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.).
This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level. No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole. The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies. None of them thinks about the whole as such. And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist). None of them makes a comparison of alternatives. The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well? And why not parts of these parts, et...
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