No such thing as need.

[perkeyone]

Originally Posted by devonin

This is the correct statement of the thread.

Your hair-splitting with the claim that everything is a want because even something like "I need to breathe" isn't true because you could choose to instead not breathe and thus die is semantically correct, so congratulations on that?

However, if you've therefore classified absolutely everything as a "want" and not a "need" then we no longer have a method of distinguishing between things that we want in order to perpetuate our existance and things that we want in order to improve the quality of that existance.

Necesseties (of life) and Luxuries (for life) are the categories to which we attach the terms 'need' and 'want' and that is a very helpful and useful distinction even if you could semantically suggest that even needs are just a certain type of stronger want.

I mean if anything, one thing you do NEED to do in the sense of showing you that there are needs even if you classify everything as a want instead: For wants whose negative consequence is the cessation of your existance, you NEED to determine whether not fulfilling that want is worth the cessation of your existance. This is a process that absolutely must happen with 100% certainly, thus is a need.

or maybe its fusing hairs?

of course they words are useful thats why they exist.
there definitely is a want/need for words to distinguish between necessities of life and luxuries.
i dont think the argument is being made that the words should be abolished
or even that ones perspective should be permanently changed to only think of "needs" as "strong wants".
the traditional perspective is fine if not better.
i think that the purpose is only to subject everyone to an alternate perspective.

i think there is a strong possibility that everyone is already in agreement but the wording is just slightly different.

maybe instead it should be stated that there is no such thing as an 'absolute and universal need which must happen' because with all needs (used in the traditional sense) there are alternatives

also the word "must" could be subject to the same rules
an 'absolute and universal must' is basically a 'will' since there are no alternatives