At no time have I said what a person's desires are. I don't know - though I did say that I thought that a primary desire would be survival. Seems reasonable doesn't it? Without survival, there are no more desires.
I think some people are more skilled than others at deducing from his actions what a person desires, but that is outside the scope of the both assumption.
Which is that Man's desires are unlimited.
So, your first two paragraphs may be interesting, but they do not affect the first Assumption. And you have in no way shown a need to abandon the first "Assumption" as an axiom and treat it as a corollary to the second.
In fact, the second is a way better to achieve the first. If you satisfy your desires with less exertion, you will be able to satisfy more of them - which is what you want.
Your next paragraph indicates you and your neighbor have different desires. Nothing wrong with that. However, I would suggest that each of you, no matter what course you may take will seek to satisfy your desires with the least exertion.
You will not blunt your axe so it will be harder to cut the wood. On the contrary, you will probably sharpen it to save yourself exertion.
As for your neighbor, he has taken a different turn. He is watching TV.
If you want to watch TV rather than split wood, I suppose you will follow a path similar to your neighbors'. Or, perhaps your desire is not o split wood - even though you are doing it. Maybe you want big muscles and this is the easiest path to get them. If it isn't the easiest path and you find one which will get you the muscles with less exertion - you'll take it.
The operating word of the second Assumption is "seek". You may not yet have found the best way - but you will seek it. If someone says do it this way and it will be completed in 2 days rather than 3 - would you change your method to save a day?
Would you change?
I would expect you to change to save yourself exertion. But, you may have desires I don't know. A problem arises when we know what we would do and therefore expect others to do they same as us. That doesn't happen.
You attacked me at the end of your note. Perhaps you shouldn't have. I fear you still are wounded from when I suggested you don't know what ad hoc meant.
Well I was kidding. I should actually have looked around for some umbrage to take.
For you took the careful work of a century or two and dismissed it as " ad hoc generalizations of the emergent properties of the aggregate".
In other words, you dismissed a great deal of thoughtful work as "improvised or impromptu". So, I suggested you didn't know the meaning of ad hoc.
You didn't like that, and grabbed the umbrage I missed. You also suggested I am scornful, which indicates "extreme contempt".
Would I spend hours of writing if I was contemptuous of the Future Workers. They are a great lot and I think we all enjoy the thrust and parry of debate and discussion.
Brian said 'This is fun".
It is!
Harry
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Mike wrote:
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/
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Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
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