similar consequences, the one with slightly fewer desires fulfilled will sometimes be preferable to the one with the most desires fulfilled.

Again, I'm going to assume you don't want to claim this. It's not an immediately abhorrent conclusion, but it seems obviously counter-productive.

So DU's claim is ii), then it's an empirical one - we can (theoretically at least) measure the effectiveness of MDPCRP vs any other method, and if we find another method to be more effective, we've falsified DU. Unlike the other claims, this doesn't seem self-defeating, or contrary to the logic that led us to util in the first place.

But it also doesn’t seem very likely to be true - or at least, I can’t see a reason to believe it is until I see some hard research data to prove it. (I also think it’s too vague at the moment to provide much of a research programme - you’d need a very rigorous and exclusive definition of MDPCRP that clearly distinguished it from any other type of action)

But whether it’s true or not, since it’s an empirical claim rather than a normative one, it doesn’t actually distinguish DU from PU - because if MDPCRP does turn out to be the best method of fulfilling desires, PU will say that’s what we should do, too.

In other words, if you’re going to claim a plausible version of 2), you’re effectively claiming 3)

---

Re 3) - well, ok. And they might also include other things. There’s not much else to say...

---

Re 4) - this seems like the only other claim DU might make to distinguish itself from PU (quite possibly there’s an option 5 that I’ve completely failed to imagine, but if so after separating out the other options it should hopefully be easy to define in a short sentence - as with 1-4). A universal claim like this isn’t very helpful claim, though. It’s either true by definition or false. Either way, we don't learn anything from it.

hanks for this Arepo. Lets zoom in on the issue

Arepo wrote:1) Maximise desire fulfilment inasmuch as you can do so by manipulating desires via praise, condemnation, reward or punishment (let's shorten this to MDPCRP).
2) Maximise desire fulfilment by whatever means available, with particular consideration to MDPCRP.
3) Maximise desire fulfilment by whatever means available. These might include MDPCRP.
4) Maximise desire fulfilment by whatever means available. This is only possible via MDPCRP.

Re 4) - this seems like the only other claim DU might make to distinguish itself from PU (quite possibly there’s an option 5 that I’ve completely failed to imagine, but if so after separating out the other options it should hopefully be easy to define in a short sentence - as with 1-4). A universal claim like this isn’t very helpful claim, though. It’s either true by definition or false. Either way, we don't learn anything from it.

MCPCRP means social forces which clearer than that abbreviation. Now
5) Prefer to increase desire fulfilment by any means that do not decrease desire fulfilment.

When these means are the social dimension, it is by definition covered by "social forces" - that is there are no other social actions of any relevance here. And this is the direct domain of morality. When one is evaluating the set of social forces in a society one is examining their moral code - without such social forces morality has no meaning at all, indeed such a society would be amoral (and also likely does not exist) and there is no subject matter to discuss. Hence my puzzle as to what on earth Ryan is going on about.

Now this does not exhaust the means, there are also legal and economic dimensions etc. For completeness and consistency, this ethical analysis is not only applied recursively to those social forces themselves but also to all and any of these other dimensions such as the legal or economic ones. However, now, one is not answering directly the (internal) legal or economic questions but is instead concerned to the degree that there are (external) ethical implications - which is discovered by noting what the resulting economic or legal practices affects are on the social forces!

Arepo wrote:So the way I think Ryan sees it (which seems logical to me), is that DU at its core basically says one of four things:

1) Maximise desire fulfilment inasmuch as you can do so by manipulating desires via praise, condemnation, reward or punishment (let's shorten this to MDPCRP).
2) Maximise desire fulfilment by whatever means available, with particular consideration to MDPCRP.
3) Maximise desire fulfilment by whatever means available. These might include MDPCRP.
4) Maximise desire fulfilment by whatever means available. This is only possible via MDPCRP.

