It occured to me that no one really does anything they don’t want to do. That is someone may do something they dislike immediately because they will like the longer term consequences. For example, One doesn’t like his job, but he works there because he needs the money. He wants not to work there, but he wants the money more so.
It also occured to me that something seemed to be missing there. Something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
So, what am I missing? Anything?
Your peculiar definiition of ‘want’?
Unless you want to go five pages around semantics, I think PatriotX got it in one. One could argue if one chose that a person “wants” to give his wallet to the mugger because he prefers the longer term benefit of not dying, but it’s kind of a silly argument. And of course, taking it one step further, if the mugger pistol-whips the guy and then boosts the wallet off of the guy’s unconscious body even that argument goes away.
I sort of get what the op is saying. Humans are inherently selfish. Nothing we do is without some distant motivational reasoning to benefit ourselves. We might help an old lady cross a street to avoid the guilt of not helping her. It could be wrong but it’s a valid theory to debate.
I really didn’t want to come in here.
I really dislike this theory because its the ultimate “catch-all”, no matter how tenuous the link it can be used to explain all actions and I quite simply just don’t by it.
For example, a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save his squadmates is selfish how? Why he’s only doing it from his own egotistical desire to be a hero!
Its in the same realm as the subconcious which is the modern “god of the gaps” method to explain everything we don’t quite understand.
Meh; this is just a variation of the altruism argument and it stinks - if you define a term to be so broad and inclusive, it becomes meaningless, furthermore, these arguments seem to demand of themselves a shockingly low standard of proof; I say I cleaned the toilet tonight, but I didn’t want to - seems all you have to do is provide a not ridiculously implausible chain of reasoning as to why I might actually have wanted to clean the toilet, deep down, at some level and presto! you’ve won the argument…but why? - it’s not as if you necessarily described my actual motivation, or anything like it.
Just to throw in another complication for giggles. I just finished a book on quitting smoking (which has actually worked for two months). The premise of the book is you don’t actually *want * to smoke. You just *think * you want to smoke. You’re brainwashed to think you want to smoke.
Addiction as “false wanting.” Hmmm…isn’t that an interesting thought? If nothing else I think it is true that the primitive brain does “take over” and make us “want” things that our intellect (cerebral cortex? I’m no neurobiologist) doesn’t really “want.” In other words, wanting itself can be co-opted.
Maybe it is a peculiar definition of ‘want’. It seems that subsequent repliers have used it so let’s continue.
In response to Lobsang and MidwinterF1, it’s not necessarily a selfish want. Using MidwinterF1’s example, maybe the soldier wanted his fellow soldiers not to be hurt.
Of course, this leads to Mangetout’s point. We don’t know what he wanted. But have you ever done anything that you truly didn’t want to do (using my peculiar definition)? Would you do something that you didn’t want to do and from which nothing that you do want will result? Maybe you have or would. If so, I’ll change my proposition to “I never truly do anything I don’t want to do” because I know I don’t.
And uglybeech, I disagree. Primitive wants are just as valid as intellectual wants. Your wants are dictated by your emotions, which are furthermore dictated by neurochemicals in your brain. Having alien chemicals in your brain doesn’t change how you think you feel; it changes how you actually do feel.
I think that part of what the OP might be getting at is that a lot of people want to shift the blame for their actions onto others, as in, “I didn’t want to rob that store, but my friends made me do it.” When caving in to peer pressure they want to blame the peers, rather than accept their own culpability.
In this respect, I fully agree. While your friends may encourage behaviors you might not do on your own, you still would not act unless a little part of you wanted to do it in the first place. Supportive friends give us courage.
Well I’m not really asserting anything. I’m just throwing out complications to think about. I’m pretty sure I’m not asserting what you’re disagreeing with. I’m certainly not saying the primitive wants are less “valid” than intellectual wants.
