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But being able to, or knowing that you can, do something is not the same as doing it, and isn't in itself a motivation....The only one that I can come up with that isn't rooted in desire or want is...because he can. That's about as impersonal and non-interventionist as it gets. It's completely apathetic.
Creating a universe that didn't previously exist implies prior incompleteness, else the universe would be redundant.Motivation implies a goal, which implies finitude, and therefore incompleteness. As such, God wouldn't fit this picture.
This pretty much corresponds with Frankfurter's first and second-order desires - although I'd argue that latter desire does involve feeling, but associated with 'will', i.e. deliberative thought (Kahneman's 'System 2' thinking), whereas the roots of the former are subconscious ('System 1' thinking). I guess it depends on the definition of 'feeling'...I'm saying there's desire in the sense of conscious or unconscious feeling inclining a person in a certain way, and there's also desire in the sense of preference, which doesn't involve feeling and refers only to one's abstract idea of the good in a particular situation.
Sez you. To me, the distinction is seen every day by English speakers.
But these examples don't underscore the fact that phenomenologically speaking (in the moment of your experience during these things), you have conflicting desires of different size. Getting out of bed is the smaller desire and staying in it is the bigger one. So again, what is it that allows you to forego the bigger desire and choose the smaller one?
I'm sure they do...it just has no consequence in this argument. If we were to ask "why does god have a "preference" of any kind...guess what we're gonna be coming back to? Desires/wants.
I just explained that...in a fair amount of detail. It ultimately comes down to a much larger desire of being able to provide for myself and my wife. That one desire actually motivates a lot of behavior.
Why is it that you think I sleep in until I'm not tired on my days off lol. As much as 10-12 hours at a time.
Again, the idea that everything goes back to desires is your contention. Mine is that people use want/desire as a feeling and want/desire as a (non-feeling) preference reflecting value.
But for every instance that it's applied to my life, the desire as feeling isn't bigger, and that's exactly what makes it necessary to exert my will. The desire as non-feeling preference is bigger. This is why I think we're having semantic differences.
The implication of all that is that God acted "as if" He wasn't depressed...
It looks as if this interpretation needs something like Harry Frankfurt's second-order desires, i.e. desires about desires. In the case of acting to counter depression, the first order desire would be dysfunctional or negative (the depression), and the second order desire would be the desire to stop feeling that way, which, given suitable prompting, would provide the motivation for corrective action - making it an effective desire, which Frankfurt associates with the will, in contrast to first-order desires, that are not deliberative.
It seems to me that what motivates you is either your desire to do the things you have to do that day, or your desire to avoid the consequences of not doing them.
As you say, sometimes the desires are insufficient to motivate you to get out of bed; or perhaps the desire to sleep, or the desire to avoid facing those responsibilities outweighs them and motivates you to remain; however, I see no instance in your example where your motivation is not the result of a desire.
I don't follow you; can you explain?
Reasoning is motivated by desire.
This effectively makes it random.
What's a non-feeling preference? I can have a preference for vanilla, or brunettes, but these are very much based upon feelings.
Again, the idea that everything goes back to desires is your contention. Mine is that people use want/desire as a feeling and want/desire as a (non-feeling) preference reflecting value.
But for every instance that it's applied to my life, the desire as feeling isn't bigger, and that's exactly what makes it necessary to exert my will. The desire as non-feeling preference is bigger. This is why I think we're having semantic differences.
I think you're confusing the immediacy of a desire as making it "stronger" than certain non-immediate desires.
When do you feel the immediacy of the desire to go back to sleep? Right when you're getting up of course...but that doesn't mean you don't have a stronger desire to handle business as it were.
When do you feel the immediacy of eating ice cream? When it's right in front of you...but that doesn't mean you don't have a stronger desire that's keeping you healthy.
Does that solve your problem?
Only if I limited desire to preference. But with those examples I'm speaking of desire as feeling.
Is it not? Does the person who desires to be healthy not feel ashamed when they stuff their face full of gummy bears? Where do you think that feeling of shame comes from if not a contradictory desire?
In the examples you gave in your last post, your use of desire didn't reflect stronger and weaker feelings; they reflected preferences. When I'm in bed in the morning and about to get up, my desire as feeling to stay in bed is stronger than my desire (as feeling) to get up. Now, my desire as preference might be bigger in getting up.
Consider this article...
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/528151/the-importance-of-feelings/
It goes into some detail about how the mind is only emergent from emotions, not logic or reason. More importantly, it mentions a study (which I'm having trouble finding) as such...
"His insight, dating back to the early 1990s, stemmed from the clinical study of brain lesions in patients unable to make good decisions because their emotions were impaired, but whose reason was otherwise unaffected..."
Now, if I could remember the study correctly, this is a rather generous description. There was at least one patient who's emotional center was so damaged that a decision of chicken or turkey for lunch was paralyzing. He literally could not decide...he could rationalize the choice between the two, but he couldn't choose without a desire of one or the other.
I know it seems like you reason your way towards a choice...but you don't...the science suggests there's an emotional basis for every decision you make.
I have no difficulty with there being an emotional basis with regard to choice (for us human folk with dat biology); we need at least a flavor of something in order to ascertain its value in most if not all cases.
What I have difficulty with is the idea that the bigger desire or want always wins. That, to me, is patently false, and here we have to go back to bad language: any strong-willed person is constantly pushing against his immediate inclinations which entail stronger desires (as feelings) and exerting himself (choosing) toward weaker desires (as feeling) that are ultimately better. This weaker desire can have (but not always, e.g., depressives) a flavor of the good thing to it, but this desire is still qualitatively smaller than the immediate desire.
@Ana the Ist, the summary of our discussion seems to go something like this.
I say that I will something insofar as I push against bigger desires (as feeling) and go with smaller desires.
You seem to respond by saying that anything we choose must be the bigger desire precisely because it's chosen.
My response is that this reflects desire not as feeling but as preference -- which can involve feeling, but doesn't attend to the contention that we can and often do choose smaller desires as they're felt in the moment.
So you're using desire as preference in response to my use of desire as feeling. That's the problem with our disagreement, IMO.
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