Three strengths of desire

Plausibly, having satisfied desires contributes to my well-being and having unsatisfied desires contributes to my ill-being, at least in the case of rational desires. But there are infinitely many things that I’d like to know and only finitely many that I do know, and my desire here is rational. So my desire and knowledge state contributes infinite misery to me. But it does not. So something’s gone wrong.

That’s too quick. Maybe the things that I know are things that I more strongly desire to know than the things that I don’t know, to such a degree that the contribution to my well-being from the finite number of things I know outweighs the contribution to my ill-being from the infinite number of things I don’t know. In my case, I think this objection holds, since I take myself to know the central truths of the Christian faith, and I take that to make me know things that I most want to know: who I am, what I should do, what the point of my life is, etc. And this may well outweigh the infinitely many things that I don’t know.

Yes, but I can tweak the argument. Consider some area of my knowledge. Perhaps my knowledge of noncommutative geometry. There is way more that I don’t know than that I know, and I can’t say that the things that I do know are ones that I desire so much more strongly to know than the ones I don’t know so as to balance them out. But I don’t think I am made more miserable by my desire and knowledge state with respect to noncommutative geometry. If I neither knew anything nor cared to know anything about noncommutative geometry, I wouldn’t be any better off.

Thinking about this suggests there are three different strengths in a desire:

1. S_p: preferential strength, determined by which things one is inclined to choose over which.

2. S_h: happiness strength, determined by how happy having the desire fulfilled makes one.

3. S_m: misery strength, determined by how miserable having the desire unfulfilled makes one.

It is natural to hypothesize that (a) the contribution to well-being is S_h when the desire is fulfilled and −S_m when it is unfulfilled, and (b) in a rational agent, S_p = S_h + S_m. As a result of (b), one can have the same preferential strength, but differently divided between the happiness and misery strengths. For instance, there may be a degree of pain such that the preferential strength of my desire not to have that pain equals the preferential strength of my desire to know whether the Goldbach Conjecture is true. I would be indifferent whether to avoid the pain or learn whether the Goldbach Conjecture is true. But they are differently divided: in the pain case S_m >> S_h and in the Goldbach case S_m << S_h.

There might be some desires where S_m = 0. In those cases we think “It would be nice…” For instance, I might have a desire that some celebrity be my friend. Here, S_m = 0: I am in no way made miserable by having that desire be unfulfilled, although the desire might have significant preferential strength—there might be significant goods I would be willing trade for that friendship. On the other hand, when I desire that a colleague be my friend, quite likely S_m >> 0: I would pine if the friendship weren’t there.

(We might think a hedonist has a story about all this: S_h measures how pleasant it is to have the desire fulfilled and S_m measures how painful the unfulfilled desire is. But that story is mistaken. For instance, consider my desire that people not say bad things behind my back in such a way that I never find out. Here, S_m >> 0, but there is no pain in having the desire unfulfilled, since when it’s unfulfilled I don’t know about it.)

God, love and creation

Consider this argument (inspired by a comment Dan Johnson made on this post):

1. God does everything out of love.
2. God creates Francis.
3. If God creates Francis out of love, he creates Francis out of self-love, out of love for Francis, or out of love for someone or something other than God or Francis.
4. God does not create Francis out of self-love.
5. God does not create Francis out of love for Francis.
6. God does not create Francis out of love for anyone or anything other than himself or Francis.
7. So, God does not create Francis out of love.
8. Contradiction!

Premise (4) is justified by the idea that our existence doesn't benefit the infinite, self-sufficient, transcendent and triune God. Premise (6), and to some degree (4) as well, is justified by Kantian thoughts about how Francis is an end in himself.

Premise (5), on the other hand, comes from the thought that if God creates Francis out of love for Francis, then God's love for Francis is explanatorily prior to his decision to create Francis. But insofar as God is loving Francis, God must have "already" (in the explanatory order) decided to create him, and so he can't be basing his decision to create on his love for Francis.

I am not confident about (4). God's extended, non-intrinsic, well-being (the kind of well-being that is constituted by the flourishing of our friends or the success of our projects) may be promoted by creating Francis, and because God is God, Kantian worries about Francis existing for God's sake are inappropriate.

But one might also question (1). When I bestow goods on my kids, that they are my kids, that they are in the image of God and that the goods are good yield one or two sufficient reasons to bestow the good. That I love my kids, while true, is a fact about me. That fact may give me additional reason to bestow goods on them, but that additional reason doesn't seem to me to be something that should be in the forefront of my mind. Love is more focused on the beloved than on one's own status as a love. Moreover, when I bestow the goods on my kids because they are my kids, because they are in the image of God, and because the goods are good, I act lovingly. My act of will is partly constitutive of my love for them.

Likewise, then, we can say that when God creates Francis, he does not have to do that because he loves Francis. Instead, God's creation of Francis is partly constitutive of that love. Thus, we have reason to revise (1) to:

9. Everything that God does, God does either out of love or it is partly constitutive of love.

We can now ask the interesting question: Can we procreate not out of love for the child, but in a way partly constitutive of love for that child? Notice a difference between us and God. While God's creation is essentially efficacious, our procreation is very chancy—indeed, most cases where people intend to procreate, they do not actually succeed (then). Moreover, our procreation is not tied to one person: it might be Francis who will result, but it might be someone else. So there will be worlds where Francis's parents do the same as they did in our world, but someone other than Francis comes about or even no one comes about. In those other worlds, they don't love Francis, since there is no Francis to love, and it doesn't even seem right to say that their act is partly consitutive of love for Francis (not just because it is not clear whether one can partly constitute something that doesn't obtain).

