It is common to think of addiction as involving behavior which in some sense is ?out of control.? But does this mean addictive actions occur because of compulsion or because of ordinary weakness of will? Many philosophers argue that addictive actions occur because of weakness of will, since there is plenty of evidence suggesting that they are not caused by irresistible desires. In fact, addicts seem, in general, to perform these actions freely in the sense of having the ability (...) to refrain from doing so. In this paper I argue, first, that it is not the addiction-as-compulsion view that is mistaken, but rather the view that irresistible desires are a defining feature of compulsion. Second, drawing on some results in addiction neuroscience, I construct and defend a new analysis of compulsivity that distinguishes addictive from weak-willed actions in a way that is consistent with the view that addictive actions are performed freely. (shrink)

Does addiction to heroin undermine the voluntariness of heroin addicts' consent to take part in research which involves giving them free and legal heroin? This question has been raised in connection with research into the effectiveness of heroin prescription as a way of treating dependent heroin users. Participants in such research are required to give their informed consent to take part. Louis C. Charland has argued that we should not presume that heroin addicts are competent to do this since heroin (...) addiction by nature involves a loss of ability to resist the desire for heroin. In this article, I argue that Charland is right that we should not presume that heroin addicts are competent to consent, but not for the reason he thinks. In fact, as Charland's critics correctly point out, there is plenty of evidence showing that heroin addicts can resist their desire for heroin. These critics are wrong, however, to conclude from this that we should presume that heroin addicts are competent to give their voluntary consent. There are, I shall argue, other conditions associated with heroin addiction that might constrain heroin addicts' choice in ways likely to undermine the voluntariness of their consent. In order to see this, we need to move beyond the focus on the addicts' desires for heroin and instead consider the wider social and psychological circumstances of heroin addiction, as well as the effects these circumstances may have on the addicts' beliefs about the nature of their options. (shrink)

Stoic analysis of the characters of Yoda and the Emperor reveals the opposing logics of the Force. Yoda initially appears to be a jester, but shares with the Stoic wise man the virtues of timely action, patience, commitment, seriousness, calmness, peacefulness, caution, benevolence, joyful mirth, passivity, and wisdom. The logic of the Dark Side is: Anger leads to hatred. Hatred leads to aggressive mastery of others, which is true power, which is irresistibly desirable. The Emperor uses terror and cruelty to (...) oppress others. Instead of wisely pursuing Stoic self-control, the arrogant Emperor serves his vices and dies suffering. (shrink)

How should addictive behavior be explained? In terms of neurobiological illness and compulsion, or as a choice made freely, even rationally, in the face of harmful social or psychological circumstances? Some of the disagreement between proponents of the prevailing medical models and choice models in the science of addiction centres on the notion of “loss of control” as a normative characterization of addiction. In this article I examine two of the standard interpretations of loss of control in addiction, one according (...) to which addicts have lost free will, the other according to which their will is weak. I argue that both interpretations are mistaken and propose therefore an alternative based on a dual-process approach. This alternative neither rules out a capacity in addicts to rationally choose to engage in drug-oriented behavior, nor the possibility that addictive behavior can be compulsive and depend upon harmful changes in their brains caused by the regular use of drugs. (shrink)

Normative thinking about addiction has traditionally been divided between, on the one hand, a medical model which sees addiction as a disease characterized by compulsive and relapsing drug use over which the addict has little or no control and, on the other, a moral model which sees addiction as a choice characterized by voluntary behaviour under the control of the addict. Proponents of the former appeal to evidence showing that regular consumption of drugs causes persistent changes in the brain structures (...) and functions known to be involved in the motivation of behavior. On this evidence, it is often concluded that becoming addicted involves a transition from voluntary, chosen drug use to non-voluntary compulsive drug use. Against this view, proponents of the moral model provide ample evidence that addictive drug use involves voluntary chosen behaviour. In this paper we argue that although they are right about something, both views are mistaken. We present a third model that neither rules out the view of addictive drug use as compulsive, nor that it involves voluntary chosen behavior. -/- . (shrink)

Despite Diotima’s irresistible virtues and attractiveness across the millennia, she spells trouble for philosophy. It is not her fault that she has been misunderstood, nor is it Plato’s. Rather, I suspect, each era has made of Diotima what it desired her to be. Her malleability is related to the assumption that Plato invented her, that she is a mere literary fiction, licensing the imagination to do what it will. In the first part of my paper, I argue against three (...) contemporary ‘majority views’ about Diotima that I regard as false. The first is that we can be certain she is fictional;1 a second is that Diotima is our best evidence for Plato’s feminism; the third, that she is Plato’s mouthpiece for the higher mysteries in the Symposium. After I have set aside what I regard as false, I proceed in the second half of my paper to develop Diotima’s positive contribution to philosophical psychology, her naturalistic account of the psyche as mortal, unified, and developmental. Whether the view Plato assigns to her is one that he held I do not pretend to know; but it is a powerful, defensible, and coherent view that inspired positive aspects of Freudian psychology in the twentieth century. Freud’s insight, in fact, makes clear how erōs can be developed in relation to the bad as well as the good. (shrink)

Addicts sometimes engage in such spectacularly self-destructive behavior that they seem to act under compulsion. I briefly review the claim that addiction is not compulsive at all. I then consider recent accounts of addiction by Holton and Schroeder, which characterize addiction in terms of abnormally strong motivations. However, this account can only explain the apparent compulsivity of addiction if we assume—contrary to what we know about addicts—that the desires are so strong as to be irresistible. I then consider accounts (...) that invoke the phenomenon of “ego depletion,” according to which a person can resist temptation for a while, but not indefinitely. Implicit in this account is the assumption that addiction-related desires persist long enough to deplete the addict’s willpower. The balance of the paper argues that the persistence of the desire to consume drugs is a significant form of dysfunction in its own right, and that it makes an important and independent contribution to the compulsivity of addiction. I argue that addiction involves dysfunction in a mechanism that normally prevents a person from being tempted to do something that would invite disaster. (shrink)

