Abstract

I argue that Humean theories of practical reason gain descriptive and normative advantages by accepting the view that agents can rationally choose and control their intrinsic desires . Traditional Humean theories reject this view; however, that rejection is not essential to the Humean position. Accepting the claim that people have, at times, direct and reasoned control over their desires helps accommodate the intuition that we rationally choose our goals no less than we rationally choose the means for their satisfaction, an intuition that has long been considered the sole domain of non-Humean theories. But the idea of 'reasoning about one's goals' receives here a new and individualistic understanding. ;Arguments against the conceptual possibility of desiring at will and against the claim that desiring at will is part of our deliberative life are considered as well as arguments for the claim that Humean theories cannot explain the reason giving status of desires that we acquire at will.