Showdown: ILP vs. ILO Finale

[Carleas]

Be a part of history!

The Challenge;
The Debate;

The Discussion:

[thezeus18]

Uh, I fail to see how team ILO's conception of morality is, er, morality.

[Tab]

[PavlovianModel146]

Uh, I fail to see how team ILO's conception of morality is, er, morality.

Morals = Right Conduct

Do what's right for yourself!

[helptheherd]

Morality must entail immorality. Morality isn't description.

And certainly, Team ILO's attempt at morality is nothing more than description. "To do what satisifes your wants and your needs on an individual basis" is how people do, in fact, act. It cannot be morality because it is no more than an observation of human decision making. It leaves no room for immorality, because all human actions are attempts to satisfy wants and needs.

a quote from carleas-

you see the thing you guys are not seeing is that a universal morality is a neccessity- if there were no universal morality then existence would not be. one can be immoral to others but can never be completely immoral to themselves or they would not be able to exist- therefore team ilp is horribly wrong and team ilo is completely right...Good Job ilo!...God bless- no offense to carleas- but it is the truth- just had to put it out there- do with it what you will- if you understand you will have to agree- see ya

[Mad Man P]

ILO didn't even put up a fight this time...

[PavlovianModel146]

Or, perhaps our argument is so ridiculously simple that you are missing it.

[uglypeoplefucking]

it is ridiculously simple - i think you guys needed to make a better case that it's actually a MORAL argument - i wasn't convinced that it was ...

[PavlovianModel146]

it is ridiculously simple - i think you guys needed to make a better case that it's actually a MORAL argument - i wasn't convinced that it was ...

Coming soon to a theater near you.

[Wobbly]

I missed the second debate, but between the first and the finale there has emerged a clear strategy on the part of ILO and a complete failure of ILP to adjust it. The strategy, ofcourse, was easily predictable, almost necessarily so, to anyone that is familiar with how both sides think. ILO takes a straightfoward question with a long established manor of discourse and argues for a position that ought to completely change the strategies and reasonings of both sides. ILP being less creative and adaptive, but more logical and capable struggles to argue with traditional lines of inquiry in what ILO has changed into an unconventional debate. Completely missing that what ILO has offered is trash.

This disconnect was far more appearant in the last debate in which ILO's position on universal morality can hardly be considered a position on universal morality at all. This allowed them, as "creative" arguments often do, to control the terms on which the discussion was held. Failing to adjust, ILP was forced to argue traditional lines against nontraditional arguments. Th, ae debate was won before it began, and it was won by a position that cannot really be considered a position on the topic to begin with. Or rather, it requires so much clarification and nuance that if it is possible to argue it all, it ought to take the entirety of a book to do so.

The genius of it is that their formulation of their position is so mundane and platitudinous that one instantly thinks one knows what it means. And instead of realizing how flawed and massively underdeveloped it was, ILP assumed it made sense and tried to levy rational arguments against an unclear and probably unreasonable position. ILP ought to have attacked it on the grounds that it doesn't make sense, and is a meaningless statement instead of assuming that they knew what it meant and arguing against it on traditional terms. Everything that ILO said was pure nonsense, but everything that ILP said was a strawman. It was a train wreck and painful read.

Do to time constraints I will only point out how worthless ILO's position is. To do this I will use their most concise formulations of it, which are incidentally single sentences that make nonsense look like platitudes.

In their first post we get this from Pav. :

"the Universal Morality is that we do whatever we can (within our confines) to satisfy our individual wants or needs. We are moral; we do what is right for us."

This is the folk psychological view of how human volition works, but it is a descriptive statement and this is a normative debate. For it to be a formulation of a universal morality it has to be an imperative and take the form of "one ought to....do what satisfies ones individual wants and needs". ILO got away with multiple equivocations throughout the debate and seemed to flaunt the equivocation as a main part of their argument.

Gobbo starts off the second ILO post by capitalizing and advocating the equivocation when he says Alright, describing morality in the confines of prescribed (non)action is not the only way to look at universal morality.

