Abstract

This work is a characterization and a criticism of the Belief-Desire Model , and of the way in which recent debates about the nature of value judgments have revolved around it. I propose a characterization of the BDM unifying parts of the theory that appear spread in different theories of philosophers holding the model. The BDM is a model for the explanation of mental states and actions that takes the concepts of belief and desire as its basic components. Unlike previous theories of actions, the BDM is an explanatory model: it claims that explanations of actions and mental states in terms of reasons are causal explanations. It also differs from previous models in that it tries to extend explanations in terms of beliefs and desires to other mental states, such as intentions, emotions, and judgments of value, among others. In this way, it is a reductionistic model. In this essay I take distance from its causally explanatory nature, emphasizing the normative character of mental states---something that dispositional accounts of mental states seem to have trouble explaining. But primarily I focus on the reductivistic nature of the model, and on how it extends explanations in terms of beliefs and desires to other mental states and to value judgments in particular. Initially, I use the notion of direction of fit, used by supporters of the model, to differentiate not only between beliefs and desires, but also between these two and other mental states, such as imagination or intention. Then I analyze whether value judgments can be reduced to either beliefs or desires. In meta-ethical debates, cognitivists have claimed that value judgments are forms of beliefs, whereas many non-cognitivists have claimed that they are actually forms of desires. I present arguments against both positions: difficulties that anybody aiming at the extension of the vocabulary of beliefs and desires would have to face. Since I deny that value judgments are forms of beliefs, I finish by analyzing some of the implications that this would have in terms of the objectivity of our value judgments. My basic claim here is that truth and objectivity must be disassociated in the area of evaluative judgments