You need food? Why? Because you need to live? How? If so how do you explain how you need to live when you will inevitably die? Don’t you simply just want to live?
what would happen to your needs if killed you? Sure you define your own needs, and you must also define what the needs pertain to.
endeavor to define a need, i will show you what i mean.
i believe i covered this aswell. there is no innate need to avoid suffering. humans need to avoid suffering if they want to be happy. (generally)
The thing about need is that it describes something necessary. to need something is to necessarily require something.
As humans we have a hard time figuring out what’s necessary, almost always we refer to what is necessary in our own ideal set of desires, not what is actually necessary.
When you say something is needed or necessary, there must be definable consequences if that need is not met.
i simplify things to try and help others understand. my answers are not rehtorical. If my answers do not satisfy you i really see no cause for a fit.
If i desired your respect, perhaps i would need to impress you, in order to make myself happy.
Why are things important to us? because pain and pleasure are vivid.
What’s the difference between a desire and a need? a need is just a critical desire, critical to some goal.
why is desire more important than need? because desire gives rise to need.
I don’t know what it is about my way of thinking that confuses you. “needs” are something that vary depending on the person. In order to just talk generally anout “needs” you have to define the context of a need. If you want to ramble on about needs and desires, define the terms.
i guess the boy didn’t need to see then, even though he wanted to. though in order to achieve his desires, he needed to see it.
i guess you don’t need to have sex either, even though in order to satisfy your desires, you might need to.
Why do you say people need to eat? they need to eat in order to live.
we don’t need to live however, the universe doesn’t stop when we die.
you only need to eat if you want to live, which is a desire not shared by all humans.
Is that simple enough?
oh i thought of one. the only universal need is the need to exist, accomplished retroactively.
Okay, so apparently you are in control of your needs. That is intimidating. I am ashamed to have to say that I am not. I need to eat I need to drink, I need to sleep. Because I need to live. That is how I experience it. I could deny it, and say I don’t need to live, and I have done that, just to try it out, but it wasn’t true. My need to live is not a result of my thoughts, but of what I happen to be, beyond my control. If this is different for you, how and when do you define your needs?
A need is something which is beyond my will to ignore.
I meant no offense. I just wanted to make clear we approach this with different ideas of what knowledge is. I try to go strictly by the experiential, subjective. You seem to use abstract, language based, objective standards.
What about honor, then? I don’t think the general concept of pleasure covers that very well.
I have to object to this. To live is not ‘some goal’.
The terms are experience. The context is reality. I don’t see how my grounding philosophy in experience, reality, makes for rambling.
But he does not need to achieve his desires.
Because your body will be in critical trouble if you don’t.
Perhaps, but more certainly, to avoid the suffering of hunger
The universe doesn’t need to stop when I die for me to need to live.
I just know I need to live. If I die, obviously all my needs end. But philosophy isn’t of much use to the dead, therefore I’d like to stay within the context of life.
I admit you are much quicker to grasp this than me. Frustrating that I’m not in the least illuminated by your theories.
Allow me to ramble on for a bit, maybe I’ll catch up.
Some people lose the will to live. This occurs when they are a) in unbearable physical pain or b) deprived of that which they experienced as the foundation of their life, such as a family, or in the case of the Samurai, their honor.
A is a matter of need. The pain needs to end. Why? I don’t know, but the need is there. Not because they have defined it, but because they are built a certain way.
B is a matter of desire. No desire can be fulfilled anymore, so there is no more need to live. Man needs desires. Or rather, life needs desires to continue existing.
Is this anywhere close to what you have understood?
Something like that, yes. Or passive vs active.
Wonderer:
It is impossible to negate your last statement, but I’m not interested in the universal - that is exactly what I’m trying to get away from. I’m trying to define basic particulars.
It recently became clear to me that the universal is of no relevance to my life. It is strictly theoretical. Who knows, it might just exists as a function of grammar.
Then if I need to exist, do then I not also need to perform those tasks which allow me to continue to do so, such as eating and drinking, or is simply having existed enough in itself?
Sure but how do you need to exist?
I’m not offering any judgement about that, simply responding to the point made by Wonderer.
Very well then, I’m still looking for someone to argue how they need to exist.
Perhaps we could say that existence is the one irredeemable fact we have about ourselves; while all else about us is in some sense mutable our existence cannot be negated even in death or suicide, which would merely be the end of life rather than existence.
That would be religion with no logical reason as to why we would continue to exist after we die.
yep, because curiosity is an important thing. Does it matter that its you or not no, not at all, it only matters out of curiosity 
If you looked like a troll I would still care about you the same. But, if you smelled like one we would probably have issues
I think what he means is that our death does not erase our existence from history.
I see, got ya then.
Yes, exactly.
seems like you are not in control of your desires. nobody needs to live. suicides are very common. the needs you describe are totally subjective.
that’s abit vague.
What if your will fails at getting a need, like you go hungry for a day let’s say… ignoring hunger for a day need not have any consequences.
honor gives pleasure… like a martyr dying for his cause. it is a great pleasure.
yes it is. to stay alive is a goal. it’s “some goal”.
when not everyone shares your experiences the things you assert… well you know…
right, nobody needs to do anything.
what if you dont need a healthy body? then do you need to eat?
right, to avoid suffering people need to eat, but people fast all the time. avoiding pain is not a universal desire.
look… what you “just know”, i “don’t know”. your desires are not my own. you desire to live, you don’t need to live. You said it yourself. You don’t need to achieve your desires
just as the average man doesn’t need to live, a suicidal man doesn;t need to die. they desire to die
re-read this over and over again. you are describing desire. an intense desire. Desire defines need. Your strongest desire is what gives rise to the most important thing in your life, your greatest need.
The thing is that you’re trying to define need in its base form. You ask what is need? and perhaps look for a universal need. you cannot take one of your own needs, even if you think everyone shares that need, because everybody can have completely different desires, which entail completely different needs.
I try to define need in terms of a formula. A need is a critical requirement for the fufillment of some event. In order to be happy (an event) a person might need to satisfy a certain desire, or to eat food and become full.
Without something to lose or gain, a defined objective, there is really no such thing as a need. There are no innate or natural needs in the universe. Humans die wanting all the time, their needs never met.
need is a contextual affair. The op said that need gives rise to desire, we desire things we need. It’s the other way around, we must use desire to qualify a need, because no universal needs exist.
p.s nobody finds me illuminating. i’m too much of a realist.
living and dying isn’t the same as existence…
being dust qualifies you 
it was only an anecdote though
if you exist, you cannot un exist yourself. you must continue existing according to the known laws of the universe.
you need to exist, or you dont exist at all.
Hmm? How do I exist after death?
I think all of you guys would be much better off thinking about needs, desires, and wants in terms of neurobiological mechanisms. It is also important to distinguish between a “feeling” and a statement which describes necessary conditions, as may be the case with the word “need.”
Desires and wants are clearly “feelings.” Needs on the other hand can either refer to a “feeling” or a “condition” which describes either a physical or conceptual relationship. For example, one can say “Fire needs oxygen.” Or “A logical argument needs premises.”
I assume we are only concerned with discussing “needs” in terms of human “feelings.” In that case, I would suggest that “needs”, “desires” and “wants” all be classified under the umbrella term “human motivational mechanisms.” In essence, all these feelings are neurobiological mechanisms which, in one way or another, exert some kind of force which we can only call “motivation.” It is the force that propels us to conscious action. It does not force us to act but it is essential to conscious human action.
More on this later! I gota leave work and go home! Be back in a bit.