No Gobbo perscribed action is what morality is, and the only reason you are not laughed out of the debate when you say that is that your formulation of a universal moralityis highly equivocal. It is both a folk psychological veiw of describing human volition and your chosen formulation of morality. Your equivocation does not lead us to some grand idea about what morality is, it is just a fucking equivocation, and a particularly blatant and silly equivocation at that. You just tried to change the definition of morality based on a defect of reasonsing. So painful..... The debate was won right here by ILP, they just failed to realize it


Gobbo gives us another formulation of their theory at the end of his post:

we're saying, essentially, yes, doing what you want in the face of absurdity and complexity


It is hard to even understand what this is supposed to mean, it doesn't even say "most want", it just says want. Well, I think I want about 1,000 different things at once, some things I want more than others, and other things I hardly want at all. Some things I value but don't want and other things I want but don't value. You're asserting that I act immorally if I behave consistent with my values but not my wants when they come into conflict with each other.

I value an education but really don't want to go to class today, if I side with my values, according to you I am being immoral. This is a serious problem with your theory, infact it is so hopelessly confused that this alone overturns and trumps all arguments any of you made.

Other problems include knowing what you want, understanding implanted wants versus authentic wants, second order wants, when wants come into conflict....and the list goes on for quite some time.


The point is that ILO based their entire position on an equivocation and advocated that equivocation, and even ignoring this their position is so general and assumes such a binary and simple human that it is hardly understandable to begin with. Yet, they got away with it because ILP was incapable of seeing through the platitudinous formulations.

[Carleas]

I think we hit that nail, and pretty hard.

In the first paragraph of my response to Pav,

By shifting the argument from what people should do, to what people do do, PavlovianModel146 has tacitly accepted that it is impossible to define a universal statement of what people should do, i.e. that there is no universal human morality. For whatever Team ILO has described, it can be sure that it is not morality.

Tab said "a 'universal morality of one' is a meaningless concept", and Smears said "people simply acting according to their desires doesn't seem to have much to do with morality at all."

I don't see how your response is very different from these statements.

[Wobbly]

Then wtf were the judges doing, seriously, what the hell.

If I may venture an explanation.....

I think your post was flawless, but Tab's post failed to point out the equivocation and he assumed that he instantly knew what was meant by their childishly underdeveloped formulation of "do what you want". Infact he took something that was complete nonsense "do what you want", and interpreted it as Thelema. They share similar flaws, but they are not the same thing. So when he attacked Thelema as meaningless, even though it also applies to "do what you want", the attack was a straw-man. He also pointed out the "do what you want" statement was nonsense, but not on the grounds that it doesn't make sense as a stand-alone, but on the grounds that it doesn't make sense as a universal morality. The tacit assumption was that "do what you want" made sense, and given it's platitudinous formulation it allowed ILO to maintain the illusion that it is a simple and immediately understandable statement.

It seems that the equivocation allowed ILO the opportunity to prove their point only if they could prove that "people do what they want", since it was piggybacked onto "people ought to do what they want". So while Tab argued against the "ought" formulation, as we saw he allowed the descriptive formulation to maintain, and since they were tied together with an equivocation there was nothing he could say that would disprove the ought formulation.

I didn't see this the first time I read your post, but Tab's post redirected it.

[PavlovianModel146]

Do to time constraints I will only point out how worthless ILO's position is. To do this I will use their most concise formulations of it, which are incidentally single sentences that make nonsense look like platitudes.

In their first post we get this from Pav. :

"the Universal Morality is that we do whatever we can (within our confines) to satisfy our individual wants or needs. We are moral; we do what is right for us."

"Make nonsense look like platitudes."

Awesome!

Seriously, that was hilarious.

I value an education but really don't want to go to class today, if I side with my values, according to you I am being immoral. This is a serious problem with your theory, infact it is so hopelessly confused that this alone overturns and trumps all arguments any of you made.

It does no such thing.

The problem here is that it is impossible to satisfy both wants. You want to act in a manner that adheres to your values, but you also want to skip class on this particular day, but you can't do both. That is going to be the case anytime there are two different things that you may want to do, but that involve the same period of time in such a manner that you cannot do both.

In such a situation, you must choose one or the other. If you choose the one that you want to do more at the time (and you always will) according to Team ILO's definition, you have acted morally.

