Desire-fulfillment theories of wellbeing

On desire-fulfillment (DF) theories of wellbeing, cases of fulfilled desire are an increment to utility. What about cases of unfulfilled desire? On DF theories, we have a choice point. We could say that unfulfilled desires don’t count at all—it’s just that one doesn’t get the increment from the desire being fulfilled—or that they are a decrement.

Saying that unfulfilled desires don’t count at all would be mistaken. It would imply, for instance, that it’s worthwhile to gain all the possible desires, since then one maximizes the amount of fulfilled desire, and there is no loss from unfulfilled desire.

So the DF theorist should count unfulfilled desire as a decrement to utility.

But now here is an interesting question. If I desire that p, and then get an increment x > 0 to my utility if p, is my decrement to utility if not p just  − x or something different?

It seems that in different cases we feel differently. There seem to be cases where the increment from fulfillment is greater than the decrement from non-fulfillment. These may be cases of wanting something as a bonus or an adjunct to one’s other desires. For instance, a philosopher might want to win a pickleball tournament, and intuitively the increment to utility from winning is greater than the decrement from not winning. But there are cases where the decrement is at least as large as the increment. Cases of really important desires, like the desire to have friends, may be like that.

What should the DF theorist do about this? The observation above seems to do serious damage to the elegant “add up fulfillments and subtract non-fulfulfillments” picture of DF theories.

I think there is actually a neat move that can be made. We normally think of desires as coming with strengths or importances, and of course every DF theorist will want to weight the increments and decrements to utility with the importance of the desire involved. But perhaps what we should do is to attach two importances to any given desire: an importance that is a weight for the increment if the desire is fulfilled and an importance that is a weight for the decrement if the desire is not fulfilled.

So now it is just a psychological fact that each desire comes along with a pair of weights, and we can decide how much to add and how much to subtract based on the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the desire.

If this is right, then we have an algorithm for a good life: work on your psychology to gain lots and lots of new desires with large fulfillment weights and small non-fulfillment weights, and to transform your existing desires to have large fulfillment weights and small non-fulfillment weights. Then you will have more wellbeing, since the fulfillments of desires will add significantly to your utility but the non-fulfillments will make little difference.

This algorithm results in an inhuman person, one who gains much if their friends live and are loyal, but loses nothing if their friends die or are disloyal. That’s not the best kind of friendship. The best kind of friendship requires vulnerability, and the algorithm takes that away.

Two different ways of non-instrumentally pursuing a good

Suppose Alice is blind to the intrinsic value of friendship and Bob can see the intrinsic value of friendship. Bob then told Alice that friendship is intrinsically valuable. Alice justifiedly trusts Bob in moral matters, and so Alice concludes that friendship has intrinsic value, even though she can’t “see” it. Alice and Bob then both pursue friendship for its own sake.

But there is a difference: Bob pursues friendship because of the particular ineffable “thick” kind of value that friendship has. Alice doesn’t know what “thick” kind of value friendship has, but on the basis of Bob’s testimony, she knows that it has some such value or other, and that it is a great and significant value. As long as Alice knows what kinds of actions friendship requires, she can pursue friendship without that knowledge, though it’s probably more difficult for her, perhaps in the way that it is more difficult for a tone-deaf person to play the piano, though in practice the tone-deaf person could learn what kinds of finger movements result in aesthetically valuable music without grasping that aesthetic value.

The Aristotelian tradition makes the grasp of the particular thick kind of value involved in a virtuous activity be a part of the full possession of that virtue. On that view, Alice cannot have the full virtue of friendship. There is something she is missing out on, just as the tone-deaf pianist is missing out on something. But she is not, I think, less praiseworthy than Bob. In fact Alice’s pursuit of friendship involves the exercise of a virtue which Bob’s does not: the virtue of faith, as exhibited in Alice’s trust in Bob’s testimony about the value of friendship.

Proper empathy

Empathy is usually understood as sharing in the feelings of others, and it is thought to be an important part of closer forms of human love.

I think there is a mistake here. Consider these cases, where Alice is a very close friend of Bob.

1. Alice knows that Bob’s wife has been cheating on him, but because of the confidentiality of the source of the information, she is unable to information Bob. She constantly sees Bob enjoying his marriage and delighting in thinking of his wife’s loyalty.

2. Last week, Bob has been informed he has a terminal disease, and is feeling the normal feelings of dread. Alice works in the medical office and has just discovered that that Bob’s file was mixed up with the file of another person of the same name, who indeed had a terminal disease and died of it two years ago, and Bob’s actual diagnosis was a clean bill of health. The office has yet to inform Bob of this.

3. Bob is a great fan of his local hockey team. He has just found out that the star player in a team that is to play against them has just broken a leg, and is delighted, and shares his delight with Alice.

4. Because Bob’s country used to be occupied by the Soviet Union, Bob has a visceral dislike of Russia. He has just learned that Russia won the Ice Hockey World Championship, and this makes him sad. He shares his sadness with Alice.

Cases 1 and 2 are cases where Bob is ignorant of the relevant facts, and cases 3 and 4 are ones where he is in the grip of a vice. But in none of the four cases is it appropriate for Alice to straightforwardly share in Bob’s feelings.

