**Links to**: [[Desire]], [[Desire and Capital]], [[Postcapitalist Desire]]
_Desiderata_ are, simply stated, those things which are desired.
For this, they need to be clearly stated. Transparently communicated. Obvious?
How can we know?
How can desiderata be known?
>“What makes thought social is the fact that reasons belong to language and language is itself a complex of interrelated practices, linguistic and non-linguistic, inserted in a tradition, a ‘form of life’ in Wittgenstein’s words (Wittgenstein 2009: §§ 7, 19, 241). The availability of meanings comes from being initiated in a language where a world-view is transmitted. Because of this initiation, our capacity to understand others consists directly and without mediation in our ability to “hear someone else’s meaning in his words” (McDowell 1998: 258), and not in the capacity to interpret or otherwise calculate their meaning.” Glenda Satne in Kiverstein 2016, pp. 536-7.
>Moten writes Adorno writes: ““... The object of theory is not something immediate, of which theory might carry home a replica. Knowledge has not, like the state police, a rogues’ gallery of its objects. Rather, it conceives them as it conveys them; else it would be content to describe the façade. As Brecht did admit, after all, the criterion of sense perception—overstretched and problematic even in its proper place—is not applicable to radically indirect society. What immigrated into the object as the law of its motion [Bewegungsgesetz], inevitably concealed by the ideological form of the phenomenon, eludes that criterion” (_Negative Dialectics_, trans. E. B. Ashton [New York: Continuum, 1973], 206.” _Consent not to be a single thing_, p. 285.
>“**3.1. The minimal structure of commitment and the sense of commitment**
>
>In addressing the three desiderata identified in the previous section {_(i.e. motivation, implicit commitment, development)._}, Michael, Sebanz, and Knoblich propose a characterization of the minimal structure of situations in which a sense of commitment can arise. This minimal structure can be expressed as follows:
>
>(i) There is an outcome (O) which one agent (ME) either desires to come about, or which is the goal of an action which ME is currently performing or intends to perform.
>(ii) The contribution (X) of a second agent (YOU) is crucial12 to bringing about O. Clearly, conditions (i) and (ii) specify a broader category than that of commitment in the strict sense. Nevertheless, situations with this structure may elicit a sense of commitment on the part of one or both agents. Michael, Sebanz, and Knoblich (2016) conceptualize the sense of commitment as follows:
>
>ME has a sense that YOU is committed to performing X to the extent that ME expects X to occur because (i) and (ii) obtain. YOU has a sense of being committed to performing X to the extent that YOU is motivated by her belief that ME expects her to contribute X. While the minimal structure is specified such that only one agent (ME) desires O and/or has the goal of bringing about O, there are many cases in which both agents desire O and/or have the goal O. In those cases, the commitment may be mutual, with each agent having a sense of being committed as well as a sense that the other agent is committed.” John Michael in Kiverstein 2016, p. 374.
>“When I was a boy, my logical bent caused me to take pleasure in tracing out upon a map of an imaginary labyrinth one path after another in hopes of finding my way to a central compartment. The operation we have just gone through is essentially of the same sort, and if we are to recognize the one as essentially performed by experimentation upon a diagram, so must we recognize that the other is performed. The demonstration just traced out brings home to us very strongly, also, the convenience of so constructing our diagram as to afford a clear view of the mode of connection of its parts, and of its composition at each stage of our operations upon it. Such convenience is obtained in the diagrams of algebra. In logic, however, the desirability of convenience in threading our way through complications is much less than in mathematics, while there is another desideratum which the mathematician as such does not feel. The mathematician wants to reach the conclusion, and his interest in the process is merely as a means to reach similar conclusions. The logician does not care what the result may be; his desire is to understand the nature of the process by which it is reached. The mathematician seeks the speediest and most abridged of secure methods; the logician wishes to make each smallest step of the process stand out distinctly, so that its nature may be understood. He wants his diagram to be, above all, as analytical as possible.” C.S. Peirce: CP 4.533 Cross-Ref: †† §3. GRAPHS AND SIGNS.
>“It is certainly a desideratum in philosophy to unify the phenomena of mind and matter. The logic of retroduction directs us to adopt Monism as a provisional hypothesis of philosophy, whether we think it likely or not; and not to abandon it till the position is stormed and we are forced out of it. In view of this, it becomes exceedingly interesting to inquire how the physicist explains those actions which seem to violate the law of energy. Now such of them as physicists have deeply studied are all explained by the action of ***chance.***” C.S. Peirce: CP 6.73 Cross-Ref: ††.
>“A man may act with reference only to the momentary occasion, either from unrestrained desire, or from preference for one desideratum over another, or from provision against future desires, or from persuasion, or from imitative instinct, or from dread of blame, or in awed obedience to an instant command; or he may act according to some general rule restricted to his own wishes, such as the pursuit of pleasure, or self-preservation, or good-will toward an acquaintance, or attachment to home and surroundings, or conformity to the customs of his tribe, or reverence for a law; or, becoming a moralist, he may aim at bringing about an ideal state of things definitely conceived, such as one in which everybody attends exclusively to his own business and interest (individualism), or in which the maximum total pleasure of all beings capable of pleasure is attained (utilitarianism), or in which altruistic sentiments universally prevail (altruism), or in which his community is placed out of all danger (patriotism), or in which the ways of nature are as little modified as possible (naturalism); or he may aim at hastening some result not otherwise known in advance than as that, whatever it may turn out to be, to which some process seeming to him good must inevitably lead, such as whatever the dictates of the human heart may approve (sentimentalism), or whatever would result from every man's duly weighing, before action, the advantages of his every purpose (to which I will attach the nonce-name entelism, distinguishing it and others below by italics), or whatever the historical evolution of public sentiment may decree (historicism), or whatever the operation of cosmical causes may be destined to bring about (evolutionism); or he may be devoted to truth, and may be determined to do nothing not pronounced reasonable, either by his own cogitations (rationalism), or by public discussion (dialecticism), or by crucial experiment; or he may feel that the only thing really worth striving for is the generalizing or assimilating elements in truth, and that either as the sole object in which the mind can ultimately recognize its veritable aim (educationalism), or that which alone is destined to gain universal sway (pancratism), or, finally, he may be filled with the idea that the only reason that can reasonably be admitted as ultimate is that living reason for the sake of which the psychical and physical universe is in process of creation (***religionism***).†4 Peirce: CP 8.138 Cross-Ref:††.
>This list of ethical classes of motives may, it is hoped, serve as a tolerable sample upon which to base reflections upon the acceptability as ultimate of different kinds of human motives; and it makes no pretension to any higher value. The enumeration has been so ordered as to bring into view the various degrees of generality of motives.... ” C.S. Peirce: CP 8.139 Cross-Ref:††.
**See also:** [[What is philosophy]].