[Tab]

Yadda yadda yadda.

[Carleas]

Out of curiosity, Pav, how much merit do you think ILO's definition of universal morality actually has? On the one hand, I find it ridiculous, because morality is generally taken as a motivator, and that definition cannot motivate. On the other hand, I don't think people push morality for any reason other than to get what they want. It seems like the conventional understanding of morality presents an impossible standard, and that ILO just tried to transcend and defy the conventional understanding, since a discussion within that understanding would have been hopeless.

[Wobbly]

The problem here is that it is impossible to satisfy both wants. You want to act in a manner that adheres to your values, but you also want to skip class on this particular day, but you can't do both. That is going to be the case anytime there are two different things that you may want to do, but that involve the same period of time in such a manner that you cannot do both.

I think that is an oversimplified understanding of want, but I guess I'm supposed to redefine "want" along with ILO and use it as a catch all for every human motivator. I would have to be convinced to do so, rather than just forced to by some underdeveloped sentence that compelled it on all of us unconsciously. But, It lacks explanatory power because it lacks complexity, I would be unable to even explain the inner motivations of myself let alone try to universalize them out to the entire species. A binary account of want doesn't accurately describe the human condition.

The problem ofcourse is that It doesn't make sense for the reason I pointed out in my previous post. Different motivators come into conflict all the time, and the human is not a binary creature that has just one sort of motivation in only one sort of intensity. The two motivators I used were values and attitudes, and I gave a very plausible account of how my attitude is felt more intensely than this sort of "in the back of my mind" values, but I am ultimately moved by my values to action. I don't think any of us can deny that the desire to stay in bed when we've stayed up too late is NOT more intense than the nagging feeling we have that we ought to go to class even though we don't have to. Yet, occasions occur when we are moved by that nagging feeling. The answer is that we have either previously decided to be motivated by our values over our more intense baser wants and desires, we are moved to action out of habit, or we find motivation from values qualitatively superior to motivation by quantitatively superior attitudes. Your platitude is incompatible with all three of these answers, it cannot account for human behavior.

I should have anticipated your response, but the surprise gave me a good laugh, so thank you for that. Your response was in keeping with the ILO position, but it didn't address the difficulties I laid out. Instead it was a descriptive statement that is folk psychological. Focusing on the problem of satisfying multiple "wants" is a problem dear to folk psychology, and saying the most intense wins out is an answer dear to folk psychology, so as per usual your answer is immediately understood and seen as the right answer. But it addressed neither the point that was made, nor made sense beyond a immediate guttural agreement.

[PavlovianModel146]

Out of curiosity, Pav, how much merit do you think ILO's definition of universal morality actually has? On the one hand, I find it ridiculous, because morality is generally taken as a motivator, and that definition cannot motivate. On the other hand, I don't think people push morality for any reason other than to get what they want. It seems like the conventional understanding of morality presents an impossible standard, and that ILO just tried to transcend and defy the conventional understanding, since a discussion within that understanding would have been hopeless.

That's exactly what we did, attempted to transcend the conventional standard. That's what we had to do. Let's assume for a second that ILO (As a team) could come up with one thing so vile and wrong that no human being would be capable of doing it, even if we were to do that it wouldn't be a Universal Morality, per se, but simply a Universal Moral, and one Moral does not a Morality make.

Just for the sake of argument, even if Team ILP were to accept a single Moral as an entire Morality, the fact that no human could do the thing described still would not prove anything. The very fact that someone could think of an example of something that no person could ever do indicates that someone could actually conceivably do it, because for a thing to be inconceivable one must not even be able to think about it.

So, the next strategy is to take it the other way because morality usually entails not doing something that could be construed or generally regarded as bad, but then what if we could come up with something Universally regarded as good that virtually everyone does as a matter of course? It still wouldn't matter because there are certain groups of people (i.e. mentally handicapped) that it could still probably not be applied to.

So, we pretty much had to change the terms of the entire Debate which required an overhaul on what is construed as Morality. With the path we chose, it actually 180'ed the argument and made it near-impossible for ILP to argue against us because the nature of our argument was self-contained, how can anyone possibly help but do whatever it is they are going to do when they must always be doing something?

