more from this thinker     |     more from this text

Single Idea 20046

[filed under theme 20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 1. Acting on Desires ]

Full Idea

If wanting something most were the same as having the most powerful feelings about it, then as an ascetic (rejecting what you most powerfully desire), your wanting most to eat a bun would be your reason for not eating the bun.

Gist of Idea

For an ascetic a powerful desire for something is a reason not to implement it

Source

Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 3 'The belief-')

Book Ref

Stout,Rowland: 'Action' [Acumen 2005], p.36

A Reaction

This sounds like reason overruling desire, but the asceticism can always be characterised as a meta-desire.

The 17 ideas with the same theme [desires and emotions as the main motivator of action]:

1540 Pleasure and pain guide our choices of good and bad [Democritus]
7408 It is an error that reason should control the passions, which give right guidance on their own [Hobbes, by Tuck]
2362 The will is just the last appetite before action [Hobbes]
20305 Whenever we act, then desire is our very essence [Spinoza]
5489 Humans have variable dispositions, and also power to change their dispositions [Ellis]
3814 Preferences can result from deliberation, not just precede it [Searle]
23724 A pure desire could be criticised if it were based on a false belief [Smith,M]
23723 In the Humean account, desires are not true/false, or subject to any rational criticism [Smith,M]
23735 Subjects may be fallible about the desires which explain their actions [Smith,M]
23736 A person can have a desire without feeling it [Smith,M]
23738 Humeans (unlike their opponents) say that desires and judgements can separate [Smith,M]
23739 Goals need desires, and so only desires can motivate us [Smith,M]
23742 If first- and second-order desires conflict, harmony does not require the second-order to win [Smith,M]
23746 Objective reasons to act might be the systematic desires of a fully rational person [Smith,M]
20202 Motives involve desires, but also how the desires connect to our aims [Zagzebski]
20049 Maybe your emotions arise from you motivations, rather than being their cause [Stout,R]
20046 For an ascetic a powerful desire for something is a reason not to implement it [Stout,R]