1. Human Desire

1. Human Desire

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1. Human Desire

a. What is a 'desire,' and what are the two ways it manifests in consciousness? A desire is what motivates our choosing, something we want or are drawn toward that functions as the reason behind a choice. From the Taylor excerpt, desire can appear as a raw, unformed emotional state (like an infant's undifferentiated distress or craving for contact, before it has any conceptual shape), which only becomes a clear, nameable want once it's been given interpretation.

b. What is a 'protointerpretation' versus an 'interpretation' of desire? Why do desires need interpreting? A protointerpretation is the earliest, pre-verbal shaping of a child's raw desires that a parent provides through repeated rituals, feeding, soothing, playing, rocking to sleep, giving formless emotional "storms" (hunger, pain, need for contact) a definite shape, purpose, and recognizable remedy, before the child has language or self-understanding. Desires need interpreting because, left unshaped, they're explosive and shapeless, without a clear outlet or hope of fulfillment, which tends to end in apathy and despondency

2. Levels of Happiness

a. The four levels, with objects/acts of each

Level 1, External-Pleasure-Material: objects like food, drink, shelter, material goods (clothes, cars, money); source is the brain and sensory faculties.

Level 2, Ego-Comparative: objects like status, winning, being smarter/better than others, achievement; source is self-consciousness.

Level 3, Contributive-Empathetic: acts of helping/contributing to others, or "being with" people in empathy; source is self-consciousness plus empathy and conscience.

Level 4, Transcendent: object is openness to God, perfect/unconditional truth, love, goodness, beauty, and being ("home"); source is transcendental awareness.

b. Spitzer's argument for Level 4 as universal, and answering the objection Spitzer's evidence is that four negative feelings, cosmic emptiness, alienation, loneliness, and guilt, show up even in people who are not religious or don't consciously believe in God. He treats the persistence of these feelings, despite someone's denial or lack of belief, as proof the Level 4 desire is real in everyone whether they acknowledge it or not. On the objection ("some people don't believe in God, so not everyone has Level 4 desire"): this fails because Spitzer's claim isn't that everyone consciously believes in or acknowledges God, it's that everyone possesses the underlying desire whether they recognize it or not. Not believing in God doesn't mean lacking the desire, it just means the desire goes unmet, which is precisely what produces those four cosmic feelings even in nonbelievers.

3. Choices and Wonder

a.i. Why must there be a final end or basic reason for choosing? Free choice always requires a reason, without one, you wouldn't choose at all, you'd just have instinct or spasm (like a reflex). If there were no final end or basic reason underlying our choices, every "why" question about a choice could be asked infinitely with no place to stop, meaning no choice would ever be genuinely intelligible or explicable. Choices would just be arbitrary, with nothing actually motivating them.

a.ii. What is the final end, and how does volitional intentionality analysis show it? The final end all choices are ultimately pursuing is happiness. Volitional intentionality analysis is the technique of repeatedly asking "why" or "what for" behind any choice, tracing reason behind reason, until you hit a point where no further "why" can be asked. De La Noval demonstrates this with a mundane example (reading an assigned chapter, tracing back through wanting a good grade, G.P.A, a job, financial security, family happiness, and finally just happiness itself) and an evil example (identity theft, tracing back to wanting to feel superior/safe, still ultimately about the thief's own happiness). No matter where you start, the chain always bottoms out at happiness, which has no further "because" behind it.

a.iii. What is a 'conditioned' good? A conditioned (or extrinsically) good is something desirable only because of some further reason or condition, it isn't good "on its own terms." For example, lifting 300 pounds is only desirable because you desire fitness or strength; it's conditioned on that further goal. Happiness, by contrast, is the only unconditioned good, it doesn't require any further "because" to explain why it's desirable, it's intrinsically good in itself.

b. Nutter's two arguments that wonder is unrestricted, plus the definition of wonder and its object Definition: Wonder is the desire to know, the desire for truth. Argument 1: By asking whether there's something we cannot ask about, we're already asking about it, the very act of questioning a limit shows we've already conceived of what's beyond it. Argument 2: Whenever we make a judgment about something finite, further questions always arise (knowing the moon's gravitational force leads to asking about its effect on Earth), showing our wonder is never fully satisfied by finite knowledge, it's oriented toward something infinite by nature. Object of wonder: Since wonder is unrestricted and only an unrestricted/infinite reality can satisfy an unrestricted desire, the object wonder is ultimately ordered toward is God, defined as the infinite, unrestricted reality.

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