Conclusion

This brief chapter first restates the arguments for desire-as-belief, reiterates how it illuminates various questions about motivation, rationality, and what we ought to do, and recapitulates the ways in which the view can avoid objections. It then briefly restates the contrasts between desire-as-belief and some rival views. The chapter next presents some autobiographical claims about which aspects of the view the author finds most and least compelling, and finally notes various topics that stand out as requiring further investigation in relation to desire-as-belief: the nature of reasons, the prospects for objectivism in metaethics, developments in neuroscience, and questions about desire-as-belief and the status of knowledge – as opposed to mere belief – about reasons.

The Guise of the Normative

The chapter starts by contrasting desire-as-belief with the idea that there are ‘besires’. On a natural understanding of that view, desire-as-belief is the superior theory, being more parsimonious and more in keeping with common sense. The chapter then addresses the guise of the good: the view that we only desire things if we believe them to be good. The guise of the good faces various counterexamples, cannot permit that different people can correctly desire different things, and makes poor sense of the contrast between wanting, wishing, and hoping. But these problems can be avoided if we treat desires as beliefs about reasons.

Desire and Feeling

This chapter explores the relationship between desires and feelings such as pleasure and emotion. It explains how emotions bear on our desires in a manner that is consistent with desire-as-belief – our emotions affect our desires largely by directing our attention onto the reasons we have. It then discusses the influence of appetites and pleasure on desire – these things affect our desires because they affect the reasons we have. Moreover, the chapter argues that by understanding appetites and likings as distinct states from desires, desire-as-belief can make good sense of apparently non-rational variation in desire between people, and over time. The chapter goes on to explain how desire-as-belief can make good sense of ascetics who believe that they have no reasons to pursue pleasure. Finally, the chapter addresses the role that desires play in producing pleasure.

Irrationality

This chapter replies to one common objection to desire-as-belief: that it makes poor sense of practical irrationality such as akrasia. This objection to desire-as-belief is closely related to two others: the worry that we sometimes desire to do things without believing we have reason to pursue them, and the worry that we sometimes believe we have reason to pursue things without desiring to do them. The chapter offers a series of complementary responses to these objections: that our beliefs can be irrational, that some of what we say about our desires is misleading, and that we might fail to be motivated by our desires. Between these factors, it is doubtful that such objections succeed. The chapter finishes with a brief aside on second-order desires, and concludes that they are of little relevance to the occurrence of akrasia.

Introduction

It’s a sunny Wednesday morning, and I want to get lots of work done today—I want this book finished before Christmas. On the other hand, I also want to find time for a proper lunch break so I can do some exercise: I’m putting on weight and I’d prefer to reverse that trend sooner rather than later. Sadly, I put these thoughts to the back of mind as I notice that my youngest son has just been sick on the bed, and I want to get that cleaned up right away....

Desire and Motivation

This chapter introduces the theory ODM (‘Only Desires Motivate’), according to which we can be motivated only by desire. ODM is attractive because it fits with ordinary ways of explaining actions, and because it explains so much—all human behaviour—in a simple and systematic manner. But ODM needs to be distinguished from a nearby more extreme view: although we are only motivated by desire, we are not always motivated by our desires in exact proportion to their strengths. The chapter then shows how ODM can overcome some common-sense objections, can avoid Thomas Nagel’s influential worries, and can make sense of motivation by intention and emotion.

Normative Belief and Motivation

This chapter begins by explaining and endorsing the view that normative beliefs can motivate us to act. Views in this vicinity are normally labelled as versions of ‘judgement internalism’, but I argue that that view has often been understood in ways that render it less plausible. The chapter then combines this claim about the motivational power of normative belief with ODM (Only Desires Motivate) in order to show that desires and reasons beliefs are the same state of mind. This argument is often thought to be an argument for non-cognitivism, which reduces normative beliefs to desires, but the chapter shows that non-cognitivism makes poor sense of normative beliefs about other people, and so the argument instead strongly favours desire-as-belief. The chapter ends by briefly showing how this argument against non-cognitivism and in favour of desire-as-belief connects in a natural way to the Frege-Geach problem for non-cognitivism.

Desire and Rationality

The chapter starts by defending the claim that desires make a difference to what it is rational for us to do. It then defends Warren Quinn’s classic argument that many dispositional theories of desire fail to explain this rationalizing force: they cannot explain why desires, unlike other dispositional states, are rationally significant. The chapter goes on to explain how desire-as-belief can explain the rational significance of desire, by appeal to widely accepted claims about the rational significance of our normative beliefs. The chapter then shows how this reasoning also counts in favour of treating desires as beliefs rather than perception-like states, as some nearby rival views do.

What is Desire-as-Belief?

This chapter explains some basic assumptions and terminology and then introduces desire-as-belief—the view that our desires are a subset of our beliefs. The view is explained in part by an analogy to a natural view about the nature of disbelief, and that analogy helps fend off an initial objection to the view stemming from the distinction between two directions of fit. The chapter goes on to describe some simple attractions of desire-as-belief and also defends it from some further initial objections, such as the worry that inconsistent beliefs are irrational whereas inconsistent desires need not be, and a more general concern about how desire-as-belief relates to Plato’s distinction between Reason and passion.

Uncertainty and Reasoning

In the first half, the chapter explains how desires can come in degrees. The most complex question here is how degrees of uncertainty in our reasons beliefs get expressed with respect to desires. The answer is that they get expressed as uncertainty about what we want. In the second half, the chapter turns to our capacity to reason with our desires. It focuses on instrumentalism, the view that only instrumental desires can be changed by reasoning. This might seem problematic for desire-as-belief. But the chapter shows that instrumentalism is false, in light of the fact that some desires are neither instrumental nor ultimate.