Necessity is defined by desire. I need to eat if I want to avoid starvation. If I don't want to avoid starvation, I don't need to eat.

Yet if you starve you become incapable of desire. We can require without wanting yet we can often do nothing if certain requirements are not met.

[quote]Yet if you starve you become incapable of desire.[/quote] So? If one does not desire to continue to desire, then this should not concern them.

Desires are subjective and variable. Necessities are objective and set. You may wish to starve today but you may not wish to do so tomorrow. Your requirement for food to continue to function, however, will not abate until it is met. There is the argument that death will negate the necessity to eat, but that is because you have lost the ability to function. The requirement is still there (food to function), you just no longer qualify.

There is no universal necessity. Necessities are dependent on desires. X is necessary for Y. X is not necessary for it's own sake. Your arguments are interesting, but not relevant to this point. There's no way around it, necessity cannot exist separate from desire.

A fire cannot continue without fuel. Photosynthesis cannot occur without light. An avalanche cannot exist without gravity. No desire factors into these, it's simply how our universe works. One may "choose" to live or die, or allow others to live or die, but those conditions have requirements. You may say "I choose not to eat," but to make that decision would require you to have already eaten, otherwise you would not exist to desire death. You'd also require consciousness and the survival of your ancestors. If you are standing in front of a console with a button to cancel the launch of a nuclear missile, you can make a choice based on your desires. Your choice, however, may very well deny everyone else the ability to pursue their own desires. Them being able to have desires and make choices of their own necessitates you choose to end the countdown. [b][i]That[/i][/b] is not a choice, that's just how it is.

You are confusing necessities and desires with causal relationships. They are very different things. Allow me to put the argument into a new form: One who desires nothing, needs nothing.

I see where your going but disagree with the direction. To me, a need is something that is required in order to continue functioning on a basic level. If you desire to cease funtioning, that goes against your needs, not redefines them. I'd also argue that needs can be, at times, dictated by obligation.

To "continue functioning", something must have a purpose, a function. Humans don't have a purpose, they create purpose. Any necessity is dependent on that invented purpose. Something is only necessary in terms of fulfilling other desires.

All life has purpose: its perpetuation and spread. Life exists for its own sake. Our choices are only relevant if life continues (not necessarily our own life, however). If a meteor destroyed all humanity tomorrow and there was no one to pass our knowledge onto, everything choice we've made would be meaningless and amount to nothing. For our choices to maintain any value, a minimal level of functionality must be maintained. If we can't do that, we disappear, rendering our desires meaningless. For our wants to even exist, let alone have value, we need to maintain life, and for life to continue, certain requirements (needs) must be met.

The planets do not exist to orbit the sun, that's just something they happen to do. Likewise, life doesn't exist to perpetuate itself, that's just something it happens to do.

Those are two dfferent things. The earth rotates around the sun due to gravity, orbiting is not an inherent trait of matter. Life, like fire or fusion, is a chain reaction. Chain reactions playout, continuing until they are no longer able to do so. Either way it's irrelevant. My point is that needs are not necessarily dictated by wants or desires. Our needs are often in contrast to our wants. Self harm is a very real thing. It is not necessary or even beneficial yet it's often desired by the individual inflicting it on themselves. A 400 lbd man does not need another bucket of fried chicken, no matter how much he desires it. He does, however, need food (healthy food, to be specific) and exercise despite how much he may loathe the idea. The disagreement here is clearly our definitions of needs. You seem to be arguing that needs are the means to an end and our goals are set by our desires. I'm arguing that needs are basic requirements that must be met in order for us to function (and by extension set and reach for goals). Your approach allows for "needs" to be unnecessay when one does not wish to continue. My approach dictates that in order to be be in a state that is capable of wishing not to continue, you'd have to already be maintaining certain level of functionality. To you (if I'm understanding you correctly), the dead have no needs because they have no desires. To me, the dead have no needs because they have already ceased to function (rendering them incapable of desire). I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.