Your second-order desires are fixed by your desires as a whole, trivially. But they aren’t fixed by your first-order desires. So it makes sense for me to ask whether you harbor a second-order desire to change your first-order desires in this case, or whether you are reflectively satisfied with your first-order desires.
Consider the alcoholic who desires to stop craving alcohol (a second-order desire), but who continues to drink alcohol (because his first-order desires are stronger than his desire-desires). Presumably your first-order desires are currently defeating your second-order ones, else you’d have already switched first-order desires. But it doesn’t follow from this that your second-order desires are nonexistent!
Perhaps, for instance, your second-order desire is strong enough that if you could simply push a button to forever effortlessly change your first-order desires, you would do so; but your second-order desire isn’t so strong that you’ll change first-order desires by willpower alone, without having a magic button to press. This, I think, is an extremely common situation humans find themselves in. So I was curious whether you were satisfied or unsatisfied with your current first-order priorities.
I still do not alieve that keeping my child a safe distance away while sleeping but showing love and care at all other times increases her chance of SIDS. If I was to be shown conclusive research of cause and effect between them, I would reverse my current opinion, mos’ def.
So it’s not really the case that you’d prioritize psychological-guilt-avoidance over SIDS-avoidance? In that case the question is less interesting, since it’s just a matter of how well you can think yourself into the hypothetical in which you have to choose between, say, increasing your child’s odds of surviving by 1% and the cost of, say, increasing your guilt-if-the-child-does-die by 200%.
In that case the question is less interesting, since it’s just a matter of how well you can think yourself into the hypothetical in which you have to choose between, say, increasing your child’s odds of surviving by 1% and the cost of, say, increasing your guilt-if-the-child-does-die by 200%.
I guess, but in real life I don’t sit down with a calculator to figure that out; I’d settle for some definitive research.
Your second-order desires are fixed by your desires as a whole, trivially. But they aren’t fixed by your first-order desires. So it makes sense for me to ask whether you harbor a second-order desire to change your first-order desires in this case, or whether you are reflectively satisfied with your first-order desires.
[all that quote], trivially. What I am saying is that even my “own” desires and the goals that I think are right are only what they are because of my biology and upbringing. If I seek to “debug” myself, it’s still only according to a value system that is adapted to perpetuate our DNA. So to answer truthfully, I am NOT satisfied with my first-order desires, in fact I am not satisfied with being trapped in a human body, from which the first-order desires are spawned.
Your second-order desires are fixed by your desires as a whole, trivially. But they aren’t fixed by your first-order desires. So it makes sense for me to ask whether you harbor a second-order desire to change your first-order desires in this case, or whether you are reflectively satisfied with your first-order desires.
Consider the alcoholic who desires to stop craving alcohol (a second-order desire), but who continues to drink alcohol (because his first-order desires are stronger than his desire-desires). Presumably your first-order desires are currently defeating your second-order ones, else you’d have already switched first-order desires. But it doesn’t follow from this that your second-order desires are nonexistent!
Perhaps, for instance, your second-order desire is strong enough that if you could simply push a button to forever effortlessly change your first-order desires, you would do so; but your second-order desire isn’t so strong that you’ll change first-order desires by willpower alone, without having a magic button to press. This, I think, is an extremely common situation humans find themselves in. So I was curious whether you were satisfied or unsatisfied with your current first-order priorities.
So it’s not really the case that you’d prioritize psychological-guilt-avoidance over SIDS-avoidance? In that case the question is less interesting, since it’s just a matter of how well you can think yourself into the hypothetical in which you have to choose between, say, increasing your child’s odds of surviving by 1% and the cost of, say, increasing your guilt-if-the-child-does-die by 200%.
I guess, but in real life I don’t sit down with a calculator to figure that out; I’d settle for some definitive research.
[all that quote], trivially. What I am saying is that even my “own” desires and the goals that I think are right are only what they are because of my biology and upbringing. If I seek to “debug” myself, it’s still only according to a value system that is adapted to perpetuate our DNA. So to answer truthfully, I am NOT satisfied with my first-order desires, in fact I am not satisfied with being trapped in a human body, from which the first-order desires are spawned.