Desires

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In his book Rationality in Action, John Searle argues against what he calls the Classical Model of practical reason. One of the main features of this model is that it defines a reason for action as resting solely in one’s desires. Searle argues that a desire is really only a certain kind of practical reason–that things like responsibilities and moral obligations can also serve as reasons for acting.

He uses the example of truth-telling to make his point. If I say, “the Bucs won last night”, what might I give as a reason for making that statement? Undoubtedly I would say, simply, that the statement is true. Now a proponent of the Classical model would counter, “ah…but ultimately you said it because you desired to tell the truth.” Perhaps, yes. But the thing is I wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t true. The fact that the utterance is true thus serves as a legitimate reason for saying it. I said it BECAUSE it was true.

Similarly, if I pay you money that I owe you, I could offer the following rationale: “I paid you because I owed you money.” I have a social obligation to pay you, and that serves as a perfectly sufficient reason for doing so. I can give this reason without appealing to my desires.

So what do you think? Does this model of practical reason add up, or do our reasons for acting ultimately reduce to desires? Keep in mind that Searle is arguing against such heavyweights as Aristotle, Hume and Mill here. His argument is not necessarily the final word.

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I would say that this person is missing a link to how truth telling is connected to desire.
I believe that all decisions are made for personal gain in some way, be it directly selfish or indirectly socially unselfish or anywhere in between. And all personal gain is dictated by desire.

If one states a fact such as “the Bucs won last night”, that could be stated for a number of reasons that go further than “because it is true”. For example it might simply be stated to people who didn’t know who won last night so that they can see you as a good source of information which everyone has a natural curiosity for due to survival reason. (The more one knows about its surroundings, the more it can predict it and the more prepared one can be for any threats it might pose).
It might be used as a conversation starter or as a playful winding up of a person who didn’t want them to win so that you can talk about it and present your opinions and information about it to be seen as a good source of information and to potentially gain more from the other person and know their opinions of it to gain information on human behaviour - all this for the same reason as in the last paragraph. And being seen as a knowledgable person, one can gain admirers who can be used to help you out in future.

As for paying back money, that is done for fear of consequences of not doing it, whether they be social or guilt related so that you don’t have to feel guilty about it and you don’t have to lose a potential helper/friend/collegue and so you can know that that person will now feel that they would have to do the same for you in a potential future situation so you are more prepared for it.

I love talking about this because it reminds me of how people really are under their facades and how crap we all are compared to what we’re trying to be. It sounds bad, but as long as you don’t deny it straight away as a defence mechanism and actually think about it objectively, you know its true.

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What about when we act out of habit or instinct? These can easily be against our desires. While I concede that a habit may originally form out of a desire to act in a certain way, later it can be against our desire to act that way.

I also think ‘personal gain’ is a very vague concept. When a man jumps in front of a bus to push the woman he loves out of the way of that bus he will gain nothing but death, there is absolutely no personal gain for him at all.

However none of these examples I have provided help argue Searle’s case. Perhaps one way to understand his position is to think about the situation of paying someone money back.

Say someone lends you money until you get to a cash machine, you may automatically pay it back without your rational thought process evr reaching an appeal to desire stage. Had it got to a stage where it had been a few hours after you being to the cash machine (say you forgot about it) and your friend asks you for the money you may give it to him out of a desire to assuage that guilt and I would concede that desire forms a part of action there, but if you gave it to him immediatly I don’t believe that your thought process ever reached a desire ‘checking’ state, for want of a better word.

One might argue that this is because it is a formed habit to pay someone back as at one stage in your life you decided paying cash back to someone is in accordance with your desires, but the point here is that your motivation for action is not desire in this case but just the rational thought “I borrowed money so I shall pay it back”.

What do you think, do you believe that we reach the desire checking stage with every action and thought? And even if you don’t is desire still the reason for action even though its cause is indirect? And do instinct/Habit negate the argument that all actions are motivated by desire?

