What makes someone's life go well? What's the best theory or philosophy to live by that
guarantees the best life possible? One modern idea in philosophy is called desire satisfaction
theory and claims one's life goes best to the extent that their desires get fulfilled.
Is the key to a good life and state of high well-being having your desires met the best
you can? In this video, I'll be explaining this theory of well-being and analyzing if
it is indeed the best philosophy for life today. If you liked this video at any point
please consider giving it a thumbs up and keep the video playing until the end, even
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So, does meeting your desires in life equal the best life possible.
When you think about this question, probably the first question that arises in your mind
is "which desires?" Just ours or desires we have for other people and the world?
Derek Parfit wrote about desire list theory in his work Reasons and Persons and suggested
that we only focus on fulfilling our own desires. Take this example why:
'Suppose that I meet a stranger who has what is believed to be a fatal disease. My sympathy
is aroused, and I strongly want this stranger to be cured. We never meet again. Later, unknown
to me, this stranger is cured. On the Unrestricted Desire-Satisfaction Theory, this event is
good for me, and makes my life go better. This is not plausible. We should reject this
theory.'
Obviously, it's not going to make any difference if the person we have a desire for lives or
dies and if we never find out. So, he suggests we focus on something he calls success theory.
In the case of success theory, something is intrinsically good for you if it satisfies
your desires, only if it satisfies your desires, and because it satisfies your desires.
Now it's important to understand that success theory is not hedonism. Where hedonism, specifically
prudential hedonism, is concerned with achieving pleasure and avoiding pain, success theory
focuses on specific desires we have, not necessarily a feeling. For example, we may have the desire
to see our children become healthy mature adults. This, of course, would entail much
suffering and work as any parent will tell you raising children is not easy.
Hedonism would be more concerned if we were experiencing pleasure and avoiding pain as
we raised them.
The next big question we should ask is whether we should focus on fulfilling the current
desires or focusing on all the desires we have.
For example, we may have the desire to be a professional artist one day. But if we have
a desire to avoid going to art lessons in the present we will have to decide whether
to go for the immediate desire, or the longer-term one and go to class.
If we focus on just present desires, it leads to some bad conclusions, though. Think of
a teenager who gets grounded, then erupts in anger and threatens to end his life. If
we focus on present desires for well-being, the teen will end his life, which can't be
right.
So, Parfit says desire theories should be what he calls Summative or, simply put, the
more desire-satisfaction a person gets in their life as a whole, the better their life.
We can assign numbers to specific desires. Maybe not having to go to art class could
be a level 1 desire, but becoming an artist as a career could be a level 100,000 desire.
In this case, we should focus suck it up and go to our class for a better life.
So yes, not pulling the trigger didn't satisfy a desire, but living more years will allow
the teen to satisfy even more desires and have a better life.
However, there's a big problem with this, too. Parfit asks us to imagine that he got
us addicted to a drug that he can give an endless supply. Each morning we awake with
a strong desire for our drug fix for the day which he supplies. Say we do this the rest
of our life. Theoretically, he made our lives go very well since fulfilling our many, and
powerful addiction desires outweighed the one initial desire not to take the drug in
the first place.
But that can't be correct either, right?
Luckily, he has a solution. We need to distinguish between local desires and global desires.
A global version of the success theory ranks desires so that desires about the shape and
content of one's life as a whole are given some priority.
A local desire would be in which we count each desire without factoring in a past element
that gives one's life as a whole a shape.
In the case of a global version of success theory, the desire to not become a drug addict
is now much greater than the individual desires to get high since it had such a great impact
on us.
So, if I prefer not to become a drug addict, that will explain why I shouldn't take Parfit's
drug. I can envision a life that more greater desires could be fulfilled than one I have
to fulfill the same desire repeatedly.
But then one can argue back, what if you can't envision life like that? Imagine that, in
addition to being a great philosopher Derek Parfit was also a wack job that got us addicted
to drugs as just a small child. When assessing our entire life, we would probably choose
to let him get us addicted to drugs since we can't envision any life or any desires
that could be better than that. The only thing we can think is just sitting around our house
not wanting anything at all. At least being addicted to drugs gave us something to want
and do.
Or, think of it this way. Say we have the option between staying home and reading a
nice book or going to a wild party. Say we choose to satisfy our desire to stay at home
and have a nice time. However, if we went to the party we would have had a better time.
We need to add the idea of 'informed desire' to this global success theory. Informed desire
meaning, according to the informed desire account, the best life is the one I would
desire if I were fully informed.
So at this point, if you're actually still watching, you're probably wondering how exactly
that would work in real life and starting to become suspicious that desire satisfaction
theory, in any form, isn't a solid theory of well-being. Don't worry; you're not alone.
There seems to be several serious flaws in this theory of well-being that are unfixable
no matter how much we bend and twist the initial idea.
For instance, there's the 'grass counter' issue.
Philosopher John Rawls asks to imagine a Harvard mathematician, fully informed about her options
in life, who somehow developer an overriding desire to just sit and count blades of grass
all day.
Perhaps she experienced some neurosis or trauma that lead to this. Maybe it's a false desire
she thinks she has, and is really masking a deeper desire to be free again.
Living your life counting blades of grass fulfilling a false desire can't be correct,
right?
Another issue is death. Say we have a desire to be a famous artist like Van Gogh. Van Gogh,
however, didn't' become famous until after his death. His desire then was fulfilled,
yet it didn't impact his life. Some desire satisfaction theories argue we can't desire
about things after death since they don't affect us. But, what if you were to travel
back in time and ask him if he would want to be famous, even if it occurred after he
was dead? He would probably answer yes in the present.
Finally, and maybe the most important, desire isn't a good-making property. For example,
we desire things like to paint a great picture because we think those things are independently
good. We aren't painting the picture because they will satisfy our desire for them. As
Aristotle said long ago, 'desire is consequent on opinion rather than opinion on desire'.
So desire list theory isn't a good theory of well-being. So what is? I'll give an even
better one coming up soon in the next video.
The idea that desire-satisfaction is a 'good-making property' is somewhat odd. As Aristotle says
(Metaphysics, 1072a, tr. Ross): 'desire is consequent on opinion rather than opinion
on desire'. In other words, we desire things, such as writing a great novel, because we
think those things are independently good; we do not think they are good because they
will satisfy our desire for them.