In case 1, Alice can be expected to feel badly for Bob, and her feeling badly is only accentuated by the fact that Bob doesn’t feel badly. In case 2, Alice would feel delighted for Bob, with the delight tempered by some a sadness that Bob is still feeling dread. But even that sadness would not take the form of dread. In case 3, Alice might share some of Bob’s joy that his preferred team will win, but she shouldn’t feel any delight at the player breaking a leg. Moreover, Alice should feel badly about her friend exhibiting a vicious joy. Finally, in case 4, Alice should feel badly, but not as a sharing in Bob’s sadness, but as a reaction to Bob’s ethnic prejudice. However, since she knows that the feelings are unpleasant ones for Bob, she might well have some sadness for his suffering, even if that suffering is vicious in nature.

These cases suggest to me that a good human friend:

• Has a first-order share in the feelings that the friend should have (i.e., would have if they were virtuous and well-informed).

• Has second-order feelings in reaction to the friend’s actual first-order feelings.

In many cases where the friend is virtuous and well-informed, the first-order sharing in the feelings the friend should have is also a first-order sharing in the feelings the friend does have.

This is a much more complex, and morally loaded, set of dispositions than empathy as usually defined. I don’t know that we have a good name for this complex set of dispositions. We might, of course, call it “proper empathy”, if we like.

Feeling bad about harms to our friends

Suppose something bad happens to my friend, and while I am properly motivated in the right degree to alleviate the bad, I just don’t feel bad about it (nor do I feel good about). Common sense says I am morally defective. But suppose, instead, something bad happens just to me, and I stoically (I am not making any claims about the Stoic movement by using this word, despite the etymology) bear up under it, without feeling bad, though being properly motivated to alleviate the harm. Common sense praises this rather than castigating it. Yet, aren’t friends supposed to be other selves?

So, we have a paradox generated by:

1. The attitudes we should have towards our friends are very much like those we should have towards ourselves.

2. It is wrong not to feel bad about harms to our friends even when we are properly motivated to fight those harms.

3. It is not wrong to feel bad about harms to ourselves when we are properly motivated to fight those harms.

As some terminological background, feeling bad about our friends’ losses is not exactly empathy. In empathy, we feel the other’s feelings as we see things from their point of view. So, feeling bad about harms to our friends will only be empathy if our friends are themselves feeling bad about these harms. There are at least two kinds of cases where we feel bad about harms to our friends when our friends themselves do not: (a) our friends are being stoical and (b) our friends are unaware of the harms (e.g., their reputation is being harmed by gossip we witness, or our friends are being harmed by acting viciously while thinking it’s virtuous). Moreover, even when our friends are feeling bad about the harms, our feeling bad about the harms will only be a case of empathy if we feel bad because they are feeling bad. If we feel bad because of the badness of the harms, that’s different.

In fact, we don’t actually have a good word in English for feeling bad on account of a friend’s being harmed. Sympathy is perhaps a bit closer than empathy, but it has connotations that aren’t quite right. Perhaps “compassion” in the OED’s obsolete sense 1 and sense 2a is close. The reason we don’t have a good word is that normally our friends themselves do feel bad about having been harmed, and our terminology fails to distinguish whether our feeling bad is an instance of sharing in their feeling or of emotionally sharing in the harm to them. (Think of how the “passion” in “compassion” could be either the other’s negative feeling or it could be the underlying harm.) And I think we also don’t have a word for feeling bad on account of our own being harmed, our “self compassion” (we do have “self pity”, but that’s generally seen as bad), though we do have thicker words for particular species of the phenomenon, such as shame or grief. So I’ll just stick to the clunky “feeling bad on account of harm”.

When we really are dealing with empathy, i.e., when we feel bad for our friend because our friend feels bad for it, the paradox is easier to resolve. We can add a disjunct to (1) and say:

4. The attitudes we should have towards our friends are very much like either those that we should have towards ourselves or those that our friends non-defectively have towards themselves.

This is a bit messy. I’m not happy with it. But it captures a lot of cases.

But what about the pure case of feeling bad for harms to a friend, not because the friend feels bad about it?—either because the friend doesn’t know about the harm, or the friend is being stoical, or our bad feeling is a direct reflection of the harms rather than indirectly via the other’s feeling of the harms. (Of course there will also be the special case where the feeling is the harm, as perhaps in the case of pains.) I am not sure.

I actually feel a pull to saying that especially when our friend doesn’t feel bad about the harm, we should, on their behalf. If our friend nobly does not feel the insult, we should feel it for them. And if our friend is being unjustly maligned, we should not only work to rescue their reputation, but we should feel bad.

But I am still given pause by the plausibility of (1) (even as modified to (4)) and (3). One solution would be to say that we should feel bad about harms to ourselves, that we should not be stoical about them. But I don’t want to say that the stoical attitude is always wrong. If our friends are being stoical about something, we don’t always want to criticize them for it, even mentally. Still there are cases where our friends are rightly criticizable for a stoical attitude. One case is where they should be grieving for the loss of someone they love. A more extreme case is where they should be feeling guilt for vicious action—in that case, we wouldn’t even use the fairly positive word “stoical”, but we would call their attitude “unfeeling” or something like that. In those cases, at least, it does seem like they should feel bad for the harm, and we should likewise feel bad on their behalf whether or not they do. (And, yes, this feeling may be in the neighborhood of a patronizing feeling in the case where they are not feeling the guilt they should—but the neighborhood of patronization has some places that sometimes need to be occupied.)