The costs of the COVID-19 pandemic are yet to be calculated, but they include the loss of millions of lives and the destruction of countless livelihoods. What is certain is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has changed the way we live for the foreseeable future. It has forced many to live in ways they would have previously thought impossible. As well as challenging scientists and medical professionals to address urgent value conflicts in the short term, COVID-19 has raised slower-burning value questions (...) for corporations, public institutions, governments, and policymakers. In simple terms, the pandemic has brought what we care about into sharp relief, both collectively and individually. Whether this revaluation of our values will last beyond the current pandemic is unknown. Once COVID-19 has been tamed, will the desire to return to our previous lives be irresistible? Or will living under pandemic conditions have taught us something that will be incorporated into how we design our future lives and technologies? These are hard questions for the ethics of technology, which this volume aims to explore and address. (shrink)

In an earlier article in this journal I argued that the question of whether heroin addicts can give voluntary consent to take part in research which involves giving them a choice of free heroin does not – in contrast with a common assumption in the bioethics literature – depend exclusively on whether or not they possess the capacity to resist their desire for heroin. In some cases, circumstances and beliefs might undermine the voluntariness of the choices a person makes (...) even if they do possess a capacity for self-control. Based on what I took to be a plausible definition of voluntariness, I argued that the circumstances and beliefs typical of many vulnerable heroin addicts are such that we have good reasons to suspect they cannot give voluntary consent to take part in such research, even assuming their desire for heroin is not irresistible. In a recent article in this journal, Uusitalo and Broers object to this on the grounds that I misdescribe heroin addicts' options set, that the definition of voluntariness on which I rely is unrealistic and too demanding, and, more generally, that my view of heroin addiction is flawed. I think their arguments derive from a misunderstanding of the view I expressed in my article. In what follows I hope therefore to clarify my position. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 215-232 [Access article in PDF] Eighteenth-Century Print Culture and the "Truth" of Fictional Narrative Lisa Zunshine As a session entitled "Truth" at a recent Modern Language Association of America annual convention has demonstrated, the obsession with the epistemologies of truth is alive and well. Our "familiar ways of thinking and talking about truth," as one of the speakers, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, observed, remain "theoretically (...) elusive, discursively slippery, and hard or perhaps impossible to articulate clearly in relation to other current concepts and ideas" 1 --an irresistible invitation to further thinking and talking on the subject. My essay enters this conversation by attempting to contemplate truth not as a stable attribute but as a ongoing attribution, that is, not as an inherent property but rather as a dynamic process predicated upon functional idiosyncrasies of our evolved cognitive architecture. The broad question posed here is this: What if our never-ending quest for truth is itself cognitively constructed and the various forms that this quest takes manifest the (not necessarily harmonious) interaction between our evolved cognitive capacities and the ever-changing specifics of our cultural environment?Consider just one of the forms of such an interaction, namely, our age-long preoccupation with the "truth" of literary narrative. In many respects, this preoccupation is counterproductive: the most "fantastic" story contains a number of contingently useful "truths" about the world, whereas the most "factual" narrative manipulates facts by virtue of being a narrative or a subjective arrangementof information. Still, we persevere in wanting to put the label "fiction" or "nonfiction" onto any story that comes our way. As I will argue, the bookstore's organization of its sections satisfies this species of "cognitive" craving as well as [End Page 215] reinforces it, making it seem culturally inevitable. Viewed from this perspective, our culture appears to be a multifaceted feedback mechanism engaged in the process of satisfying, reinforcing, struggling with, and manipulating our cognitive predispositions.The cultural manipulation of our cognitive predispositions is the topic of the present essay, which discusses several examples of such manipulation that respond to our desire to assign a certain "truth-value" to a given narrative, i.e., to attach a label to it announcing its "factuality" or "fictionality." "Truth-value" is a loaded term, resisting definition, and liable to lead me into trouble. Imperfect as it is, however, I need it in order to shuffle between two scholarly discourses that do not (yet) have much vocabulary in common: literary criticism and cognitive science. The reason for turning to cognitive science in my discussion of literary narrative is that cognitive anthropologists and psychologists frequently engage the same problems that we do when we ask, What is "Fiction"? How is it different from "History"? How do we decide whether what we are reading is "true?" The key difference between the two approaches is, however, that whereas the literary critic focuses on specific texts produced and read in specific cultural circumstances, the cognitive anthropologist pays attention to the cross-cultural insistence with which people wish to and often claim to distinguish "truth" from "fiction" and inquires into the possible evolutionary history of the cognitive architecture implicated in our never-ending quest for "truth." The latter perspective can thus be useful for literary studies because, by suggesting that our evolved cognitive architecture often "encourages" us to construe the world as a negotiation of "truths" and "nontruths," this perspective begins to account--at least on some level--for the fact that people may approach a complex cultural artifact, such as a novel, with a "truth"/"non-truth" binary in mind that is ultimately not very productive. 2 Evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists frequently point to disjunctions between the tasks that our brain evolved to solve and the tasks that we have to deal with in the modern environment; our vexed insistence on determining the truth-value of the 500-page printed narrative--not an object one would come across in the Pleistocene--can be seen as yet another instance of such a disjunction.Thus, I suggest that, on the... (shrink)

