Meaning of Right and Wrong... Finally Answered!

[theVOID]

But the evident question is "do people want to do the right thing?"

Some if not most do, obviously, namely because we want to live in a world where we are free to do more of the things we want while suffering less, and this is something that Deisrism can achieve. Regardless, people wanting/not wanting do good does not impact what is determined to be right or wrong

Anyway, This is a problem for all ideas of morality, singling it out for Desirism seems strange to me. Even in a subjectivist sense, whatever people want to do becomes moral, so how do you make people agree on what is right? It's the same problem rephrased, and you aren't going to find any moral theories with an insta-fix solution, but desirism does have a method tending towards this end, namely the use of praise and condemnation to change the desires of others.

You're saying an ideal state of affairs is desirism which promotes stronger desires and thwarts less appealing ideas, but there are countless examples in day to day life where the right thing to do isn't the most appealing/pleasent thing to do. When faced with a choice between doing something "right" which is unpleasent and doing something which has no obvious impact on the "right thing" but is more appealing to them in fulfilling their immediate desires they're usually going to choose that over the "right thing". I'm not wrong in describing that as "being selfish".

Sure, and in that case they are acting immorally or if ignorant, amorally.

Say for example if you find a wallet with cash and a drivers license, it may be more appealing to keep the cash and bin the rest, but that doesn't make it the right thing to do. We have a reason to promote the desire to return lost property, because we want our property returned when it is lost also and we want the same for our friends and family, thus a desire to keep the property is not a good desire because it is a desire than tends to thwart more and stronger desires than it promotes.

So we have a reason for action to promote the desire to return lost property.

People can only be convinced of a changing particular direction of action when it's made to clear them it will benefit them. In the short term they may not be instantly fulfilled by doing the "right thing", but it will benefit them tenfold in the long term. I suppose i'm trying to convey the merit for those who in their behaviour and thought process favor long term benefits over short term gains, if we need to define the topic somewhat.

Exactly, we have reason to promote certain desires in others, such as the desire to return stolen property. The long term gains may or may not personally be more beneficial, it depends on whether we are in the same situation, but as long as we have the desire to return lost property then we are fulfilling both our desires and the desires of the person who lost their property. Thus we have a reason for action to promote the desire to return lost property.

If someone chooses to keep the property then they are acting immorally.

So how exactly is moral theory at all relevant when you construct it without taking into the account the actions and behaviour of people that the theory is attempting to be applied to? Makes no sense.

I haven't, you're simply confusing yourself. A moral theory is intended to discern right, wrong, better, worse and establish the categories of Obligated, Permitted and Forbidden etc. That is what Desirism does and in the sense of achieving what a moral theory should, it works perfectly It also acts as a normative moral theory, and you can apply the method to ethics, as I have shown.

People not wanting to behave morally =/= moral theory is wrong. I showed above how the question of "what of people who don't want to be moral" simply gets rephrased in subjectivist theories, which is what I assume you subscribe to? In any case, a person wanting or not wanting to be moral is irrelevant, so is the case of people doing wrong while thinking they are being moral, which is a massive problem in subjectivism, that is why I think theories of moral realism, such as Desirism, are ultimately better.

lol I guess you're not used to metaphors and rhetoric..

No, I just think your application of them missed the target.

ok well, I was saying there that you're beginning recognise desirism as a natural occurance in behaviour, that's true, but I replied that desirism (when used on its own) is utterly worthless for the primary basis of using it as a yardstick or a moral theory. If you rely on the desires of a selfish man with his own immediate needs as his focus to be the yardstick by which to judge others then you don't set any kind of watermark to better other people, because they'll just be allowed to be as selfish as that man is.

And this is where you are totally off track.

