A response to Kip on Desirism

This post is a response to comments by Kip on Desirism: More Questions Answered (part 2) at Luke's Commonsense Atheism.

I’m saying that all the desires that exist are relevant. You are
talking about the “invariants”, seemingly dismissing some of the
variables, but then you clarified that you are not, so I’m not sure how
your response addressed Luke’s concerns with the billions of variables
involved.

Now this was the result of my previous responses to a point in a previous post by Luke. Specifically:

Instead, desire utilitarianism says that moral imperatives can only be known by way of calculations involving billions of (mostly) unknown variables: desires, strengths of desires, relations between desires and states of affairs, and relations between desires and other desires.

Kip remains unconvinced by my argument over types and tokens but this is only part of the argument. Let us complete it here.

To recap I have argued for two points so far:

1. The evaluation focus being on desires not actions means that it is the type of desire that is under consideration - to be promoted or demoted - rather than any individual token instance with resultant action, since the same type can lead to different actions in different instances. It is the overall effect of promoting or demoting a desire, as it indeed leads to various actions in various circumstances that is of concern and that is amenable to social influence.
2. One can determine in some sense the desire type by seeking to discover the invariant features that are common to a range of token instances with related actions.

Now Kip's concern seems to be that I am in some sense or other dismissing the variables within these tokens, specifically the strength and number of holders of the desires under question. His concern would be quite correct if I were dismissing these variables but I am not, rather it is a question of emphasis and priority. To illustrate this I will provide an argument from analogy, which might, at first glance confirm Kip's worry but, hopefully, the conclusion should lay this worry to rest.

Consider Aristotle seeking understand the structure of thought, of arguments that led to his theory of deductive logic. Now could Aristotle (and his peers and successors) have embarked on this enterprise if he (or they) had thought (to paraphrase Luke's above statement) that "that logic can only be known by way of calculations involving billions of (mostly) unknown variables: beliefs, strengths of beliefs, relations between beliefs and states of affairs, and relations between beliefs and other beliefs."?

My point about seeking invariants across token instances is surely very analogous to the extractions of the various logical principles such as syllogisms such as modus tolens and modus ponens and the range of mistakes - formal and informal fallacies- that can occur. (And I am treating this analogy in a Quinian sense, that there is an empirical basis and derivation of the rules of logic). So in both scenarios the number and strength of beliefs or desires serves to distract from and distort the underlying structures one is seeking to discern.

The analogy can be extended further since there are a number of informal fallacies based on the number holders and strengths of beliefs - such as argument from popularity and argument from histrionics (or, even worse, the argument from the threat of violence or the argument from violence). Without accepting something specially different about desires, for which an argument needs to be made, a similar point can be made with respect to desires - the strengths and (number of) holders of a desire are not legitimate grounds to justify any desire.

Ultimately the point to be made is quite simple, with regard to evaluating a desire the consequences or conclusion is over whether it is to be promoted or demoted. This means as to whether to increase or decrease the strength of the desire(s) in question and as to whether to increase or decrease the number of holders of such desires. So these factors - variables - are to be taken into account, but in the implementation of the solution.

To insist upon them as overwhelming factors in framing the problem space serves only to make the question unresolvable (I am not insinuating that Kip is guilty of this, but it is one implication of his concern) . As Dennett put it ""Philosophy is what you do when you don't yet know what the right questions to ask are". This approach gets beyond philisophy (conceptual analysis) to empirical analysis by asking questions capable of tractable answers.