• Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.7k
    I wanted to respond to this post by Joshs in this thread a bit more fully without derailing it:

    Is this control over desire or just being at the mercy of one desire over another? Since you mentioned Nietzsche, I thought I’d quote him on the issue of will and desire:

    [The fact] that one desires to combat the vehemence of a drive at all, however, does not stand within our own power; nor does the choice of any particular method; nor does the success or failure of this method. What is clearly the case is that in this entire procedure our intellect is only the blind instrument of another drive which is a rival of the drive whose vehemence is tormenting us . . . While “we” believe we are complaining about the vehemence of a drive, at bottom it is one drive which is complaining about the other; that is to say: for us to become aware that we are suffering from the vehemence [or violence] of a drive presupposes the existence of another equally vehement or even more vehement drive, and that a struggle is in prospect in which our intellect is going to have to take sides.

    There is no struggle of reason against the drives; what we call “reason” is nothing more than a certain “system of relations between various passions,” a certain ordering of the drives.

    This is certainly a popular position. It seems to be somewhat Sam Harris' position in The Moral Landscape when he argues that morality and values can be objectively understood and grounded in science rather than relying solely on religious or subjective beliefs. The core idea being that "human well-being (desires)" should be the benchmark for evaluating moral principles, and that scientific inquiry can help identify objective moral truths. Skinner has a similar position.

    In this, all three also seem close to Hume, who argued that, “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them [by figuring out how to get what our appetites want.]"

    I like parts of Harris' position. I think wellbeing can be objectively measured, even if instrumentalizing it is difficult. At the same time, I think these views miss something important. I think this Plato quote sums up what is missing quite nicely.

    Nobody is satisfied to acquire things that are merely believed to be good . . . but everyone wants the things that really are good and disdains mere belief here.

    Plato, Republic 505d

    That is, we want what is really good, what is really true, not mere incorrect belief that makes us happy. And it seems to me that Harris would have to accept such a position because his entire argument against religion and philosophy is based on a similar argument. "Religion and philosophy do not give us the real truth, and thus they do not achieve the real good. So, we should not use them as a guiding light, but use science instead." That is, Harris does not seem to suggest that "we should follow religion and superstition if we think doing so will maximize our well-being," there is rather a "truth of the matter," that settles the matter. Further, his position re openness to reformulations of "the good" based on the findings of science suggests that we should always strive for the "truth of the matter" and that this determines what is best for us.

    Likewise, Nietzsche's whole revaluation of all values collapses into petty hedonism if we know or suspect some sort of higher good -- a good we ourselves recognize or fear we fail to recognize -- but then continue on in our current mode of being "because it's easier" or "good enough." This is exactly the sort of behavior Nietzsche spends a lot of time attacking.

    Nietzche's overman becomes somewhat pathetic if Nietzsche is wrong about some of his key claims. But then it seems that reason might overturn all desire, making it somewhat different from desire, and no mere "slave."

    Re Plato's quote, we might consider Nozick's "Experience Machine."

    Suppose there were an Experience Machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain.

    While you were hooked into the machine you wouldn't know the experiences you believed you were having weren't real, you'd think they were all actually occurring.

    Just think, you could pre-programme the machine so you would end up really thinking you looked like a Hollywood star, had won the Nobel Prize for physics, enjoyed a fulfilling marriage, scored the victorious goal in the World Cup final and lived in a penthouse overlooking the sea. Would you plug into such a machine?

    Would we plug into the machine?

    Tough question. A common concern I've heard here is that, if you plug into the machine, all the people you know and care for miss out on you. Thus, choosing the machine is precluded because of what it does to others. This could be fixed by supposing that, per your choice, everyone goes into the machine.

    But still, we might have our doubts. Do we really think these neurologists can actually give us the highest good? Is it possible that the nature of the machine itself reveals that it does not lead to the highest good? What if the highest good necessarily comes from doing things out in the world? What if the highest good comes from addressing spiritual issues that require pain and suffering? Perhaps the highest good is being, in important ways, free from desire and instinct, and the Machine merely enthralls us to them all the more?