So, that makes the very doing of anything moral, or even the doing of nothing because inaction is still a form of action.

Anyway, we basically had to go with that, and the fact that immorality (under our definition) doesn't actually exist (or cannot exist) isn't really important because it has nothing to do with there being a morality. That would be like saying that God cannot be Universal without there simultaneously being no God, that makes no sense.

Anyway, some Debates without clearly defined bounds work much like a legal trial works. It is largely about controlling definitions and terms of the argument. Even though laws are written to avoid ambiguity many of them are ambiguous, especially when it comes to proper sentencing, so there is a lot of argument that has to go on there. In this case, though, the bounds were pretty clearly defined, so it was the bounds themselves that had to be changed, a paradigm that needed to be shifted.

So, to answer the question do I really believed what ILO described to be the Universal Morality. Probably not, but it is just as good as there not being a Universal Morality, either way, the end result is the same people do whatever they think is best for them to do at the time.

[PavlovianModel146]

I think that is an oversimplified understanding of want, but I guess I'm supposed to redefine "want" along with ILO and use it as a catch all for every human motivator. I would have to be convinced to do so, rather than just forced to by some underdeveloped sentence that compelled it on all of us unconsciously. But, It lacks explanatory power because it lacks complexity, I would be unable to even explain the inner motivations of myself let alone try to universalize them out to the entire species. A binary account of want doesn't accurately describe the human condition.

Does 2 + 2 = 4 lack explanatory power because it lacks complexity?

The problem ofcourse is that It doesn't make sense for the reason I pointed out in my previous post. Different motivators come into conflict all the time, and the human is not a binary creature that has just one sort of motivation in only one sort of intensity. The two motivators I used were values and attitudes, and I gave a very plausible account of how my attitude is felt more intensely than this sort of "in the back of my mind" values, but I am ultimately moved by my values to action. I don't think any of us can deny that the desire to stay in bed when we've stayed up too late is NOT more intense than the nagging feeling we have that we ought to go to class even though we don't have to. Yet, occasions occur when we are moved by that nagging feeling. The answer is that we have either previously decided to be motivated by our values over our more intense baser wants and desires, we are moved to action out of habit, or we find motivation from values qualitatively superior to motivation by quantitatively superior attitudes. Your platitude is incompatible with all three of these answers, it cannot account for human behavior.

Values and attitudes, but then everything is also situational. Let's posit the values for a second, because I think that is what you were intending to do in the first place. The question then becomes, why is the person with these values motivated to skip class?

Is it because the person was up all night studying for an exam in that very class? It could be, but then skipping class defeats completely the very reason that they put themselves into a position to want to skip class in the first place. As a result, the person is almost definitely going to go to class because the person does not want to waste all that effort studying and then fail a test by not showing up.

On the other hand, maybe the person is very studious, but decided to have a wild night for a change of pace and is seriously hungover with a bad headache. This person is motivated not to go to class because he will not only worsen his headache, but even though he attends the first class he may not get that much out of it. However, if there is a later class for him to attend, he might be able to get himself into good physical condition for that one by fully sleeping off his drunk.

Anyway, none of your answers work because they are all one or the other, or constitute pre-planning.

1.) "previously decided to be motivated by our values over our more intense baser wants and desires."

That's a good rule of thumb and I am sure it applies to many people, but the way you define it prevents it from being situational. It's something that we can do as a rule, but occasionally we will still act in opposition to our values.

2.) "we are moved to action out of habit"

Nope, doesn't account for one-time decisions for which no habit has been formed.

3.) "find motivation from values qualitatively superior to motivation by quantitatively superior attitudes."

What?

I should have anticipated your response, but the surprise gave me a good laugh, so thank you for that. Your response was in keeping with the ILO position, but it didn't address the difficulties I laid out. Instead it was a descriptive statement that is folk psychological. Focusing on the problem of satisfying multiple "wants" is a problem dear to folk psychology, and saying the most intense wins out is an answer dear to folk psychology, so as per usual your answer is immediately understood and seen as the right answer. But it addressed neither the point that was made, nor made sense beyond a immediate guttural agreement.

Duck test, observation, personal experience?