The Psychology of Gossip Obsession -/- Gossip is a universal human behavior, deeply ingrained in social interactions. While it can serve useful purposes—such as reinforcing social norms and strengthening group bonds—an obsession with gossip can lead to negative consequences, including invasion of privacy, misinformation, and social toxicity. Understanding the psychology behind gossip obsession helps explain why people are so drawn to it and how it can be managed. -/- Why Do People Gossip? -/- 1. Evolutionary Psychology: Survival and Social Bonding (...) -/- In early human societies, gossip helped individuals navigate social hierarchies and avoid potential threats. -/- Sharing information about others’ behaviors allowed groups to regulate social norms and enforce cooperation. -/- People who stayed informed about their peers had an advantage in forming alliances and avoiding deception. -/- 2. Dopamine and the Pleasure of Gossiping -/- Gossip activates the brain’s reward system, releasing dopamine, the same neurotransmitter involved in pleasure and addiction. -/- People feel a sense of excitement or satisfaction when sharing or hearing juicy information, reinforcing the habit. -/- 3. Social Status and Power -/- Gossiping about others can create a sense of social superiority. -/- Those who spread insider knowledge may feel more influential within their social circles. -/- Negative gossip can sometimes be used to diminish the status of others and elevate one’s own standing. -/- 4. Emotional Regulation and Catharsis -/- Talking about others can serve as an emotional outlet, helping people vent frustrations. -/- Sharing experiences of betrayal, unfairness, or scandal can provide a sense of validation and solidarity. -/- 5. Curiosity and the Desire for Novelty -/- Humans are naturally curious, and gossip often involves unpredictable or surprising information. -/- The brain is wired to pay attention to unusual or dramatic events, making gossip irresistible. -/- 6. Fear of Exclusion and the Need for Belonging -/- Staying informed about social dynamics helps people feel included and avoid being left out. -/- Gossiping together strengthens social bonds by creating shared knowledge and experiences. -/- 7. Projection and Psychological Defense Mechanisms -/- Some people gossip to project their insecurities onto others. -/- By focusing on someone else’s flaws, they distract themselves from their own weaknesses. -/- Why Some People Become Obsessed with Gossip -/- 1. Low Self-Esteem and Insecurity -/- Those who lack self-confidence may gossip to shift attention away from themselves. -/- Engaging in gossip can provide a temporary boost in self-worth by making others look worse. -/- 2. Addiction to Drama and Sensationalism -/- Some individuals develop a dependency on the emotional high of gossip. -/- This can be linked to a need for excitement, distraction from boredom, or avoidance of personal issues. -/- 3. Lack of Personal Fulfillment -/- People who are not satisfied with their own lives may focus excessively on the lives of others. -/- Celebrity gossip and social media drama can serve as an escape from their own problems. -/- 4. Peer Pressure and Social Conformity -/- In environments where gossip is a norm, individuals may feel compelled to participate to fit in. -/- Workplace gossip, school cliques, and online communities often encourage this behavior. -/- 5. Media Influence and the Digital Age -/- The internet has made gossip more accessible, encouraging an endless cycle of speculation and commentary. -/- Social media algorithms prioritize sensational and controversial content, reinforcing gossip obsession. -/- Consequences of Gossip Obsession -/- 1. Psychological and Emotional Impact -/- Increased anxiety and paranoia about how one is perceived by others. -/- Reduced trust and deeper insecurities due to constant comparison. -/- 2. Relationship Damage -/- Gossip can ruin friendships, workplace dynamics, and reputations. -/- People who gossip excessively may lose credibility and respect. -/- 3. Ethical and Moral Consequences -/- Spreading false or harmful information can contribute to bullying, defamation, and social division. -/- Unethical gossip can destroy lives and create unnecessary conflict. -/- How to Manage Gossip Obsession -/- 1. Develop Self-Awareness -/- Recognize when gossip is becoming a habit and ask yourself why you are engaging in it. -/- Reflect on whether it serves a meaningful purpose or just fuels negativity. -/- 2. Build Self-Confidence -/- Strengthen your self-worth so you don’t need to elevate yourself by putting others down. -/- Focus on personal growth and meaningful achievements. -/- 3. Seek Positive Social Interactions -/- Surround yourself with people who engage in constructive conversations rather than gossip. -/- Build relationships based on mutual respect and support. -/- 4. Limit Exposure to Toxic Media -/- Avoid celebrity gossip websites, clickbait news, and negative social media feeds. -/- Follow content that promotes personal development, knowledge, and meaningful discussions. -/- 5. Shift the Conversation -/- If a conversation turns into gossip, redirect it to a more positive or neutral topic. -/- Encourage discussions about ideas, experiences, and shared goals instead of personal rumors. -/- 6. Practice Empathy and Compassion -/- Before spreading gossip, consider how it would feel if someone gossiped about you. -/- Recognize that everyone has struggles and flaws, and kindness is more valuable than judgment. -/- 7. Cultivate a Growth Mindset -/- Invest your energy in self-improvement, learning new skills, and pursuing hobbies. -/- The more fulfilled you feel in your own life, the less interest you will have in gossiping about others. -/- Conclusion -/- Gossip obsession is rooted in human psychology, from evolutionary survival instincts to modern social pressures. While gossip can serve as a social tool, excessive engagement in it can be harmful to both individuals and society. By developing self-awareness, practicing empathy, and shifting focus toward meaningful interactions, people can break free from gossip obsession and cultivate a healthier, more positive mindset. -/- . (shrink)

According to the thesis of the guise of the normative, all desires are associated with normative appearances or judgments. But guise of the normative theories differ sharply over the content of the normative representation, with the two main versions being the guise of reasons and the guise of the good. Chapter 6 defends the comparative thesis that the guise of reasons thesis is more promising than the guise of the good. The central idea is that observations from the theory of (...) content determination can be used in order to constrain possible theories of the representational contents associated with desire. The authors argue that the initially most promising versions of the guise of the good fail to meet these constraints, and then explain the steep challenge confronting any who wish to craft a new guise of the good theory which meets the constraints while also preserving the initial motivations for adopting any guise of the normative theory at all. But a simple version of the guise of reasons not only avoids the troubles besetting the guise of the good but proceeds immediately from a deep diagnosis of the source of its difficulties. (shrink)

