What signals do you look for? Do you decide based on reason or instinct?
Raised Catholic. Anything that makes me feel guilty is a desire.
Would that be everything?
Well, I almost always try to reason through my own actions, or have already done that reasoning and then come up with a set of guidelines.
To try to put them simply:
Will I likely die or become gravely ill or seriously injured or degrade my body or mind in an extreme manner or experience extreme pain without this thing or activity or… state of being?
If yes, then its a need.
Everything else is a want.
There are of course different tiers of wants and needs.
And, people are different, and some things may move up and down those tiers, and people will never fully agree on every different thing… also, addiction becomes a relevant concept to consider.
This one guy Maslow had some ideas about that once.
I think a need is neccessarily tied to some goal and can’t really be discussed without mentioning the goal.
If the goal is survival the needs are water, food shelter. if your goal is not to continue living, then e.g. poison would be more of a need than food, water and shelter.
If the goal is having a fulfilled life the needs also include social contact, intimacy, something meaningful you can spend your time on etc.
so i don’t think you can just say something is a need, you need to decide what your goals are, probably with some hierarchy of goals, and work backwards from that to the needs. Or conversely, to know if something is a need, think about if not having it would keep you from your goal.
so i don’t think you can just say something is a need, you need to decide what your goals are, probably with some hierarchy of goals, and work backwards from that to the needs. Or conversely, to know if something is a need, think about if not having it would keep you from your goal.
Hmm, sadly that results in a circular reasoning, no? How do you decide upon goals - which goals are important (needs) and which are folly (desire)? Should we simply trust Maslow got it right?
I don’t think it’s circular reasoning. more like kicking the can down the road, instead of deciding needs, you need to decide goals. but once you have a goal it helps determining the needs. So it’s a different framing that can help a bit to untangle the mess. Maslow is also just 4 goals in a hierarchy and then the needs for each of them.
As for how to decide on goals, idk, that changes all the time and I don’t think there’s any hard set rule to figure that out. In the end it’s all just made up 🤷 But I think asking yourself “what are my goals in life” is more productive than asking yourself “what do I need”, at least it comes more naturally to me.
If I’d die without it, it’s a need. Otherwise a desire.
Counterpoint: You do not die* without legal documents, but having legal documents still a “need” in most modern civilizations, can’t even get most jobs if you do not have an ID.
(*well, not immediately, anyways, you can always beg for food or shoplift)
but having legal documents still a “need” in most modern civilization
Not really, plenty of people are undocumented or live somewhere illegally. It’s very desirable to have legal status, but it’s not a need.
You can’t do without whatever it is you need, you can do without whatever it is you want.
I want to read that specific book but I need to be able to read.
At the most fundamentals, we need very little: food, shelter and then to be able to reproduce. But there are other ‘needs’, those would just be the true basic ones.
Reproduction is a paradigmatic example of a meaningless urge or desire. You can certainly choose to reproduce, if you want, but nothing bad happens if you don’t.
