Desire Utilitarianism Versus Secular Benevolism: Initial Thoughts
Actually written DECEMBER 7, 2008
I recently read a book called A Better Place… Selected Essays On Desire Utilitarianism, by Alonzo Fyfe.
I read the book because someone examined the MySpace page I made for my philosophy called “Secular Benevolism” and recommended I look into an ideology called “Desire Utilitarianism”, the premise being that the two ideologies are very similar.
So here are my initial thoughts.
Desire Utilitarianism (DU from now on) and Secular Benevolism (SB from now on) do seem very similar to me. They both seem essentially concerned to increase the gratification of all our strongest motivations (desires and aversions). How deeply this similarity runs is still under my investigation.
Not only that, but the creator of DU, Alonzo Fyfe, includes a brief biographical sketch of his motivation for creating it. And as I read this sketch, I felt an instant kinship with him. Here’s his sketch:
I believe I have related a similar account of myself as a child and teenager. I too “have no idea where that type of certainty comes from”, and I would add that the certainty of others on such issues has even traumatized me.
Anyway, now back to the content of DU versus SB.
Let us first presume that the essential content of DU and SB is the same. Both aim at greater gratification of our strongest motivations (desires and aversions), and do so by promoting benevolence wherever possible.
The difference between DU and SB then becomes a matter of presentation, of strategy for inviting others to embrace that essential content as a principle for action.
DU presents itself as a moral theory while SB presents itself as a non-moral theory. On the issue of morality, the essential content shared by both theories is a rejection of moral intrinsicism, i.e. the notion that our actions are guided by motivation-void goals. The difference is in how DU and SB interpret morality in general. DU says moral intrinsicism is just one type of moral theory. It is possible to reject moral intrinsicism and still have a moral theory. SB considers all moral theories as essentially intrinsicist.
So, DU is trying to “reclaim” morality from the intrinsicists, while SB is trying to avoid the whole fight over moral territory in favor of just talking about “benevolence versus malevolence” by using precisely those words “benevolence” and “malevolence”.
Desire Utilitarianism seems like the result of someone re-packaging Secular Benevolism in order to make it more appealing for those who refuse to give up moral terminology. This seems like a wise strategy for advancing Secular Benevolism, precisely because many people do indeed refuse to avoid moral terminology. So here, keep your moral terminology. Keep using words like “obligation” and “duty” and so on. We'll just redefine those words so they mean concern over benevolence versus malevolence. Just read this book about Desire Utilitarianism, and we’ve got you covered.
This might be an effective strategy of persuasion. Some people might go for this kind of persuasion, such as those whose concern is essentially benevolence, but who still have a fixation on moral terminology. It is wise for our program of persuasion to have a way to reach such people. (But of course this strategy won’t work on hard-core moral intrinsicists at all. They are a tough crowd indeed.)
But I still worry that something is lost in the translation of SB into DU.
I still think the wiser option is to challenge the moral terminology fixation at its root.
Simply re-defining moral words in terms of benevolent desires ignores the fact that moral words have a long history of deriving from desire-void goals instead. Moral intrisicists use these words too, and they don’t mean benevolence when they speak them. There is something other than desire, benevolent or otherwise, in their meaning for moral words. They swear to this. And this alone is cause for a lot of people misunderstanding one another.
But there’s something even more insidious and dangerous afoot here.
Even where the re-definition strategy does persuade some people, I believe it just leaves such people on a slippery slope back to moral intrinsicism.
Moral intrinsicism has a strong psychological appeal. Against our more desire-oriented sensibilities, it still tempts us. The temptation is to add a special urgency and force to our benevolent desires. It seems weak to simply say we feel benevolence toward the hungry and the homeless and the sick. We are tempted to say that someone has a benevolence-independent “obligation” to help such people. “Benevolence” is too weak; “obligation” is strong. Moral instinsicism seems to put more strength behind our concern over others. Of course, desire-based benevolence and desire-void moral intrisicism are antithetical – one destroys the other. And precisely because moral intrinsicism is stronger than mere benevolent desire, it will be moral intrinsicism that destroys benevolence. And here is the ironic situation where our attempt to add the strength of moral intrinsicism to our benevolence actually destroys our benevolence the more seriously we focus on the source of that extra strength.
It seems to me the strategy of reducing moral terminology to benevolent desire amounts to trying to “borrow” the psychological strength of moral intrinsicism’s vocabulary while trying to reject the implied source of that strength. It can’t really be done. To embrace a kind of strength while trying to reject the implied source of that strength is a contradiction. It’s like saying, “I want the pleasure of eating actual cake, but I don’t want any contact with any actual cake.”