I suppose it could be the case, however, that it is a contingent matter that this particular procreative act is partly constitutive of love for Francis—in some worlds it's not partly constitutive of love for any child (maybe it's partly constitutive of love of spouse and love of God), and in others it's partly constitutive of love for another child. So, yes, perhaps the same thing can be said in our case as in God's case, with the difference that the divine creative act is essentially constitutive of love.

In an earlier post, I argued for a paradox in regard to human reproduction. Maybe the above considerations help? Maybe a couple can intentionally procreate in order to perform an act constitutive of love for a child? But I don't think that helps with the argument in that post, since performing an act constitutive of love for a child is either seen as good for the child, in which case premise 2 of that argument covers the case, or it does not (probably, it's seen as good for the couple), in which case premise 1 of that argument covers the case.

By the same token, saying that God's creative act is partly constitutive of God's love for the creature doesn't answer the question of why God creates the creature. I still think the answer that he does so for the good of the creature, which I give in the aforementioned post, can be defended. As the Catechism says, we are created to know and love God. And that's good for us.

Reasons of marriage

Suppose we take seriously the idea that when a couple marries, an entity with moral standing—the married couple—comes into existence. Then there might be cases where an action is good for the spouses but bad for the married couple, and the fact that it is bad for the married couple could provide a strong moral reason to refrain from an action even if the action is good for the spouses.

That said, I don't accept an ontology on which a new entity comes into existence when a couple marries. But something similar to the above could still be the case. There are two kinds of wellbeing: one may call them narrow and extended wellbeing. Extended wellbeing is flourishing you have in virtue things outside of you going right for you. For instance, when someone you love has a success, your extended wellbeing increases even before you find out about it. Likewise, our reputation is a matter of our extended wellbeing, though it also tends to instrumentally affect our narrow wellbeing.

It can be quite rational to engage in some actions that sacrifice narrow wellbeing for extended wellbeing (just as sometimes the opposite makes sense). Now, even if a new entity doesn't come into existence when a couple marries, the members of the couple acquire a new mode of extended wellbeing, a mode where they are well insofar as the marriage goes well and poorly insofar as the marriage goes poorly.

But this means that it could happen that it would be rational for the spouses to sacrifice the narrow wellbeing of both persons for the sake of the external wellbeing they have in virtue of their marriage. It could well be that destroying the marriage is on balance a harm to the spouses even if they no longer care about the marriage and its destruction makes them feel better, just as an action that destroys one's reputation may be a harm to one even if one no longer cares about one's reputation and enjoys ruining it.

Lauinger's Well-being and Theism

This is a plug for something I just got in the mail: my former student William Lauinger's first book, Well-being and Theism. There is some really nice material in the book.

First, we get a new account of well-being. On the one hand, the literature has natural-law accounts on which something is an aspect of one's well-being provided that it perfects one. On the other hand, there are desire-fulfillment theories on which something is an aspect of one's well-being provided that one desires it, or would desire it under appropriate conditions. Lauinger criticizes both (I am convinced by the criticism of desire-fulfillment but not of the natural-law accounts), and then makes a move that normally would be a non-starter but is surprisingly promising here: he conjoins the two by saying that something is an aspect of one's well-being provided it perfects one and satisfies a desire. The criticisms of desire-fulfillment accounts of well-being are very powerful, and ever since reading them in Lauinger's dissertation they have shaped much of my thinking about desire-fulfillment theories.

There is also some really helpful empirically-grounded material in the book arguing that non-standard cases where adults lack desires for basic goods like friendship and health are either much more rare than one might think or non-existent.

The book comes to a completion with (a) an argument that neither evolutionary nor Aristotelian groundings for the perfectionist aspects of the account as satisfactory unless supplemented with theism and (b) discussion of our desires as a desires for something infinite.

I only wish the book wasn't so expensive.

Punishment is good for those who are justly punished

Suppose Satan is the only creature in existence and Satan sins gravely through pride, does not repent, and goes to hell forever. Hell is a punishment from God. Now in punishing Satan in this world, God does something good to creation, since God does not do anything to creation that isn't good.

But every good is a good for someone. In that world, however, there is only God and Satan. So for whom is that punishment good? For God alone or for Satan alone or for both God and Satan?

It does not seem that the "for God alone" answer is satisfactory. For God, considered on his own, has an unchangeable perfect flourishing. Additionally, there is an extended well-being that God has when those that he loves receive goods, but that presupposes that God isn't the only recipient of the good. Besides, surely, when God acts in creation, he produces good effects--he is, after all, omnibenevolent.

Hence, the punishment of Satan in that world is good for Satan (and maybe for God, derivatively via extended well-being).

But if it is good for Satan in that world, why not in ours as well?

And why is it necessarily good for Satan? Presumably because in general punishment is good for those who justly receive it.