Still, I doubt that it is ever wrong not feel something. That would be like saying that it is wrong not to smell something. Emotions are perceptions of putative normative facts, I think. It can be defective not to smell an odor, either because one has lost one’s sense of smell or because one has failed to sniff when one should have. But the failure to smell an odor is not wrong, though it may be the consequence of doing something wrong, as when the repair person has neglected to sniff for a gas leak.

Instead, I think the thing to say is that there is a good in feeling bad about harms to a friend—or to ourselves. The good is the good of correct perception of the normative state of affairs. A good always generates reasons, and the good is to be pursued absent countervailing reasons. But there can be countervailing reasons. When I injure my shoulder, my pain is a correct perception of my body’s injured state. Nonetheless, because that pain is unpleasant (or fill in whatever the right story about why we rightly avoid pain), I take an ibuprofen. I have reason to feel the pain, namely because the pain is a correct way of seeing the world, but I also have reason not to feel the pain, namely because it hurts.

Similarly, if someone has insulted me, I have reason to feel bad, because feeling bad is a correct reflection of the normative state of affairs. But I also have reason not to feel bad, because feeling bad is unpleasant. So it can be reasonable not to feel bad. Loving my friend as myself does not require me to make greater sacrifices for my friend than I would make for myself, though it is sometimes supererogatory to do so (and sometimes foolish, as when the sacrifice is excessive given the goods gained). So if I don’t have an obligation to sacrifice my equanimity to in order to feel bad for the insult to me, it seems that I don’t have an obligation to sacrifice it in order to feel bad for the insult to my friend. But that sounds wrong, doesn’t it?

So where does the asymmetry come from? Here is a suggestion. In typical cases where our friend feels bad for the harm, our feeling does not actually match the intensity of our friend’s, and this is not a defect in friendship. So the unpleasantness of feeling bad for oneself is worse than in the case of feeling bad for one’s friend. Thus, more equanimity is sacrificed for the sake of our feelings correctly reflecting reality when it is our own case, and hence the argument that if I don’t have an obligation to make the sacrifice for myself, I don’t have an obligation to make the sacrifice for my friend is fallacious, as the sacrifices are not the same. Furthermore, to be honest, there is a pleasure in feeling bad for a friend. The OED entry for “compassion” cites this psychological insight from a sermon by Mozley (1876): “Compassion … gives the person who feels it pleasure even in the very act of ministering to and succouring pain.” I haven’t read the rest of the sermon, but I think this is not any perverse wallowing or the like. The “compassion” is an exercise of the virtue of friendship, and there is an Aristotelian pleasure in exercising a virtue. And this is much more present when it is one’s friend one is serving. Thus, once again, the sacrifice tends to be less when one feels bad for one’s friend than when one feels bad for oneself, and hence the reason that one has to feel bad for one’s friend is less often outbalanced by the reason not to than in one’s own case.

Nonetheless, the reason to feel bad for one’s friend can be outbalanced by reasons to the contrary. Correct perceptual reflection of reality is not the only good to be pursued—not even the only good in the friendship.

Obligations of friendship

We are said to have various obligations, especially of benevolence, to our friends precisely because they are our friends. Yet this seems mistaken to me if friendship is by definition mutual.

Suppose you and I think we really are friends. We do all the things good friends do together. We think we are friends. And you really exhibited with respect to me all, externally and internally, all the things that good friends exhibit. But one day I realize that the behavior of my heart has not met the minimal constitutive standards for friendship. Perhaps though I had done things to benefit you, they were all done for selfish ends. And thus I was never your friend, and if friendship is mutual, it follows that we weren’t ever friends.

At the same time, I learn that you are in precisely the kind of need that triggers onerous obligations of benevolence in friends. And so I think to myself: “Whew! I thought I would have an obligation to help, but since I was always selfish in the relationship, and not a real friend, I don’t.”

This thought would surely be a further moral corruption. Granted, if I found out that you had never acted towards me as a friend does, but had always been selfish, that might undercut my obligation to you. But it would be very odd to think that finding out that I was selfish would give me permission for further selfishness!

So, I think, in the case above I still would have towards you the kinds of obligations of benevolence that one has towards one’s friends. Therefore, it seems, these obligations do not arise precisely from friendship. The two-sided appearance of friendship coupled with one-sided (on your side) reality is enough to generate these obligations.

Variant case: For years I’ve been pretending to be your friend for the sake of political gain, while you were sincerely doing what a friend does. And now you need my help. Surely I owe it to you!

I am not saying that these sorts of fake friendships give rise to all the obligations normally attributed to friendship. For instance, one of the obligations normally attributed to friendship is to be willing to admit that one is friends with them (Peter violated this obligation when he denied Jesus). But this obligation requires real friendship. Moreover, certain obligations to socialize with one’s friends depend on the friendship being real.

