(October 7, 2010 at 12:44 am)Cerrone Wrote: It's still impossible to define a universal right and wrong within ideas of morality. It's true what you're saying with "desires", but that itself isn't morally stating right or wrongs, it's using a selfish impulse with is left unchecked by other means of comparison from other people and it's running free; in the case of the desert island dude.
Not it isn't, we can establish moral standards based on the universal considerations of the desires of all agents that need to be considered.
Lets put it this way:
Desirism is:
cognitivist – ethical sentences like “murder is wrong” can be true or false; they assert a proposition.
objectivist – ethical sentences refer to facts, not opinions.
realist – some ethical sentences are true; they correspond to reality.
naturalist – moral facts reduce to non-moral facts about the world.
gnostic – many ethical sentences can be known to be true; moral knowledge is possible.
consequentialist – the goodness and badness of something (of a desire, in the case of desirism) is determined by its consequences.
Desirism is both a theory about what our moral terms mean to, such as what it means to say "rape is wrong" and about how we determine these moral propositions to be true.
Morality is a standard by which we judge actions. All morality refers to someones reasons for action, causing the death of a human changes morally by intention. It cannot be morally wrong to accidentally kill someone (given no fault to the causer) but it is morally wrong to allow a death to result of your negligence given you have responsibility in a situation, and it is morally wrong to murder someone. So reasons for action are how we determine whether or not the outcome was the result of a moral right or wrong.
Desires are the only reasons for action that actually exist. If you drink coffee it is because you desire to drink coffee, if you eat pig penis is it because you desire Joe Rogan's $50,000, if you kiss the mob bosses shoes it is because you desire not to be beaten.
So how do we tie together morality and desires? Because morality is a standard by which we judge action, and actions are only the result of desires, morality in desirism is a measured relationship between the desires of all the people involved, and the state of affairs in which more and stronger desires are promoted than are thwarted.
A good desire is a desire than tends to promote other desires. A bad desire is a desire that tends to thwart other desires. When talking about action, a right action is an action that a moral person would perform, and a wrong action is one a moral person would not perform. A moral person is one who's actions tend to promote more and stronger desires than they thwarts.
Being a moral person does not just affect our actions, it also affect how we influence the desires of others, because the desire for people to be moral is in it's self a desire. We can use our praise and condemnation of others to promote good desires and thwart bad desires. The goal is to eliminate the desires that tend to thwart more and stronger desires than they promote, while promoting desires that tend to promote more and desires than they thwart.
The relationships between our desires and a state of affairs that will be realized upon performing an action is what is measured. If the action is going to promote more desires it is good, thwart them and it's bad. We can objectively say that "rape is wrong" because it thwarts more and stronger desires than it promotes.
I'll give an example.
There are a room of 100 people, and 99 of them have the desire to rape. But all 100 of them have a desire not to be raped (because it is not possible to desire non consensual acts) therefore a desire to rape is a desire that thwarts more and stronger desires than it promotes and it is an action that a moral person will not perform.
If you desire to be moral you should act like a moral person.
.