    People can certainly deny that there is any such higher good, and that, on the evidence, it makes sense to plug in. However, it seems impossible to "prove" that plugging in would be the greatest good. We always appear to have ample room to question this. For example, we can question if a life plugged into the machine might deny us the opportunity to exercise meaningful freedom and to develop in such a way that we are free (there are many other objections).It might be that it is not the "being in the machine part" that is the problem, but the "being in a world designed to satisfy your desires" part that makes us question it. Or it might be that we don't want to be in the machine because it would bar us from ever discovering a higher good if one exists.

    Plato's point is simply this:if we thought the good was not the sort of thing the Experience Machine could achieve or maximize, then we wouldn't want to choose the machine no matter how much we agreed that it might make us happier. This doesn't preclude that we might choose the machine. The point is that, if we think the machine doesn't reach the "true good," perhaps because it does not allow us to be "self-determining," or "free," (the reason doesn't really matter), we will at the very least have a second order desire "not to want to choose the machine." We will hope that we don't choose it because we want the higher good.


    Is Plato simply begging the question here? Of course we choose the thing we think is "better" over the thing we think is worse, right?

    I'm not sure if this is turns out to be straightforward question begging. Many a drunkard sees living sober as better, but does not choose sobriety. Many an adulterer agrees that not cheating would be better. Many a man who is shamed by cowardice wishes they chose courage. The point is about higher order desire, and a drive towards truth. Thus, it seems to me that Plato is getting at something important here. We want to know the truth of the good because we will prefer it because it is the truth. However, we may not always be free to choose that good.

    And this brings me back to the ol' role of knowledge and freedom in morality. To do the right thing, we have to know how to causally effect the world such that our actions bring about the states of affairs we desire. Complex questions of policy, medical treatment, etc. all require knowledge and discernment. At the same time, we can only do the good if we are free to do it. And so freedom is also inately tied to moral action (e.g., we might know something is wrong, but do it anyway because we are slaves to our desires).

    Reason is obviously crucial to promoting both knowledge and freedom. And, because we can always question more, always go beyond our initial beliefs and desires, it doesn't seem to me that reason can be merely another desire. Doubt is not a desire. Further, reason is able to apprehend the abstract ideal of "the best" and search for it. In this, it seeks to transcend what it currently is and become more in an outwards search. This is, in important ways, an overcoming of desire, not simply a form of it. It is true that it is a desire for truth, but it's a desire grounded in what is beyond us, in a way other desires are not.
  • Fooloso4
    6k
    Reason is able to apprehend the abstract ideal of "the best" and search for it. In this, it seeks to transcend what it currently is and become more in an outwards search.Count Timothy von Icarus

    This is the desire of reason.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.7k


    Right, I don't think I had saved my edit yet before you posted. It is, in ways, similar to a desire. But for other desires, we desire what we do because of what we are and what we know. This desire to truth is a desire that seeks to go beyond what we are and what we know, a desire, in ways, to transcend the self. The desire for knowledge can have the effect of radically reshaping and reordering all our desires, particularly our second order desires.

    This isn't true of all desire towards knowledge. Reason can be a slave to the passions, and often is. I might desire to know something to win an argument and feel vindicated, or desire knowledge so I can fix my car and go pick up chicken wings I am craving. But what Plato is talking about is the desire towards truth/the good because of what it is, and it's this desire that is transcendent.
  • unenlightened
    9.2k
    Suppose there were an Experience Machine that would give you any experience you desired.

    Something that might help to clarify matters is to analyse somewhat the nature of desire.

    one desires to combat the vehemence of a drive at all, however, does not stand within our own power; nor does the choice of any particular method; nor does the success or failure of this method

    What is the source of this force or drive? If I can dismiss the teleology of the desirable thing exerting a causal force backwards in time, then the source can only be an image that one forms in the mind. I imagine the happy release of having a drink, and the imaginary beer induces my action to accomplish it in fact.

