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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Bernard Williams' argument that categorical desires ground a person's reasons for living applies equally to indefinitely extended projects.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Indefinitely extended projects risk losing categorical status through habituation, shifting toward instrumental maintenance of empty routines over time.
      ?

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    • 2.Williams emphasizes categorical desires as grounding reasons *to continue living*; indefinite extension may undermine the urgency and meaning that initially justified them.
      ?

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    • 3.Finite projects have determinate endpoints providing narrative closure; indefinite projects may struggle to sustain the desire-structure Williams describes without natural conclusions.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Categorical desires (desires we have for their own sake) motivate action regardless of duration; temporal extension doesn't diminish their categorical nature.
      ?

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    • 2.Many indefinitely extended projects (raising children, artistic pursuits, scientific inquiry) function psychologically as categorical desires grounding reasons to live.
      ?

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    • 3.If categorical desires ground reasons for living in finite projects, the logical structure applies equally to open-ended ones; duration is irrelevant to the grounding relation.
      ?

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