A tempting thought: Even if friendship is mutual, there is a non-mutual relation of “being a friend to”. You can be a friend to someone who isn’t a friend to you. Perhaps in the above cases, my obligation to you arises not from our friendship, which does not exist, but from your being a friend to me. But I think that’s not quite right. For then we could force people to have obligations towards us by being friends to them, and that doesn’t seem right.

Maybe what happens is this. In friendship, we invite our friends’ trust in us. This invitation of trust, rather than the friendship itself, is what gives rise to the obligations of benevolence. And in fake friendships, the invitation of trust—even if insincere—also gives rise to obligations of benevolence.

So, we can say that we have obligations of benevolence to our friends because they are our friends, but not precisely because they are our friends. Rather, the obligations arise from a part of friendship, the invitation of trust, a part that can exist apart from friendship.

Scattered thoughts on self-identification

Among other things, I am a mathematician and a Wacoan. It is moderately important to my self-image, my “identity”, that I practice mathematics and that I live in Waco. But there is an important difference between the two contributions. My identifying as a mathematician also includes a certain kind of “fellow feeling” towards other mathematicians qua mathematicians, a feeling of belonging in a group, a feeling as of being part of a “we”. But while I love living in Waco, I do not actually have a similar “fellow feeling” towards other Wacoans qua Wacoans , a feeling as of being part of a “we” (perhaps I should). It’s just that I do not exemplify the civic friendship that Aristotle talks about.

An initial way of putting the distinction is this:

1. identifying with one’s possession of a quality versus identifying with being a member of the group of people who possess the quality.

This correctly highlights the fact that self-identification is hyperintensional, but it’s not quite right. Two finalists for some distinction can identify with being a member of the group of people who are finalists, and yet they need not—but can—have a “we”-type identification with this group.

It seems to me that the distinction I am after cannot be captured by egocentric facts about property possession. The “we”-type of identification is not a self-identification of oneself as having a certain quality. It seems to me that we have two different logical grammars of self-identification:

2. (a) identifying with one’s possession of a quality versus (b) identifying with the group of people who possess the quality.

I think some people go more easily from (a) to (b), and some people—including me—go less easily.

I wonder if it is possible to have (b) without (a). I don’t know, but I suspect one can. It may be that some herd animals have something like (b) without having anything like (a). So why couldn’t humans?

I think the move from (a) to (b) tends to be a good thing, as it is expressive of the good of sociality.

There are also second- and third-person analogues to (2):

3. (a) identifying a person with their possession of a quality versus (b) identify them with the group of people who possess the quality.

Regarding (b), I am reminded of Robert Nozick’s remark that people in romantic relationships want to be acknowledged as part of a “we”. In other words, people in romantic relationships want second- and third-person identification of them as part of the pair (a kind of group) of people in the particular relationship. I wonder if that’s possible without (a). Again, I am not sure.

I think 3(a) and 3(b) have a potential for being dangerous. One thinks of stereotyping here.

I think 2(a) and 2(b) also have a potential for danger, albeit a different one. The danger is that both kinds of self-identification lead to an inflexibility with respect to the quality or community. But sometimes we need to change qualities or communities, or they are changed on us. I suppose 2(a) and 2(b) are not so problematic with respect to qualities or groups that one ought to maintain oneself as having or belonging to (e.g., virtue or the Church).

Three strengths of desire

Plausibly, having satisfied desires contributes to my well-being and having unsatisfied desires contributes to my ill-being, at least in the case of rational desires. But there are infinitely many things that I’d like to know and only finitely many that I do know, and my desire here is rational. So my desire and knowledge state contributes infinite misery to me. But it does not. So something’s gone wrong.

That’s too quick. Maybe the things that I know are things that I more strongly desire to know than the things that I don’t know, to such a degree that the contribution to my well-being from the finite number of things I know outweighs the contribution to my ill-being from the infinite number of things I don’t know. In my case, I think this objection holds, since I take myself to know the central truths of the Christian faith, and I take that to make me know things that I most want to know: who I am, what I should do, what the point of my life is, etc. And this may well outweigh the infinitely many things that I don’t know.

Yes, but I can tweak the argument. Consider some area of my knowledge. Perhaps my knowledge of noncommutative geometry. There is way more that I don’t know than that I know, and I can’t say that the things that I do know are ones that I desire so much more strongly to know than the ones I don’t know so as to balance them out. But I don’t think I am made more miserable by my desire and knowledge state with respect to noncommutative geometry. If I neither knew anything nor cared to know anything about noncommutative geometry, I wouldn’t be any better off.

Thinking about this suggests there are three different strengths in a desire:

1. S_p: preferential strength, determined by which things one is inclined to choose over which.

2. S_h: happiness strength, determined by how happy having the desire fulfilled makes one.

3. S_m: misery strength, determined by how miserable having the desire unfulfilled makes one.

It is natural to hypothesize that (a) the contribution to well-being is S_h when the desire is fulfilled and −S_m when it is unfulfilled, and (b) in a rational agent, S_p = S_h + S_m. As a result of (b), one can have the same preferential strength, but differently divided between the happiness and misery strengths. For instance, there may be a degree of pain such that the preferential strength of my desire not to have that pain equals the preferential strength of my desire to know whether the Goldbach Conjecture is true. I would be indifferent whether to avoid the pain or learn whether the Goldbach Conjecture is true. But they are differently divided: in the pain case S_m >> S_h and in the Goldbach case S_m << S_h.