I have been trying to not be over pedantic when someone says something in terms of DU that might be misleading, still one can note my comments over "satisfaction" versus "fulfilment" earlier in this thread or "influence" over "manipulate". Anyway the use of "Maximise desire fulfilment by whatever means available" I want to make clear, if I have not already, is quite misleading. This is not DU but desire fulfilment act utilitarianism which is pretty much what I think you guys mean by Preference Satisfaction. As I said at the beginning of this thread "Morality is about using praise, blame, reward and punishment to encourage desires that tend to fulfil desires and discourage desire that tend to thwart other desires" that ismeans increasing desire fulfilling desires is the method to increasing desire fulfilment overall. Maximising desire fulfilment directly can lead to different and immoral results, I already posted the differences between these two in another thread Preference Satisfaction versus Desire Fulfilment

Hmm, I'm reviving an old discussion here, but it's because I feel I have something really sensible to add.
Thankyou very much for putting the discussion under your magnifying glass Arepo. Faithlessgod, I notice you made yourself a fifth description of DU. Well I'm going to try to sum up what I understand of your position.

There are two main parts:
(a) Ethics is about desires. People praise and condemn others' actions. What doesn't involve social forces shaping desires is not a part of ethics. Actions, for example, are not a part of ethics.
(b) Ends are important. Consequences matter. Specifically, we should maximise the fulfilment of desires and minimise the thwarting of desires.

It follows from a and b that we should desire what fulfils and does not thwart desires.

Does this adequately sum up your position? If so:
you share the point (b) with preference utilitarians
you differ from preference utilitarians on the point (a)

I think that (a) misunderstands the brain. There isn't any point in the brain where sensations are separated from desires and decisions and actions. Desires and commands of action are just the same thing: patterns of neurons firing. I think the position that desires are a part of ethics but acts are not is indefensible because desires and acts are bound together. Whenever you desire something, your neurons have acted in such a way that you desire it. That is, desiring is an action. And action-commands can be created by patterns of activity that involve desire. That is, acts follow desires.


* In Arepo's system, this is a 4.

RyanCarey wrote:Faithlessgod, I notice you made yourself a fifth description of DU. Well I'm going to try to sum up what I understand of your position.

The other four do not describe DU.

RyanCarey wrote:There are two main parts:
(a) Ethics is about desires. People praise and condemn others' actions. What doesn't involve social forces shaping desires is not a part of ethics. Actions, for example, are not a part of ethics.

(b) Ends are important. Consequences matter. Specifically, we should maximise the fulfilment of desires and minimise the thwarting of desires.

It follows from a and b that we should desire what fulfils and does not thwart desires.

Does this adequately sum up your position?

Sorry this again is desire fulfilment act utilitarianism not DU

To expand/answer/correct (a) and (b) point by point
(a)
Ethics is about the study of a range of interpersonal interactions of people, (at least that is what I am addressing).
People use praise and condemnation to change desires (trivially true surely?).
You cannot use reason to change desires (one uses reason to change beliefs and so desires that depend on such beliefs can be modified).
What does not involve the use of social forces is not of interest to me (since all the major issues that I and AFAICS most others are concerned about involve these forces that does not limit this very much).
Actions are trivially part of ethics, as this is the study of actual physical, material interactions (without actions there are no interactions).
(b)
Ends are important but not (a priori at least) more so than means
Consequences matter and can evaluate ends as well as means

RyanCarey wrote:I think that (a) misunderstands the brain. There isn't any point in the brain where sensations are separated from desires and decisions and actions. Desires and commands of action are just the same thing: patterns of neurons firing. I think the position that desires are a part of ethics but acts are not is indefensible because desires and acts are bound together. Whenever you desire something, your neurons have acted in such a way that you desire it. That is, desiring is an action. And action-commands can be created by patterns of activity that involve desire. That is, acts follow desires.

Since I make no argument specifically as italicized the quote above there is nothing to defend. With respect to the bolded part of the quote: A desire is an attitude to make or keep something true. It can be a reason to act not an act itself. Apart from these points there is nothing else to disagree with in this paragraph.