The fact is (whether the fact constitutes a Universal Morality notwithstanding) that everything that we do (or don't) by our own volition we do because we wanted to do it. We're confronted with choices every day. I generally like Life more that I like Kix, I think Life is the superior breakfast cereal, but maybe I wake up one day and I want Kix. Maybe I want eggs.

I don't know. It seems to me that people do what they most want to do at any given time when what they most want to do is feasible, it strikes me as obvious. There are reasons and there are reasons for those reasons and it's all pretty much cause and effect.

Some things will make a person shelf their values for a time, some things won't.

[Wobbly]

I'm not sure what to do with your post. You seem to think that I'm offering some behavioral theory of everything, but all I am doing is pointing out examples that show why "do what you want most" doesn't properly describe all human behavior. What this means is that I don't have to account for all human behavior, nor do I in anyway intend to, claim to, or want to, all I have to do is show examples where "do what you want most" doesn't apply.

I've taken it a little further in order to debunk the less strict original formulation of "do what you want" by claiming that it is too simple to describe human behavior because it is using "want" as a catch all, but humans have multiple distinct motivators.

That is not to say that cases don't exist where "do what you want" applies, as in when the only motivators at work are immediate desires. There are plenty of cases, like when I know I want to drink soda but have the choice of mountain dew or coke. The only thing that weighs on this decision is my immediate want. In such a case we can describe my behavior with "do what you want", but only because the relevant motivators have the same origin.

Anyway, you've contradicted yourself and admitted that "do what you most want" doesn't work as a universal because examples exist in which it doesn't describe our behavior.

That's a good rule of thumb and I am sure it applies to many people, but the way you define it prevents it from being situational.

Nope, doesn't account for one-time decisions for which no habit has been formed.

Anyway, none of your answers work because they are all one or the other, or constitute pre-planning.

I would argue further that you've also conceded that "do what you want" doesn't make sense when "want" is a catch all for all human motivators because you employed distinctions among motivators in your last post, but that might still be up in the air.


I think the example you chose at the end of your post to describe "want" pretty much sums up the story of your post. It is a folk psychological example that is overly simplistic and misses the complexities of human motivators in more complex cases. Yet, for some reason, it is seen as the archetypal case that can be universalized out to all examples. It's a very curious thing, to watch it in action.

[PavlovianModel146]

Show me a situation where doing what someone most wants to do out of all available options does not come into play.

How does a motivator, as you put it, not result in a want? If it doesn't result in a want, how is it a motivator?

[Wobbly]

How does a motivator, as you put it, not result in a want? If it doesn't result in a want, how is it a motivator?

A want is a type of motivator, it doesn't make sense to say "result" in reference to the relation

And if you decide to say that there is only one type of motivator and it is called "want", despite the reasons I gave for not doing so, then the ILO position becomes "we are motivated to action by what motivates us". Such a statement says nothing.

[PavlovianModel146]

How does a motivator, as you put it, not result in a want? If it doesn't result in a want, how is it a motivator?

A want is a type of motivator, it doesn't make sense to say "result" in reference to the relation

And if you decide to say that there is only one type of motivator and it is called "want", despite the reasons I gave for not doing so, then the ILO position becomes "we are motivated to action by what motivates us". Such a statement says nothing.

Ok, so a want is a type of motivator, I'll work with that. Other types of motivators could be needs or values and of course there are others. So, we understand that any of these motivators, whether collaboratively or individually result in us taking a certain action. However, we want to take this action in order to satisfy these motivators.

So it is not saying, "We are motivated to action by what motivates us," or, "We are motivated to want by our wants," and you are correct that such statements say nothing. Basically, what it is saying is that we want to take a certain action as a result of these motivators, whatever they may be, and that is a seperate thing. Essentially then, we are wanting two things, the first of which is the initial want or the desire to satisfy the initial value, the second thing is that we want to determine and implement an action that will satisfy the initial want or value.

These are two completely different things, even though they may seem like they are the same thing. What I mean by this is that it is theoretically possible to want something while not taking the necessary action to get it, in this event, the want by itself is not enough of a Motivator. Since it is not enough of a Motivator, we do not do what is necessary to satisfy the initial want, or in other words, we do not want (For whatever reason) to take action that will satisfy the initial want. What this means is that the taking of an action to satisfy a different want, or inaction, apparently satisfies a separate Motivator having more of an affect on us (Qualitatively or Quantitatively, or both) than the unsatisfied want mentioned above.

