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On Needs and Interests*

The logical relation between "needs" and "interests" may be summarily analyzed as follows:

1. Presupposed by any talk about "needs" and "interests" is something like Whitehead's postulates about (1) the art of life, Lei.e., to live, to live well, and to live better; and (2) the function of reason to promote the art of life.

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3. What an organism needs is relative to its successful functioning; and if its "needs" are not satisfied, it will malfunction, Lei.e., it will not live, or not live well, or not live better.

4. An organism, accordingly, has "interests" corresponding to its "needs"---—interests, namely, in satisfying its needs.

5. In. the case of a rational organism, or, in the proper sense, an agent, to speak of its "interests" is to Iuake make a judgment about the way its particular desires, wants, or preferences could be rationally integrated so as not only to live, but also to live well, and to live better, i.e., to have a "good life."

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10. Another such approach is the "optimal-conditions approach," for which the "real" interests of an agent or agents are those that she or he or they would discover under most satisfactory conditions-—conditions of nondeprivation, noncoercion, minimally correct information, and so on---—by becoming aware of her or his or their "real" needs.

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"To speak of an agent's 'interests' is to speak of the way that agent's particular desires [wants, preferences] could be rationally integrated into a coherent 'good life.' . . . I have an 'interest' in the satisfaction of anything which can be reasonably be termed a 'need'" (Guess Geuss 47. f.). "'Needs' are defined relative to the successful functioning of an individual or social organism; if the 'needs' of the organism are not satisfied, it will malfunction" (Guess Geuss 46). Thus whether x has interests is not entirely a function of whether x can make a rational judgement about which of its desires, wants, preferences, etc., out ought to be satisfied, because insofar as one has needs, one has an interest in satisfying them, with or without any rational judgement. "If agents are deceived or mistaken about their interests, we will say that they are pursuing 'merely apparent' interests, and not their 'real' or 'true' interests" (GuessGeuss: 48).

There are (at least) two different approaches to the definition of the "true" interests of a person or group. (1) On the "perfect-knowledge approach," a person's or group's "real," or "true," or "objective" interests are the ones he or she or it would have in the limiting case of having perfect knowledge. (2) On the "optimal conditions approach," the agent's or agents' "real" interests are the interests he or she or they would have found in "optimal," i.e., beneficent, conditions, conditions of non-deprivation, non-coercion, and minimally correct information.