Okay, Faithlessgod, I'll try again:
(a) ethics is the operation of social forces. Desire utilitarianism evaluates desires.
(b) Desire utilitarianism is consequentialist. It compels us to maximise desire fulfilment.

Now, to follow up on this point that desires and actions are ethically the same: As a classical utilitarian, I don't believe in actions above desires or the other way around. I just believe in maximising happiness. It doesn't matter whether positive consequences come about because of people (donation to charity) or by chance (Oxfam stumble upon a giant gold nugget). All that matters is the consequences of the events.

faithlessgod wrote:A desire is an attitude to make or keep something true. It can be a reason to act not an act itself

Fine, you may say that a desire is an attitude. But what is an attitude? English grammar forbids us from saying "Dan is doing a positive attitude". But it is undeniable that something is being done to make Dan's attitude positive. So if you prefer to say that this was an act of Dan's neurons, by all means do so! Dan's neurons acted in a way that caused him to be happy and this caused fulfilment of others' desires! If you ban Dan's acts from ethics, you have to ban his neurons' acts too. It's the same person. So you have to take his desires off the ethical playing field.

Hey Ryan, no you still have not grokked this but we are progressing positively.

Firs I think I have collected enough data to make what I think is an interesting observation, one that I have just discovered or noticed. That is that conversations here and in other forums are an interesting contrast with most of my face to face ones - mostly people who are not particularly interested in moral theory, if at all, but with whom I have discussed this topic. The contrast is that here and in other forums I pretty all the time struggle to overcome misunderstandings of DU and not much else, whereas with my face to face buddies and acquaintances - regardless of their socio-economic, national, political and educational backgrounds (and these are very varied), their interests and whether we agree on anything else, they have virtually no difficulty at all in understanding DU! That does not mean they agree with it, many do not, but whist I have had many external and internal critiques of DU from a wide variety of face to face conversations, I pretty much never have to say "no you are misunderstanding DU". I find this interesting and I wonder if anyone else here has seen any similar type of pattern for arguing for their versions of utilitarianism?

Anyway back to the topic at hand:

RyanCarey wrote:Okay, Faithlessgod, I'll try again:
(a) ethics is the operation of social forces. Desire utilitarianism evaluates desires.
(b) Desire utilitarianism is consequentialist. It compels us to maximise desire fulfilment.

And I will respond again
(a) Morality is to do with the operation of social forces to resolve issues between people as opposed to, say, the law which is to do with certain material forces and practices. Ethics here is the study of morality and the law (jurisprudence). Desire utilitarianism's primary evaluation focus is on desires, rather than rules, actions or decision procedures - these are evaluated in reference to desires. The reason for this is this is what social forces, in fact, directly address already, they are applied to influence malleable desires in all aspects of life not just moral issues.
(b) Desire utilitarianism is consequentialist, it seeks to promote desire fulfilment. It emphatically does not do this by maximising desire fulfilment.

Sorry but how many times do I have to make this simple point? And in how many ways here? "It compels us to maximise desire fulfilment" displays a such a fundamental misunderstanding as to render useless any arguments and critiques (external or internal) that labour under this misconception. Now until you (and others here) understand this - you do not have to agree with it of course - we are not talking about DU.

I presented my preamble above because I never have any difficulty explaining this to people who have not studied morality, they find this very easy to understand, and still do, if, as a result of our conversations, they go off and investigate many other moral approaches. Even then, they find this both simple and easy to understand - indeed a common criticism I have from them is that DU is too simple and surely it must be more complex as they understand other systems - that is how can people have spent so much time and effort on other systems if it is that simple( a poor argument IMHO)!? Be that as it may until we can resolve this there is not much point answering the rest of this post.

So what is that you do not understand about DU not maximising desire fulfilment?

RyanCarey wrote:Hmm, I'm reviving an old discussion here, but it's because I feel I have something really sensible to add.

I don't know about you, but I've never had a problem with thread necromancy except in it's most monosyllabic form (eg replying after a year to say 'yeah' or the like)

Nothing to add at this stage, I haven't read the replies properly yet...