Certainly, a person can be said to "desire something he does not need," but this is a judgement of necessity, and there may still be an underlying need. What could cause a person to desire something if there is no underlying need? Perhaps there is always a need but also other factors, but without the need would the other factors be enough to create desire in a person?
I would say that there is a general need amongst all life forms, from the individual cell, finding its role in the hierarchy of the organism, to the various living entities and their societies, to the ecological level and possibly the cosmic rank, to communicate and benefit at large to fulfil the program of evolution in some general teleonomic sense.
IF you consider how advertisement industry can awaken in people desires that they have not experienced earlier, one inclines to think that there can easily be desires that are beyond need and lack.
It is hard to say where there is a need, and what that need demands.
My father was always talking about the difference between Wants, and Needs, but by Abraham Maslows Definition of needs, many needs are subtle, and the desires they create indirect.
If you understand that needs are vague drives that are there to guide the organism towards proper health, but are sidetracked and redirected by culture and the complexity of the World today, it might not be as obvious where needs are directed. Advertising is just one way that needs are redirected without recourse.
I would say that needs or desires are not the prime driver of evolution – it is the over reaching instinct of self preservation that is a basic trait and self referential physical law that emerge in complex enough biological systems.
I refer to the issue of desire and its relation to human needs in my book 'the desire for metaphysics'
If a person can desire something they do not need, is this a judgement? A judgement is cognitive in nature while desire is emotional and visceral. As Ferenc points out, desires can be generated in many ways and can become needs purely by the strength of the desire. They can be related to biological, spiritual, social, or intellectual factors. Need and desire co-mingle, as when father talks about the difference between wants and needs. This is an issue for discussion and sharing horizons of perspective, not something we should try to make objective rules about. In other words, an area for phenomenological investigation rather than logic. A case can be made that a need can always be identified at some level below desire, but whether it is actually a need and what we mean by "need" needs to be clarified phenomenologically and metaphysically. Interesting topic of discussion.
How is phenomenology related to metaphysics in this case? Ronny's book should be instructive...
Yes, I would have to say it does originate from thought. Without thought, you have nothing. Thought will either decide lack, need, or otherwise. Is going to a university a lack, need, or other? You think about it and then answer it yourself, even if you ask others about their thoughts on it. Your desire to fulfill it will outweigh the others including your previous thoughts and conclusions. You have to do it; or, you need to do it. Either you have a reason or you just want to. Good or bad or doesn't matter. Either we're experimenting or following through on that thought which might be a dream to accomplish, personal or scientific or other. But it can arise from need or lack without directly knowing that it came from this. Your mind will come up with answers for all sorts of things; even if you have not realized what you thought is the answer. It might arrive at your at some later time. But yes, it can originate from something else. I'm going to have my morning coffee right now; because if I lack in that, it will most certainly become an obvious need later on. But for now, I'll make it a need because I do not wish to lack in not having it first thing in the morning. Or, I can deviate from this and do not drink anything at all, or just a glass of water. Will I have thoughts about the need for coffee or my lack thereof? Or, can my mind just put it out and get moving with my day? What's going to originate from this if I go this route? I don't want to find out. I'm going to have my coffee and forget about it so I can move on with my day as usual. I don't mind offering you a cup of coffee or glass of water either. It's your decision. Either way, it will not affect me. Or, will it? Lack, or need? It doesn't originate from lack or need at this time; it's from routine. Interrupting that routine can cause a need for lack thereof. It's set; and by me.
I have considered my own wants and needs deeply. The only conclusion for me was to see that 'what I want' is 'everything, which I am aware of (right now!) that I don't have', as a definition of the word 'want', if you will.
The list of what I 'need' is categorized by 'what I need it for'. Survival, satisfying my reproductive imperative ( I only 'needed' sex twice for this, all the other times were for other needs), comfort, pleasure, increasing my experience, understanding, fulfilling my contribution to the evolution of the universe, satisfying urges, etc. The effort put into any intention to satisfy a need has to be balanced, morally, with the other values that have been identified in my experience as well as other needs.
Desire is part of the universal process that selects imagined future possibilities and determines the choice between options and the level of intention and effort that will be directed toward causing chosen events to actually happen and be experienced.
