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Way back in 2019, while conversing on Ricochet, I noticed a connection between Augustine and John Stuart Mill: They both talk about desire as part of how we know what is good.
Took me a while to get it all written up, and for some reason, between one scholarly journal and another, I cut most of the Augustine out of the paper. Not to worry--Aristotle and Boethius stepped in, they picked up the slack, and the paper is now published here.
The general idea is pretty simple.
Mill is this modern utilitarian philosopher, and he says that the foundation for knowledge of right versus wrong is desire:
The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.
This is in answer to the question of by what faculty we know right and wrong--after Mill observes that knowledge of the physical world depends on faculties like sight and hearing.
I take Mill at his word: Desire is the faculty of moral perception, or something very similar; it's the moral analogue to sensory perception. This is how we know first principles: things we can't know in any other way because we rely on them to know other things.
The rest is details:
Alvin Plantinga is a (still-living) philosopher who wrote a whole book about faculties for knowing. His explanations can supplement Mill's philosophy.
Mill isn't much interested in doing metaphysics--the study of reality--when he does ethics. He even makes the mistake of saying that no statement of what is can also be a statement about goodness: evaluation statements are statements of what should be, never of what is. (I correct that error here on Ricochet.) Ancient and medieval philosophers like Aristotle, Augustine, and Boethius say desire contributes to our understanding of what's good, and they can help out Mill's philosophy by doing more metaphysics.
But Mill's philosophy can help them out in return by concentrating on epistemology--the study of knowledge--more than pre-modern philosophers did. Mill shows how the first principle of morality--that happiness is good--is on a par with sensory knowledge, explaining that they all depend on faculties. And we all agree anyway. I think that's useful philosophy to include with Aristotelian or Augustinian ideas.
A complete picture of morality would include many insights from people who didn't have the complete picture, but who were quite right with what fragments they did have.
Discussion (13)
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I’m a geologist. I was trained to observe things in the physical world. Thank goodness a philosopher came before me to give proof that the given object I am observing is visible, because I can actually see it. Philosophy is not my strong suit.
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The point is that we don't need proof to know that the rock is real. At least we don't need any proof more than being able to see it.
Nor do we need any special proof that happiness is good.
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But what if you have a person who desires evil and sees it as a good? For example, someone we would call a psychopath who gets pleasure from torturing animals, or setting fires? Happiness may not always be a good thing.
Or even something less psycho, how about two people who are committing adultery. The desire for the relationship brings them happiness, but is it an overall good? I don't think you can always equate happiness with good just because you desire it. Except perhaps only in the moment, which makes it only a superficial good.
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Yeah, this question puzzled me for a while. Came across the sorta obvious answer eventually while teaching in Pakistan.
Desire is the evidence that something is good because desire is the faculty for knowing what's good. Faculties are fallible. I might see something that’s not really visible, and that doesn't mean it's there and visible. And that doesn't stop sight from being the only way of knowing what's visible. I might desire something that's not really desirable, and that doesn't make it good. And that doesn't stop desire from being the only way of knowing what's good.
The happiness itself is good, but not the net subtraction of happiness that happens with adultery.
And this is where that faculty error comes in. Mill explains that we only desire happiness. We often desire something else that is part of our own happiness or at least linked to it. And when that something is actually a net cause of UNhappiness we are desiring the wrong thing and seeing it as good when it isn't.
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Then couldn't I posit that desire is not evidence. If you are seeking evidence, you are seeking truth, and desire would not be reliable truth. Then you get into relativism. My desire as evidence of truth may be different from yours, yet they can both be goods depending upon how I judge my own, without an inherent mechanism to define morality.
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