So far so good. I look forward to the hard stuff :) And thanks for engaging my request.
Actually, your calling second-level agreement “endorsement” has led me to wonder whether there’s a special term for desires that you want to want, want to want to want, and so on ad infinitum, analogous to common knowledge) or Hofstadter’s hyperrational groups (where everyone knows that everyone knows etc. that everyone is rational).
Particularly because you can bring your beliefs and metabeliefs, etc., into alignment by reflection, whereas making your desires consistent requires at a minimum some kind of action, and may not be possible at all (except for the trivial case of instrumental second-order desires as in Ex. 1).
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.
So far so good. I look forward to the hard stuff :) And thanks for engaging my request.
Actually, your calling second-level agreement “endorsement” has led me to wonder whether there’s a special term for desires that you want to want, want to want to want, and so on ad infinitum, analogous to common knowledge) or Hofstadter’s hyperrational groups (where everyone knows that everyone knows etc. that everyone is rational).
“Reflectively consistent.”
I think that’s for beliefs, not desires.
Particularly because you can bring your beliefs and metabeliefs, etc., into alignment by reflection, whereas making your desires consistent requires at a minimum some kind of action, and may not be possible at all (except for the trivial case of instrumental second-order desires as in Ex. 1).
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.
Update: upon reading Frankfurt I find that he calls this sort of infinitely regressed metawanting a “decisive” want or desire.
Seems to be related to FAI. I’d look forward very much to any mathematic formalization of the term, if you have ideas how to get there.