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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Desire-satisfaction alone is not a sufficient basis for regarding an action as good.

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

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Preference satisfaction theories, as developed by Hare and Brandt, distinguish between actual desires and idealized informed preferences under conditions of full rationality.
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    • 2.The bulimic's desire fails not because desire-satisfaction is insufficient, but because it does not survive the idealization process that constitutes genuine preference.
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    • 3.A refined desire-satisfaction account that corrects for misinformation, compulsion, and irrationality can accommodate the bulimia case without abandoning desire as the normative foundation.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures demonstrates that a sophisticated hedonist-consequentialist can rank satisfactions by quality without departing from a desire-based framework.
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    • 2.The bulimia counterexample conflates the satisfaction of a surface desire with the satisfaction of deeper, more reflectively endorsed desires about one's own wellbeing.
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    • 3.Once the hierarchy of desires is properly accounted for, as in Frankfurt's theory of second-order volitions, desire-satisfaction remains a sufficient basis for goodness.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.A bulimic person might desire to eat cake, and eating the cake would satisfy that desire.
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    • 2.Yet eating cake would not thereby be regarded as genuinely good for a bulimic person.
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    • 3.Therefore, mere desire-satisfaction is not sufficient to make an action good.
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