In this paper, we present two puzzles involving desire reports concerning series of events. What does a person want to happen in the first event – is it the event with the highest expected return, or the event that is the initial part of the best series? We show that existing approaches fail to resolve the puzzles around this question and develop a novel account of our own. Our semantics is built around three ideas. First, we propose that (...) class='Hi'>desire ascriptions are evaluated relative to a contextually supplied set of propositions, or alternatives. The semantic value of an ascription ‘S wants p’ is determined by S's preference ordering over these alternatives. Second, we propose that desire reports carry a requirement to the effect that the prejacent of the ascription must be suitably related to the background set of alternatives. Finally, we suggest that desire reports carry a dominance condition concerning the subject's ranking of the alternatives. Overall, we argue that our theory provides us with an elegant resolution of our puzzles, and yields a promising approach to desire. (shrink)

According to desire satisfactionism, well-being consists in getting what you desire. Recently, several theorists have suggested that this view should be extended to claim that ill-being consists in getting what you are averse to. I argue that both of these paradigmatic claims are false. As I show, desire and aversion are indeed both relevant to well-being and ill-being—in fact, perhaps surprisingly, each attitude has unique effects on both our well-being and ill-being. However, these effects are a matter (...) of the unique feelings desire and aversion produce. The paradigmatic desire satisfactionist approach—and, I argue, a surprisingly wide variety of desire satisfactionist views—cannot properly capture the relevance of these feelings, and thus the relevance of desire and aversion, to well-being and ill-being, and should therefore be abandoned. (shrink)

I argue that one intends that ϕ if one has a desire that ϕ and an appropriately related means-end belief. Opponents, including Setiya and Bratman, charge that this view can't explain three things. First, intentional action is accompanied by knowledge of what we are doing. Second, we can choose our reasons for action. Third, forming an intention settles a deliberative question about what to do, disposing us to cease deliberating about it. I show how the desire- belief view (...) can explain why these phenomena occur when they occur, and why they don't when they don't. (shrink)

In an overlooked section of his influential book What We Owe to Each Other Thomas Scanlon advances an argument against the desire-model of practical reasoning. In Scanlon’s view the model gives a distorted picture of the structure of our practical thinking. His idea is that there is an alternative to the “weighing behavior” of reasons, a particular way in which reasons can relate to each other. This phenomenon, which the paper calls “silencing”, is not something that the desire-model (...) can accommodate, or so Scanlon argues. The paper first presents and interprets Scanlon’s challenge. After this, the paper argues, through the examination of three responses, that Scanlon is right in claiming that the model cannot accommodate the phenomenon as he describes it. However, the paper further argues that there is no need to accept Scanlon’s depiction of silencing: advocates of the model can give an alternative account of what happens in cases of silencing that is just as plausible as Scanlon’s own. Scanlon’s challenge is thus, the paper concludes, illegitimate. (shrink)

Desire theories of well-being claim that how well our life goes for us is solely determined by the fulfilment and frustration of our desires. Several writers have argued that these theories are incorrect because they fail to capture the harms of self-sacrifice and severe depression. In this paper, I argue that desire theories of well-being can account for the harm of both phenomena by rejecting proportionalism about desire and motivation. This is the view that desires always motivate (...) proportionally to their strength. If we reject this view, then we can explain the harm of many cases of self-sacrifice as arising when we act upon our weaker desires and thereby frustrate our stronger desires. Moreover, the harm of many cases of severe depression can be explained by its suppression of the motivational force of desires. This inevitably frustrates desires that we are left unmotivated to fulfil. I argue that this approach captures the experiential quality of self-sacrifice and severe depression better than rival views that seek to problematise these phenomena for desire theories of well-being. Moreover, these theories have sufficient conceptual resources to account for residual cases of self-sacrifice and severe depression that are less well explained by this approach. (shrink)

Evaluativism about desire, the view that desires just are, or necessarily involve, positive evaluations of their objects, currently enjoys widespread popularity in many philosophical circles. This chapter argues that evaluativism, in both of its doxastic and perceptual versions, overstates and mischaracterises the connection between desires and evaluations. Whereas doxastic evaluativism implausibly rules out cases where someone has a desire, despite evaluating its object negatively, being uncertain about its value, or having no doxastic attitude whatsoever towards its evaluative status (...) at all, perceptual evaluativism cannot even properly apply to the large class of standing desires. It is also argued that evaluativism about desire is not even well-motivated in the first place: the theory is supposed to solve a particular puzzle about the role desires play in the explanation of action, yet, in fact, it does not offer any help whatsoever in dealing with the relevant puzzle. (shrink)

This paper argues that the crucial feature of the drug-related desires experienced by addicted agents is not that they ‘push’ the agent with a force she cannot oppose, but that they are not easily undermined by things that normally have the ability to undermine desires —in other words, that they are extraordinarily recalcitrant. As a result, the disposition to experience these desires is very persistent over the long-term, manifesting itself in particular episodes of wanting to use drugs that recur with (...) great frequency. Both the persistence and the recurrence of these desires, it is argued, contribute to a diminished ability to respond to relevant reasons that speak against drug use. (shrink)

