Again, using reason to choose between two desires is not the same thing as reason generating those desires in the first place.
I’m not sure if “rationalize” is the right word here. Reason, to me, is a capacity for inference. And inference is concluding that one thing either deductively or inductively follows from another. But what kind of inference is it when somebody decides between two urges? When deliberating, one may use reason to determine questions of fact concerning the two options. But then, once the facts have been considered, and the actual choice is to be made, what kind of inference is involved? What is the premise from which “therefore I choose X” is concluded? It seems that, once it comes down to actually deciding on an action, the man chooses impelled by whichever is the stronger urge.
Let’s take the karaoke bar and grill example. Quintus deliberates over the options of the banana split and performing. He considers exactly what sensations he would undergo with each of the choices: how the banana split would taste and how it would feel to be on stage. These questions about anticipated future states of sensation are questions of fact. And he uses his reason to inductively determine them. He anticipates that the banana split will taste a certain way, because other banana splits have tasted a certain way before, for example. But when it comes down to the decision itself, no matter how many facts he has collected in his deliberation, what really matters is how he values those facts. It’s not an issue of inference, like “singing yields 10 “utils” while ice cream only yields 8, 10>8, therefore singing is objectively best”. The set of facts, enlarged by deliberation, associated with the two options elicits two sets of urges. The stronger urge will impel the acting man to decide for its associated option. This decision cannot be characterized as an inference.
I’m sure Hume would have loved In & Out.: he was not a thin man. But I think St. Thomas Aquinas had him beat in the philosophical fatty department.
At least according to Long’s quote, it doesn’t seem that they would identify the chosen option with happiness, but instead the chosen option would be considered a constituent means (thanks for that term, Anarchist Cain) for happiness.
To me, the passions are that part of the psyche which generates urges, while reason is that part which conducts inference.
"We must take as a sign of states of character the pleasure or pain that ensues on acts; for the man who abstains from bodily pleasures and delights in this very fact is temperate, while the man who is annoyed at it is self-indulgent, and he who stands his ground against things that are terrible and delights in this or at least is not pained is brave, while the man who is pained is a coward. For moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and pains; it is on account of the pleasure that we do bad things, and on account of the pain that we abstain from noble ones. Hence we ought to have been brought up in a particular way from our very youth, as Plato says, so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; for this is the right education.
Again, if the virtues are concerned with actions and passions, and every passion and every action is accompanied by pleasure and pain, for this reason also virtue will be concerned with pleasures and pains…
That virtue, then, is concerned with pleasures and pains, and that by the acts from which it arises it is both increased and, if they are done differently, destroyed, and that the acts from which it arose are those in which it actualizes itself…"
And this is in the same collection of books that Aristotle explained the telos of an individual is eudaemonia. So what I see here is by virtue the passions, the urges, can by reason become acted upon in a noble and/or brave way. it takes a cultivation of the urges by reason to rise above low level passions. I’m not stating the passions you are speaking about are low level, but since you place them outside of intellectual cultivation I’m having difficulty with understanding how right reasoning would not only infer but become the end. Thus right reasoning would enjoy the end, take part in the end, if as stated it is right reasoning. Thus reasoning that is in accord with fulfilling happiness. Though reason has a late start in development (a child has less reasoning and somebody that is not interested in education more than a child quite possibly but less than somebody who is more curious), I don’t see how reason still wouldn’t take part in the end. This is the point of eudaemonia. It is not only of the pleasure and pain undeveloped, but also a fulfillment of pleasure in the intellect. By choices and actions reason further cultivates and refines the passions and thus an individual enjoys a good intellect as well as a good heart.
Do you see where I’m having difficulty ridding my view on how passions and eudaemonia are similar, except, the latter is more expansive in scope. You’re excluding passions from reason yet you say individuals reason so this is not my difficulty. Eudaemonia is experienced as the passions and as reason. So it’s more inclusional. This is how I see this. The more virtuous somebody is the more eudaemonia will be included not just in the passions, but in reason, in character (human acting), and influential in the bonding of society too.
Proof for natural rights is provided by Rassmusen in Groundwork for Rights. His argument is that life is an end in itself. This is because any action that does not promote your life is a logically contradictory action, since you need life in order to act. He then proceeds to argue that natural law is the groundwork you need to use in order to promote your own life.
First of all, I reject the “means-end dichotomy.” The “means-end dichotomy” is merely an axiom. However, this axiom is psychologically unsound. Consequentially, I reject Aristotelian ethics.
Could anyone provide an argument for the “means-end dichotomy” in the first place?
No, by “identify” I meant “equate”. In other words, the eudaemonist wouldn’t equate the chosen option with happiness, but instead the chosen option would be considered a means for happiness.
In any given moment we are impelled by our urges. We can try to cultivate our psyche such that in the future we will have certain urges. But even that cultivation is an action which is impelled by an urge.
