One might think the name had been coined by opponents of views of this kind. But while its name may seem to imply a controversial claim to objectivity, this is not what is essential to the category as I understand it. Other desire theories depart from this principle in some cases, but it remains the central touchstone of theories of this type.
But this now seems to me a mistake. Hedonism in its classical form, 11 according to which pleasure is the only thing which contributes to the quality of a life, counts as a substantive good theory on the definition I have offered.
This may seem odd. But both of these reasons for associating the two views with one another are mistaken. Hedonism takes certain mental states to be the only things of ultimate value.
The mistake underlying the second reason for linking hedonism and desire theories is, for present purposes, more important. As Griffin goes on to acknowledge, however, substantive good theories can also allow for this kind of variation. They can count various kinds of enjoyment among those things that can make a life better, and can also recognize that different people experience these forms of enjoyment under different p.
Consequently, a substantive good theory can allow for the fact that the best lives for different people may contain quite different ingredients. As I see it, according to a desire theory, when something makes life better this is always because that thing satisfies some desire. Substantive good theories can allow for the fact that this is sometimes the case—it is sometimes a good thing simply to be getting what you want—but according to these theories being an object of desire is not in general what makes things valuable.
Someone who accepts a substantive good theory, according to which certain goods make a life better, will no doubt also believe that these goods are the objects of informed desire—that they would be desired by people who fully appreciated their nature and the nature of life.
But the order of explanation here is likely to be from the belief that these things are genuine goods to the conclusion that people will, if informed, come to desire them. The fact that certain things are the object of desires which are, as far as we can tell, informed desires, can be a reason for believing these things to be goods.
One objective of such a theory is to describe a class of things which make lives better, perhaps also offering some account of the kind of case that can be made for the claim that a thing belongs to this class.
A second, more ambitious objective is to give a general account of the ground of this kind of value—a general account of what it is that makes a life a good life.
I take it that classical hedonism was supposed to do both of these things, and I have been assuming that the unrestricted actual desire theory also aimed at the second of these objectives at least as much as the first; that is, that it sought to explain what makes things valuable at least as much as to identify any particular group of things as desirable. Informed desires are desires which are responsive to the relevant features of their objects. By acknowledging the importance of these features in making the objects good and making the desires for them appropriate rather than mistaken , this theory parts company sharply with the unrestricted actual desire theory, according to which it was the satisfaction of desire which made things good.
Such a theory claims that certain diverse goods make a life better, and it will be prepared to defend this claim by offering reasons possibly different in each case about why these things are desirable.
But it may offer no unified account of what makes things good. Let me turn now to a consideration of the various points of view which I have distinguished above. I will argue against such theories in the following way. But when it does, this reason is either a reason of the sort described by a mental state view such as hedonism or a reason based on some other notion of substantive good rather than a reason grounded simply in the fact of desire, in the way that desire theories would require.
To see this we need to consider each of these cases in a little more detail. In many cases, the fact that I desire a certain outcome provides me with a reason for trying to bring it about because the presence of that desire indicates that the outcome will be pleasant or enjoyable for me.
I can have reasons of this kind, for example, for ordering fish rather than tortellini, for climbing to the top of a hill, or for wearing a particular necktie. The end sought in these cases is the experience or mental state which the object or activity in question p. In other cases, my desire that a certain state of affairs should obtain reflects my judgement that that state of affairs is desirable for some reason other than the mere fact that I prefer it: it may reflect, for example, my judgement that state of affairs is morally good, or that it is in my overall interest, or that it is a good thing of its kind.
This represents, I believe, the most common kind of case in which preferences are cited as reasons for action; the fact that I prefer a certain outcome is a reason for action in such a case, but not a fundamental one. My preferences are not the source of reasons but reflect conclusions based on reasons of other kinds.
My conclusion, then, is that when statements of preference or desire represent serious reasons for action they can be understood in one of the two ways just described: either as stating reasons which are at base hedonistic or as stating judgements of desirability reached on other grounds. Surely, Brandt claims, the fact that he once had this desire gives the man no reason to take a roller coaster ride which he will not enjoy, nor would taking the ride contribute towards making his life better on the whole just because it is something which he once desired.
Brandt's conclusion is that the desire theory should be rejected as an account of what makes a person's life go better, and that a mental state theory should be adopted instead. But these examples provide no reason to move to a mental state theory rather than a substantive good theory, particularly when we bear in mind the fact that any plausible substantive good theory will count agreeable mental states among the things which can make a life better.
That is to say, the agent will no longer regard these preferences as providing reasons for action. Of course it may be that the agent's original judgement of desirability was correct, and he or she is therefore wrong to reject it.
In that case the fulfilment of the original preference might indeed make the agent's life better and so, in a sense, he or she may have reason to seek its fulfilment.
But the force of that reason, if it is one, has nothing to do with the fact that the agent once had this preference. Similar remarks apply to future preferences. When one agrees with the judgement of desirability that a future preference will express, one will believe that one has reason now to promote the fulfilment of that preference. So, for example, a person who believes that in ten years she will have children for whom she will want to provide a good education, and who believes now that educating one's children is very important, will believe that she now has a reason to promote that future goal.
