I haven’t run into any special jargon for endorsed desires, but it would be a cool word to have. There’s some debate about whether we can really go up indefinitely in higher orders—it’s not clear that we have the necessary cognitive capacity to go higher than about six nested intentional states. (For instance, I intend that you know that I intend that you know that I want to want Mountain Dew, but if you could come up with a more complicated string of propositional attitudes, I’d be a bit lost.)
I see nothing more than the intent to share knowledge of intent, or more concisely, to share intent. This can be reduced to a desire for synchrony of consciousness. When I sit down to play music with others, I do not have all of these intents and meta-intents. Yet it’s arguably true that I do intend for the other musician to know that I intend him or her to know that I want to make good music. One can compose an infinite number of such statements concerning meta-intent and knowledge. But this is only an effect of the linearity of language, causing us to consider each constituent relationship one at a time. Beyond this, one can simply deal with the whole (jam session) in a highly functional, immediate, and mutually pleasing way.
Nth order desires are really just a variation on Xeno’s paradox. It’s a nifty mental exercise, but reality doesn’t work that way. One just has 1st order wants, and a conflict resolution drive which is the only 2nd order want.
I haven’t run into any special jargon for endorsed desires, but it would be a cool word to have. There’s some debate about whether we can really go up indefinitely in higher orders—it’s not clear that we have the necessary cognitive capacity to go higher than about six nested intentional states. (For instance, I intend that you know that I intend that you know that I want to want Mountain Dew, but if you could come up with a more complicated string of propositional attitudes, I’d be a bit lost.)
I see nothing more than the intent to share knowledge of intent, or more concisely, to share intent. This can be reduced to a desire for synchrony of consciousness. When I sit down to play music with others, I do not have all of these intents and meta-intents. Yet it’s arguably true that I do intend for the other musician to know that I intend him or her to know that I want to make good music. One can compose an infinite number of such statements concerning meta-intent and knowledge. But this is only an effect of the linearity of language, causing us to consider each constituent relationship one at a time. Beyond this, one can simply deal with the whole (jam session) in a highly functional, immediate, and mutually pleasing way.
Nth order desires are really just a variation on Xeno’s paradox. It’s a nifty mental exercise, but reality doesn’t work that way. One just has 1st order wants, and a conflict resolution drive which is the only 2nd order want.