Or, in simpler terms, there is something that we want more.

In a case where we take the action, which means we wanted to take the action, to satisfy a want as a Motivator, it means the want was enough of a Motivator to take that action.

At the end of it all, it is simply a matter of Motivation to take a certain action, or to not take action. Therefore, the choice between two (or more) individual or collective sets of wants/needs/values/habits that we make and take action to satisfy results in a separate want altogether which is wanting to take action to satisfy the Motivator.

For an example of this, let's look at something that I do not want to do vs. something that I would like to do. I would like to go play a round of golf, but at the same time, I would not like to do the gardening.

If I refrain from doing the gardening in favor of playing golf, I will get bitched at by my wife. Even though I don't want to do the gardening, I want even less to get bitched at by my wife, so now it is time to decide which action to take.

For the purpose of simplicity in stating my point, I am going to assign values to these thing and present two different scenarios. In scenario A, not doing the gardening (which is a want, by the way, it is a want to not do something) I will assign a value of five, I will assign getting bitched at by my wife a twenty-five and a round of golf a ten.

So, I could go golfing (10), not do the gardening (5), but get bitched at by my wife (-25) which results in a total of negative ten. I could do the gardening (-5) and not get bitched at by my wife (25), but I sacrifice the golfing (negative ten) for a total of ten. Finally, I could not go golfing (negative ten) not do the gardening (five) and still get bitched at by my wife (negative -25) for a total of negative thirty.

With the scores assigned to each outcome, it is obvious that (in order) the best results for me are as follows:

1.) Gardening: Yes Golfing: No Bitched At: No
2.) Golfing: Yes Gardening: No Bitched At: Yes
3.) Gardening: No Golfing: No Bitched At: Yes

Now, if I change the value of golfing to a positive thirty, let's see how the possibilities above score:

1.) Negative Ten
2.) Ten
3.) Negative Fifty

In the first case, my Motivators (Laziness, Wanting to Golf, Not Getting Bitched at) are most satisfied by doing the gardening, not going golfing and not getting bitched at. When the value of golfing changes, my Motivators are most satisfied by golfing, not doing the gardening and getting bitched at.

These are Value Equations that we do in our head everyday. Although it may be true that we do not assign a specific numerical value to all of these things, we do attempt to come up with probable results of our actions mentally before determining which action to take at any given time. As we are determining what action to take, all of these Motivators are swirling through our head and the goal is to take whatever action either Quantitatively satisfies the most Motivators (Assuming all present Motivators carry an equal value) or Qualitatively satisfies the most Motivators (Assumes a different value for at least two of the motivators, as in the example above.)

As a result, we will take whatever action is necessary to satisfy what Motivates us the most, that becomes the action that we want to take, and in some cases, the action that we need to take. To conclude, the Universal Morality is to take whatever action most satisfies our wants and/or needs and it is something that all people do which is what makes it a Universal to begin with.

Your turn.

[PavlovianModel146]

I should also add that the specific value rankings of Motivators will differ on an individual, and even on a same-person basis, and that is the reason why some people deem the actions of others to be immoral. It is also the reason why that a certain action in a certain situation may be deemed immoral by a specific person at one point in time, but may be deemed completely moral by that same person at a different point in time.

However, these valuation differences do not result in actual immorality, but merely the perception of immorality. This perception comes about because we judge the actions of others against what we ourselves would do, however the Value of Motivators that we assign ourselves are only differing from the Value of Motivators that the other person is assigning himself/herself. Therefore, the perception of immorality (or even that of superior Morality) that one person places upon another has absolutely nothing to do with the actual Morality of the action taken by the other person.

[Wobbly]

So, we understand that any of these motivators, whether collaboratively or individually result in us taking a certain action. However, we want to take this action in order to satisfy these motivators.

It's hard to tell, but you seem to be discussing second order volitions. There is no reason to think that everything we do is subject to second order volitions or that wants are the only motivators present during second order volitions. We are all wanton to a certain degree. And as it happens, the ideas I'm offering are most powerful as a response to the problem of second order volitions.