This paper examines the view that desires are beliefs about normative reasons for action. It describes the view, and briefly sketches three arguments for it. But the focus of the paper is defending the view from objections. The paper argues that the view is consistent with the distinction between the direction of fit of beliefs and desires, that it is consistent with the existence of appetites such as hunger, that it can account for counterexamples that aim to show that beliefs (...) about reasons are not sufficient for desire, such as weakness of will, and that it can account for counterexamples that aim to show that beliefs about reasons are not necessary for desire, such as addiction. The paper also shows how it is superior to the view that desires are appearances of the good. (shrink)

Desire satisfaction has not received detailed philosophical examination. Yet intuitive judgments about the satisfaction of desires have been used as data points guiding theories of desire, desire content, and the semantics of ‘desire’. This paper examines desire satisfaction and the standard propositional view of desire. Firstly, I argue that there are several distinct concepts of satisfaction. Secondly, I argue that separating them defuses a difficulty for the standard view in accommodating desires that Derek Parfit (...) described as ‘implicitly conditional on their own persistence’, a problem posed by Shieva Kleinschmidt, Kris McDaniel, and Ben Bradley. The solution undercuts a key motivation for rejecting the standard view in favour of more radical accounts proposed in the literature. (shrink)

According to an influential conception of reasons for action, the presence of a desire or some other conative state in the agent is a necessary condition for the agent’s havinga reason for action. This is sometimes known as internalism . In this paper I present a case for the considerably stronger thesis, which I call hyper-internalism , that the presence of a desire is a sufficient condition for the agent’s having a ( prima facie )reason for action.

It is often taken for granted that our desires can contribute to what it is rational for us to do. This paper examines an account of desire—the ‘guise of the good’— that promises an explanation of this datum. I argue that extant guise-of-the-good accounts fail to provide an adequate explanation of how a class of desires—basic desires—contributes to practical rationality. I develop an alternative guise-of-the-good account on which basic desires attune us to our reasons for action in virtue of (...) their biological function. This account emphasises the role of desire as part of our competence to recognise and respond to normative reasons. (shrink)

Axiom weakening is a technique that allows for a fine-grained repair of inconsistent ontologies. Its main advantage is that it repairs on- tologies by making axioms less restrictive rather than by deleting them, employing the use of refinement operators. In this paper, we build on pre- viously introduced axiom weakening for ALC, and make it much more irresistible by extending its definitions to deal with SROIQ, the expressive and decidable description logic underlying OWL 2 DL. We extend the definitions (...) of refinement operator to deal with SROIQ constructs, in particular with role hierarchies, cardinality constraints and nominals, and illustrate its application. Finally, we discuss the problem of termi- nation of an iterated weakening procedure. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a fundamental but under-appreciated distinction between two ways of understanding the desire-satisfaction theory of well-being. According to proactive desire satisfactionism, a person is benefited by the acquisition of new satisfied desires. According to reactive desire satisfactionism, a person can be benefited only by the satisfaction of their existing desires. I first offer an overview of this distinction. I then canvass several ways of developing a general formulation of desire satisfactionism that would (...) capture the reactive view, and argue that all come with significant costs. (shrink)

I argue that any account of imagination should satisfy the following three desiderata. First, imaginations induce actions only in conjunction with beliefs about the environment of the imagining subject. Second, there is a continuum between imaginations and beliefs. Recognizing this continuum is crucial to explain the phenomenon of imaginative immersion. Third, the mental states that relate to imaginations in the way that desires relate to beliefs are a special kind of desire, namely desires to make true in fiction. These (...) desires to make true in fiction do not differ from regular desires in kind, but only in content. I argue for these three desiderata in turn by critically discussing several recent accounts of imagination. (shrink)

In this paper I present a novel supertask in a Newtonian universe that destroys and creates infinite masses and energies, showing thereby that we can have infinite indeterminism. Previous supertasks have managed only to destroy or create finite masses and energies, thereby giving cases of only finite indeterminism. In the Nothing from Infinity paradox we will see an infinitude of finite masses and an infinitude of energy disappear entirely, and do so despite the conservation of energy in all collisions. I (...) then show how this leads to the Infinity from Nothing paradox, in which we have the spontaneous eruption of infinite mass and energy out of nothing. I conclude by showing how our supertask models at least something of an old conundrum, the question of what happens when the immovable object meets the irresistible force. (shrink)

On Hume’s account of motivation, beliefs and desires are very different kinds of propositional attitudes. Beliefs are cognitive attitudes, desires emotive ones. An agent’s belief in a proposition captures the weight he or she assigns to this proposition in his or her cognitive representation of the world. An agent’s desire for a proposition captures the degree to which he or she prefers its truth, motivating him or her to act accordingly. Although beliefs and desires are sometimes entangled, they play (...) very different roles in rational agency. In two classic papers (Lewis 1988, 1996), David Lewis discusses several challenges to this Humean picture, but ultimately rejects them. We think that his discussion of a central anti-Humean alternative – the desire-as-belief thesis – is in need of refinnement. On this thesis, the desire for proposition p is given by the belief that p is desirable. Lewis claims that ‘[e]xcept in trivial cases, [this thesis] collapses into contradiction’(Lewis 1996, p. 308). The problem, he argues, is that the thesis is inconsistent with the purportedly plausible requirement that one’s desire for a proposition should not change upon learning that the proposition is true; call this the invariance requirement. In this paper, we revisit Lewis’s argument. We show that, if one carefully distinguishes between non-evaluative and evaluative propositions, the desire-asbelief thesis can be rendered consistent with the invariance requirement. Lewis’s conclusion holds only under certain conditions: the desire-as-belief thesis conflicts with the invariance requirement if and only if there are certain correlations between non-evaluative and evaluative propositions. But when there are such correlations, we suggest, the invariance requirement loses its plausibility. Thus Lewis’s argument against the desire-as-belief thesis appears to be valid only in cases in which it is unsound. (shrink)

