But if someone had a magic powder that was tasteless and could remove all carbonation from a drink, then perhaps you could drink it and in a given context would want to. My point is that “2nd order desires” are probably just due to mis-formulated goals and subgoals. I don’t think people really want to want X. Most often, they want X but don’t also want Y, or they want X but cannot give up Y. I suspect it often helps if you can get as close to the level of basic drives as possible. In the Mountain Dew conundrum, it’s self preservation and avoidance of noxious stimuli. These desires are not in conflict, only the particular goal+subgoal scheme resulting from them.
In other words, I doubt many people really “Want to want X.” They often convince themselves of this in order to enable fulfilling some other directive.
But if someone had a magic powder that was tasteless and could remove all carbonation from a drink, then perhaps you could drink it and in a given context would want to. My point is that “2nd order desires” are probably just due to mis-formulated goals and subgoals. I don’t think people really want to want X. Most often, they want X but don’t also want Y, or they want X but cannot give up Y. I suspect it often helps if you can get as close to the level of basic drives as possible. In the Mountain Dew conundrum, it’s self preservation and avoidance of noxious stimuli. These desires are not in conflict, only the particular goal+subgoal scheme resulting from them.
In other words, I doubt many people really “Want to want X.” They often convince themselves of this in order to enable fulfilling some other directive.