Inclinations are voluntary

Desire constitutively depends on action, and action is up to us

First off, I’m sorry for posting so much. My substack is new, and I have many ideas that have been in my head for a while that I want to share, and so I imagine my output will decrease down the road. In the meantime, sorry for spamming your inboxes.

So, desire is action in abstraction from circumstance—that is to say, deliberating about what to desire is the same as deliberating about what to do in general, setting aside the particularities of a given circumstance one may consider. For example, when I deliberate about whether to desire money, all I am doing is deliberating about whether to take actions that promote my wealth, assuming nothing about the circumstances except that one action promotes wealth better than another and all else is equal.

There are two kinds of desires, namely, inclinations and those coming from reason, the latter being moral. When moral considerations do not bear on a choice, I go for the option that pleases me most. I antecedently prefer one outcome to another, and from that comes my choice. In the case of morality, it’s the opposite: I am rationally compelled to do something, and I am thereby motivated to do it. According to Kant, the relationship between motivation and deliberative conclusion is what distinguishes inclination from rational motivation. In the case of inclination, motivation precedes the conclusion of deliberation. In the case of reason, it is the reverse.

It’s up do me what I do. If it’s not up to me whether my arm moves, then I’m paralyzed, or something like that—whether my arm moves or not is not a doing of mine in that case. Likewise, it is up to me whether I do two things, e.g. raise my arm today and tomorrow. Were it not up to me whether I do both things, then it it would have to be the case that, for one of these particular choices, it is not up to me. Say it’s not within my power to move my arm today and tomorrow. Then if I do in fact move my arm today, by hypothesis, I will not be able to move it tomorrow; or if I can’t move it today to begin with, the conclusion follows just the same.

And, likewise, two is not a special number, so it’s up do me what I do in general in some circumstances. Say I deliberate about whether to press a red or green button whenever presented with the choice (obviously, there’s no general answer, since it depends on your information about what the buttons do; but this is just a toy example). My decision here is as voluntary as that of whether to move my arm—I can simply conclude, “I shall press the red button whenever presented with this choice,” or “I shall press the green button,” or anything else. The fact that this deliberation ranges over an infinite number of possible actions makes no difference. If I were not capable of deciding to press the red button in general, then there would have to be particular cases where it’s not up to me whether to press the red or green button, but we are by hypothesis not including those scenarios in my deliberation.¹

Therefore, it is up to me what I desire. I said that deliberation about whether to desire, say, money consists in deliberating about whether, in general, to promote my wealth in cases where all else is equal. But in any particular case where all else is equal, nothing forces me to promote my wealth. So, in general, it is up to me whether to promote my wealth in general in cases where all else is equal. This reasoning applies just as well regardless of whether we’re talking about inclination or rational motivation. Therefore, it is up to me what I am inclined to do.

That my inclinations are up to me is a seemingly absurd conclusion. I can decide whether to set my car on fire or not, but it seems I can’t decide whether I am inclined to set my car on fire. Maybe I have control over that inclination indirectly, in the sense that I could habituate myself in a way that causes me to have that inclination or not later. But it doesn’t seem that whether I have that desire is voluntary in the same way moving my arm or not is. Whether I should endure some pain might me up to me, but whether I am inclined to avoid the pain is not up to me. Or so it seems.

You say you’re not capable of just willing yourself to have different inclinations. But have you ever actually tried? Now, that’s not an easy question to answer. If someone told me, “Hey, you’re actually capable of telekinesis, you just assume it’s impossible, and so you never do it,” I don’t know how I’d test their hypothesis other than by looking at my book across the room, think “Okay, I will that the book move, let it move,” and predictably nothing would happen. In contrast, you could imagine someone whose nerves etc. are intact but who is convinced they can’t move their right arm, and to whom “trying to move my right arm” is therefore nonsense. You can imagine being exactly the same as you are right now, except you’re just convinced you can’t move your right arm. Someone may say, “Just move your right arm, it’s just like moving your left arm. Just try and it’ll move,” to which you reply, “Okay, let my right arm move. Oh, look, nothing happened.” I don’t know how I could cause a person to no longer be in this state, but it remains that they would only be incapable of moving their arm because they believe they’re incapable of it, not because it’s actually beyond their power in a stronger sense. I think such is the case with regard to our inclinations.

