Desire

The orthodox view of anger takes desires for revenge or retribution to be central to the emotion. In this paper, I develop an empirically informed challenge to the retributive view of anger. In so doing, I argue that a distinct desire is central to anger: a desire for recognition. Desires for recognition aim at the targets of anger acknowledging the wrong they have committed, as opposed to aiming for their suffering. In light of the centrality of this desire for recognition, (...) I argue that the retributive view of anger should be abandoned. I consider and dismiss two types of moves that can be made on the part of a proponent of the orthodox view in response to my argument. I propose that a pluralist view, which allows for both retribution and recognition in anger, is to be preferred. (shrink)

How homogenous are the sources of human motivation? Textbook Humeans hold that every human action is motivated by desire, thus any heterogeneity derives from differing objects of desire. Textbook Kantians hold that although some human actions are motivated by desire, others are motivated by reason. One question in this vicinity concerns whether there are states such that to be in one is at once take the world to be a certain way and to be motivated to act: the state-question. My (...) question here is different: whether passion and reason constitute distinct sources of human motivation: the source question. In this essay, I defend an affirmative answer to the source-question while remaining neutral on the state-question. I distinguish between what I call orectic desires, which are associated with the appetites, and anorectic desires, which are associated with judgments of the good. I argue that the two sorts of desires constitute distinct sources of motivation initially on the basis of their differing epistemological profiles. Specifically, self-attributions of anorectic desires are governed by the transparency condition, self-attributions of orectic desires are not. It emerges from this discussion that the motivation for performing an action arises in very different ways from each sort of desire. This difference, in turn, is explained by their differing relations to the will. Roughly, an orectic desire influences the will, but an anorectic desire is the will. The motivation to perform some of our actions derives simply from the determination that they are to-be-done—from reason. (shrink)

Our contemporary politics faces the paradoxical problem that while we are inundated with images on our screens, we nevertheless seem to lack creative political imagination to conceive of solutions to our global problems. One account for this paradox is Chiara Bottici’s suggestion that the constant stream of virtual images produced qualitatively alters them to such an extent that they become ends in themselves: thus, spectacularizing our politics. My claim, against Bottici’s, is that it is not the case that the increase (...) in images created causes a qualitative change; rather, the increase in images created results from an already occurred qualitative change that images are created for their own sake instead of as a response to the particular situation’s determining conditions. The concept of the imaginal, insofar as it is unhinged from these local conditions, is itself the precondition for the very problem of political spectacularization that we face. To support my claim, I utilize Aristotle’s concepts of imagination, desire, and practical truth to show that without truth conditions determined by the particular, the political imaginal ends up operating under the motive of image for its own sake—which is, at bottom, desire for its own sake—thus feeding into the creation of more images devoid of concrete solutions. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the claim that some desires provide reasons in virtue of their connection with conscious affective experiences like feelings of attraction or aversion. I clarify the nature of affective desires and several distinct ways in which affective desires might provide reasons. Against accounts proposed by Ruth Chang, Declan Smithies and Jeremy Weiss, I motivate doubts that it is the phenomenology of affective experiences that explains their normative or rational significance. I outline an alternative approach that centralises the function (...) of such experiences. (shrink)

What is faith? How is faith different than belief and hope? Is faith irrational? If not, how can faith go beyond the evidence? This chapter introduces the reader to philosophical questions involving faith and reason. First, we explore a four-part definition of faith. Then, we consider the question of how faith could be rational yet go beyond the evidence.