I suggest that we can’t really have it both ways. We must either reject moral terminology altogether, or we must embrace the moral intrinsicism that makes the strength of such terminology so attractive in the first place.
I re-state: trying to reclaim moral terminology from the moral intrinsicists amounts to trying to borrow the strength of moral intrinsicism while rejecting the moral intrinsicism itself that makes that strength possible at all. This can’t help but be a slippery slope back to moral intrinsicism in the end.
Also, there’s something about Fyfe’s writing that seems convoluted, indirect and “over-worked” to me. And I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it seems like he’s trying to hide something. On the other hand, perhaps trying to hide a few things might be integral to the strategy of reaching those who are fixated on moral terminology.
Instead of simply claiming that benevolent desire is the basis of morality, he uses two longer sentences, something like this: “The basis of morality comes from having good reasons for action. And desires are the only reasons for action that exist.” And “good reasons for action” are defined, as far as I can tell, as basically what I call “benevolence”, but only by further convoluted inference in a separate section that will often be now pages removed from the double sentence statement. All the time! He never comes out and simply says benevolent desire is the basis of morality. It’s like he’s trying to hide this fact from us by stretching it out across two sentences and a separate section from which it must be implied. Why would he do this? Why would he hide such an elemental fact behind implications like that?
Again, I can only suspect he does this to avoid scaring off those who have a fixation on moral terminology, so he can keep using the words “good” and “reasons for action” in close proximity to one another, and so on. In other words, he’s catering to the morally fixated, those attracted to the power of moral intrinsicism.
Other convoluted sections include his definition for desire and his treatment of the Humean “Is-Ought gap”. Defining desire as a “propositional attitude” seems bizarrely academic to me, and even circular. That circularity finally catches up with him when he attempts a little more brevity on page 101: “…desires – dispositions to act so as to bring about states of affairs where the propositions that are the objects of desires are true.”
His chapter dealing with Hume’s is-ought gap seems convoluted to me mostly because I think Fyfe completely misses the point and is attacking a straw version of “ought” to achieve his argument. He thinks the is-ought gap translates to an “is” versus “not is” gap, on the notion that if you can’t argue from what “is” to what “ought”, then what “ought” cannot even exist. Hence, to restore the “ought” to the realm of existence, “ought” must be something that exists, in this case, desire. This misses the point. The “ought” in question usually means the desire-void goals of moral intrinsicism. Fyfe says “ought” exists because “ought” is simply desire, which exists. But the intrinsicist can also claim that “ought” exists because desire-void goals exist, just like desires exist. Alonzo Fyfe hasn’t established the existence of “ought” any better than the moral intrinsicist. Both claim that “ought” simply corresponds to something that exists.
Consider this perspective on it:
The intrinsicist claims “ought” exists because “ought” simply means “desire-void goal”. Fyfe claims “ought” exists because “ought” simply means “desired goal”. People have attacked the intrinsicist because they can’t derive desire-void goals from any account of other facts. So Fyfe tries to solve the problem by replacing desire-void goals with desire-based goals, because it is self-evident to Fyfe that desire-based goals do exist. But Fyfe fails to solve the essential problem. He too cannot derive desire-based goals from any account of other facts. He’s in the same boat as the intrinsicists.
I suspect Fyfe thinks his argument works because he thinks he has established that desire-based goals exist, whereas desire-void goals do not exist. The trouble is that neither type of goal can be derived from an account of other types of fact. His very belief in the existence of desire is no more founded than the intrinsicist’s belief in the existence of desire-void duty. There remains a gap between either of these and an account of any other type of fact. Both of them belong to Aristotle’s category of teleological “final causality” which cannot be explained by any other kind of fact or causality.
And, to bring this together a bit, I think Fyfe misses the point about the “is-ought gap” precisely because he’s baffled himself with his own definition of desire in terms of a “propositional attitude”. This convoluted definition of his hides more than it helps. Such a definition tries to hide the irreducible nature of desire behind a convoluted attempt to reduce desire to a structure similar to that for beliefs. Such a definition might appeal to certain academic types, but it glosses over the irreducible nature of desire as an instance of irreducible final causality. And it sets the scene for a similar glossing over of the “is-ought gap”.
Whatever.
I’m glad someone directed me to this book. I still like it. Because DU seems so similar to SB in some important ways, DU’s answers to various problems can stand for SB’s answers as well. Alonzo has done much of the work I would have otherwise had to do. Thanks, Alonzo.
I recently read a book called A Better Place… Selected Essays On Desire Utilitarianism, by Alonzo Fyfe.
I read the book because someone examined the MySpace page I made for my philosophy called “Secular Benevolism” and recommended I look into an ideology called “Desire Utilitarianism”, the premise being that the two ideologies are very similar.
So here are my initial thoughts.
