What if the proper object of the human will is not this or that good, but a kind of good, a good under a universal formality (for example, we seek not just to know this or that truth but truth as such, etc.)? One consequence would be that we often cannot really see or imagine precisely what it is that we (at a deeper level) desire, and the things that we imagine to be the objects of our desire are at in some ways merely symbolic of the kind of thing we more truly long for, and this kind of thing is more desirable than this thing (it might be more helpful to say that we desire a way of being rather than this or that being). For example, what seems at first glance to be mere lust for concrete pleasure here and now might really be an example of a venereal craving that has become super-animated with the desire for power as such. In other words, sometimes when humans crave sex, they crave it inordinately not simply because of a biochemically caused fixation, but because that animal desire is overlaid (oops--pun permitted) with a deeper desire for power as such. Animal desires in humans can have an extra layer of desire or can become super animated with desires proper to rational beings. One who accepts all this would expect the psychologist's query into this or that human's motivations to uncover desires that could be described in somewhat Platonic-sounding terms (for example, justice-itself, power-itself, etc.).
Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...
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