In this paper I offer a novel conception of the nature of wanting. According to it, wanting is simply lacking something one needs. Lacking has no direct connection to goodness but needing does, and that is how goodness figures in to wanting. What a thing needs derives from what it is to be a good thing of its kind. In people, wanting is connected to both knowledge and choice, since a person can know that she wants something and can act (...) on that knowledge. When she does, she is acting in light of that want and her want is a reason why she acted. But while wanting is thus connected to our rational capacity for action, wanting is not itself a capacity or a disposition to act, and it does not cause or generate the action. Acting in light of a want is no different from acting in light of any other fact. Still, there is a close connection between wanting and our wills, not just because we can sometimes choose how to get what we need, but because our choices can determine what we want. We can’t simply choose to want something, but in deciding how to live our lives, who to be, and what to pursue, we are free to settle what we want, at least within limits. These connections to knowledge and the will make human wanting rich and morally relevant, but they don’t transform human wanting into something special. Wanting is everywhere just a matter of lacking something one needs. That, in very broad strokes, is the picture I will spell out. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a defense of the motivational theory of desire. According to the motivational view, a desire is basically a disposition to bring about the desire's content. First, I argue that two rival views on the nature of desire, the evaluative theory and the deontic theory, fall prey to the problem of the death of desire and that, when one tries to develop a plausible version of these theories which is able to overcome this problem, one ends (...) up with a view that is not relevantly different from the evaluative view. Second, I respond to some objections to the claim that motivations are sufficient for desire, namely, the Radioman objection and the objection that some motivational states like intentions and habits are not desires. (shrink)

Many people find sacred choral music profound and deeply evocative, even in societies that seem to be turning away from religious belief. In this book, Julian Perlmutter examines how, in light of its wide appeal, sacred music can have religious significance for people regardless of their religious convictions. -/- By differentiating between doctrinal belief and the desire for God, Perlmutter explores a longing for the spiritual that is compatible with both belief and 'interested non-belief'. He describes how sacred music can (...) elicit this kind of longing, thereby helping the listener to grow in religious openness. The work of Thomas Merton is also analyzed in order to show that musically-elicited desire for God can be incorporated into the Christian practice of contemplative prayer, aimed ultimately at a union of love with God. By exploring connections between desire, knowledge and religious practice, this engaging account illustrates how sacred music can have a transformative effect on one's wider spiritual life. -/- Of particular interest to philosophers and theologians, the book makes a novel contribution to several topics including religious epistemology, the philosophy of emotion and aesthetics. (shrink)

The guise of the good doctrine is the view that whatever we desire, we desire it under the guise of the good, i.e. it appears good to us in some way. In this paper I first clarify the role that the doctrine of the guise of the good plays in the first step of J. S. Mill’s proof of the principle of utility (in which he shows that one’s happiness is desirable as an end). Then I provide textual evidence in (...) favour of ascribing the doctrine to Mill, arguing that he commits to it to the extent that he equates finding something pleasant and thinking it desirable. Finally I counter two potential sources of evidence against ascribing the guise of the good to Mill: apparent desires based on ‘fixed ideas’, and those habitual desires which are no longer associated with finding their objects pleasant. I argue that ‘fixed ideas’ do not feed actual desires, and that the habitual desires which seem to escape the guise of the good, even if not uncommon, have a secondary status as desires. (shrink)

Most contemporary accounts of the nature of faith explicitly defend what we call ‘the positivity theory of faith’ – the theory that faith must be accompanied by a favourable evaluative belief, or a desire towards the object of faith. This paper examines the different varieties of the positivity theory and the arguments used to support it. Whilst initially plausible, we find that the theory faces numerous problematic counterexamples, and show that weaker versions of the positivity theory are ultimately implausible. We (...) discuss a distinct property of faith that we call ‘true grit’, such that faith requires one to be resilient toward the evidential, practical, and psychological challenges that it faces. We show how true grit is necessary for faith, and provides a simpler and less problematic explanation of the evidence used to support the positivity theory. (shrink)

Choice-theoretic and philosophical accounts of rationality and reasoning address a multi-attitude psychology, including beliefs, desires, intentions, etc. By contrast, logicians traditionally focus on beliefs only. Yet there is 'logic' in multiple attitudes. We propose a generalization of the three standard logical requirements on beliefs -- consistency, completeness, and deductive closedness -- towards multiple attitudes. How do these three logical requirements relate to rational requirements, e.g., of transitive preferences or non-akratic intentions? We establish a systematic correspondence: each logical requirement (consistency, completeness, (...) or closedness) is equivalent to a class of rational requirements. Loosely speaking, this correspondence connects the logical and rational approaches to psychology. Addressing John Broome's central question, we characterize the extent to which reasoning can help achieve consistent, complete, or closed attitudes, respectively. (shrink)

