From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 17 2003 - 14:41:25 MDT
On 7/14/2003, Dan Fabulich wrote:
>Still, I stand by my claim that there are basically two plausible
>normative implications of your claim: 1 accept it honestly, "come what
>may" or 2 reject it, even though it is true; ...
I can agree with this.
>Similarly, I'd argue that any "specific" argument you might make would get
>hit by the first argument as well. By arguing that your claim about our
>"real desires" is true, but you shouldn't believe it, you'd be forced to
>accept the logical inference that there is, therefore, some truth that you
>shouldn't believe; that you shouldn't always believe the truth. But this
>was precisely the claim I was responding to in the first place.
I agree that if you have an axiom that says you should always believe the
truth, you violate it if you ever choose to believe what isn't true. What
I deny is that I must accept such an axiom on pain of self-contradiction.
I need not accept the normative axiom that I must always believe the truth.
> > Real journeys of self-discovery would largely be dark affairs, wherein
> > mounting evidence forced people to believe ignoble things about
> > themselves that they would rather not tell others. And those who do
> > struggle over decades to learn the truth about what people want, and who
> > are willing to tell others, would face largely indifferent or hostile
> > audiences.
>
>It's easy to see how life will be miserable for anyone who believes and
>espouses this extremely cynical view; I take your depiction here to be a
>pretty gross understatement as to how bad life would really be for someone
>who took this philosophy truly seriously. Just imagine how much
>association you'd like to have with someone who was in the habit of saying
>things this: "I've gone through a terrible self-discovery process, and
>discovered that I don't really like other people, and, what's more, I
>realized that almost no one else does either. I'd rather be famous than
>help anybody; I believe most intimate relationships are based on commonly
>accepted lies, and that most people believe in our common mores on account
>of comforting self-deception."
>
>Furthermore, I think you are in no way licensed to conclude that you've
>correctly captured the notion of "want" that agrees with "the ordinary
>sense"; indeed, if anyone's more licensed to make the claim to agree with
>"ordinary common sense" here, it would have to be me: you're the one
>proposing that almost everyone is basically wrong (self-deceived) in the
>way that they use the word "want".
Economists look at what people choose, and try to infer what people believe
and want from these actions. I claim this economists' sense of the word is
also the usual informal sense of the word "want"; it is whatever best
accounts for their typical choices. People do choose to be famous over
helping others, for example, and they do this consistently and with enough
subtlety and strategic sophistication as to make it hard to believe that
they do this by accident or due to a misunderstanding. In ordinary
terminology,
I still claim that your proposed sense of "want" is best described as "what
I want to believe that I want".
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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