In Desirism all desires are considered, not just the desires of the selfish person - That would be Subjectivist desire fulfilment, and i've already said that I am not a subjectivist. If the action of this person is one that tends to promote more and stronger desires in both [/i]himself[/i] and others then it is morally good, even though fulfilling your own desires is always to an extent selfish. However, we have many desires than are both selfish and that benefit others, such as a parent having the desire to keep their children safe, there is the self fulfilling aspect as well as the aspect that promotes more and stronger desires in others. We have a reason for action to promote the desire to keep children safe, because we don't want anything happening to our own children or (in my case) any children at all. This is a desire that is both self fulfilling and promotes more and stronger desires than it thwarts.

However, if you instruct people (as i said above) to focus on the long term instead of the short term, then they begin to realise that their own immediate fulfillment is selfish and destructive in the long term, and only then when the desires have been modified with perspective and virtue can desirism be put to use to benefit society. Otherwise by itself desirism is just no more of an obvious statement than watching a pigeon pick away at some crumbs and remarking on how it picks away at some crumbs as if its a miraculous event.

*sigh* I can see correcting your misunderstanding is going to take a while.

1. Short term vs long term is unimportant, what matters is how many desires were promoted vs thwarted over the entire life of the desire, if it is a desire with long term implications then you have to consider all desires thwarted vs promoted for the entire time the desire is relevant.

2. Someone who has a desire than is solely (or mostly) selfish it is a bad desire. We have reasons for action to promote an aversion to these desires and we do so through our use of praise and condemnation.

It's more likely that the representatives of the exploitative companies would be chased out of the country and whatever resources they left behind would be put to use by the revolutionary forces. Like ohh.. a few south american nations that immediately spring to mind.

Sure it may happen, but some of these nations don't have the resources for food production to meet their population in the way South America does. In any case, this is hardly relevant to whether or not desirism is true, considering the desires involved and the implications of the actions you can determine what action is morally better.

That doesn't really work though, prisons are our only real way of punishing, but its a counter productive solution that either destroys people or makes them 10 times worse by the time they're released... at the expense of the heavily taxed civilian.

1. Imprisonment is a form of condemnation.

2. Some prisoners come out of prison worse, but it's still better than leaving offenders out of jail. Whatever disadvantages there are to a prison system massively outweighs what would happen should we not imprison anyone.

And you can apply that to any kind of punishment really, unless behavioural education is implimented then the person punished won't learn anything from the experience; it's just a short term solution to a long term problem.

Of course it is, but it's also much better than nothing.

And I am all for rehabilitation, it's very much the act of changing people's desires. If you make their desire to be a law abiding citizen, and thus achieve all of the desires available to the law abiding, greater than their desire for gains from criminal activity then you have done exactly what desirism prescribes. We have reason for action to promote an aversion to crime, so changing the desires of criminals is very much part of the framework.

The only way to prevent more complicated selfish and destructive desires is to educate people about how those kind of desires will hurt them in the long term.

Exactly! these desires will thwart more of their own desires than the desire to be law abiding. This makes the desire to be a criminal lower than the desire to be law abiding, and since criminal desires are (often) those than tend to thwart more and stronger desires than they promote we have a reason for action to promote an aversion to crime.

I think we agree on much much more than you think, you just seem to have a misconception that leads you to raising all of these 'non-objections'.

Accidents are forgivable, but ignorance of consequences is no excuse. Again, it comes back to education on the subject.

So you would say being ignorant of the consequences of a decision that thwarts more and stronger desires is equally as immoral is knowingly making a decision that will thwart more and stronger desires?

Short term/long term are vastly different.

They are a non-factor. What mattes is the totality of desires promoted vs thwarted. I hope I've explained why this is sufficiently by now.

And neutral isn't as simple as not taking part, you aid the progress of either course of action or not, by doing nothing simply because you've chosen to opt out leaves others with stakes in either course of action liable to suffer or gain because of your lack of involvement.

I agree, it is immoral not to help someone who is bleeding to death. We have a reason for action to promote the desire to help people in need. This is an example of a moral obligation. If you want to make the world better place (better in a utilitarian sense) then you ought to act like a moral person. A moral person is one who has desires than tend to promote more and stronger desires than they thwart. The desire to help someone who is bleeding to death is such a desire, we have reason for action to promote this desire in others because we all have an aversion to bleeding to death.