​Imagination will remain a mystery—we will not be able to explain imagination—until we can break it into parts we already understand. Explaining Imagination is a guidebook for doing just that, where the parts are other ordinary mental states like beliefs, desires, judgments, and decisions. In different combinations and contexts, these states constitute cases of imagining. This reductive approach to imagination is at direct odds with the current orthodoxy, according to which imagination is a sui generis mental state or process—one with (...) its own inscrutable principles of operation. Explaining Imagination upends that view, showing how, on closer inspection, the imaginings at work in hypothetical reasoning, pretense, the enjoyment of fiction, and creativity are reducible to other familiar mental states—judgments, beliefs, desires, and decisions among them. Crisscrossing contemporary philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and aesthetics, Explaining Imagination argues that a clearer understanding of imagination is already well within reach. (shrink)

Being born into a family structure—being born of a mother—is key to being human. It is, for Jacques Lacan, essential to the formation of human desire. It is also part of the structure of analogy in the Thomistic thought of Erich Przywara. AI may well increase exponentially in sophistication, and even achieve human-like qualities; but it will only ever form an imaginary mirroring of genuine human persons—an imitation that is in fact morbid and dehumanising. Taking Lacan and Przywara at a (...) point of convergence on this topic offers important insight into human exceptionalism. (shrink)

Being born into a family structure—being born of a mother—is key to being human. It is, for Jacques Lacan, essential to the formation of human desire. It is also part of the structure of analogy in the Thomistic thought of Erich Przywara. AI may well increase exponentially in sophistication, and even achieve human-like qualities; but it will only ever form an imaginary mirroring of genuine human persons—an imitation that is in fact morbid and dehumanising. Taking Lacan and Przywara at a (...) point of convergence on this topic offers important insight into human exceptionalism. (shrink)

One influential philosophical account of desire treats it as a species of propositional attitude, possessing broadly the same kinds of content as belief while differing in direction of fit. However, this arguably neglects more basic forms of desire. It seems an open possibility, for example, that animals that lack propositional attitudes might still have simple desires mediated by sensations like hunger and thirst. In this essay, I will argue the case for the existence of these basic desires, and suggest a (...) strategy for understanding them. I begin by briefly discussing some different approaches to the psychological ascription of desires, and examine some candidate forms of behaviour that might be constitutive of a creature's having a basic desire. I go on to argue that a form of behaviour known as motivational trade-off offers a particularly promising framework for attributions of basic desire. (shrink)

We adjudicate a recent dispute concerning the desire theory of well-being. Stock counterexamples to the desire theory include “quirky” desires that seem irrelevant to well-being, such as the desire to count blades of grass. Bruckner claims that such desires are relevant to well-being, provided that the desirer can characterize the object in such a way that makes it clear to others what attracts the desirer to it. Lin claims that merely being attracted to the object of one’s desire should be (...) sufficient for it to be relevant to one’s well-being. The capacity to characterize the desire as Bruckner requires does no work in the explanation of the welfare-relevance of the desire, Lin claims, especially since Lin’s account and Bruckner’s account are extensionally equivalent. In response, we provide a conceptual analysis of desire based on conceptual role semantics. Our analysis shows the plausibility of and motivation for Bruckner’s account. As well, it shows that the extensional equivalence of the accounts is no accident, but due to what it is to have a desire. Lin has not succeeded in providing an alternative to Bruckner’s account, but merely reformulated it, though in an illuminating way that supports Bruckner’s original case. (shrink)

The formal theory of rational choice as grounded in desire-satisfaction cannot account for the problem of such deformed desires as women's slavish desires. Traditional “informed desire” tests impose conditions of rationality, such as full information and absence of psychoses, but do not exclude deformed desires. I offer a Kantian-inspired addendum to these tests, according to which the very features of deformed desires render them irrational to adopt for an agent who appreciates her equal worth.