I want to smoke because I'm addicted to nicotine, but I am aware of the concequences it causes to my health so I don't value this want. Now we could say I don't want to want to smoke, but we wouldn't really capture what is going on within me because, in this example, two different motivators are at play. An immediate want that unconsciously compels me to smoke, and then the relation between a higher cognitive processes and my values that makes me disvalue smoking. If we say I don't want to want we are forced into equivocation or unnecessarily vague language. It is simply a very poor way to describe my behavior if I am ultimately motivated by my second order value to quit smoking.

Or consider an example where wants come into direct contradiction with each other. Let's say I want to smoke because I'm addicted, but I don't want to smoke because it makes my house smelly. Let's further say that each of these wants is of identical intensity and I want to want to do both. It is plausible that I am so torn between my wants that it resonates infinitely to any order of desire we wish to investigate. I want to want to want to want....to do both. Your theory cannot account for how I decide which path to pursue, infact it further says that I will never be able to be moved to action at all. I am stuck at an impasse of wants for all eternity. Yet, when situations like this do arise, we clearly pick one path like it is the natural path and don't really even realize what obvious peril we were in. On the other hand, what I have been putting forward has no problem at all in dealing with the situation. It answers with values, or attitudes, or explanatory coherence of past behavior ect.

[PavlovianModel146]

It's hard to tell, but you seem to be discussing second order volitions. There is no reason to think that everything we do is subject to second order volitions or that wants are the only motivators present during second order volitions. We are all wanton to a certain degree. And as it happens, the ideas I'm offering are most powerful as a response to the problem of second order volitions.

I want to smoke because I'm addicted to nicotine, but I am aware of the concequences it causes to my health so I don't value this want. Now we could say I don't want to want to smoke, but we wouldn't really capture what is going on within me because, in this example, two different motivators are at play. An immediate want that unconsciously compels me to smoke, and then the relation between a higher cognitive processes and my values that makes me disvalue smoking. If we say I don't want to want we are forced into equivocation or unnecessarily vague language. It is simply a very poor way to describe my behavior if I am ultimately motivated by my second order value to quit smoking.

Or consider an example where wants come into direct contradiction with each other. Let's say I want to smoke because I'm addicted, but I don't want to smoke because it makes my house smelly. Let's further say that each of these wants is of identical intensity and I want to want to do both. It is plausible that I am so torn between my wants that it resonates infinitely to any order of desire we wish to investigate. I want to want to want to want....to do both. Your theory cannot account for how I decide which path to pursue, infact it further says that I will never be able to be moved to action at all. I am stuck at an impasse of wants for all eternity. Yet, when situations like this do arise, we clearly pick one path like it is the natural path and don't really even realize what obvious peril we were in. On the other hand, what I have been putting forward has no problem at all in dealing with the situation. It answers with values, or attitudes, or explanatory coherence of past behavior ect.

First Paragraph:

I agree, but earlier I said that want is not the only Motivator. It is the Motivator of want, or any other Motivator, that makes a person take an action. In other words, we want to do everything that we do, we have to want to do it. It is the Motivators that make us want to take an action, so in that sense, everything is want.

Even simple things, if I take my arm and rest it on my desk (as opposed to the arm of my chair) when I read your post, it is because I wanted to do that.

Second Paragraph:

I would have to say that you don't want to want to smoke. It makes sense. You must want to smoke, otherwise you would either not want to smoke, or you would be neutral to smoking. The only work-around to it is to say that you want nicotine, but not to smoke, but that must not be the case or you would use chewing tobacco or a nicotine patch. In the end, you can't both want to smoke and not want to smoke, so you want to not want to smoke.

Third Paragraph:

It's a very difficult example for me to answer, but it's also a very unusual situation. The fact that we take (or don't take) action theoretically indicates one need superceding another. Even if it did not, one action (or inaction) might be taken for the purpose of it being easier. For instance, in your second paragraph example, it might be easier for you to smoke than not. It's still tough to imagine two wants having identical Motivators, especially when you consider the fact that an entire lifetime can go into making a person experience one want due to cause/effect.