    So one is driven by imagination, or by imaginary things. One can immediately see the shortcomings of the experience machine, which are the limitations of the imagination. Alas my imagination could never come up with a Bach fugue, or a Picasso, or a fine oak tree, or any of the wonders of my life, so a world limited to my desires would be a feeble shadow of the real world that consistently exceeds anything I could desire. So no experience machine for me, thanks.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.7k


    So one is driven by imagination, or by imaginary things. One can immediately see the shortcomings of the experience machine, which are the limitations of the imagination. Alas my imagination could never come up with a Bach fugue, or a Picasso, or a fine oak tree, or any of the wonders of my life, so a world limited to my desires would be a feeble shadow of the real world that consistently exceeds anything I could desire. So no experience machine for me, thanks.

    :up: I really like that. Gets at the idea of going beyond the self better than I could phrase it too. The is a neat way in which interaction with things we could never imagine makes us free to imagine new things as well. A sort of "expanding horizon" that comes with experience and knowledge.
  • Joshs
    5.6k


    This is certainly a popular position. It seems to be somewhat Sam Harris' position in The Moral Landscape when he argues that morality and values can be objectively understood and grounded in science rather than relying solely on religious or subjective beliefs. The core idea being that "human well-being (desires)" should be the benchmark for evaluating moral principles, and that scientific inquiry can help identify objective moral truths. Skinner has a similar positionCount Timothy von Icarus

    This is not Nietzsche’s position, though. Scientific inquiry involves the establishment of a discursively normative value system, a regional ontology, which produces the criteria for empirical ‘ oughts’ (what is valid or invalid, true or false, within a particular paradigmatic configuration). What does it mean to ground values in a system (science) whose very intelligibility is based on those values?

    In this, all three also seem close to Hume, who argued that, “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them [by figuring out how to get what our appetites want.]"Count Timothy von Icarus

    When Nietzsche talks about drives, affects and values, what he has in mind is not ‘blind’ passion alien to reason, but configurative patterns that prescribe ways of anticipatively interacting with the world. For Nietzsche, what our drives want is to be able to assimilate the world according to the schematics they lay out. Reason and logic are developments of this schematics. What is reasonable is what is relevant, and what is relevant is what matters, an affective criterion.

    Nietzsche's whole revaluation of all values collapses into petty hedonism if we know or suspect some sort of higher good -- a good we ourselves recognize or fear we fail to recognize -- but then continue on in our current mode of being "because it's easier" or "good enough." This is exactly the sort of behavior Nietzsche spends a lot of time attackingCount Timothy von Icarus

    The aim of the revaluation of all values is not to settle on some final or ultimate value system ( a higher good) but to stay in tune with the act of value posting itself as a means of not getting stuck in any particular value system. One could say that the ‘highest good’ is the continual movement from one normative conception of the good to another. Notice that this highest good is devoid of value content in itself.

    Would we plug into the machine?

    Tough question. A common concern I've heard here is that, if you plug into the machine, all the people you know and care for miss out on you. Thus, choosing the machine is precluded because of what it does to others. This could be fixed by supposing that, per your choice, everyone goes into the machine.
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    Machines don’t produce value, they are devoid of meaning in themselves. What they achieve is only understandable by reference to meaningful desires and purposes that must be accessed independently of the meaninglessly calculative functioning of the machine in itself.

    Reason is obviously crucial to promoting both knowledge and freedom. And, because we can always question more, always go beyond our initial beliefs and desires, it doesn't seem to me that reason can be merely another desire. Doubt is not a desire. Further, reason is able to apprehend the abstract ideal of "the best" and search for it. In this, it seeks to transcend what it currently is and become more in an outwards search. This is, in important ways, an overcoming of desire, not simply a form of it. It is true that it is a desire for truth, but it's a desire grounded in what is beyond us, in a way other desires are notCount Timothy von Icarus

    Doubt derives its intelligibility from within a system
    of desire-values. The kind of reason-based questioning you’re advocating doesn’t go beyond a value system, it is in service of one. We must not only go beyond our previous beliefs, but also beyond the norms within those beliefs have their sense as true or false, certain or doubtful. In short we must change the way things matter to us.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.7k


    Sorry, I didn't mean to imply the Sam Harris, Hume, and Nietzsche all advance the same moral system. Obviously, they are quite different. I simply mean to point out that in Hume and Nietzsche, and in the naturalist position (Harris, Skinner, etc.) there is the same idea that "reason is a passion," or is rightly a "slave of the passions." They are very dissimilar otherwise. Nietzsche is pretty clear on his attitude towards scientific views of morality in the opening of BG&E, and it isn't positive.