This article argues that political injustices can arise from the distribution and character of our sexual desires and that we can be held responsible for correcting these injustices. It draws on a conception of structural injustice to diagnose unjust patterns of sexual attraction, which are taken to arise when socio-structural processes shaping the formation of sexual desire compound systemic domination and capacity-deprivation for the occupants of a social position. Individualistic and structural solutions to the problem of unjust patterns of (...) sexual attraction are assessed in the context of racialised sexual aversion, racial fetishism, and the desexualisation of people with disabilities. While both forms of intervention can help in principle, some of the advantages of structural approaches are laid out. A schema for assigning political responsibilities for addressing this injustice is proposed, with some limits identified to the kinds of state and social responses that are justified. Finally, the status of the merely aesthetically unappealing is considered, with a relational egalitarian approach concluding that they are subject to structurally unjust patterns of sexual desire only when exposed to oppression or second-class citizenship as a result. (shrink)

I present a paradoxical combination of desires. I show why it's paradoxical, and consider ways of responding. The paradox saddles us with an unappealing trilemma: either we reject the possibility of the case by placing surprising restrictions on what we can desire, or we deny plausibly constitutive principles linking desires to the conditions under which they are satisfied, or we revise some bit of classical logic. I argue that denying the possibility of the case is unmotivated on any reasonable (...) way of thinking about mental content, and rejecting those desire-satisfaction principles leads to revenge paradoxes. So the best response is a non-classical one, according to which certain desires are neither determinately satisfied nor determinately not satisfied. Thus, theorizing about paradoxical propositional attitudes helps constrain the space of possibilities for adequate solutions to semantic paradoxes more generally. (shrink)

The desirable gambles framework offers the most comprehensive foundations for the theory of lower pre- visions, which in turn affords the most general ac- count of imprecise probabilities. Nevertheless, for all its generality, the theory of lower previsions rests on the notion of linear utility. This commitment to linearity is clearest in the coherence axioms for sets of desirable gambles. This paper considers two routes to relaxing this commitment. The first preserves the additive structure of the desirable gambles framework and (...) the machinery for coherent inference but detaches the interpretation of desirability from the multiplicative scale invariance axiom. The second strays from the additive combination axiom to accommodate repeated gambles that return rewards by a non-stationary processes that is not necessarily additive. Unlike the first approach, which is a conservative amendment to the desirable gambles framework, the second is a rad- ical departure. Yet, common to both is a method for describing rewards called discounted utility. (shrink)

We often have affective responses to fictional events. We feel afraid for Desdemona when Othello approaches her in a murderous rage. We feel disgust toward Iago for orchestrating this tragic event. What mental architecture could explain these affective responses? In this paper I consider the claim that the best explanation of our affective responses to fiction involves imaginative desires. Some theorists argue that accounts that do not invoke imaginative desires imply that consumers of fiction have irrational desires. I argue that (...) there are serious worries about imaginative desires that warrant skepticism about the adequacy of the account. Moreover, it is quite difficult to articulate general principles of rationality for desires, and even according to the most plausible of these possible principles, desires about fiction are not irrational. (shrink)

The thesis defended, the “guise of the ought”, is that the formal objects of desires are norms (oughts to be or oughts to do) rather than values (as the “guise of the good” thesis has it). It is impossible, in virtue of the nature of desire, to desire something without it being presented as something that ought to be or that one ought to do. This view is defended by pointing to a key distinction between values and norms: (...) positive and negative norms (obligation and interdiction) are interdefinable through negation; positive and negative values aren’t. This contrast between the norms and values, it is argued, is mirrored, within the psychological realm, by the contrast between the desires and emotions. Positive and negative desires are interdefinable through negation, but positive and negative emotions aren’t. The overall, Meinongian picture suggested is that norms are to desires what values are to emotions. (shrink)

This paper argues that the crucial feature of the drug-related desires experienced by addicted agents is not that they ‘push’ the agent with a force she cannot oppose, but that they are not easily undermined by things that normally have the ability to undermine desires —in other words, that they are extraordinarily recalcitrant. As a result, the disposition to experience these desires is very persistent over the long-term, manifesting itself in particular episodes of wanting to use drugs that recur with (...) great frequency. Both the persistence and the recurrence of these desires, it is argued, contribute to a diminished ability to respond to relevant reasons that speak against drug use. (shrink)

Alex Gregory (2017a; 2017b; 2018; 2021) provides an ingenious, systematic defence of the view that desires are a species of belief about normative reasons. This view explains how desires make actions rationally intelligible. Its main rival, which is attractive for the same reason, says that desires involve a quasi-perceptual appearance of value. Gregory (2017a; 2018; 2021) has argued that his view provides the superior explanation of how desires are sensitive to evidence. Here, I show that the quasi-perceptual view fairs better (...) in this regard. Negatively, I argue that Gregory’s view overestimates the evidence-sensitivity of desires and implies that we are systematically mistaken in having different attitudes about desires and beliefs. Positively, I argue that quasi-perceptual appearances of value are brought into the scope of rational control through their dependence on prior representational states. I also provide a novel explanation of why some kinds of desires are resistant to rational control. I propose that desires are produced through exercises of an affective capacity to discriminate value. Variations in the way this capacity is exercised, and its links to prior representational states, can produce systematic insensitivity to evidence in certain kinds of desires. This paper advances the debate around desire on two fronts: first, it performs the neglected task of showing how the quasi-perceptual view can simultaneously explain both the sensitivity and insensitivity to evidence exhibited by desires and, second, it shows how the explanation offered is superior to one of its closest rivals, the view that desires are a species of normative belief. (shrink)