But we *should * remember that “wanting” is not at all a simple thing. There are competing circuits in your brain that will conflict, and usurp each other at times (Your conscious self “wanting” to hold your breath will only succeed for so long, for example). “I” may want one thing but there are a number of parts of my brain that might successfully interfere with that (you can say they are also wants - but are they? Sometimes they’re just instincts, etc). So on that level alone saying that “I” only do what “I” want to do gets hairy.
The book is talking about another complication which I think is speculative, but interesting. The possibility that we can be habituated to think we “want” something when we don’t. In a nutshell the difference between a “physical” cravings (one kind of wanting), vs. “psychological” addiction (when you no longer are feeling the cravings of withdrawal but still “want” the smoke). He would say that’s the product of having been conditioned by repetitive withdrawal cravings to think that you “want” a cigarette. It’s wanting by habit. Anyway it’s an interesting idea. It takes the idea of conditioning further than the traditional stuff I learned in college - where the reward may disappear by the desire remains. In his view the desire itself may disappear but the belief in the desire remains.
I think everyone is looking too deeply into this… it’s basically a tautology.
Think of an equation, say, y = x. Neither x nor y has a definite value until someone or something comes along to say something about either. It doesn’t really matter what is said - the fact remains that someone had to say something… and this is what the OP is noticing.
A motivation prompts an action. Take any motivation, and it’s still a subset of All Motivations; take any action, and it’s still a subset of All Actions. It’s not really surprising that if a relationship exists between either, that someone willed it to exist - could it exist any other way?
The OP’s assertion that “no one really does anything they don’t want to do.” makes good sense, but
is also a perfectly sensible statement. Thus we see that the phrase “wanting to do something” does not have a clear and unalterable sense in itself, but depends upon the context and intent of the speaker. Big surprise, eh?
What if you want to do perfectly random actions of no general benefit to yourself, simply to prove you have free will?
How can you prove you have free will when anything you do, by definition, is simply supplying a want of yours?
I’ve been over this argument a few times with some of my friends. It usually starts with one of my friends claiming that there is no such thing as a truly altruistic act. The implication that every action has some kind of selfish motivation gets our resident hard-core Christian a bit riled up, and the two of them get to arguing about whether good works done out of faith in God are truly unselfish.
Usually at about that point I intervene and complain that they could both argue until they’re blue in the face but won’t get anywhere unless they clearly define what they mean when they say “selfish,” “altruistic,” or “want.” Since it causes me near-physical pain to watch them argue in circles around terms they are interpreting differently, I bring up the concept of utility as defined in economics. To me, this is a clearly, unambiguously defined term that I think is what the OP is getting at by saying “want.” Economics attracts me specifically because it is devoted to the study of human behavior, and approaches decision-making in as rigorous a manner as possible.
It does seem tautological to state that any decision made by a rational person will be in favor of the option that grants them the most utility, since you can define utility simply as the sum of all factors that went into making the decision. But though it seems obvious I don’t think it is a useless statement, since it gives a basic framework for decision-making that my friends and I can agree on. Once we get arguing from the concept of utility, at last we’re all using words that are clearly defined and agreed upon.
We can argue about my one friend’s claim that if you derive utility from a choice then that choice is selfish, or another friend’s claim that faith is somehow separate from utility considerations. I think those are both more productive than watching “but you’re saying there’s no such thing as a desire to be good” and “but aren’t you only doing those things to look better to God” over and over again.
Boiled down, what this says is “People make choices”. People have options, weight them, and pick. Do I give the dollar to Starbucks or to the Salvation Army. Do I rush into the fire to try and save the child, or do I stay out here with my own kids.
There’s no new discovery here, just a rephrasing of what we all know.
For an action to be counted as something I “want” to do, it should be defined as an action I would willingly take even if I didn’t have to. I want to post on the SDMB. I have to pay taxes.
You don’t have to pay taxes.
In whose world?
You can not pay taxes, be conficted of tax evasion, and go to prison. You just don’t want to.