I did not read the post CW
Congrats on making this community!
Agreed, this community’s existence was a desire I held for a while too! I would be willing to moderate it and contribute to the best of my abilities!
Congratulations!
One solution might be to refer to distinguish between “first-order” and “second-order” desires. First-order desires are precisely the kind of desires we’ve been considering so far – desires about what to eat, what to study, and when to die. Second-order desires, on the other hand, are desires about desires. To illustrate the difference between these two, consider the case of Mary. Mary is a smoker. Every morning, she wakes up with a powerful desire for a cigarette. A desire that she promptly satisfies. Then, throughout the day, she desires many more cigarettes – a full pack’s worth in fact. Mary, however, deeply regrets being a smoker. She hates the harmful effects it has on her health and her wallet. She wishes that she didn’t desire cigarettes. So, while Mary’s first order desire is to smoke cigarettes, her second order desire is precisely the opposite.
How does this help us? Well, we might argue that when considering how best to respect a person’s autonomy, we should focus purely on an individual’s second-order desires. This, then, would permit us to do something like forcefully prevent Mary from smoking (say, by confiscating her cigarettes and preventing her from buying more). Similar reasoning can be applied to the many cases where someone’s desires have been corrupted by addiction, deception, or general human flaws like laziness and procrastination.
This is what we already do. It shouldn’t need to be argued when it’s literally already the philosophical practice of the vast majority of human society. We ban people from substances that cause this problem, removing people’s autonomy because we’re well aware that the drug itself removes their autonomy.
Unless you’re in somewhere like Canada where their leaders gaslight the population that building a system on the concept of “kill the poor” is somehow a progressive and positive thing.
Anyway this dude is correct and intervention in these cases is a good thing. In case anyone is worried about that CW, this one probably doesn’t need it.