I propose an account of desire that reconciles two apparently conflicting intuitions about practical agency. I do so by exploring a certain intuitive datum. The intuitive datum is that often when an agent desires P she will seem to immediately and conclusively know that there is a reason to bring P about. Desire-based theories of reasons seem uniquely placed to explain this intuitive datum. On this view, desires are the source of an agent’s practical reasons. A desire (...) for P grounds conclusive knowledge of a reason to bring P about because that desire makes it true that there is a reason to do so. However, this implies that a basic desire for P can never be in error about there being at least some reason to bring P about. We have the conflicting intuition that basic desires sometimes rationally count for nothing. The guise of the good explains this intuition about the fallibility of desires. On this view, a desire for P represents P as good in some respect. Desires and reasons are independent, so a desire might misrepresent one’s reasons. But this independence is usually taken to rule out that desires ever provide conclusive knowledge of reasons. Capturing the intuition about conclusive knowledge rules out capturing the intuition about fallibility, and vice versa. I propose an epistemological disjunctivist version of the guise of the good that reconciles fallibility with the possibility of conclusive knowledge. (shrink)

We commonly appeal to emotions to explain human behaviour: we seek comfort out of grief, we threaten someone in anger and we hide in fear. According to the standard Humean analysis, intentional action is always explained with reference to a belief-desire pair. According to recent consensus, however, emotions have independent motivating force apart from beliefs and desires, and supplant them when explaining emotional action. In this paper I provide a systematic framework for thinking about the motivational structure of emotion (...) and show how it is consistent with the Humean analysis. On this picture, emotions are not reducible to beliefs and desires, instead their primary motivational force comes from their role as modulators of desires—they control the strength of our occurrent desires. Emotions therefore motivate actions through the belief-desire system instead of overriding it. (shrink)

In this essay I ask if there are reasons that count in favor of having a desire in virtue of its attitudinal nature. I call those considerations desire's own reasons. I argue that desire's own reasons are considerations that explain why a desire meets its constitutive standard of correctness and that it meets this standard when its satisfaction would also be satisfactory to the subject who has it. Reasons that bear on subjective satisfaction are fit to (...) regulate desires through experience and imagination because desires are naturally sensitive to them. I also analyze the limits of application that such reasons have and how desire's own reasons relate to other kinds of reasons. (shrink)

This essay is about the relationship between the notions of practical reason, the will, and choice in Kant’s practical philosophy. Although Kant explicitly identifies practical reason and the will, many interpreters argue that he cannot really mean it on the grounds that unless they are distinct, irrational and, especially, immoral action is impossible. Other readers affirm his identification but distinguish the will from choice on the same basis. We argue that proper attention to Kant’s conception of practical reason as a (...) capacity reveals that these distinctions are neither textually grounded nor philosophically necessary. His moral psychology concerns a single capacity, practical reason, which is the will, and whose actualities in this or that individual fall under the title of choice. Practical reason is the will and choice because it is the rational faculty of desire: a rational being’s capacity to be, by means of her representations, the cause of the actuality of their objects. This, we argue, is entailed by his conception of rational action: action not just in accordance with, but in and through the representation of, principles. The possibility of irrational action is explained not by a distinction between capacities but by the finitude, and thereby the fallibility, of human reason. (shrink)

The experience machine poses the most important problem for hedonist theories of well-being. I argue that desire satisfactionism about well-being faces a similar problem: the desire machine. Upon entering this machine, your desires are altered through some minor neurosurgery. In particular, the machine causes you to desire everything that actually happens. The experience machine constructs a simulated world that matches your preexisting desires. The desire machine reconstructs your conative state to match the preexisting world. Desire (...) satisfactionism recommends entering the desire machine because you will then have more satisfied desires, but this seems wrong. -/- In this paper, I consider how desire satisfactionists might avoid the result that entering the desire machine increases one’s well-being. First, I further motivate why this problem arises. Second, I consider coherence-based norms of rational desire change. Finally, I argue that introducing a substantive account of fitting desire is the only plausible solution, but that this response requires abandoning pure subjectivism about well-being. (shrink)

I argue against group agent realism, or the view that groups have irreducible mental states. If group agents have irreducible mental states, as realists assume, then the best group agent realist explanation of corporate agents features only basic mental states with at most one motivational function each. But the best group agent realist explanation of corporate agents does not feature only basic mental states with at most one motivational function each. So corporate agents lack irreducible mental states. How so? I (...) defend the conditional with an argument from disagreement. On cognitivist approaches to desire, desires function to both motivate and represent the world. Yet such desires are subject to a significant amount of disagreement. Reflection on the folk-psychological properties of desire and belief suggest that this disagreement is better explained by a non-cognitivist approach to desire where they do not have both functions. I then defend the claim that realists are committed to at least some cognitivist motivational states. Using the example of fire brigades, I argue that the best realist explanation of group agents involves mental states with both representational and motivational functions. By modus tollens, corporations then lack irreducible mental states, period. (shrink)

The desirability of what actually occurs is often influenced by what could have been. Preferences based on such value dependencies between actual and counterfactual outcomes generate a class of problems for orthodox decision theory, the best-known perhaps being the so-called Allais Paradox. In this paper we solve these problems by extending Richard Jeffrey's decision theory to counterfactual prospects, using a multidimensional possible-world semantics for conditionals, and showing that preferences that are sensitive to counterfactual considerations can still be desirability maximising. We (...) end the paper by investigating the conditions necessary and sufficient for a desirability function to be an expected utility. It turns out that the additional conditions imply highly implausible epistemic principles. (shrink)

I show that there are good reasons to think that some individuals without any capacity for consciousness should be counted as welfare subjects, assuming that desire-fulfilment is a welfare good and that any individuals who can accrue welfare goods are welfare subjects. While other philosophers have argued for similar conclusions, I show that they have done so by relying on a simplistic understanding of the desire-fulfilment theory. My argument is intended to be sensitive to the complexities and nuances (...) of contemporary developments of the theory, while avoiding highly counter-intuitive implications of previous arguments for the same conclusion. (shrink)