The dissertation seeks to articulate a Humean conception of an embodied person, according to which our beliefs and actions are essentially dependent upon certain "seemingly trivial" and intellectually opaque properties of our imagination and character. This conception is opposed to rationalism, which I take to be the view that our beliefs and actions should ideally be caused by rule-governed, intellectually transparent mental operations. I present two Hume-derived critiques of rationalism. ;The first critique concerns our beliefs. If we attempt to base (...) our beliefs about all non-present realities exclusively on causal inference , we will in effect disavow an irregular inference that operates on resemblances, and the result will be a total and unanswerable skepticism, an imaginatively disembodied condition in which we will not be able to recognize ourselves as holders of beliefs. The only way out of this malign skeptical impasse is through "carelessness and inattention," and this solution testifies to our essential embodiment. The second critique concerns our values. If we attempt to correct our sentiments by means of an intellectually clear theory of value, as requested by the rationalist, we shall subvert our intentions to the extent that the point of view of the theory becomes embodied. Once again, we would lose self-recognition. ;I then consider some informal consequences of the Humean conception. First, I show that although our powers of self-correction are more limited than the rationalist thinks they are, we should not draw any irrationalist conclusions. The Humean conception allows us to detect, moreover, certain harmful psychological tendencies whose presence is lost on rationalism. Secondly, I show that persons and artworks, rightly understood, do at least some of the work that reason, on the rationalist picture, was supposed to do, even though we do not usually approach artworks and other persons with the intention of having our sentiments corrected by them. (shrink)

I demonstrate that the two major ethical traditions agree that there are given desires which provide extra-rational practical reasons. Empiricist theories ground ethics in such desires, but the extra-rationality of this foundation appears to lead to stultifying subjectivism. Rationalist theories justify the appeal to an independent Kantian Reason as necessary to gain control over such desires. But the status of these desires as providing motivating reasons guarantees that such independent Reason can never be more than one among competing sources of (...) practical rational motivation. ;I then argue that the generalization and extension of the epistemological argument against the given provides compelling evidence that there can be no such given desires. This argument demonstrates that episodes which can provide reasons cannot be extra-rational, indeed must be constituted through rational endorsement. This critical argument is applied to the work of Dennis Stampe and Thomas Hobbes , and extended from desires to preferences . ;In order to provide rational warrant, a desire must itself be rationally endorsed in a context of other endorsed episodes within which its own warrant is secured. There are no given desires, no extra-rational practical reasons in which the crude empiricist can ground practical reasoning. But there is also no need to postulate Reason independent of desire to gain rational control over such desires. I close by suggesting that this critical argument provides a framework for the construction of a middle ground between the two traditions which incorporates their central insights while avoiding their chronic failings. (shrink)

This study is an examination of the manner in which intelligence mediates desire. Its central claims are that all desire is necessarily determined as such by the capacity of intelligence and that the specific quality of desire as animal or human is therefore conditioned by the specific power of intelligence possessed by the desiring creature. In looking at human desire, it is further argued that the presence of rational intelligence introduces instability in the natural soul that in turn conditions its (...) desire as potentially unreasonable and reasonable. Developing this argument first in light of Aristotle's moral psychology, attention is then turned to Hegel's philosophical psychology, as found in his Philosophy of Mind, and to his account of desire, as it is found in his Phenomenology of Spirit. By examining sections of these works, it is shown that Hegel revives significant aspects of this classical account of moral psychology and desire, which have for the most part been neglected in modern philosophical psychology. It is also suggested, however, the Hegel introduces significant variations to this classical view in his appropriation of it that have rendered him vulnerable to much of the post-modern criticism that he has received. (shrink)