There might be some desires where S_m = 0. In those cases we think “It would be nice…” For instance, I might have a desire that some celebrity be my friend. Here, S_m = 0: I am in no way made miserable by having that desire be unfulfilled, although the desire might have significant preferential strength—there might be significant goods I would be willing trade for that friendship. On the other hand, when I desire that a colleague be my friend, quite likely S_m >> 0: I would pine if the friendship weren’t there.

(We might think a hedonist has a story about all this: S_h measures how pleasant it is to have the desire fulfilled and S_m measures how painful the unfulfilled desire is. But that story is mistaken. For instance, consider my desire that people not say bad things behind my back in such a way that I never find out. Here, S_m >> 0, but there is no pain in having the desire unfulfilled, since when it’s unfulfilled I don’t know about it.)

Role kinds

Some kinds of roles succeed in imposing norms on those in roles of that kind. For instance, friends should help each other because they are friends, and spouses should be faithful to each other because they are spouses. Other kinds of roles do not succeed in imposing any norms. If I hurt you, I cannot rationalize my action by saying that I did that because I was your enemy. That may be an explanation, but being an enemy imposed no norm on me. At most it imposes merely apparent norms (before Socrates, the Greeks thought you should treat your enemies badly--they were wrong). What makes the difference? What gives some roles the genuine normative power they have?

Here is a natural law hypothesis I am attracted to. There are some natural human roles, and they each impose norms on those who fill them. I've in effect argued that spouse is one of those roles. Some other plausible examples: parent, child, friend, authority, subject of authority. Our nature specifies a potentiality to such roles, and gives them their normative power. There is a classificatory hierarchy between the natural roles. Spouse is a sub-role of friend, for instance. (An interesting and controversial question: are husband and wife natural sub-roles of spouse? If so, there will be further norms to being a husband and to being a wife.) And then all roles that have normative power are either natural roles or sub-roles specialized on the scaffolding of one or more natural roles, inheriting all their normative power from the natural roles. For instance, the roles of president and monarch are socially constructed sub-roles of authority, and their normative power over those in the role entirely comes from the role of authority. What about the normative power of the role over other people? That I suspect actually comes from the other people having the roles of citizen or subject, respectively, which are both sub-roles of the natural role of subject of authority. Being a monarch spouse is, on the other hand, a constructed sub-role of two different roles: monarch and spouse. (Think here of object oriented languages with multiple inheritance.) And while spouse is natural monarch is a constructed sub-role of authority.

In the above, I was talking about roles considered as general types, like spouse or parent or monarch. These types have tokens: spouse of Bill, parent of Joey, monarch of Canada. One can think of these token roles as also sub-roles, specializations of the role. An interesting question: is there any token role that is natural? That would be a token role whose normative force comes not just from the type role that it is a token of, as when being a spouse of Bill gets its normative force from being a spouse of someone-in-general. I think one plausible case is when the role is with respect to God. Being a subject of God may be a natural role. (What about friend of God? Perhaps that, too, but there the relevant nature may be a grace-nature.)

We can ask some interesting structural questions. Is there a highest level natural role? Perhaps being human or being a person. I have in the past speculated that it might be friend, but I now think that's mistaken, because friend roles are tied to particular individuals, while some of the other roles are not: an authority need not change qua authority when subjects are replaced by others (through conception, death and migration), but a friend does change in respect of friendship when friends come and go.

And how is this all tied to love? I suspect like this. Love isn't itself a role. But the roles determine which form one's love should take. Maybe in fact that is how they exercise their normative force, and that is what explains why there can't be a natural role such as enemy.

Two kinds of families of goods

I have the good of friendship with Trent. Suppose Trent was my only friend. Then I would be getting two good things out of my friendship:

1. having Trent as a friend
2. having a friend.

These are separate non-instrumental goods. When I came to be friends with Trent, I already had good (2) as I had other friends, so I "only" gained good (1) (which is a great good). But if I had had no friends previously, coming to be friends with Trent would have provided me with both good things.

So the family of friendship-with-X goods has the property that not only are particular members of the family non-instrumentally valuable, but it's also of non-instrumental value to possess some member or other of that family, which gives one d over and beyond that particular member. Not all families of goods are like this. Consider the family F consisting of the two goods (a) friendship with Trent and (b) reading Anna Karenina. There is no good of possessing some member of F that goes over and beyond the two particular goods in F. It's good to be friends with Trent and it's good to read Anna Karenina, but there is no third disjunctive good here. Or at least there is no third non-instrumental disjunctive good (we can imagine cases where the disjunction is, as such, instrumentally valuable, say when a prize is given to anyone who is friends with Trent or is reading Anna Karenina).

