Topics Mind

Question I may want to go to the kitchen because there is some food there and I want to eat. (Suppose that.) One of these desires is a "fundamental" desire (I want to eat) and the other one is merely "derivative". Are there better words usually used to express this difference between two kinds of desires? Do you think that most desires are, as I called them, "derivative" and that there is only a small set of "fundamental" desires (like the desires to be alive, healthy, free, without pain, and loved)?

Accepted:
June 18, 2009

Comments

There are two different distinctions that are of interest here.

First, there is a distinction between ends and means. Going to the kitchen is a means to the end of eating food. That is one way in which your desire to go to the kitchen is derivative from your desire to eat. Given the complexities of achieving most of our ends (buying and cooking and preparing food, earning money to be able to buy food, setting the alarm in order to get to one's job in order to earn money, and so on), the majority of our desires are bound to be derivative in this sense.

Second, there is a distinction between original goals and evolved goals. The original goals of a child may be few and simple (to eat, to avoid pain, to be loved, etc.) while the evolved goals of an adult are many (to travel, to learn about plants, to enjoy music, to learn other languages, to have children, to deepen friendships, etc.). It would be a mistake to assume that the adult's many goals are all just means to the original goals of a child, however -- that enjoying music, for example, is really just a means to the original ends of a child. The fact that one desire develops out of another doesn't mean that its ultimate aim is the satisfaction of that first desire.

If I have a sudden hankering to eat raspberries, it strikes me that I might want not want to eat them as a means to any end. I just want to eat some raspberries. So it's not derivative in any causal sense--it's not that I want this because it's a means of getting something else, and it's not obviously a result of some other desire. But our various desires might fall into natural classes. Wanting raspberries perhaps falls into the same class as wanting chocolate, and into a different class from wanting to get together with a friend. Wanting to eat some rasperries is an "instance" (that's the word I'd use) of some general type--it's an aesthetic desire, rather than a desire for interaction. If all humans have a set of fundamental desires like this, I think the list of them is quite long, and a lot of our specific desires fall into many categories, or resist categorization.