For an analytic philosopher, there is one unforgivable sin: failing to go to whatever length you can to save appearances. You’re allowed to reject appearances sometimes, but you better have some bigger, stronger appearances for the sake of which you do that. If you reject appearances, that’s called “biting the bullet.” You’re allowed to bite the bullet if you do so to avoid some even bigger bullet, but certainly what you cannot do is have some cute a priori account of the subject matter, see the rejection of appearances follows from that, and then reject appearances. Well, you’re allowed to do that, but no one will agree with you; they will just say “I reject your premises, because that’s a big bullet to bite,” and suspect you of disingenuously sticking to your guns to save your cute philosophical theory.

I don’t believe in biting bullets, ever. I don’t think that’s a thing you should do, except temporarily while your understanding of the subject matter is defective. “Reflective equilibrium” will not be a state where you bite some bullets and you’ve simply found the minimum number of bullets it’s possible to bite. It will be a state where literally everything makes sense. If I see a stick in water and I’ve never seen such before and I don’t know about refraction, it will seem counterintuitive to say that the stick is straight despite how it looks. Maybe appearances misleading me is more plausible than the stick becoming bent when put in water and then coming out straight with no damage, so I sit with the discomfort that the stick is straight even though it looks bent. But once I learn about refraction, I do not become more willing to bite a bullet; rather, believing the stick is straight is no longer a bullet to bite. Once I know about refraction, the stick looking bent becomes exactly what I expect given the circumstances, and it looking straight would be crazy. If my understanding is not defective, then I do not simply find the minimum number of counterintuitive conclusions to accept; I accept zero counterintuitive conclusions.

There is a not infrequent pattern in me doing philosophy. I have some cute account of something in philosophy—like desire being action in abstraction from circumstance—and then it seems to have counterintuitive results. I then try to find some way to save appearances, since all else equal that’s a good thing to do, and I do so to my satisfaction. But then I really, truly determine for independent reasons that the appearance is false, and the natural conclusion of my account is correct for precisely the reasons my account would say it’s correct. And then, after that, accepting the conclusion is not counterintuitive—it really truly and fully seems to me to be correct. You would be right to suspect that I’m biased, that I just come to these conclusions because of my idiosyncratic preferences for certain kinds of philosophical theories, though that is not how things seem to me. All you can do is just think through it yourself, and truly treat it as an open question whether the appearances are right.

It was this post that originally made me open to the idea that inclinations are voluntary. You really should read it, but here’s the summary: we often treat as the same aspects of our mental life that come together a lot, whereas in fact these aspects are different, and we can train ourselves to disassociate them. When I have a pain, the sensation itself and the reaction of “I’ve got to stop that” go together and seem inseparable. It just seems intrinsic to the painful sensation that it’s bad, and it’s something I’ve got to get away from. But you can learn to simply feel the sensation without thinking of it as something you’ve got to get away from, and then the sensation will become really not bad, just a sensation.

“Inclination can’t be a form of action in abstraction from circumstance, since what I do in given circumstances is up to me and inclinations are not.” Can you imagine someone who is truly inclined to pursue wealth, but who does not promote their wealth even when all else is equal? I cannot. If you tell me someone wants money, and then they forego some money, I would look for the other desire they have that they are sacrificing money for, or I would look for a reason why taking the money now would make them less wealthy overall. I would look for reasons why all else is not equal. If I know for sure that all else is equal, but they still forego the money, I would conclude that they do not desire money, at least not right now. If you tell me a sensation is painful, but you do not try to alleviate it when all else is equal, I would conclude that you are not actually in pain, even if your sensation is qualitatively similar to painful ones.²