Here's another example. Consider the subfamily of the friendship-with-X goods given by friendships with blue-eyed people. While every member of this subfamily is valuable (I'm supposing for simplicity that all cases of friendship are valuable), there does not seem to be a further value to being friends with a blue-eyed person. Someone all of whose friends are brown- or green-eyed is missing out on the good of friendship with the particular people whose eyes are blue, but isn't losing out on some further good. On the other hand, someone who has no female (or no male or no American or no Iranian) friends seems to be losing out on something valuable over and beyond the value of the particular female friends that he or she does not have, though it is unclear whether the lost value here is instrumental (say by providing a different outlook on the world) or not.

Enemies and opponents

When Jesus said to love one's neighbor, he was asked who was one's neighbor. When he said to love one's enemy, he wasn't asked who was one's enemy. But while it may be unhelpful to work hard to identify people as our enemies, it is helpful to work hard to identify people who are not our enemies. After all, (a) it's hard to love those we take to be our enemies, and we shouldn't try to engage in this difficult task when it can be avoided simply by realizing that these people are not our enemies, and (b) love comes in a variety of forms, and the way one loves one's enemy differs from the way one loves a friendly or neutral person--and to love a friendly or neutral person as an enemy is to do them an injustice. So we should work to avoid incorrect identifications of enemies.

In particular, I think it's important to avoid identifying mere opponents as enemies. I am not quite sure how to define an opponent, but roughly x is y's opponent when x tries to prevent what she knows to be a goal (final or subsidiary) of y and, roughly, x is y's enemy when x tries to prevent y's flourishing. (And it's part of the concept of flourishing that it is a goal of that of which it is the flourishing.) I suppose that all enemies are opponents. But not all opponents are enemies. After all, there are multiple ways one might try to prevent what one knows to be a goal of y without intending to take away from y's flourishing.

An opponent can even be a friend. If I play chess against you, we are opponents: we each intend to keep the other from checkmating us while each knowing that the other intends to checkmate us. But that which constitutes the opposition itself can be a sign of friendship. We may play chess precisely because it is mutually enjoyable to one another, and it is only mutually enjoyable (barring deceit) when each is trying to win. I think this is the ideal case with sports and other games: each is extending to the other the opportunity of engaging in this worthwhile mutual enterprise precisely in opposing the other. Playing a game should, thus, be a kind of bid for friendship. (I understand that sports and games sometimes don't work that way--that's sad.)

Of course not all cases of non-enmity opposition are ones where the opposition constitutes a bid for friendship. One can have opponents who are neutral with respect to one's good: they pursue a cause and see one as pursuing an incompatible one and hence the oppose one's pursuit. But hopefully one can presume that the opponent only disagrees about a subsidiary end. And if so, that's a basis for friendship.

So perhaps we can say: Love your enemies, but don't mistake mere opponents for enemies. Strive for friendship with mere opponents.

No more Facebook friends

I just unfriended my remaining three Facebook friends. If you were one of them, please take no offense. Facebook friendship isn't friendship, and Facebook unfriending isn't the termination of a friendship. What prompted this was an email from Facebook about 82 friend requests. These are all being ignored, so if you're among the 82, also please take no offense. I want to have friends but not Facebook friends.

I don't use Facebook almost at all. I much prefer ordinary email for private stuff and blog discussion for public stuff. I need to keep a Facebook account, however, if only because there are a few businesses and other organizations that have no way of being electronically contacted except through Facebook.

Spinoza's argument for internalism about truth

Internalism about truth holds that a belief's being true is a function of things internal to the mind of the believer. Coherentism and Spinoza's extreme rationalism are two kinds of internalisms about truth. Spinoza's argument in the Treatise for the Emendation of the Intellect is basically:

1. If internalism is not correct, truth is not worth having.
2. Truth is worth having.
3. Therefore, internalism is correct.

For (1) to be at all plausible, we need "worth having" to mean intrinsically worth having, and that makes (2) less plausible, though I think (2) remains true. But I deny (1), with or without the qualification, because some things can be intrinsically worth having without being internal or intrinsic to the person. Thus, it is worth having one's friends do well, even though my friends' doing well is not internal or intrinsic to me. Of course my friends' doing well tends to affect me. But not always: my friend could be doing well in my absence, without any contact we me, and that directly makes me better off.

One can also run the argument in terms of knowledge instead of truth. (I think for Spinoza the two come to the same thing! Spinoza thinks knowledge is true belief, but he has high standards for what counts as true belief—beliefs not justified up to Cartesian standards need not apply.)

Universal love

Love contains three aspects: appreciation, benevolence and a striving for union. Suppose that we are supposed to love all human beings. In a secular context, each of the three aspects of love threatens to make the love in many cases rather anemic. It is only in a context like that of Judaeo-Christian theology that one can have a love that is both rich and universal. For let's consider the aspects severally.

Appreciation: Unless we have some picture of the human being as in the image and likeness of God, it is difficult to see that much to appreciate in a Mengele. This can perhaps be overcome if one has a robust enough notion of human nature, though perhaps that is just bringing in the image and likeness of God in a hidden way.

Benevolence: It is possible to will the good to all, as this involves a merely dispositional property. But a merely dispositional beneficence is an anemic sort of benevolence. In a religious context, however, the benevolence can act as a genuine beneficence through prayer and something like the communion of the saints.