Virtues and skills, optional and not

Being a coward is an unhappy fate, even if you know you will never need to face danger. Courage is worth having whether or not you ever use it. On the other hand, the ability to get to Waterloo Station seems to be a useless skill if you're never going to be in London.[note 1] Of course there may be some incidental value in being able to get to Waterloo Station (an eccentric employer whose formative experiences have been around Waterloo Station may require the ability of all her employees) but there could also be similar incidental value in being unable to get to Waterloo Station (maybe an eccentric employer who hates Waterloo Station uses a polygraph to rule out all employees who know how to get there). And it may also be that in gaining the skill of getting to Waterloo Station, one might gain some other useful skill, but that's incidental, too.

Now, maybe, there is some non-instrumental value in being able to get to Waterloo Station. I have a certain pull to say there is. But the following seems clear: there is nothing unfortunate about not being able to get to Waterloo Station, unless you need to get to Waterloo Station or something odd (like an eccentric employer story) is the case.

Are there any virtues that are like being able to get to Waterloo Station, so that it need not be unfortunate that one lacks them? Or is it a mark of a virtue that lacking it is unfortunate, no matter whether one needs to exercise the virtue or not? Let's call any virtues that it is not unfortunate to lack "optional virtues". Thus, virtues can be divided into the optional and non-optional. Plausibly, central general virtues like prudence, courage, patience, generosity and appropriate trust are non-optional. But there may be some optional virtues.

I don't know if there are any optional virtues. Maybe, though, there are some virtues that are tied to particular vocations that it is not unfortunate to lack if you don't have that vocation? I am not sure.

Interestingly, I am inclined to think there are also non-optional skills, skills which it is unfortunate to lack, whether or not you need to exercise them or not. For instance, it is unfortunate to lack interpersonal skills even if you are going to live on a desert island, for then you are lacking something centrally human. (It is, I think, unfortunate to lack legs even if you're going to spend the rest of your life in a coma. That's part of why it's wrong to steal a permanently comatose patients' legs.)

When I started writing this post, I thought that the question of what state is unfortunate to have might neatly delineate between virtues and skills. But I think it doesn't. It may be an orthogonal distinction.

Presentism and Epicurus' death argument

Becoming friendless is a harm, even if one does not know that one's last friend has just betrayed one. Likewise, one is harmed when the persons or causes one reasonably cares about are harmed, again whether or not one knows about the harm. But we also, I think, have the intuition that this is a different sort of harm from that which one undergoes when one loses an arm or when one is tortured. Call the first set of harms, extrinsic, and the well-being that they detract from extrinsic well-being, and call the second set of harms intrinsic. Apart from an incarnation, God is not subject to intrinsic harms, but he may be subject to extrinsic harms, such as when someone he loves (i.e., anyone at all) is harmed.

Now, introduce the intuitive notion of a temporally pure property. A temporally pure property is one that is had by x only in virtue of how x is at the given time. Thus, being circular is temporally pure but being married to a future president of the United States or being fifty years old are temporally impure. (If the fact that x has Fness is a soft fact, in the Ockhamist sense, then F is temporally impure.)

Then:

1. (Premise) Only the having of an intrinsic property can constitute an intrinsic harm.
2. (Premise) Ceasing to exist can be an intrinsic harm.
3. (Premise) If presentism is true, only temporally pure properties can be intrinsic.
4. (Premise) Ceasing to exist cannot be a property constituted in virtue of how x is at a particular time.
5. Ceasing to exist cannot be constituted in virtue of one's temporally pure properties. (4 and definition)
6. If presentism is true, ceasing to exist cannot be an intrinsic property. (3 and 5)
7. If presentism is true, ceasing to exist cannot be an intrinsic harm. (1 and 6)
8. Presentism is not true. (2 and 7)

This is of course in the same spirit as Epicurus' argument that death isn't bad because when you're dead, you don't exist and hence can't be badly off, and when you're not dead, you're not dead. But notice that Epicurus' argument fails to show that death isn't extrinsically bad. Also, I formulated the argument in terms of a (hypothetical) cessation of existence rather than death, since in fact death is not a cessation of existence for human beings, and it is not completely clear that death is an intrinsic harm to non-human animals.

Interestingly, the growing block theorist, who thinks only past and present events and things are real, has a similar problem. For if growing block is true, only hard properties (ones that depend only on how things were or are) can be intrinsic properties, and ceasing to exist is not a hard property.

The eternalist, however, can say that the property of being such that one ceases to exist is an intrinsic property, at least on one interpretation of "ceases to exist". It is an intrinsic property of oneself as a temporally extended being, the property of one's life being futureward finite. It is just as much an intrinsic property as the property of being circular or of finite girth. And if someone were to cause one to have the property of one's life being futureward finite, or a more specific property like that of one's life being being no more than 54 years long, she would thereby be imposing a harm on one.

And even the cessation of existence at age 54 as such isn't an intrinsic harm, the eternalist can talk of such intrinsic harms to someone as that one's life does not include any joys after the the age of 54, thereby doing some justice to the intuition that cessation of existence is intrinsically harmful.

