Reconstructing a person from separate desires is methodologically unsound

Evidence

Therefore we should forego these so-called irreducible details and, taking the very evidence of them for a criterion, not stop in our investigation before it is evident that we neither can nor ought to go any further. In particular we must avoid trying to reconstruct a person by means of his inclinations, just as Spinoza warns us not to attempt to reconstruct a substance or its attributes by the summation of its modes. Every desire if presented as an irreducible is an absurd contingency and involves in absurdity human reality taken as a whole. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1324

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the method of studying a person as a unified project rather than a sum of discrete desires.
• XREF: Connects to Spinoza’s monism about substance versus modes, and to Sartre’s broader project of biography as unified original project. — connects to: Personality inference risk circularity but can avoid tautology by split-sample reconstruction.

Broader Connections

• Personality inference risk circularity but can avoid tautology by split-sample reconstruction. #contradicts (0.85)