Unitiveness: While appreciation and benevolence by themselves imply a kind of union, love's striving for union goes beyond these. But in a secular context one can't really go much beyond these in many cases. First, there is the problem of those who appear completely morally corrupt, with whom a further union would be morally problematic. In a religious context, however, the striving for union connects with eschatology. Every individual human on earth is someone with whom we can strive for eternal union in heaven (even if we believe that we won't achieve this union in every case). Second, and even more seriously, there is the problem of the billions of people with whom we simply cannot have a deeper union, because life is too short and their lives do not intersect our lives enough (for a more radical case, one might cite people in the distant past or distant future!) Again, this is overcome in a religious context, often by a potential for liturgical union—in liturgy, we are importantly united with people all over the world participating in the same liturgy—and always by a striving for a union in heaven that is prefigured by the liturgical union.

An interesting question is how the unitiveness will be realized in heaven between those who are in heaven and those who are in hell. I think here there is a kind of liturgical union, in that both those who are in heaven and those who are in hell are united in praise of God: those in heaven deliberately and explicitly so, while those in hell praise God by the value of their existence and the divine justice they exemplify. This is probably a hard saying.

---

If the above is right, then the duty of universal love can only fully come into its own in a religious context.

Friendship and friendly love

Thesis 1: There is no special form of love that falls under the label "friendly love" or "the love characteristic of friendship". Every love is a friendly love.

To love someone involves appreciating the beloved, pursuing her good, and seeking some sort of union of common pursuit with her. If we have only one out of three then we do not have love, but something else, respectively like disinterested appreciation, benevolence or lust. Nor are two out of three enough. But if one has all three, one has friendly love. For friendship is multiform, and any common pursuit providing a genuine union can be made the object of a friendship.

One might try to distinguish "friendly love", however, by its mutuality. While one can have unrequited romantic love, one cannot have unrequited friendship. Friendship is essentially mutual. But this argument is invalid, since friendship is not the same as friendly love. Friendly love is the love characteristic of friendship. But it can exist without a friendship. If I am your false friend, but am a very good actor, we can have what from your point of view looks just like friendship. And your love does not fall short of friendly love—it is my love that does so. So, you have a friendly love, even though there is no friendship. Or consider cases where the friendship has been lost, because one party has slid into vice, but the other retains a friendly love, striving to rescue the backslider.

The distinction between friendly love and friendship is essential to Plato's Lysis. The Lysis begins by attempting to define a friend (philos--the noun) in terms of friendly loving (philein--the verbal form; I am suspecting that philia is ambiguous in the Greek between friendly love and friendship). We begin by rejecting the definition of a friend as someone whom one loves with friendly love or someone who loves one with friendly love, on the grounds that if the friendly love is reciprocated with hatred, we do not have a case of a friend. This argument requires that it be possible to have a friendly love that is reciprocated with hatred, and hence that it is possible to have a friendly love without friendship.

Thesis 2: Friendship is the right kind of mutuality in friendly love, i.e., in love.

I do not know how exactly to characterize this mutuality, though. Minimally, it requires that each should know of the other's friendly love, but more than that is needed.

A consequence of this is that appropriately mutual romantic love is a kind of friendship.

My Best Friend

I just finished watching My Best Friend while running on the treadmill. I really liked it. It's like a romantic comedy, but about philia, not eros. Touching.

A hypothesis about marriage and friendship

Hypothesis: A society where romantic relationships and marriages are seen as primarily about emotional union between two adults is likely to be a society where non-romantic friendships are emotionally more anemic.

If this hypothesis is correct, then there is reason to promote a more embodied view of marriage not just for the sake of marriage, but also for the sake of friendship.

Frank Beckwith's new book

I found Frank Beckwith's new book, Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic, a gift from Frank (thank you!). I haven't read it yet, but I've glanced through it, and have found it a charming, well-argued and personal book. One thing that strikes me is how many evangelicals, like Frank, who come or return to the fullness of communion with the Catholic Church are so very gracious to their Protestant brethren, and so grateful what they have gained from their years as evangelical Protestants. The grace that led them to full communion, step by step, is palpable in this love and gratitude. I've suggested in an earlier post that one draws closer to non-Catholic Christians by becoming more faithful to the Catholic faith, and this seems to be a case of that. At the same time, the gracious love of Frank's non-Catholic friends also comes through.

Friendships between ecclesially and doctrinally divided Christians have of late been to me a particular case of the love by which one may know Christians. Division may lead to hatred, but division between people committed to Christ is also an opportunity for great love.

Friends and future selves

According to Jennifer Whiting, our relation to our future selves is like that to our friends. But this view is subject to a particularly clear form of the self-sacrifice objection. For suppose that I can rescue a stranger from a bear, but I foresee that in doing so I will acquire fatal wounds that will cause death within a few hours. If I had no conflicting duties, e.g., to my children, this would be a heroic and laudable thing to do. But if Whiting is right, then it seems this action is analogous to sacrificing the life of a friend for that of a stranger, without having asked the friend, since the future self who will die in a few hours is like a friend. But it's surely wrong to sacrifice the life of a friend, without special permission, to save a stranger.

