Desirism Book - Part 0004 - Ultimate Ends

We have, in our imaginary world, a person with the name of Alph with a single desire - a desire to gather stones. This desire, expressed in terms of a propositional attitude, is a "desire that I am gathering stones".

The desire provides Alph with a motivating reason to gather stones - to make or keep true the proposition "I am gathering stones". If Alph should be asked, "Why are you gathering stones?" Alph's desire would be, "Because I want to." In this imaginary world as so far constructed there is no other reason to gather stone - no other reason exists.

One of the most widely held views today is that the ultimate end of human action is happiness. This is the only thing that is or can be an end in itself - and everything else is a means to this end if it has any value at all.

This would be the case if all humans had only one desire - a desire to be happy (or, to put it in the terms of a propositional attitude, a 'desire that I be happy'). This, then, would be a desire that provides the agent with a motivating reason to make or keep true the proposition, "I am happy". Everything else is just a means to this end.

There is no reason to believe that the proposition, "I am happy" is or can be the sole proposition capable of being the object of a desire. In fact, there is no reason to set any limits on what can be the object of a desire.

Recall that beliefs are also propositional attitudes. A person who believes, "I am happy" has the attitude that the proposition "I am happy" is true. There is no limit to the propositions that can be believed. A person can believe, "I am Napoleon Bonaparte", or that water is made up of H2O, or that humans are the product of a long history of change brought about by random mutations to DNA combined with a process of natural selection.

There is no reason to hold that the ultimate objects of desire cannot be just as broad. Of course, a person can have a desire to be happy (a "desire that I am happy") - and all or almost all of us have this desire. Yet, there is no reason to rule out the possibility that an agent can also have a desire to gather stones. A person can have a desire to be having sex, or a desire to eat, or a desire not to be in pain, that they desire directly independent of their effect on happiness.

Nor is it the case that a desire must necessarily take the self as an object. One can desire that their children are happy, or desire that no person go hungry. A person can have an aversion to any person entering into a sexual relationship with somebody of the same gender (a desire that no person engage in homosexual activities) or a desire that a particular wilderness be preserved even though no person will experience that wilderness.

I will come to argue that morality depends heavily on the diversity of desires. Morality will be concerned primarily with promoting or inhibiting certain desires. It will be involved in creating in people a desire to repay debts, and aversions to telling lies. Morality will involve promoting the desire that no person go hungry and a desire to accurately distinguish fact from fiction.

In fact, unless somebody brings reason to the contrary, I suspect that the set of propositions that can become the object of a desire is no more limited than the set of what can become the object of a belief. Anything that can be believed can be desired. If a person can adopt the attitude that P is true, then a person can adopt the attitude that P be made or kept true.

In our hypothetical universe, at this point, we have one person with one desire - a desire to gather stones. In this universe, the state in which "I am gathering stones" is true is the end of all intentional actions. It is the one sole state that all beings in this universe - which, importantly, consists of Alph alone - aim. It is not happiness, or eudaimonea, or pleasure and the absence of pain, it is "I (Alph) am gathering stones" - and nothing else. And the reason it is "I (Alph) am gathering stones" is because Alph - the only intentional agent that exists - has a desire to gather stones.