Another objection to a hypothetical desire-satisfaction theory of well-being

According to the simple desire-satisfaction theory of well-being, something would contribute to your well-being, would be good for you, precisely to the extent that it would satisfy your desires. The simple theory is clearly mistaken, because one's desires could be based on false beliefs or mental illness, and so it is easy to come up with examples of desires the satisfaction of which does not make one be well off. Imagine, for instance, that one desires that Patrick flourish, because one believes that Sally is one's long-lost brother, but in fact Patrick is one's long-lost brother's murderer; Patrick's flourishing is not a part of one's well-being.

The standard move is to hypotheticalize the theory by defining well-being in terms of the desires one would have after being informed of all the relevant non-normative facts and being given ideal psychotherapy. There are serious problems with this suggestion (for instance, the order in which one is informed of the non-normative facts can clearly make a difference as to what desires one comes to have.[note 1]

Here I want to focus on one particular difficulty that has struck me. Suppose I have no genuine friends and no prospects for friendship, but I desperately want friendship. Surely, friendship would contribute to my well-being, and I am badly off for not having a friendship. But the following is also conceivable. After ideal psychotherapy, and after being informed of the non-normative fact that there are no prospects for friendship for me, I might stoically suppress the desire for friendship. Indeed, unless one thinks that friendship is an essential aspect of human well-being, it might be quite rational, even rationally required, to suppress the desire under the circumstances. But now it would be absurd to say to someone who desparately wants friendship that she is not badly off for not having one because after ideal psychotherapy she would stoically and rationally suppress that desire.

That's a dreary example. Here's a positive one. Suppose I have no interest in collecting matchboxes. Getting a matchbox would not contribute to my well-being, surely. But it might be that after ideal psychotherapy and being informed of the details of the hobby, I would come to realize that collecting matchboxes is a perfect hobby for me, and come to desire matchboxes. But I don't go for the ideal psychotherapy, and I don't come to desire matchboxes, and so I don't desire matchboxes. How does getting a matchbox contribute to my well-being? (Well, on an objective theory, it might contribute somewhat despite my lack of desire, because the matchbox is intrinsically valuable. But the desire-satisfaction theorist can't say that.)

This post is inspired by William Lauinger's work on well-being. I would not be surprised if some of my examples parallel his.

Is time a continuum?

The following argument is valid:

1. (Premise) If one compressed all the events of an infinitely long happy life into a minute, by living a year of events in the first half minute, then another year of events in the next quarter minute, and so on, then one would be exactly as well off as living the finite life as the infinite one.
2. (Premise) If supertasks are possible, then the antecedent of (1) is possible for any infinitely long happy life.
3. (Premise) If time is an actual continuum, supertasks are possible.
4. (Premise) There is a possible an infinitely long happy life that would make for full human well-being.
5. (Premise) A finitely long life could not make for full human well-being.
6. (Premise) If a life makes for full human well-being, then so does any life that makes one exactly as well off.
7. Therefore, if supertasks are possible, there is a finitely long life that would make for full human well-being (1, 2, 4, 6).
8. Therefore, supertasks are impossible. (5, 7)
9. Therefore, time is not an actual continuum. (3 and 8)

Well-being

Consider these statements:

1. Polluted air is bad for a tree.
2. Polluted air is bad for a ladybug.
3. Polluted air is bad for a mouse.
4. Polluted air is bad for a dog.
5. Polluted air is bad for a human.

As far as I know, these are all true. Moreover, it does not appear to me that "bad for" is used equivocally in all the cases.

Furthermore, the reasons for the truth of the items higher on the list remain in the case of the items lower on the list, but new reasons are added. Thus, pollution harms the growth and survival of a mouse just as it does a tree. But the mouse can get sick and feel pain, while the tree cannot. Thus, there is an additional reason for why pollution is bad for a mouse that does not apply in the case of the tree. And a human being can have various higher level goals be frustrated by pollution. However, the reasons for why polluted air is bad for a tree, a ladybug, a mouse or a dog are all reasons for why it is bad for a human as well.

This has obvious implications for a theory of human well-being. Since the reasons for why (1) is true have nothing to do with actual or counterfactual desires of trees, likewise, at least one of the reasons for why (5) is true obtains least in part independently of any actual or counterfactual desires of humans. And this shows that desire-fulfillment theories of human well-being are false: some things, such as health, are valuable for humans regardless of how humans feel about them, for the very same reasons for which they are valuable for trees.

The opponent will, I expect, either deny (1) and (2) (and maybe even (3)), saying that nothing is good or bad for trees or ladybugs, or else claim that I am equivocating on "bad for". Neither, though, seems that plausible.

Second-order desire fulfillment theories of well-being

According to second-order desire fulfillment theories (2DF), A is bad for me if and only if I desire that A not occur, and my desire that A not occur is either endorsed (the stronger variant) or not disendorsed (the weaker variant). A desire is "endorsed" if and only if I have a desire to have that desire. A desire is "disendorsed" if and only if I have a desire not to have that desire.

Here is a counterexample to 2DF. Joey is not a Stoic. He fears torture as much as you and I do, and desires that he not be tortured. However, Joey desires to be a Stoic. In particular, he desires that he not have a desire not to be tortured. Suppose Joey is being tortured. He intensely desires that the torture come to an end. But he also consistently desires that he not have that desire. According to both variants of 2DF, the torture is not bad for him. But isn't that absurd?

