fwiw, I don't think I have any direct intuition about the truth or falsity of the principle that "All good things have opposites." (Where by 'direct intuition' I mean considered in abstraction from any substantive assumptions about which things are good.)
Moreover, it seems to me like a very strange sort of principle to have direct intuitions about. Certainly, positive well-being has an opposite, namely negative well-being. But I really would think that the only way to form a judgment about whether each and every *type* of good thing has an opposite would be to list them and see. I don't see any particular reason to prefer either answer here (in advance of simply seeing what falls out of one's preferred theory).
It is an interesting question how desire theorists should distinguish ill-being from neutrality, but it doesn't strike me as a grave difficulty. Two quick thoughts:
(1) I wasn't convinced that thwarted preferences are most naturally thought of as neutral. Surely *lacking the preference* is most naturally thought of as neutral, and having a thwarted preference is subjectively worse than that, i.e. bad.
(2) This may not work for some (e.g. graded hedonic) preferences, e.g. to have more pleasure and less pain. How can desire theorists accommodate a "zero point" here (such that more pleasure is always good, whereas less pain is not positively good for you, but rather is *less bad* for you than more pain would have been)?
One natural solution would be to understand preferences as enriched representations that include an explicit neutral point within the rank ordering. The agent prefers more pleasure over nothing at all, and prefers nothing at all over any pain, with additional pain being ever more strongly dispreferred.
Interesting. As for (1) it seems like just wanting something that isn't the case but it not being the case not troubling you wouldn't make you worse off. But also, even if we think that thwarted preferences are bad, it doesn't seem like they're all that's bad -- there seem like preferences for things not happening over and above the preferences for the things happening not happening.
I'm not sure I quite understand the last point. Would all preferences have to possess rank orderings over states of affairs with a neutral point?
Yeah, I think that's probably the way for preferentists to go: say that each preference comes with an implicit comparison positioning it relative to neutrality. Typically, we express this by saying we "desire that p" when we prefer p to neutrality, and we "desire to avoid q" when we disprefer q to neutrality. Obviously you can't coherently both prefer p to neutrality and prefer neutrality to p, so this seems to block Kagan's objection.
One worry I have -- it seems that our desires aren't specific enough for cases. Kagan talks about this a bit in the paper. Suppose I desire to know the truth about the roman empire. However, suppose I have unjustified true belief about the roman empire. It doesn't seem plausible that my desires implicitly are able to evaluate this case, for example -- particularly if I've had no thoughts related to unjustified true beliefs about the roman empire.
Are you thinking of desires as linguistic entities? At least for normative purposes, I think they're better thought of as (dispositionally) directed towards (sets of) possible worlds. There are some possible worlds that are, with respect to the relation between your beliefs and the roman empire, the way you want the world to be. When in doubt, picture the possible world in question and ask, "Is this what you want?" If the agent is disposed to answer affirmatively, then it counts. In some cases they may not be sure whether they want it or not. Perhaps the boundaries of their desires are, in such cases, indeterminate.
Interesting -- one reason to favor this is that if good things have opposites, there's just one underlying property, thus, it's simpler. But also, I have this intuition about the broad structure of morality. It strikes me as the type of intuition somewhat like the claim that parsimony is a virtue -- it's an intuition about what we'd expect the broad structure of morality to look like.
fwiw, I don't think I have any direct intuition about the truth or falsity of the principle that "All good things have opposites." (Where by 'direct intuition' I mean considered in abstraction from any substantive assumptions about which things are good.)
Moreover, it seems to me like a very strange sort of principle to have direct intuitions about. Certainly, positive well-being has an opposite, namely negative well-being. But I really would think that the only way to form a judgment about whether each and every *type* of good thing has an opposite would be to list them and see. I don't see any particular reason to prefer either answer here (in advance of simply seeing what falls out of one's preferred theory).
One question: do you agree that the ill-being point raises issues for desire satisfaction theory?
It is an interesting question how desire theorists should distinguish ill-being from neutrality, but it doesn't strike me as a grave difficulty. Two quick thoughts:
(1) I wasn't convinced that thwarted preferences are most naturally thought of as neutral. Surely *lacking the preference* is most naturally thought of as neutral, and having a thwarted preference is subjectively worse than that, i.e. bad.
(2) This may not work for some (e.g. graded hedonic) preferences, e.g. to have more pleasure and less pain. How can desire theorists accommodate a "zero point" here (such that more pleasure is always good, whereas less pain is not positively good for you, but rather is *less bad* for you than more pain would have been)?
One natural solution would be to understand preferences as enriched representations that include an explicit neutral point within the rank ordering. The agent prefers more pleasure over nothing at all, and prefers nothing at all over any pain, with additional pain being ever more strongly dispreferred.
Interesting. As for (1) it seems like just wanting something that isn't the case but it not being the case not troubling you wouldn't make you worse off. But also, even if we think that thwarted preferences are bad, it doesn't seem like they're all that's bad -- there seem like preferences for things not happening over and above the preferences for the things happening not happening.
I'm not sure I quite understand the last point. Would all preferences have to possess rank orderings over states of affairs with a neutral point?
Yeah, I think that's probably the way for preferentists to go: say that each preference comes with an implicit comparison positioning it relative to neutrality. Typically, we express this by saying we "desire that p" when we prefer p to neutrality, and we "desire to avoid q" when we disprefer q to neutrality. Obviously you can't coherently both prefer p to neutrality and prefer neutrality to p, so this seems to block Kagan's objection.
Hmm, interesting, that seems like a pretty good response. I wonder if Kagan would have anything to say about that response.
One worry I have -- it seems that our desires aren't specific enough for cases. Kagan talks about this a bit in the paper. Suppose I desire to know the truth about the roman empire. However, suppose I have unjustified true belief about the roman empire. It doesn't seem plausible that my desires implicitly are able to evaluate this case, for example -- particularly if I've had no thoughts related to unjustified true beliefs about the roman empire.
Are you thinking of desires as linguistic entities? At least for normative purposes, I think they're better thought of as (dispositionally) directed towards (sets of) possible worlds. There are some possible worlds that are, with respect to the relation between your beliefs and the roman empire, the way you want the world to be. When in doubt, picture the possible world in question and ask, "Is this what you want?" If the agent is disposed to answer affirmatively, then it counts. In some cases they may not be sure whether they want it or not. Perhaps the boundaries of their desires are, in such cases, indeterminate.
Interesting -- one reason to favor this is that if good things have opposites, there's just one underlying property, thus, it's simpler. But also, I have this intuition about the broad structure of morality. It strikes me as the type of intuition somewhat like the claim that parsimony is a virtue -- it's an intuition about what we'd expect the broad structure of morality to look like.