I compare two theories of motivation: The Socratic Theory of Motivation and Fred Dretske's attempt to vindicate the use of desires in folk-psychological explanations. I find that, although Socrates ' theory is, at first glance, counterintuitive, while Dretske's provides persuasive analyses of beliefs and desires, there is a way of developing Dretske's theory which produces a theory that is parallel to the Socratic Theory of Motivation. In fact, if we substitute "all desire is for homeostasis" for the thesis that "all (...) desire is for the good" in the Socratic Theory of Motivation, we can actually reduce much of the Socratic Theory from psychology to physiology. I call this parallel theory the Socratized Dretskean Theory of Motivation. As a consequence, I find that many features of the Socratized Dretskean Theory of Motivation are actually more consistent with our common sense physiological views than are our everyday folk-psychological assumptions concerning beliefs and desires. I conclude that, if we are to vindicate folk psychology, we should take a Socratic stance concerning such psychological entities as beliefs, desires and knowledge. (shrink)

I examine the relations of three kinds of mental state--desire, belief, and purpose--to their manifestations in behavior, and derive from these relations certain consequences for the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of value. -/- Part I deals with how a purpose that is actually being acted upon is manifested in behavior. Tolman and Pepper held the thesis T: An agent A acts with purpose G if and only if A "persists until" G and A is "docile" with respect to (...) G. To say A persists until G means that if A's first response is not followed by G, A tends to vary his responses until one of them is followed by G. To say A is docile with respect to G means that on certain subsequent occasions, A tends to reject behaviors which in the past were unsuccessful, and thus to come more quickly to the successful behavior. After making some refinements of T, I consider seven objections. Of these, T successfully meets all but the seventh: If two states of affairs, G and H, are lawfully equivalent, to say that A has goal G does not imply that A has goal H. I then propose a major modification of T which meets this objection. -/- Part II deals with desires considered as dispositions to engage in purposive behavior, and inquires into the role of other desires and of beliefs as conditions for their actualization. Those beliefs which mediate the manifestation of desires in behavior are held to be "means-end readinesses," dispositions to pursue or to prefer certain means on condition of pursuing certain ends. The behavioral expression of preference is found to depend on what the agent believes to be an alternative; therefore, the behavioral equivalent of believing something to be an alternative is defined first, and followed by the behavioristic definitions of various types of preference. I then examine the validity or meaningfulness of several kinds of quantitative representation of mental states: numbers putatively representing the strength, not merely the order, of preference or desire, the probability an event is believed to have, and the strength of a belief. Certain intermediate-level motivational structures called "sentiments" are also discussed. -/- In Part III, the results are applied to problems in two areas: philosophy of mind and philosophy of value. I argue that certain claims of analytical behaviorism are untenable, while others may be acceptable; and that a form of identity-materialism is acceptable, provided, of course, that physical states are the basis of behavior. Finally, I analyze the purposive dynamics of using evaluative sentences and argue that ethical emotivism is self-contradictory. (shrink)

The dissertation deals with the possibility of historicizing the fundamental connection between narrative and desire. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis both as a methodological tool and an object of study--along with other post-modern theories of culture--I have provided a topography of the theoretical ramifications of desire and narrative. I have then outlined a theory of historicized narrative desire which looks at both notions in terms of how they modify and inform different cultural products. ;My premise is that, as a linear form, narrative (...) is at the same time the space where desire gets expressed and the structure which determines the conditions of our act of desiring. The tendency on the part of desire to be mediated by temporal structures betrays an imaginary attempt to evade the "reality" of the "event" which has caused it in the first place. This imaginary evasion of the "real story" implies a lifting of desire from the realm of contingency and change. It implies an act of dehistoricization. I have argued that it is this attempt in its negative form which makes possible any account or perception of the historical contingency of desire as it is expressed in cultural forms and discourses. In other words, when the subject uses narrative or fantasy to evade the reality of her desire, she involuntarily betrays what she wants to evade--she makes possible the historicization of her own desire. Historicization is therefore the act whereby the analysand and by extension the reader relates desire to its "real" event, to its "true" story. ;The historicization of narrative desire is important for three reasons: it explains how cultural artifacts relate to different desires; it deconstructs the premises of the metaphysical understanding of desire that has dominated classical forms of discourse; it lays the ground for a theory and a politics of desire that takes into consideration variables like race, gender, class and "nation," which I try to outline with specific reference to a set of modernist, colonial and "feminine" texts. (shrink)