A false principle concerning desire

I am not the first to discover this particular fallacy—in fact, part of this post is based on ideas I got in conversion from somebody who got them from something he read. But the ideas are no less fun for being mainly not mine.

Consider the following argument for psychological hedonism, the doctrine that the only thing we pursue is pleasure:

1. Whenever we pursue something other than pleasure, we pursue it because it gives us pleasure. (Premise)
2. Therefore, what we really pursue is the pleasure it affords to us.

Not only is (1) false, but (2) does not follow from it. The following inference is invalid:

3. We pursue x because it gives us y.
4. Therefore, what we really pursue is y.

In fact, taken literally, (4) contradicts (3), since if "what we really pursue" is y, and y is not x, then we are not pursuing x (to pursue is the same as to really pursue). But even if we weaken (4) to:

5. Therefore, we pursue y

the inference is still invalid. If I am trying to find a woman who offers water to my camels (cf. Genesis 24), it does not follow that what I am really pursuing is water for my camels. Perhaps I just want the kind of woman who gives water to my camels. Likewise, one might want a particular fig tree in the garden because it yields figs, not because one wants the figs, but because yielding figs is largely constitutive of the health of a tree, and one wants only healthy trees in the garden.

Perhaps the inference works better if we replace (1) by:

6. Whenever we pursue something other than pleasure, we pursue it only because it gives us pleasure.

It's easier to see how (2) might be thought to follow, but (6) now begs the question against the non-hedonist. In any case, the inference is still logically invalid.

In fact, it is even incorrect to conclude from the claim that I seek x solely because it yields y that I want y at all. Suppose that, whimsically, I desire a magical hat that yields rabbits. I only want the hat because it yields rabbits—my whim is that I want to have rabbits pop into existence out of a hat. I can want such a hat for such a reason without having any desire for the rabbits. The rabbits themselves are a nuisance, and I would have no interest at all in rabbits that come into existence in any way other than out of a hat.

It might be objected that then I don't want the hat just because it yields rabbits, but I want the hat because it is a hat that yields rabbits, and so this isn't a counterexample to the inference type. But if so, then the non-hedonist need only say that she doesn't want x just because it yields pleasure, but she wants an x because it is an x that yields pleasure.

The fallacy here also occurs in the Lysis in the argument that if I am friends with x because x yields y, then what I am really friends with is y.

Eternal happiness and finitude

Let us think what full happiness would be like. This isn't just partial happiness, but it is a happy state involving nothing unfortunate for one, nothing unhappy. Full happiness need not be maximal happiness. It is prima facie coherent that one might be fully happy at t₁, but happier yet at t₂, though the lesser amount of happiness at t₁ would not have to involve any kind of unhappiness at the fact that it is not yet t₂.

Full happiness has both mental and extra-mental components. To be fully happy requires a certain level of awareness of the events that make one be happy. No one in a coma is fully happy. But purely subjective states are insufficient. Being loved by others is surely a part of full happiness, but thinking and feeling that one is loved by others is not enough. The falsehood in thinking and feeling one is loved by others when in fact they despise one is clearly something unfortunate for one. Both the subjective component and the objective are essential to full happiness.

Next, for the sake of the argument, let me assume that there is a finite number N such that there are at most N subjectively different conscious states that are possible to one of us. At this point, I want this assumption to be ambiguous between different senses of "possible" (practical, nomic, physical, causal, metaphysical, logical, etc.) For instance, it seems plausible that there is such a number if mental states supervene on brain states and there is a limit on the possible size of the brain of one of us (maybe brains just couldn't function—or at least couldn't function as our brains—if they were more than a light year across), since although an analog system like the brain possibly is can have an infinite number of states, states that are too close together would not be subjectively distinguishable.

Now, it seems to me that a part of the concept of being fully happy is that the state of being fully happy forever is desirable. Let us take that assumption.

I will individuate mental state types in terms of subjective difference (feeling hot and smelling wintergreen are subjectively different, but smelling synthetic wintergreen and smelling natural wintergreen need not be subjectively different).[note 1]

The following seems plausible: Every qualitatively normal human state—i.e., every state of the same qualitative type as our normal, everyday human states—is such that to be in that state forever would be somewhat unfortunate. When we find ourselves feeling really happy, we wish that the moment could go on forever. But in fact, in the case of normal human states, this would be unfortunate. The wish of the lovers to sit on the bench watching the autumn foliage forever might be romantic, but if a fairy froze the lovers in that subjective state for eternity, we would see the spectacle as deeply sad. We might see it as preferable to many other states, but it would not be a fully happy state.

Neither would it be a fully happy state for a person to oscillate, with or without a repeating pattern, between a finite number of normal mental states. Granted, if the person in the state may be unaware that she has already experienced the blissful state 10¹00 times, she may not feel any ennui in having the state for the (10¹00+1)st time. But remember that happiness involves not just a subjective state, but an objective one. It may or may not be good to unaware of the infinite repetition of states, but such repetition is itself unfortunate.

But if there is only a finite number of normal mental states (distinguished subjectively) possible to us, then anybody who experiences only normal mental states will either cease having mental states (due to death or coma) or will eternally oscillate (with or without a repeating pattern) between a finite number of states. Since it is unfortunate if happiness is not to last forever, the person who would cease to have mental states was not fully happy (whether or not she was aware of the impending end of consciousness). And the person eternally oscillating between a finite number of states is also undergoing something unfortunate.