Dustin Stokes argues for the existence of orectic penetration, a phenomenon in which a desire-like state penetrates our perceptual experience. His candidate for a case of orectic penetration is the most convincing candidate presented thus far. It is argued here that his candidate and his further arguments for the existence of orectic penetration do not support the claim that orectic penetration takes place. As a result, it is concluded that there are no convincing cases of desire-like states penetrating (...) perceptual experience. (shrink)

The predominant view in developmental psychology is that young children are able to reason with the concept of desire prior to being able to reason with the concept of belief. We propose an explanation of this phenomenon that focuses on the cognitive tasks that competence with the belief and desire concepts enable young children to perform. We show that cognitive tasks that are typically considered fundamental to our competence with the belief and desire concepts can be performed (...) with the concept of desire in the absence of competence with the concept of belief, whereas the reverse is considerably less feasible. (shrink)

Les désirs sont centraux pour agir et être heureux. Qu’est-ce qu’un désir ? En quoi les désirs sont-ils importants ? Dans cette entrée, nous tenterons de mettre les mots sur cette expérience si familière et pourtant négligée par la philosophie contemporaine. (1) En guise de préliminaires, nous délimiterons notre objet d’étude à la lumière des principales distinctions entre les désirs et d’autres états mentaux tels que les croyances et intentions, ainsi qu’à l’aide des distinctions classiques parmi les désirs. (2) Notre (...) exploration débutera par l’exposé de diverses facettes du désir : (i) les désirs s’accompagnent de l’apparence du bien; (ii) les désirs nous poussent à agir ; (iii) le monde doit se conformer à nos désirs (la direction d’ajustement monde-esprit); et (iv) les désirs portent sur ce que nous ne pensons pas être réel (le principe de la mort du désir). (3) Dans la troisième partie, nous présenterons les principales conceptions du désir en philosophie contemporaine, particulièrement les deux approches classiques: désirer est faire l’expérience du bien (théorie évaluative) et désirer est être motivé à agir (théorie motivationnelle). Nous esquisserons aussi des théories alternatives: l’approche déontique et neuroscientifique. Après avoir tenté de délimiter le désir, nous examinerons son importance. (4) Nous questionnerons trois types de désir qui occupent une place privilégiée dans nos vies: l’espoir, la curiosité et le désir sexuel. (5) Nous explorerons les bienfaits du désir à travers les théories désidératives du bonheur, des raisons d’agir et de la personnalité. (6) Nous conclurons en discutant les vicissitudes épistémiques du désir ou leur pouvoir de nous faire baigner dans l’illusion (l’auto-duperie). (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that we might do well to adopt a hybrid theory of well-being: a theory that incorporates both an objective-value constraint and a pro-attitude constraint. Hybrid theories are attractive for two main reasons. First, unlike desire theories of well-being, hybrid theories need not worry about the problem of defective desires. This is so because, unlike desire theories, hybrid theories place an objective-value constraint on well-being. Second, unlike objectivist theories of well-being, hybrid theories need not worry (...) about being overly alienating. This is so because, unlike objectivist theories, hybrid theories place a pro-attitude constraint on well-being. However, from the point of view of objectivists, hybrid theories are not objectivist enough, and this can be seen clearly in missing-desires cases. For instance, hybrid theories entail that, if someone lacks the desire for health, then health is not a component of her well-being. This, objectivists say, is implausible. It is obvious, objectivists say, that someone’s life goes better for herself inasmuch as she is healthy, and hence that health is a component of her welfare. This paper focuses on the missing-desires objection (as leveled by objectivists) to hybrid theories of well-being. My argument is that the missing-desires objection can be answered in a way that is generally convincing and, in particular, in a way that pays a good deal of respect to objectivist intuitions about well-being. My hope, then, is that this paper will help to persuade objectivists about well-being to become hybrid theorists. (shrink)

Desire is commonly spoken of as a state in which the desired object seems good, which apparently ascribes an evaluative element to desire. I offer a new defence of this old idea. As traditionally conceived, this view faces serious objections related to its way of characterizing desire's evaluative content. I develop an alternative conception of evaluative mental content which is plausible in its own right, allows the evaluative desire theorist to avoid the standard objections, and sheds (...) interesting new light on the idea of evaluative experience. (shrink)

Many believe that the rational evaluation of actions depends on the rational evaluation of even basic desires. Hume, though, viewed desires as "original existences" which cannot be contrary to either truth or reason. Contemporary critics of Hume, including Norman, Brandt and Parfit, have sought a basis for the rational evaluation of desires that would deny some basic desires reason-giving force. I side with Hume against these modern critics. Hume's concept of rational evaluation is admittedly too narrow; even basic desires are, (...) despite their nonrepresentational nature, subject to rational evaluation. But this evaluation is not relevant to their tendency to generate reasons for action, and does not undermine the spirit of the Humean view of rational action. (shrink)

I defend the widely-held view that morally worthy action need not be motivated by a desire to promote rightness as such. Some have recently come to reject this view, arguing that desires for rightness as such are necessary for avoiding a certain kind of luck thought incompatible with morally worthy action. I show that those who defend desires for rightness as such on the basis of this argument misunderstand the relationship between moral worth and the kind of luck that (...) their argument employs. Consequently, the argument provides no reason to doubt the popular view that a desire for rightness as such is no part of virtue. I conclude by suggesting that a family of worries about merely accidentally right action presuppose one side of the recent debate about objectivism and perspectivism about moral rightness. (shrink)