La 4ème de couv. indique : "Pour l'avoir relu plusieurs fois, je sais que c'est le plus haut livre de notre époque. On a l'impression que tout e qui compte d'une façon ou d'une autre - Blanchot, Bataille, Par-delà le Bien et le Mal aussi - on y conduisait insidieusement : mais voilà, c'est dit maintenant, et de si haut que tout recule et ne compte plus qu'à demi. C'était cela qu'il fallait penser : désire, valeur et simulacre - triangle (...) qui nous domine et nous a constitués, depuis des siècles sans doute, dans notre histoire.". (shrink)

Compares Freud's conception of religion being negative for the health of our psyche to Kierkegaard's theory of stages culminating in the necessity of a relationship to God for self-realization.

A dime-novel dust cover and misleading title disguise this work on the desires lying at the basis of ethics.--R. F. T.

We seem to be abandoning the codes that told previous generations who they should love. But now that many of us are free to choose whoever we want, nothing is less certain. The proliferation of divorces and separations reveal a dynamic we would rather not see: others sometimes reject us as passionately as we are attracted to them. Our desire makes us sick. The throes of rivalry are at the heart of our attraction to one another. This is the central (...) thesis of Jean-Michel Oughourlian's _The Genesis of Desire_, where the war of the sexes is finally given a scientific explanation. The discovery of mirror neurons corroborates his ideas, clarifying the phenomena of empathy and the mechanisms of violent reciprocity. How can a couple be saved when they have declared war on one another? By helping them realize that desire originates not in the self but in the other. There are strategies that can help, which Dr. Oughourlian has prescribed successfully to his patients. This work, alternating between case studies and more theoretical statements, convincingly defends the possibility that breakups need not be permanent. (shrink)

Is there a Moore ’s paradox in desire? I give a normative explanation of the epistemic irrationality, and hence absurdity, of Moorean belief that builds on Green and Williams’ normative account of absurdity. This explains why Moorean beliefs are normally irrational and thus absurd, while some Moorean beliefs are absurd without being irrational. Then I defend constructing a Moorean desire as the syntactic counterpart of a Moorean belief and distinguish it from a ‘Frankfurt’ conjunction of desires. Next I discuss putative (...) examples of rational and irrational desires, suggesting that there are norms of rational desire. Then I examine David Wall’s groundbreaking argument that Moorean desires are always unreasonable. Next I show against this that there are rational as well as irrational Moorean desires. Those that are irrational are also absurd, although there seem to be absurd desires that are not irrational. I conclude that certain norms of rational desire should be rejected. (shrink)

In the structure of a modern literature erotic text we see two main tendencies: metaphoric (or metonymic) imagination, (for example Bataille) and combined imagination (de Sad). A bright example of the first tendency is A story of an eye by Bataille (1928). In it we see an antithetic metaphor, striking two sexes together. De Sad, using combined imagination, proceeds from the fact, that there is a limited amount of erotism places. But from them he leads all figures, which act in (...) these places. He transfers them and combines erotica and aggression, forming endless combinations. Кarel by Jahn Jene (1947) is an example of the second tendency. Endlessness of erotic desire in the novel appears as darkness. This darkness – is a sign of bottomless depths of desire–has a stream of light as reverse side, as its antithetic metaphor. The metaphor, created by a non-synthetic combination aims at causing shock, conveying obscenity, unquotability of desire. It has a double nature: to come into touch with Eros one must taste death. Unquotable discourse speaks of a unified pulsation of Eros-Thanatos. (shrink)

Preliminary draft of November 2010—please do not circulate without permission.