Desirism as Rationalism

I have often entertained the idea of declaring desirism a rationalism, since desirism is nothing but the recommendation to live life rationally. I refrained from naming this ethics “rationalism”

simply because the term has such broad and varied usage already. I chose instead “desirism” because my starting assumption was that one and the same rational belief or set of rational beliefs could lead to different actions; so I inferred that desires must be the crucial target of our reasoning about what to do. For example, you may have every good reason to believe that your pantry is well stocked with food, but that you are overweight and have already eaten your daily recommended caloric intake; so is it rational for you to keep eating? Depends on what you want (i.e., most want, or want on balance): Do you want to lose weight because you want to ameliorate your poor heart condition? Do you want to land the starring role in a movie being made by a famous director based on a best-selling book about the world’s fattest man? 

            But now I realize that I was conflating two distinct senses of “desire.” “Desire” can refer to a real psychological entity, for example, the desire to keep eating for its own sake, from sheer appetite. This is desire proper, and the true analogue or complement of belief as a psychological entity. But “desire” can also mean motivation (or be synonymous with “motivation”), for example, the desire to keep eating some unappetizing food in order to gain weight. I had fallaciously assumed that the latter kind of desire always involved the former kind. But a belief by itself can constitute a motivational desire without assistance from a psychological desire; for example, other things equal, it is enough to believe sincerely that one ought to do x in order to be motivated to do x (and hence, other things equal, in order to do x). 

Furthermore, one and the same desire or set of desires could lead to different actions, depending on what one believed. Thus, if you were very hungry and believed your cupboard was well stocked, you would be motivated to walk into the kitchen; but if  you believed the cupboard was bare, you would be motivated to go out shopping. So the target of our reasoning is the motivation, no matter whether constituted of a belief and a desire, or only a belief (or only a desire, if there are such cases). “Desirism” is somewhat of a misnomer and misleading because the desire it is asking us to rationally vet first and foremost is not desire proper but rather motivation. 

            This returns us to “rationalism” as a fitter name for the ethics I have been proposing. And in fact I now have an additional reason – one even more extreme that my reason (or I could say motivation) for developing a new ethics in the first place. Desirism grew out of my “anti-epiphany” that morality is a myth, nothing but a secular version of divine commandments. I felt an acute need for an ethics – a “guide to life” – in the sudden absence of the one I had relied on (or thought I had been relying on). It finally dawned on me that all I needed was what I (and everybody else) already had, namely, desires (now read “motivations”) plus the ability to reason about them. All the while I assumed that the case against morality was a done deal. 

But in my ensuing researches I became aware of a needling objection to amoralism, the so-called Companions in Guilt argument. This holds (in one of its several forms) that rationality is suspect in the sam0065 way that morality is according to amoralists, namely, in its reliance on a presumed categorical imperative. In the case of rationality the imperative is to avoid contradiction or to follow the rules of logic and probability in one’s thinking or believing, just as in morality it is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you or to obey God’s commandments or to avoid double standard or whatever. If the categoricity of all of these imperatives is, to use J. L. Mackie’s famous label, queer, then we must give up rationality as well as morality. But, the objection proceeds, not even amoralists are prepared to do that. Therefore amoralism is a nonstarter. 

            My response to this argument has been to resort to a pragmatism, and so I argue that the utility and even indispensability of rationality for living or living well militate in favor of our retaining it as a human practice, whereas the dispensability and even relative net noxiousness of morality militate in favor of eliminating it as a human practice.[1] 

Nevertheless something about the Companions in Guilt argument “stuck” in my consciousness, and I would now say what stuck is that rationality’s presumed “target” – truth – is as mythical (and noxious) as morality’s presumed target(s) – rightness, wrongness, goodness, and badness. And indicting truth in this way has the further implication that believing x is not to be understood as equivalent to believing that x is true. Truth can no more be a quality of belief than rightness or goodness can be a quality of desire (or action). Both belief and desire (and action), however, can still be rationally vetted.[2] Rationalism in the broad sense I now have in mind is therefore simply the recommendation that we strive to have sincere, informed, and logical reasons for what we believe, desire,[3] and (are motivated to) do. It is intended to be an antidote to moralism and what could be called truthism (or aletheism). The recommendation is to rationalize our desires (in both senses, or I could say, “our desires and actions”[4]) instead of moralizing them, and to rationalize our beliefs instead of truthifying them.

---

[1] Note that “living well” and “noxiousness” are themselves to be understood in terms of another psychological attitude, namely, liking. One might thus be tempted to refer to a likism of values. But here again I would call for rational vetting, in this case, of our likes and dislikes.

[2] So there is no need to speak of a beliefism any more than to speak of a desirism (or a likism).

[3] And like (or dislike).

[4] And values.