Consequently, assuming what has been assumed above, such as that there is a finite upper bound on the number of mental states possible to us, it follows that full happiness is impossible to us if we are limited to normal human states. The sense of "impossible" here matches the sense of "impossible" in the claim that it is impossible for us to have more than N subjectively different mental states.

From the above, an argument could be constructed that our full happiness would require either a supernatural mental state (such as the vision of God) or our going through an infinite number of different mental states (e.g., due to unbounded growth in knowledge).

In either case, the following seems interestingly true: Full happiness is impossible as long as naturalism is true. This might yield a desire-based argument against naturalism if we add the theses that any rational desire is possible to fulfill, that the desire for full happiness is rational, and that if naturalism is true, then it is impossible for naturalism to cease to be true. This requires some kind of a physical causal or nomic sense of "possible".

The above is just a sketch. Working it out would require carefully examining the different modalities and trying to find one in respect of which all of the premises of the argument are plausible. Something like nomic modality might do the trick. But this is all left as an exercise to the reader.

Circular lives and time travel

1. Necessarily, having the same kind of genuine bliss for an infinite amount of time is intrinsically better for one than having it for a finite amount of time. (Premise)
2. Leading a genuinely blissful life over a temporal circle that wraps around from t₀ to t₁ (you have a blissful life from t₀ to t₁, and time wraps around so that t₁ is actually the same as t₀) would be intrinsically just as good as living out an eternal recurrence of a genuinely blissful life of the same kind and length as the temporally circular life. (Premise)
3. If both of the scenarios in (2) are possible, then (1) is violated. (Premise)
4. The scenario of an eternal recurrence of a blissful life is possible. (Premise)
5. The scenario of a life arranged on a temporal circle is impossible. (By (1)-(4))
6. If a circular life is possible, so is a blissful circular life. (Premise)
7. Therefore, a circular life is impossible. (By (5) and (6))
8. If circular time is possible, so is a circular life. (Premise)
9. Therefore, circular time is impossible. (By (7) and (8))
10. If time travel is possible, so is a circular life. (Premise)
11. Therefore, time travel is impossible. (By (7) and (10))

In (2), the life of infinite recurrence is the circular life "unwrapped". I am open to the possibility that (2) in the argument is false, and that it is due to the "infinitely many times around" misapprehension of what circular time would be. It could also be that experiencing the same kind of bliss twice is no better than experiencing it once. I am also open the possibility that (8) is false—maybe there can be circular time, but lives of persons might not be circularly arrangeable. Likewise, I am not that sure of (10).

In any case, the thought experiment embodied in (2) seems worth thinking about. As you approach t₁, you become more and more like you were at t₀, and then, lo and behold, t₁ is t₀. If I lived on a circular time, I would never be facing death. Yet my life would be finite. It would not only be finite in the objective way of a life of someone whose functions got faster and faster, thereby ensuring that over a finite span of objective time he accomplished a life that was of infinite subjective span (i.e., a super-task life), but the circular life would be a life that has only a finite subjective span, though no beginning or end.

Pleasure and pain

In experiencing a pleasure (or pain, but let's start with the nice side), one is aware. But what is one aware of in the pleasure? We could say that one is aware of the pleasure. However, that seems mistaken. For there is indeed such a thing as being aware of a pleasure--a second order perception--and that second order awareness need not be pleasant at all. One might with horror realize that one is taking pleasure in the sufferings of another, for instance. So an awareness of a pleasure need not be pleasant. But a pleasure is, of course, always pleasant. This suggests that a pleasure is more than the awareness of a pleasure. Now maybe it is a certain kind of such awareness, say a particularly vivid one. But I don't think this is going to work.

Let's try a different tack. Pleasure isn't some kind of unitary mental ingredient. Rather, there are different kinds of pleasure, and there is no single common feel between them. There is the pleasure of solving a difficult mathematical problem and the pleasure of eating a chocolate cake. It would be really odd if one had these two feelings reversed! Moreover, one takes pleasure in something, such as an activity.[note 1] It is quite possible to take pleasure in something unreal, for instance being glad that someone has done one a good turn, when in fact the person has sneakily betrayed one.

So in pleasure we are taking pleasure in something distinct from the pleasure itself, and pleasure comes in different kinds corresponding to the kinds of things we take pleasure in. What, then, are we aware of in having a pleasure? It is the thing we take pleasure in. But to be aware of something is to be aware of it as a something. So in having a pleasure, we are aware of some x as an F. Often, x is an activity. But what is F? If we say "something pleasant", we have gone in a circle in trying to understand pleasure. Rather, I suggest, we are aware of an x as a particular kind of good. When we take pleasure in camping we are aware of the camping as a particular kind of good. Is this the whole story? Maybe not--maybe we need to say something about the sort of awareness this is, the kind of awareness that is involved in perception rather than in figuring out that something has some property. But we've got, I think, at least a part of a story.

Nor is this story very new. It is not very far from Aristotle's account of pleasure as completing a good in the Nicomachean Ethics, and is the view of pleasure that we get by analogy to Socrates' account of fear in the Protagoras.