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Matt wrote:

Now that you mention it, I think instinct and habit negate the argument that all our actions are motivated by desire. They help us realize that all of our conscious actions are motivated by self interest, while at the same time showing us that not all of our actions are consciously made. This is very similar to voluntary/involuntary movements and actions, like breathing. Most of the time, when we are breathing, we are not aware of it. But when we are, we are doing so out of the obvious desire to stay alive. I think we all can agree on with this. But when breathing is involuntary, are we doing it out of desire? When our heart beats, is it out of desire? I would say no. It is merely a biological process that is uncontrolled by us. Therefore, even though we desire to live, that is not the cause of us breathing involuntarily. Suppose we could prove that primitive man had to always consciously think about his heart beating in order for it to do so. Would we now claim that our heart beats out of desire? I wouldn’t think so. Because even if I willed my heart to stop, it wouldn’t. And as there was no opportunity to “will” not giving the money back, it was not a desire-caused action.

But is it possible for actions to become involuntary? If it is possible, then surely we must accept Searle’s argument. I would say yes, and Matt has given several examples of this already. Even though these process’s origins were in the conscious realm, they have entered into an unconscious realm, where desire is non-existent.

But then again, I’m still not too confindent with this answer :slight_smile: . Interesting question Logo.

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I think you both agree that you define desire as a selfish conscious want. But I define desires as components of all that u want, selfishly or socially at every conscious level from sub-conscious (mainly instinct and id) to conscious (mainly ego and super-ego).

If you think that you’ve doing something against what you want, that is because a sub-conscious desire is over-riding it. And it is the overall desire that usually wins the decision. Things like impulse decisions don’t require fully conscious contemplation. It only becomes conscious when u need to think about what would be best for urself - which can be selfish or for what other people think of you (in order to gain respect). You save someone else’s life in exchange for ur own because u think it gives respect and because you weigh the other person’s desires above your own.

It is instinct to make ur heart beat. It is part of the self-preservation desire. But it is possible to slow ur heart beat actually. Professional shooters do it. My dad has a friend who won an olympic bronze and he has to control his heart beat when he shoots.

Involuntary decisions = sunconsious desires over-riding conscious desires.

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This is all interesting. I think habit is a good argument against the idea that ALL behavior, however rational, stems directly from what we desire. Even Searle doesn’t seem to take habit into account. He questions the philosophical relevance of the sub-Humean model, which holds that desire motivates ALL action. He says, of course we do everything we do because on some psychological level we want to do it. But that’s not saying much. All it basically means is that we choose (or at least appear to choose; practical-reason philosophers tend to assume free will as a sort of pragmatic construct) to do everything we do. But Searle tries to define desires more narrowly, as those motivations which stem from a sort of non-rational Id: a guy watches porn because he WANTS to; that’s desire. For Searle, things like obligations are fundamentally different. Of course people WANT to fulfill their moral obligations, but this is a very different kind of desire from the kind that causes a person to watch porn.

Habits seem to form an interesting exception though. I think we can account for habits by saying that habit-forming actions stem from desire, so by extension the actions performed under the influence of developed habits stem from those initial desires; not necessarily from what we want at the moment of action. I don’t think the sub-Humean view has an answer for this.

But I suppose I failed to clarify that Searle is talking primarily about RATIONAL action: what things qualify as GOOD reasons for acting? And I don’t think he ultimately defeats the Classical view that all rational motivation must reduce to desires.

Desires remain in the background of practal reasoning; often we don’t engage in full causal reasoning about our actions–which is why desire is not always INVOKED when a rational agent explores her motives. Often it is sufficent for someone to say, “I said x because x is true.” But the desire ALWAYS remains the most primary consideration. If the agent were to engage in FULL causal reasoning she would have to come up with something like,

-I want to tell the truth.
-x is true.

I want to say x.

The desire is the most basic consideration, and when coupled with a true fact about the world, that desire becomes a good reason for rational action. Searle of course admits that desire can be construed in a broader sense like this, but he wants to say that a desire to tell the truth is different from a desire to–say–eat ice cream. However, I tend to think that desires end up reducing to a few ultimate ends; and fulfilling those ultimate ends is what constitutes rationality. My contention is that the end of physical pleasure is no different from the end of fulfilling moral obligations, so long as they are both ULTIMATE ends. Of course, ultimate ends conflict all the time, and much of practical reasoning consists in optimizing and prioritizing in such a way that all of one’s primary ends are maximally satisfied.

Let me just say one more thing about habit here: if the agent can specify a primary end, it will be rational for her to form habits that will consistently meet that end. We may not be directly responding to our desires in habitual action, but if the habit is rational, it has been formed and therefore indirectly motivated by desire.