Desire Utilitarianism (DU from now on) and Secular Benevolism (SB from now on) do seem very similar to me. They both seem essentially concerned to increase the gratification of all our strongest motivations (desires and aversions). How deeply this similarity runs is still under my investigation.
Not only that, but the creator of DU, Alonzo Fyfe, includes a brief biographical sketch of his motivation for creating it. And as I read this sketch, I felt an instant kinship with him. Here’s his sketch:
When I was 16 years old, sitting in a high-school history class, I decided that I wanted to leave this world better than it would have been if I had not been a part of it. To do that, I needed to understand what “a better place” would be like.
That was a problem.
I looked around and found a great many people who claimed to know what “better” was, who were confident in their opinions. Their attitude seemed to be, “If only the world listened to me alone and, perhaps, made me absolute dictator, I could solve all of the world’s problems without possibility of error.”
I have no idea where that type of certainty comes from. I see a world filled with people who disagree with each other. To me, this is reason enough for each one of them to doubt that they have the certain lock on the moral truth that they claim to have.
For me, with my uncertainty, I needed to find out who was right. That is what started the line of research that led to the ideas presented in this book.
(Alonzo Fyfe, A Better Place, Piii)
I believe I have related a similar account of myself as a child and teenager. I too “have no idea where that type of certainty comes from”, and I would add that the certainty of others on such issues has even traumatized me.
Anyway, now back to the content of DU versus SB.
Let us first presume that the essential content of DU and SB is the same. Both aim at greater gratification of our strongest motivations (desires and aversions), and do so by promoting benevolence wherever possible.
The difference between DU and SB then becomes a matter of presentation, of strategy for inviting others to embrace that essential content as a principle for action.
DU presents itself as a moral theory while SB presents itself as a non-moral theory. On the issue of morality, the essential content shared by both theories is a rejection of moral intrinsicism, i.e. the notion that our actions are guided by motivation-void goals. The difference is in how DU and SB interpret morality in general. DU says moral intrinsicism is just one type of moral theory. It is possible to reject moral intrinsicism and still have a moral theory. SB considers all moral theories as essentially intrinsicist.
So, DU is trying to “reclaim” morality from the intrinsicists, while SB is trying to avoid the whole fight over moral territory in favor of just talking about “benevolence versus malevolence” by using precisely those words “benevolence” and “malevolence”.
Desire Utilitarianism seems like the result of someone re-packaging Secular Benevolism in order to make it more appealing for those who refuse to give up moral terminology. This seems like a wise strategy for advancing Secular Benevolism, precisely because many people do indeed refuse to avoid moral terminology. So here, keep your moral terminology. Keep using words like “obligation” and “duty” and so on. We'll just redefine those words so they mean concern over benevolence versus malevolence. Just read this book about Desire Utilitarianism, and we’ve got you covered.
This might be an effective strategy of persuasion. Some people might go for this kind of persuasion, such as those whose concern is essentially benevolence, but who still have a fixation on moral terminology. It is wise for our program of persuasion to have a way to reach such people. (But of course this strategy won’t work on hard-core moral intrinsicists at all. They are a tough crowd indeed.)
But I still worry that something is lost in the translation of SB into DU.
I still think the wiser option is to challenge the moral terminology fixation at its root.
Simply re-defining moral words in terms of benevolent desires ignores the fact that moral words have a long history of deriving from desire-void goals instead. Moral intrisicists use these words too, and they don’t mean benevolence when they speak them. There is something other than desire, benevolent or otherwise, in their meaning for moral words. They swear to this. And this alone is cause for a lot of people misunderstanding one another.
But there’s something even more insidious and dangerous afoot here.
Even where the re-definition strategy does persuade some people, I believe it just leaves such people on a slippery slope back to moral intrinsicism.
Moral intrinsicism has a strong psychological appeal. Against our more desire-oriented sensibilities, it still tempts us. The temptation is to add a special urgency and force to our benevolent desires. It seems weak to simply say we feel benevolence toward the hungry and the homeless and the sick. We are tempted to say that someone has a benevolence-independent “obligation” to help such people. “Benevolence” is too weak; “obligation” is strong. Moral instinsicism seems to put more strength behind our concern over others. Of course, desire-based benevolence and desire-void moral intrisicism are antithetical – one destroys the other. And precisely because moral intrinsicism is stronger than mere benevolent desire, it will be moral intrinsicism that destroys benevolence. And here is the ironic situation where our attempt to add the strength of moral intrinsicism to our benevolence actually destroys our benevolence the more seriously we focus on the source of that extra strength.