Let’s say Quintus had a history of ice cream gluttony. He wants to become less gluttonous, because that would make him feel better about himself as a person. The fact that his urge to improve himself is considered good and worthy does not make it any more “intellectual” (of the intellect) than his urge for ice cream. Let’s say he sees a banana split, but he abstains from it. This is not a victory of the intellect. This is a victory of the urge for self-improvement over the urge for ice cream. You might say the urge for self-improvement arises from high-level passions, but it is passion nonetheless.
Are you taking a linear position? I think that’s the concept I was trying to explain, but finally found the words. I take a more particular approach, meaning, particulars such as reason can telos happiness. So can passions. Now if we are talking about the whole person, then each of these particulars of the person are telosing (?) happiness, thus, as a whole the person is telosing happiness.
I agree with this. To focus on human action or reason would side-step the other moral virtues or values in general that a person can enjoy. I don’t know if my position is unordinary, which I’ve explained above.
I agree and I don’t see how this side-steps pursuit of happiness. Aristotle himself listed many virtues and goods and not all of these are intellectual. Quoted from Plauche dissertation:
"A good place to start would be with goods and virtues identified by Aristotle. In Rhetoric 1362b0-28 Aristotle lists a number of goods and some of the virtues that he also discusses in the Nicomachean Ethics. Rasmussen and Den Uyl summarize the list of goods as 1) intellectual ability (including speech), 2) intellectual pursuits, 3) health (including action, pleasure and life), 4) friendship, 5) honor, 6) wealth, 7) beauty, 8) justice, and 9) artistic pursuits…
Of the moral virtues (and their corresponding vices of excess and deficiency), Aristotle discusses 1) courage (the mean between rashness and cowardice); 2) temperance (licentiousness and insensibility); 3) generosity or liberality (prodigality and illiberality/meanness), a minor virtue regarding getting and spending; 4) magnificence (vulgarity and pettiness/extreme stinginess), a major virtue regarding getting and spending;" etc…
To not become gluttonous (vice) is to pursue health (virtue), and these are the telos of happiness in the virtuous sense.
I don’t know where this goes against the grain of an “eudaemonist”. Again, I definitely admit I have not inquired into all the works on this topic, so, I don’t know who’s position I’m directly coming from or if I’m picking and choosing in a way that I’ve preconceived to be my original position and thus I’m picking up what fits my worldview along the way and discarding what is not. But from these works I’m not an expert on, but I’m also not vaguely familiar I’m wondering whom Hume is arguing against. Maybe there were or still are “eudaemonists” that over rationalize and narrow the concept of happiness to intellect alone, but this was not something “courage”, for one, or health needs rationalized in the act. Unless there are principles that a cognizant person, thus a person fully or more fully aware of their own actions would act upon such principles when they do something.
For example, a person on a diet would refrain from eating the banana split due to the rationalized principles of the diet.
But somebody that has the urge to eat it, then chooses not to, the reason for such is a means that refrains the urge of a more desired end, thus, a more desired urge is met, which is not to eat the sundae.
Thus somebody in 1 is following a pre-ordained rationalized principle. It was something rationalized before the act. Somebody in 2 is more involved in the moment of an urge that wasn’t rationalized first. Yet there is a third way:
The telos of happiness that can be rationalized before or after the event is going along with the urge to refrain and thus reasoned as following a diet or even reasoned to simply following the urged refraining. Thus happiness in fulfilling this urge. Also another telos of happiness happens if reason happens, the reasoning it was a refrain or following a diet. And thus the intellect is happy as well to figure this out. The conclusions of rationality fit the event, thus, the epistemology matches the event. Happiness all around.
I’m the third way here. Whether my way in understanding this follows in step with others, I’m not an expert on what others think, so, I don’t know.
So do you see why I don’t see the difference between a passions, reasoned, and thus teleological happiness position?
Here’s Aristotle saying what you are saying about deliberation (rationalizing) being a means. Keep in mind the book I’m taking this from (Aristotle’s) states the end is happiness (he defines happiness in various ways that include baseline desires and intellectual desires, as well as, social desires, etc…). I perceive any of these desires originating in the individual and as I commented previously society influences these desires too (an individual in a neighborhood of criminals would be influenced and would be influencing those around him or her differently than a neighborhood of non-criminals). So an eudaemonia position seems to be mirroring yours in a way. I’m trying to see the distinctions, so, let me know if there are any. Taken from book 3; chapter 5; Nicomachean Ethics:
“The end, then, being what we wish for, the means what we deliberate about and choose, actions concerning means must be according to choice and voluntary. Now the exercise of the virtues is concerned with means. Therefore virtue also is in our own power, and so too vice. For where it is in our power to act it is also in our power not to act, and vice versa; so that, if to act, where this is noble, is in our power, not to act, which will be base, will also be in our power, and if not to act, where this is noble, is in our power, to act, which will be base, will also be in our power. Now if it is in our power to do noble or base acts, and likewise in our power not to do them, and this was what being good or bad meant, then it is in our power to be virtuous or vicious.”
