But it’s not clear that pain aversion (or sexual desire) can be fit into the same narrative.
I don’t see why not? I feel like you already stated in an earlier paragraph how it can be fit into the same narrative, when you said:
What of the third example? Well, that depends on what the manager feels about their own sexual urges. They may be more or less endorsed, depending on various factors of the manager’s values and social circumstances.
Nothing says that higher-order preferences would have to be as simple as “unconditionally endorse” or “unconditionally unendorse”: you could have a complex higher-order preference that endorsed the lower-order one in some situations and unendorsed it in others. That seems like a very straightforward extension of the framework, and certainly much simpler than saying that we should abandon it entirely.
For the record, I do suspect that the model of lower- and higher-order desires is too simplistic, and that people who feel that higher-order desires should always win may be identifying too much with the rider; my model would be something more like “there are different shards of desire, each seeking to achieve its own interests and their power balances shifting depending on different situations, with things being closer to a scheming court full of constantly changing alliances than to any hierarchic system”. But I don’t feel like your examples are particularly compelling demonstrations of the model being flawed.
But it’s not clear that pain aversion (or sexual desire) can be fit into the same narrative.
I don’t see why not? I feel like you already stated in an earlier paragraph how it can be fit into the same narrative, when you said:
What of the third example? Well, that depends on what the manager feels about their own sexual urges. They may be more or less endorsed, depending on various factors of the manager’s values and social circumstances.
Nothing says that higher-order preferences would have to be as simple as “unconditionally endorse” or “unconditionally unendorse”: you could have a complex higher-order preference that endorsed the lower-order one in some situations and unendorsed it in others. That seems like a very straightforward extension of the framework, and certainly much simpler than saying that we should abandon it entirely.
For the record, I do suspect that the model of lower- and higher-order desires is too simplistic, and that people who feel that higher-order desires should always win may be identifying too much with the rider; my model would be something more like “there are different shards of desire, each seeking to achieve its own interests and their power balances shifting depending on different situations, with things being closer to a scheming court full of constantly changing alliances than to any hierarchic system”. But I don’t feel like your examples are particularly compelling demonstrations of the model being flawed.
I tend to agree; my post is partially because I think I’ll need to refer to this idea later.