{"id":6284,"date":"2013-08-22T22:05:49","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T06:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=6284"},"modified":"2025-03-04T02:03:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T10:03:46","slug":"deep-thoughts-about-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=6284","title":{"rendered":"Deep Thoughts about \u2026 What?<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I started reading Rethinking the Western Understanding of the Self<\/cite> by Ulrich Steinvorth, and in its first chapter came upon this passage<\/p>

As subjects we desire satisfaction of our desires<\/u>; as selves we strive for the enactment of reason and free will.<\/blockquote>

(Underscore mine.) It is not auspicious to find a claim of this sort early in the work.<\/p>

To say that something desires the satisfaction of its individual<\/em> desires is no more than to say that it desires what it desires; nothing fails to do this, as things without desire present us with the trivial case of a null set.<\/p>

The pursuit of satisfaction of each individual desire does not logically entail global satiation of desires (bliss<\/span>) unless those desires are themselves somehow bounded<\/em>. It's not clear what Steinvorth means by desire<\/q> (a point that I will labor), but let's assume that he means something along the lines of uncontemplated cravings<\/span> and the things that are craved, as for sensual pleasures or for hoards of material goods. I don't see that they're naturally bounded. I don't see that most people make a presumption, one way or another, about whether such cravings are bounded. The impulse to bound them by attaining \u1f00\u03c0\u03ac\u03b8\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1<\/span> or nirvana seems far from universal to me (and anyway is probably not an expression of what Steinvorth calls subject<\/q>, but of what he calls self<\/q>).<\/p>

It's evident that he wants to distinguish desire<\/q> as a verb from one more generally meaning to have a directed psychological impulse<\/span>, and as a noun from one more generally meaning objective<\/span>; but nowhere prior has Steinvorth given a definition of desire<\/q>, as noun or as verb; the remainder of the chapter and use of the index indicate that he's not going to do it at all. I see declarations such as X<\/var> desires the satisfaction of X<\/var>'s desires<\/q> as the unconscious attempt to fill the need for a definition with a logically unassailable tautology. (Simply say X<\/var> desires<\/q> and the need for definition is more apparent.) The problem is that the latter cannot do the work of the former, and the tautology is vacuous.<\/p>

It's further evident from the first chapter that Steinvorth wants to distinguish happiness<\/q> from a noun simply meaning an emotional sense of attaining or of having attained one's objectives<\/span>; and to distinguish utility<\/q> from a noun simply meaning usefulness<\/span>. One can tell that he means to equate or approximate what he means by happiness<\/q> with what he means by utility<\/q>. But nowhere in the first chapter does he actually provide more positive definitions. He does insist that if we consider such things as the glory of suffering<\/q> to be a form of happiness<\/q> then the idea of happiness becomes inflated and loses its meaning<\/q>, but I want to know what meaning it would lose<\/em>. Again using the index, it doesn't seem that he bothered with providing any of these definitions anywhere else in the book.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I started reading Rethinking the Western Understanding of the Self by Ulrich Steinvorth, and in its first chapter came upon this passage As subjects we desire satisfaction of our desires; as selves we strive for the enactment of reason and free will. (Underscore mine.) It is not auspicious to find a claim of this sort […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,117,720,318,9,175,4],"tags":[549,1201,1200,1202],"class_list":["post-6284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-communication","category-epistemology","category-ethics-philosophy","category-ideology-philosophy","category-philosophy","category-public","tag-reviews","tag-self","tag-ulrich-steinvorth","tag-western-civilization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6284"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12704,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6284\/revisions\/12704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}