    The aim of the revaluation of all values is not to settle on some final or ultimate value system ( a higher good) but to stay in tune with the act of value posting itself as a means of not getting stuck in any particular value system. One could say that the ‘highest good’ is the continual movement from one normative conception of the good to another. Notice that this highest good is devoid of value content in itself.

    Right, because there is no such highest good for Nietzsche; he accepts that as a truth. But my point was that, if Nietzsche had lived longer, and did indeed come to think he had found a higher good, he could no longer support his position. He'd have to disown a good deal of his philosophy. This is where it ties into Plato's point in the Republic.

    That is, even if his system made him really happy, if reason then convinces him that it wasn't true, that there was indeed a higher good he had missed, then he'd want the higher good. He might feel conflicted about it, many philosophers have felt conflicted about having to abandon cherished positions, but there is a powerful way in which reason is able to bowl over and reorder all our desires.

    A good example might be the person who loses their faith. Their highest goal was previously to please God. They organized their life around this, spending hours in prayer each day. And yet they no longer believe in God and so no longer think "pleasing God" is truly a good. Now, no matter how much all their other desires might want to lead them back into a "fool's paradise," here they are, in the crisis of faith.


    The rest wasn't particularly relevant to Nietzsche in particular, just the idea of "reason as a desire"; I may not have made that clear.

    Machines don’t produce value, they are devoid of meaning in themselves. What they achieve is only understandable by reference to meaningful desires and purposes that must be accessed independently of the meaninglessly calculative functioning of the machine in itself.

    I wasn't totally sure what this has to do with the post. The machine is designed to fulfill desires. It doesn't need to produce values independently. It's value to us is that we can plug into it and be happy. But even if we are convinced that will fulfill all of our desires, reason might still tell us "no, it's wrong to do that."
  • Joshs
    5.6k
    That is, even if his system made him really happy, if reason then convinces him that it wasn't true, that there was indeed a higher good he had missed, then he'd want the higher good. He might feel conflicted about it, many philosophers have felt conflicted about having to abandon cherished positions, but there is a powerful way in which reason is able to bowl over and reorder all our desires.

    A good example might be the person who loses their faith. Their highest goal was previously to please God. They organized their life around this, spending hours in prayer each day. And yet they no longer believe in God and so no longer think "pleasing God" is truly a good. Now, no matter how much all their other desires might want to lead them back into a "fool's paradise," here they are, in the crisis of faith.
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    What’s important to point out here is the distinction between determining that one’s previous belief is not true, and happening upon a new value system. In the former case, one goes from belief to doubt within the same value system. In the latter case, one can continue to hold one’s previous belief to be true within the context of the old value system that makes it intelligible. But now one has constructed a new value system that offers a new compass of belief and doubt within a new arrangement of intelligibility that is not simply more true than the previously believed truth. Rather , it is akin to changing the subject, transforming how the phenomena matter to one. It can’t simply be said that the new system is ‘better’ than the previous, as if one could use the same criteria of relevance and ‘goodness’ as the old system to compare it to the new one. This doesnt mean that the old and new frameworks are utterly incommensurable. One could argue that both are true, both offer valid and useful ways of going on in the world, but that one prefer one over the other on the basis of aesthetic considerations. or that the old model did its job so effectively that its technologies put one into different environmental circumstances that require a new model to navigate. The point is that the criteria of goodness and truth change as a result of the way that each value system alters our relationship with our world. The fact that knowledge is the construction of a biological niche means that we are always in the process of reevaluating what is at stake and at issue in conceptual normativity, which is both different and more fundamental than issues of belief and doubt.
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.