But the future preference itself is doing little work in such cases; what matters is the underlying judgement of desirability. The cases in which the fact of future preference is itself most clearly fundamental fit the hedonistic or, more broadly, experiential model: our concern in these cases is to bring ourselves the pleasant experience of having these preferences fulfilled or to spare ourselves the unpleasant experience of having them frustrated.
It is difficult to come up with a plausible example in which future preferences which one does not now have none the less provide one with direct reasons for action that are independent of experiential or other indirect effects and independent of the merits of the judgements on which those preferences are based. This thesis does not assert that people should take utility maximization to be their most basic reason for action.
It is not a thesis about the reasons people have for acting but rather a thesis about the structure which the preferences of a p. The thesis asserts that the preferences of a rational person will satisfy certain axioms and that when this is the case there will be a mathematical measure of expected preference satisfaction such that the individual will always prefer the alternative to which this measure assigns the greater number. In short, it asserts that a rational individual will choose in such a way as to maximize utility, but does not claim that utility is a quantity which like pleasure supplies the reasons for these choices.
Harsanyi has suggested that the relevant notion is fulfilment of the preferences of the intended beneficiary, and he points out that this is what we aim at when we are selecting a gift for a friend. Preferences are important when we are selecting a gift, baking a birthday cake, or deciding where to take a friend to dinner because what we are aiming at in such cases is a person's happiness.
What we want is to please them, and preferences play a double role here. First, they indicate what gift is likely to bring pleasure. In addition, a person can be pleased simply by the fact that we have taken care to discern what his preferences are and to find a gift that fulfils them. But, contrary to Brandt's suggestion, it is not clear that pleasure is what we should always aim at qua benefactors. Surely there are cases in which a true benefactor will aim at a person's overall good at the expense of what would be pleasing or will at least be torn between these two objectives.
But in so far as the idea of pure desire satisfaction diverges from these two it seems to play little role in the thinking of a rational benefactor.
This idea gets greater weight, however, when we shift from the role of benefactor to that of agent or representative. A person who is acting for a friend or son or daughter may be constrained by that person's preferences, in so far as these are known, in a way that a benefactor is not. Certainly this is the view that my own children take! Whatever view children may take, however, p. They are not bound always to take their children's preferences as definitive of their good, and need to be able to form an independent judgement about that good.
But it is when we focus on people whose role is solely that of agents for other adults that the desire theory has its greatest plausibility. That view owes much of its influence to its wide acceptance among economists, and it seems likely that this acceptance is in turn based on the idea that officials who must choose social policies for a society should think of themselves as agents of the members of that society, and therefore as bound to promote the fulfilment of the members' preferences.
Official responsibility can be defined in many different ways, but it is natural to suppose that an official could be conceived both to be acting for the good of a group and to be bound to accept the expressed judgement of members of that group as to where that good lies. Here, then, is a natural home for desire theories. What makes such theories seem appropriate to questions of social policy is not the nature of the questions at issue.
The question is how broadly they apply. Do they, for example, apply to each of us when we adopt the attitude of impartiality which is appropriate to moral argument? I will turn next to that question. Elemental Edition Notes. Amplified Edition Notes. Amplified edition: By Sarah C. Notes: Transcription. Editorial note. Sorry, but there are no notes associated with any currently displayed witness.
Whenever possible, for instance, original spelling, punctuation, capitalization, lineation, insertions, deletions, alterations, spacing between words and lines, and indentation are all maintained; abbreviations and brevigraphs are not expanded; and superscript and subscript representations are retained. See full conventions for the transcriptions here.
Editorial note The aim of the elemental edition to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure.
Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. See full conventions for this edition here. Editorial note My priority in editing these poems has been to modernise, and to achieve interpretative and visual clarity, in order to make the poems as accessible as possible to as wide a modern audience as is possible. Spelling is modernised, as is punctuation. Critical Note. Headnote In this poetic prayer to God, the speaker seeks illumination of her dark soul, with a promise that in the afterlife the speaker will sing songs of praise to God.
The title interestingly claims that her soul renounces all other desires, except the wish to join in the plenitude of heavenly light that the speaker associates with the moment of creation.
The poem is self-conscious about its own status as a created work and is markedly experimental in its form: its structure, unusual for Pulter, consists of six three-line stanzas, the first two lines of rhymed iambic pentameter and the third a differently rhymed dimeter, with dimeter lines rhyming in sequential stanzas AAB CCB and so on. These devotional lyrics are personal colloquies with God, and they are simple and delicately rendered, of a kind likely to be broadly influenced by the plain style of George Herbert.
The Herbertian qualities of the poem are evident in its combination of apparent simplicity with actual intricacy. These dimeter lines rhyme in pairs across stanzas. My Desire Lyrics. More Gospel Lyrics. Release Year : Added By : Farida. Published : Jan 08 , Na Pesa Yo Nini.
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