This story has several merits:

1. The account is uniform between spiritual or psychological pleasures and physical pleasures. It is clear that spiritual or psychological pleasures are the taking of pleasure in something--that they have intentionality. This is less clear for physical pleasures. But it seems implausible that some pleasures would be intentional mental states and some would be non-intentional mental states.
2. The account neatly explains what an "empty pleasure" is. An empty pleasure is one divorced from the good being taken pleasure in. I could inject myself with chemicals, perhaps, that will make me feel the satisfaction of having done a job well, but if I do so when I've botched the job, my pleasure will be empty.
3. The account explains why it is that taking pleasure in bad things (e.g., bad things happening to others) is particularly bad. It is particularly bad because it is self-deceptive: one is having oneself perceive something bad as good. And this kind of deception makes one deficient at love, since love requires getting right what is good and what is bad for others.
4. The account explains why it is that many instances of pleasure are good. They are good because they are veridical perceptual states.

There is an analogous story about pains: pains are perceptions of something as bad in a particular way. However, some of the advantages of the account of pleasure are harder to see in the case of pain. One consequence of this account of pain is, after all, that veridical pain--i.e., pain in which we see something as bad in a particular way which is indeed bad in that particular way and where we are rightly connected to that bad state of affairs--is intrinsically good. And it might strike us as odd to suppose that some pains are intrinsically good. But observe that this is the right thing to say about many spiritual pains. As Johannes de Silentio says in the Sickness unto Death, the worse sickness is not to have that sickness. Many spiritual pains are such that it would be a defect not to have them. To fail to feel guilt for a bad action and to fail to grieve for a friend's suffering is bad: conversely, to feel guilt when one has done ill and to grieve rightly are intrinsically good. The uniformity between spiritual and physical pains seems a theoretical merit. And for a theist the fact that the question why God allows there to be pain is not intrinsically a problem--that it is good that God allows there to be pain--is definitely an advantage of the account.

But we still need to explain why it seems to be a good thing to relieve even veridical physical pains (pains that correctly represent an injury as bad), even though these pains according to the theory are intrinsically good. At least things can be said on this point. First, even if something is intrinsically good, it can be instrumentally bad. Pains often distract us, drawing our attention to facts that we do not need our attention drawn to. If we have a gaping wound, and have seen a doctor, we don't need further reminder of the wound, though the reminder is veridical. Second, I wonder whether our physical pains are often veridical even in cases where a genuine injury is causing the pain. They might be excessive, disproportionate vis-a-vis the injury, especially in light of our eternal destiny. I suspect that we tend to underappreciate moral bads and overappreciate physical bads, so we tend not to suffer enough spiritually and to suffer too much physically (on the other hand, Christ on the Cross had both a full appreciation of moral bads, and our excessive, fallen pain perceptions, so he suffered doubly). This seems to be a part of the Fall.

I also suspect we tend not to take enough pleasure in things; if we saw God manifested in everything around us, every pleasure would be heightened. But while excess renders a pain non-veridical, shortfall does not automatically render a pleasure non-veridical. This disanalogy is due to the fact that even if we do not see all the good in a state of affairs, the good that we see in it is there, and as far as the pleasure goes, it is veridical--though more pleasure would also be veridical.

An argument against hedonism

Hedonism is the claim that how well off one is is a function of pleasure. Suppose you experienced the greatest pleasure of your life between times t₀ and t₁. For the ensuing, I will assume that the mental supervenes locally on the physical, but even if that is not true (and I doubt it is true), we can modify the description.
If hedonism is true, then the following life is better than yours. Fred begins his existence a day before a time t₀*, in the neural state you were in a day before t₀. During this day he has the same experiences as you had over the day before t₀. He then undergoes the pleasurable experience you had between t₀ and t₁. As soon as that is over, his neural state is reset to the state it had at t₀*. Then he re-experiences the pleasure you had between t₀ and t₁. Then his memory is reset again. Then he re-experiences that pleasure. And so on, for two hundred years.
Let's say the most pleasant experience of your life was the first time you managed to ride a bicycle without training wheels. Then Fred has that experience, over and over, each time feeling and thinking it's the first time.
Unless the experience you had between t₀ and t₁ was some kind of supernatural experience like that of union with God, and it is not that kind of pleasure that typical hedonists are talking about, I think Fred's life is horrible. It is a nightmare, but Fred of course thinks it is just great.
But hedonism claims Fred is better off than you are, which is absurd.
Note: One might have personal identity worries about Fred's persistence. However, a bout of amnesia during which one loses memory of a period of time does not destroy personal identity, as long as there are earlier memories. That was why I posited that Fred spends a day sharing the experiences you had for the day before t₀, so that the memory of these experiences will anchor his identity through the two hundred years of recurrence.

Is pain bad because of its raw subjective feel?

I want to consider three arguments that pain is not bad because of its raw feel. If it is bad, it is because of something else associated with that raw feel. (This has at least one application. One way to "answer" the question of why God would allow non-human animals to feel pain is to deny that animals feel pain. A different strategy would be to argue that although they feel pain, their experience does not have in it the ingredient which makes human pain bad, or at least which makes it as bad as it is. If pain is not bad because of its raw feel, then the ingredient that makes pain bad is something else--perhaps something having to do with how we conceptualize the pain--and it might turn out that this is lacking in animals.)

