Harry expostulated:
> Why is desire ambiguous? The word was chosen carefully and it isn't
> difficult to check out. I like "The feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied
> state". Desire is stronger than want, which is often used by economists.
>
> I'll repeat. Why is desire ambiguous?
Desire is an internal state of mind. It is purely cognitive and
private. Your mindfulness of your "unsatisfied states" is itself a
state of the same kind. You have no way to know mine or confirm its
existence save by projection, the same kind of projection that we all
use when we surmise in others conscious states similar to those we
experience ourselves.
Our desires are not accessible to external observation, to scientific
scrutiny. How shall we treat any statement as an hypothesis subject
to proof or disproof or even to scrutiny, if it is about a thing -- a
state or phenomenon -- that is not subject to observation?
Well, perhaps we may say that we can infer desires from the behavior
of those subsequently alleged to have experienced them. In that case
we will have to abandon your first "Assumption" as an axiom and treat
it as a corollary to the second. I desire to have a warm house and so
does my neighbor. But I'm out splitting wood while he has finished up
the wage work needed to pay for his oil and has his feet up, watching
television. I'm willingly expending rather more effort to heat my
house than he is. How do we get out of this? Only by inferring that
it must be the case, our protestations to the contrary
notwithstanding, that my desire is different from his, that his is to
heat his house plus X while mine is to heat my house plus Y, for there
is in fact nothing to prevent me from installing oil or gas heat.
But if we use this behavioral methodology to infer desires, the second
"Assumption" can never be evaluated. We have no way to evaluate
whether or not a subject is seeking to satisfy a desire with the least
effort because we can only infer his desire from efforts exerted. If,
in two cases, efforts differ -- or more precisely, if the degrees of
effort sought appear to differ -- then the desires must be inferred to
differ.
"Desire" is ambiguous because, for each of us, our notion of what it
is depends entirely on our own subjective feelings and our
suppositions about similar feeling in others. It is one of those
words, like "love", that is handy, even essential, for conversation
but can never reasonably be defined. At best, we can characterize
such things as desire and love by classifying a number of candidate
personal, described or ascribed experiences as being or not being love
(or desire) and then reflecting on the consequences of that exercise.
That's a good basis for discussion -- for qualitative study -- but not
for hypotheses upon which to base a scientific theory.
Your two "Assumptions" are stimulating and possibly useful rhetoric
but they are a semantic can of worms, as is:
"There's nothing like a good cigar"
> ...I don't smoke. Try another.
The fact that you don't smoke makes no ripple on the surface of the
popular assertion about cigars. There *is nothing* like a good
cigar, whether or not you have ever smoked one. But the popular
assertion isn't germane to a scientific approach to tobacco-related
questions of health, agriculture or even marketing.
Harry, I don't object to your holding your "Assumptions" to be
self-evident truth or erecting your own intellectual edifice upon
them. I confess that it does annoy me intemperately that you
introject them as unassailable Truths and then address those of us who
demur in a tone variously condescending, patiently pedantic or
scornful.
I believe several on-topic FW posts have just arrived that I haven't
read yet. Lets go on to them.
- Mike
---
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/