It seems to me the strategy of reducing moral terminology to benevolent desire amounts to trying to “borrow” the psychological strength of moral intrinsicism’s vocabulary while trying to reject the implied source of that strength. It can’t really be done. To embrace a kind of strength while trying to reject the implied source of that strength is a contradiction. It’s like saying, “I want the pleasure of eating actual cake, but I don’t want any contact with any actual cake.”
I suggest that we can’t really have it both ways. We must either reject moral terminology altogether, or we must embrace the moral intrinsicism that makes the strength of such terminology so attractive in the first place.
I re-state: trying to reclaim moral terminology from the moral intrinsicists amounts to trying to borrow the strength of moral intrinsicism while rejecting the moral intrinsicism itself that makes that strength possible at all. This can’t help but be a slippery slope back to moral intrinsicism in the end.
Also, there’s something about Fyfe’s writing that seems convoluted, indirect and “over-worked” to me. And I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it seems like he’s trying to hide something. On the other hand, perhaps trying to hide a few things might be integral to the strategy of reaching those who are fixated on moral terminology.
Instead of simply claiming that benevolent desire is the basis of morality, he uses two longer sentences, something like this: “The basis of morality comes from having good reasons for action. And desires are the only reasons for action that exist.” And “good reasons for action” are defined, as far as I can tell, as basically what I call “benevolence”, but only by further convoluted inference in a separate section that will often be now pages removed from the double sentence statement. All the time! He never comes out and simply says benevolent desire is the basis of morality. It’s like he’s trying to hide this fact from us by stretching it out across two sentences and a separate section from which it must be implied. Why would he do this? Why would he hide such an elemental fact behind implications like that?
Again, I can only suspect he does this to avoid scaring off those who have a fixation on moral terminology, so he can keep using the words “good” and “reasons for action” in close proximity to one another, and so on. In other words, he’s catering to the morally fixated, those attracted to the power of moral intrinsicism.
Other convoluted sections include his definition for desire and his treatment of the Humean “Is-Ought gap”. Defining desire as a “propositional attitude” seems bizarrely academic to me, and even circular. That circularity finally catches up with him when he attempts a little more brevity on page 101: “…desires – dispositions to act so as to bring about states of affairs where the propositions that are the objects of desires are true.”
His chapter dealing with Hume’s is-ought gap seems convoluted to me mostly because I think Fyfe completely misses the point and is attacking a straw version of “ought” to achieve his argument. He thinks the is-ought gap translates to an “is” versus “not is” gap, on the notion that if you can’t argue from what “is” to what “ought”, then what “ought” cannot even exist. Hence, to restore the “ought” to the realm of existence, “ought” must be something that exists, in this case, desire. This misses the point. The “ought” in question usually means the desire-void goals of moral intrinsicism. Fyfe says “ought” exists because “ought” is simply desire, which exists. But the intrinsicist can also claim that “ought” exists because desire-void goals exist, just like desires exist. Alonzo Fyfe hasn’t established the existence of “ought” any better than the moral intrinsicist. Both claim that “ought” simply corresponds to something that exists.
Consider this perspective on it:
The intrinsicist claims “ought” exists because “ought” simply means “desire-void goal”. Fyfe claims “ought” exists because “ought” simply means “desired goal”. People have attacked the intrinsicist because they can’t derive desire-void goals from any account of other facts. So Fyfe tries to solve the problem by replacing desire-void goals with desire-based goals, because it is self-evident to Fyfe that desire-based goals do exist. But Fyfe fails to solve the essential problem. He too cannot derive desire-based goals from any account of other facts. He’s in the same boat as the intrinsicists.
I suspect Fyfe thinks his argument works because he thinks he has established that desire-based goals exist, whereas desire-void goals do not exist. The trouble is that neither type of goal can be derived from an account of other types of fact. His very belief in the existence of desire is no more founded than the intrinsicist’s belief in the existence of desire-void duty. There remains a gap between either of these and an account of any other type of fact. Both of them belong to Aristotle’s category of teleological “final causality” which cannot be explained by any other kind of fact or causality.
And, to bring this together a bit, I think Fyfe misses the point about the “is-ought gap” precisely because he’s baffled himself with his own definition of desire in terms of a “propositional attitude”. This convoluted definition of his hides more than it helps. Such a definition tries to hide the irreducible nature of desire behind a convoluted attempt to reduce desire to a structure similar to that for beliefs. Such a definition might appeal to certain academic types, but it glosses over the irreducible nature of desire as an instance of irreducible final causality. And it sets the scene for a similar glossing over of the “is-ought gap”.
Whatever.
I’m glad someone directed me to this book. I still like it. Because DU seems so similar to SB in some important ways, DU’s answers to various problems can stand for SB’s answers as well. Alonzo has done much of the work I would have otherwise had to do. Thanks, Alonzo.
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