Seen as a fraction of a person's total ability to bring about outcomes, desired outcomes are typically identified by a perception of a choice and willingness to expend a large effort toward causing them. On one hand all intention can be viewed as the result of desire, however, typically, to say that one desires something is to say that a large part of the person's ability to effect the future is expended toward that want or need. When we decide to drink the third glass of water today we don't say we desired it. But when we passionately strive for an outcome to satisfy our existence and purpose for this lifetime it is more often expressed as a result of our desire.
Does anyone see any other semantic expressions of the general desire that leads to any intention and the specific way we attribute a person's action to their desires?
Desire is a dance of paradox. Of poetry. And profound mystery. In the space between lack and need is the place where the tonality of tension speaks. A relational space of interconnected yearning, which finds articulation in academic and poetic expression. With integrated and interdisciplinary studies, the terrain of how this is informed becomes more blurred, and invites both transcendence and transformation, particularly in relation to what is meant by: need and lack. And who is deciding the meaning. And why.
Sometimes we see something that other people possess. We feel jealous and feel the want. This want too leads us to have something we don't actually need.
Can jealousy (or rather, envy) be described as the person creating a perceived need? That is, the person is generally without need, but then sees someone with something they consider desirable. They then change their belief that they are satisfied, basically upping the bar for what they desire, and through that they create an unfilled need? After all, who needs modern appliances, and yet we all desire them to make our lives easier. Maybe this is because of an underlying desire for an easy (easier) life, but that isn't due to an actual need, or is it? It sounds like a lack created by the person's own assessment, but is there perhaps an underlying need to feel important that drives the desire?
The need for social status is often enslaved to create desires for more expensive stuff. The idea being that if you have more stuff, and it is more expensive, that you are somehow winning more status. We see this effect with early adopters of the latest expensive smart phone equipment. They actually buy advanced models during the introductory period when they are more expensive, in order to increase their perceived status.
In the case of the next person buying the product because of jealousy, it is the perceived fact that they are losing status with respect to not having the stuff that drives them.
In my view, desire is a species of wanting, which itself is a derivative of the many and ever ongoing biological drives for homeostatic regulation. Drives, wantings, and desires are "acton-ready" toward their fulfillment. Lack, need, or the perception of such can initiate wanting/desiring. Wishing, too is related, more human-only (I think), and not tied to action readiness. I've elaborated this in a chapter in Brakel (2009, OUP).
desires are the outcome our incentives , you need to be incentivized to develop a desire for anything, financial, emotional, social, political incentives lead to the development of desires .
Selfishness and covetousness is also another reason people desire certain things eventhough they do not need it
Indeed desire originates from lack or need but also emanates from want or greed, love or like and sense of entitlement to feel above everybody and above all laws of society. A rich person of business who has millions and billions of fortunes desire to get more profits not because he lacks money or needs money but because he wants more money. We have desires to learn and know more because we need to built knowledge to solve problems of life and that of society.
However desire sometimes gets confused with appreciation and like or in a more strong term love. You see an art work and you appreciate it and love it but that does not mean you desire it to own it or to have it.
To desire by sheer force of habit. Dieters will tell us how formidable this force of momentum is.
Much easier to ride a wave than to fight one...intrapersonal cycles?
Book Kondratieff Waves. Juglar – Kuznets – Kondratieff
I would say that there is a general need amongst all life forms, from the individual cell, finding its role in the hierarchy of the organism, to the various living entities and their societies, to the ecological level and possibly the cosmic rank, to communicate and benefit at large to fulfil the program of evolution in some general teleonomic sense.
The origin is the law of evolution, commensurate with need or lack.
As diagnosed by feminist philosophers at the end of the 20th century, within the Western tradition there are two "economies of desire." The first economy of desire begins with Plato's Symposium, where desire is described as a lack for the original other with which our souls were originally conjoined. However, in much of women's lived experience, and as articulated in Deleuze's philosophy of desire as a force vitale, and in feminist theorizations of women moving into the space of articulation and action, desire has a productive economy--giving and receiving produce supplements and excess that further desire. The economy of lack is understood from this perspective to be symptomatic of phallic desire, producing a zero sum economy of desire for which the self attempts to acquire and secure their desire at the expense of others. The economy of excess is understood to be generative, promoting an ethic of abundance and flourishing.
Thanks Mary Keller! That is a helpful from the perspective of the economy of desire.
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