1. The severity of pain is on a continuum, but very brief instances whose severity is near the bottom of the continuum are not bad at all. Pinch yourself. The feeling seems to be somewhere on the pain continuum, albeit very low down. But the feeling of pinching yourself is not at all a bad feeling to have. So pain is bad only when it has non-trivial severity. The main objection to this argument is to claim that the kinds of feelings that are not bad to have are no longer on the pain continuum--they are not pains at all. I am not sure how convincing I find this objection as it stands, but I do have a response. Take one of these items very low down on the pain continuum, allegedly below the level of pain, like the feeling of being pinched. Now if this feeling persisted unchanged for an hour, one would find it quite uncomfortable, it would be bad, and I think one would correctly consider it a low-level pain. However, if the raw feel is unchanged throughout the hour, it follows that it is not the raw feel that makes the experience bad, but something else, such as the duration of the raw feel or, perhaps better, the memory of the duration of the raw feel, and so we get to the conclusion I want. Moreover, it seems that if one feels continuous pain for an hour, one feels pain at every time, and so the raw feel of a pinch would still be a pain, since that is what one is feeling throughout the hour. The latter set of considerations show that there is another argument against the intrinsic badness of pain: a pain of low intensity is not going to be bad if it lasts for a short enough amount of time.

2. One can fail to notice one is having a pain. You wake up with an unfamiliar sensation. You think about it a little, perhaps shift around, and you realize that it's a shoulder pain. I suggest that at least until you realized that the sensation was painful or at least unpleasant, the feeling wasn't bad for you. So, not all pains are bad, it seems. Here, one can try the same kind of objection. Maybe it only starts to hurt once you realize what is going on. But if so, then what is that unfamiliar sensation you woke up with, if it's not a pain? Does that unfamiliar sensation really change into a pain when you realize what it is?

3. If you manage to get distracted from a pain and focus on something else, so that you don't mind the pain very much at all, it seems that the pain is less bad for you. So even if pain is bad for you, the degree to which it is bad is determined in large part by how focused you are on the pain and what attitude you take to it, rather than by the raw feel. Now one might think the raw feel changes in kind as you get distracted from the pain. But is that really how our perception works? If I focus my attention not on the red cube in my field of vision, but on the golden sphere, without shifting my eyes at all[note 1], is it the case that the appearance of the red cube changes, that it starts to look less red or be less cubical? It seems like the right way to describe what happens, instead, may wel be that one's attitude towards the appearance changes. If so, then when we are distracted from a pain, the pain's raw feel doesn't change, but how bad the pain is for us does. Now one might object as follows. There is some little bit of badness that the raw feel is responsible for, and other factors, such as focusing on the pain and/or minding it, are responsible for most of the badness of the pain. But I think this is mistaken. For if the raw feel gives rise to a small bit of badness, then no matter how little one focuses on a pain and how little one minds it, there is always going to be this little badness. In particular, the limit of badness as one's focus on the pain and one's minding of the pain goes to zero will be non-zero. But that seems wrong. As one's focus and minding of the pain goes to zero, the badness seems to go continuously to zero as well.

Final question: If it is not the raw feel that makes pain bad, then what makes pain bad? Is it that it distracts us from things? Is it our attitudes towards it, such as typically not wanting to have the pain (Mark Murphy thinks this)? I don't know exactly. I am attracted myself to the idea that there is such a thing as veridical pain and it is not intrinsically bad, but only bad extrinsically (e.g., because it distracts us), but I also find this idea hard to believe and harder to live.

An 18th order desire

I guess I have a 18th order desire. This desire is to have a 17th order desire. Why would I want to have a 17th order desire? Because it would be so cool to have a desire of such a high order. And I could pull out my 17th order desire at parties with other philosophers and impress them. So I've got both an instrumental and a non-instrumental reason for my desire. And I wouldn't be surprised if this desire turns out to be settled.

I am not quite so desirous of having a 16th order desire. Sure, it would be kind of cool to have a desire of such high order, but I think prime number order desires are cooler.

What's the point of this little tale? Simply that higher order desires, no matter of how high an order, can be just as frivolous--and probably even more frivolous--than the typical first order desire. There is, thus, little reason to privilege higher order desires over lower order ones, giving them some kind of an authority whereby they get to define our welfare.

Maybe you'll question whether anybody can really have that 18th order desire. Well, I'd like to have that desire, and maybe I actually do, if only so I could honestly brag about it (that's not actually an instrumental reason of the crassest sort, because of the "honestly"). And that means that I I've already got a 19th order desire, namely the desire to have the 18th order desire mentioned at the beginning of this post. I wouldn't be surprised if this 19th order desire lasted for quite a while.

And, hey, it would be quite cool to have nth order desires for every prime number n, and to have no non-prime order desires except for the first order (I guess we need to have the first order ones to make sure we don't forget to take care of our bodily needs). Suppose I actually want that, and that desire is settled, reflected upon, etc. Then here we have an infinitieth order desire--and as frivolous and unimportant as desires get.

Or maybe you'll object that these very high order desires are very weak. Sure. And it would be a mark of insanity if they were very strong. But that underscores my point that there is nothing deeply rationally special about high order desires.