Objection: The future self has the same values as I do, and hence if it were the case that I am such that I would choose to die for the stranger, I can assume that he, too, would choose to die for the stranger.

Response: There are several problems with this objection. First, the relevant future self is the one who is going to be dying from the fatal wounds. Can I really be sure that at that time there will be no regrets, but consent? Second, this answer assumes that anybody with the same values as me would have chosen the same thing. But that assumption is plausibly false. I have certain values which imply that it would be a fine thing to give up my life for the stranger. But it is not certain that each time I would act on those values. It could well be that I would only sometimes choose to act on those values. But that fact would not affect the permissibility of acting on the values. Third, consider this. What if in fact I do not love my future self as much as I love myself? Plausibly, the self-sacrifice would still be permissible. But in that case, it cannot be presumed that my future self would choose to have himself be sacrificed—for, presumably, he loves himself more than I love him. Fourth, when it comes to sacrificing the life of a friend to save a stranger, more than merely knowing that the friend has values that make the sacrifice likely is needed. The choice has to be made by the friend.

Happiness, friendship and eternity

When one is not tired of a friend, the expected approaching loss of union with the friend makes one miserable. To be tired of a friend would not be compatible with full human happiness, and neither would it be compatible with full human happiness to have no friends. Full human happiness is grounded in truth—it is not full happiness when one's delight depends on ignorance. Therefore, when one is not tired of a friend, an approaching loss of union with the friend one is not tired of is not compatible with full human happiness, whether the loss is expected or not. But neither is it compatible with full human happiness to be tired of friends or lack them. Thus, in full human happiness, one never approaches the loss of union with a friend. But if one were to cease existing, one would thereby lose all union with one's friends.

It follows that full human happiness requires unending life with at least one friend. Moreover, it requires a well-grounded security in this unending life (this point I learned from Todd Buras).

We can conclude from this that naturalism is false if we add the premises:

1. People have a natural desire for full human happiness.
2. What people have a natural desire for is possible.
3. If naturalism is true, then it is not possible to have well-grounded security in unending life.

One might think this argument can be simplified by arguing that if naturalism is true, unending life is impossible. But if the universe goes on expanding forever and quantum indeterminism holds, unending life is not impossible, just highly improbable (it gets less and less probable as the universe gets colder and colder). But such an unending life is insecure because of the improbability of its continuation.

Confidentiality

You ask me: "Did Owen tell you in confidence that he is looking for another position?" He didn't, and in fact Owen and I have never talked about the question. What can I say? It seems I can truthfully and with a clear conscience answer: "No." After all, Owen never confided in me, so I owe him no duties of confidentiality.

But if I make it a policy to answer such questions honestly in cases where Owen has reposed no relevant confidence in me, then I make myself into a non-intentional betrayer of secrets. For you can then tell whether Owen has shared a relevant confidence in me simply by asking me about it—if I answer, then he has not, and if I do not answer, then he has. Moreover, in typical cases you can also deduce, with some probability, what the confidence was. For it is more likely that Owen would take the trouble to request confidentiality about his looking for a new position than about his being satisfied with his present post.

By answering in the negative when no confidence has been reposed in me, then, I decrease my ability to keep confidences on other occasions. It seems, then, that a good thing to say is: "If he did tell me so, I wouldn't be able to share it with you. And if he did not tell me so, I still shouldn't tell you that, since then you'd be able to tell when confidence has been reposed in me."

But what is kind of tricky is that there are cases where this response does not seem satisfactory from Owen's point of view. Suppose that Owen never committed a certain pecadillo, but I am such a close friend of his, that had he done it, he would have immediately told me about it in confidence. If I am asked whether Owen confessed the pecadillo to me, and he had not, then it seems the very best thing for Owen's reputation is a clear denial from me. But a policy of such denials makes me a poorer keeper of confidences for my friends. So there is a bit of a dilemma here.

Presumably, the thing to do is to say that the duty to remain an effective keeper of confidences when one has not had a secret confided to one is only a prima facie duty. It is, simply, a good thing to be an effective keeper of confidences, but sometimes we need to act in ways that makes us less effective at keeping secrets, just as sometimes we need to act in ways that will make us less good racketball players (a philosopher I know gave up a professional racketball career to go into philosophy). To be an effective keeper of secrets is a genuine good, but there are incommensurable goods that might justify becoming a less effective keeper of secrets. There is nothing surprising here. In fact, examples are easy to find. Learning to keep a poker face, for instance, makes one a more effective keeper of secrets, but increases one's temptations to dishonesty.

What is kind of interesting to me about this case is that it seems one has prima facie duties of confidentiality towards people whose confidences one does not actually possess. I think this is because one has good reason to be ready with the offices of a friend (understood broadly—we should be a friend or neighbor to all), and hence to act in ways that make one a more effective friend. Maybe we should see this reason as grounded in what one owes fellow human beings, or maybe in what one owes oneself, or maybe in what one owes God.

And confidentiality is not the only such case. For instance, one likewise has reason to avoid budgeting one's money and time in such a way that one has no margin to help friends in need.

There is nothing earthshaking or deeply surprising here. I just wanted to think through these issues, and as often, my way of thinking them through is by writing.