So, it seems you can make yourself not inclined to promote something simply by choosing not to promote it in cases where all else is equal. A person who acts a certain way is, just in virtue of that, someone who does not desire money; so whether you desire money is as up to you as whether you will act a certain way when in a situation where one option gives you more money and all else is equal. If you could not choose whether to be inclined to pursue wealth, then in situations where all else is equal, you would be compelled to take the money. But whether you get money in situations where you are compelled does not determine what your inclinations are. In actual fact, you voluntarily take the money, and are thereby someone who is inclined to get money. Same with pain. You can stop a sensation from being disagreeable by simply regarding it as a sensation, and choosing not to desire to not have it.

The crazy thing is, this actually seems to work for me. I haven’t meditated much, and I understand most people need to meditate to get good at this, but for me reading the above-linked post was enough to make me feel like I could choose whether a sensation is painful or not.

Now, I’m limited in the degree to which I can put my hypothesis to the test without damaging my body (which is bad regardless of whether it’s painful). I’ve tried this by inflicting minor pains on myself, and it seems to work, but it’s not like the pain would have otherwise been unbearable. I also tried when I was getting a tattoo on my wrist (ἄφελε πάντα, “abstract from everything”), not the most pleasant area, and it totally worked, though it was a very quick tattoo so I don’t feel as though I really put myself to the test. Should anyone like to donate $500-$1,000 for this purpose, I could try getting a more considerable tattoo on my ribs (notably one of the most painful areas), and I will donate whatever is left over to the Shrimp Welfare Project.

So, am I now an Übermensch who suffers not? Well, no, my life is basically the same, for a few reasons. For one, I don’t experience enough pain in my everyday life to feel like putting a lot of effort into not suffering, and when I do suffer, I usually forget about all this stuff and only think about the pain. (So I imagine if someone were to, like, actually torture me, that would capture my attention and it would be unlikely that I practice the above). Maybe the Buddhists feel a deep need to rid their lives of suffering, but I’m doing fine, it’s not worth the effort. “Effort? Isn’t that a form of suffering, which you say you can avoid?” Well, yeah, when I’m thinking about whether to do these things, I’m thinking from the perspective of my current desires, and those still have a motivational pull, unless I decide to get rid of them.

Also, I worry about the extent to which I can pick and choose which inclinations to get rid of as I please. For all I’ve said, that should in theory be possible, but humans are very bad at motivational decoupling, so I’m not sure I can avoid all pain without getting rid of the inclinations that I do want to have. Finally, I’m worried about the extent to which my desire to act morally is separable from my inclinations. I should be acting out of pure respect for the Moral Law, but I am a fallen and depraved individual, and I cannot trust myself to continue to act morally without impure incentives.

Anyway, if anyone ever says “Your account of the will is wrong, you can’t be inclined or not at will,” my response is, “How do you know? Have you tried?”

1. In general, “I am capable of Xing” and “I am capable of Ying” do not entail “I am capable of X-and-Ying.” Consider the case where I have to choose between Xing and Ying but I can’t do both, or the case where Xing would make me incapable Ying later (e.g. Xing = “paralyzing my arm today,” and Ying = “moving my arm tomorrow”). But in the cases being discussed, I’m talking about choosing combinations of actions in different circumstances, where making a choice in one circumstance does not render me incapable of pursuing an option in another circumstance (does my being inclined to wealth mean that if I don’t choose it in one case, I’ll be compelled to choose it in another case?). Given these stipulations, the inference from “These things are, individually, up to me” to “It is up to me whether to do all these things” is valid.

2. Language is tricky here. I use “pain” to mean a sensation the agent is non-instrumentally inclined to make cease, so that it is a priori impossible for one to experience a pain that they are indifferent to. Some people on morphine say they feel pain and that they are indifferent to it; I say they experience something qualitatively similar to pain that is not painful. Others use “pain” to refer to the qualitative feeling, and call it “suffering” if the agent experiences it as bad. If you prefer the latter way of speaking, you can make the appropriate substitutions in my post.