I’m apologizing in advance, because this will be a long one:
In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit presents us with the category of conditional desires. These are desires that "are implicitly conditional on their own persistence" (p. 151). Parfit uses as an example his desire to swim when the moon rises, which he desires to occur only if, at the time that the moon rises, he still desires to swim. I think that this category of desires is the same as the category of "reason-providing desires", which Mark Platts discusses in Moral Realities, and Stephen Schiffer discusses in "A Paradox of Desire." Discussing Platts' view, George Schueler says "the idea is that what is desirable to the agent about the object of such a desire is completely exhausted by the fact that he wants it." (Desire, P. 40.)
But how should we cash out the notion of a conditional desire? One way is to say that it is a desire that we have only when certain conditions obtain - such as, I desire to have ice cream, but only when I haven't just had some. However, on this view it seems that all desires would be conditional - for instance, they're only had when there is mentality.
More intuitively, one could say that it's the desire that a certain conditional be true, where the consequent of the conditional itself refers to a relevant desire. So when I conditionally desire to have ice cream, I desire that I have ice cream only if at the time I have it I still desire to have it. (There is a problem with this: the focus seems to be on wanting to avoid the situation in which we have the desideratum, yet lack the relevant desire. But notice, the conditional can be true in another unappealing scenario: where we have the relevant desire, but lack the desideratum! In fact, on this account, this would be a scenario in which the conditional desire would be satisfied. However, I'll ignore this issue for now - I think the problem can be solved by saying that the conditional is really a biconditional.) We have some options concerning how to cash out the consequent of the conditional. As far as I can tell, there are three: (i) we could interpret it as referring to an unconditional desire, (ii) we could interpret it as referring to a conditional desire (but not the desire in question), or (iii) we could interpret it as being self-referential, referring to the entire conditional desire.
Going with option (i) seems to entail the following false proposition: a conditional desire (say, to have ice cream), can be fulfilled by either my lacking an unconditional desire for ice cream, or my having an unconditional desire for ice cream at the time that I get ice cream. Firstly, lacking an unconditional desire for ice cream does not seem like an adequate way for a conditional desire for ice cream to be fulfilled. Secondly, there are problems with the positing of an unconditional desire for ice cream. Either the unconditional desire comes into existence at the time that I get ice cream (which, even if true in some strange case, surely isn't true in all relevant cases), or the unconditional desire is had before I get ice cream. But if this is the case, then in addition to having a conditional desire to have ice cream, I have an unconditional desire for it as well. Now it seems that the conditional desire is not doing any work - and it certainly can't do the work that Parfit wanted it to do, which was entail that our desires for things like ice cream can be ignored once the desires are past.
Going with option (ii) seems bad because it commits us to an infinite regress of conditional desires. Which would leave us with an infinity of mental states. Aside from this seeming like a very bad thing (unless you were to perhaps posit dispositional desires, though I'm not quite sure how this would go), it seems that it would cause problems for the Desire-Fulfillment theorist, who thinks that the value of a life is affected by how many desires are fulfilled. Suppose I conditionally desire ice cream, and also conditionally desire to swim when the moon rises. Then I get to have ice cream (hm, cinnamon flavored sounds good). On this interpretation of conditional desire, an infinity of desires would have been fulfilled with that one action. But then do I have any reason to go swimming when the moon rises? After all, it's not as if I'll cause more of my desires to be fulfilled . . . however, I think that there are adequate responses to this objection for the Desire-Fulfillment theorist. But my first objection seems persuasive, and additionally, to appeal to intuitions, it just seems wrong to think that there are an infinity of desires involved every time I desire to have ice cream.
Finally, there's the option that conditional desires are self-referential (option (iii)). I'm not sure how to even conceive of this. The desire to have ice cream comes out as: the desire that I have ice cream at t given that at t I still have this desire. What exactly is the content of this desire? As far as this is unintelligible, I think it's a bad way to go. But I suspect that I'm just not understanding the idea.
If I can find an adequate reason to reject (iii), I'm going to say that on any interpretation, the positing of conditional desires is not plausible. I think that we can account for what happens in cases where we desire things such as ice cream by appealing to the distinction between desires for ends and desires for means. I desire to eat ice cream as a means to achieving the end of instantiating pleasure. If I become full, then eating ice cream will no longer achieve that end. Therefore, I cease to desire it as a means. I think that on this interpretation, the desire to have ice cream would be unconditional, but it would not provide a reason for acting past the persistence of the desire, because I only desired the ice cream for its efficacy toward a certain end, which it would cease to have. At least, that's the (very!) rough idea.
Any thoughts?
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