Wanting and willing

Abstract

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.

Feeling Like It: A Theory of Inclination and Will. TamarSchapiro. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021, 192 pp. ISBN‐13:9780198862932 hb £55.00

“…This is consistent with Marcus's (2021) suggestion that these states also differ in their epistemic profile.…”

“… (Schapiro, forthcoming).4 I am also assuming that these are dispositional states. AsWilson (2016) notes, this is needed to account for central features of inclinations, such as their ability to be shaped by practice (an important feature for Schapiro's account); but it is in tension with the dominant way Schapiro speaks of them, as occurrent states.5 This is consistent withMarcus's (2021) suggestion that these states also differ in their epistemic profile.6 An alternative, sketched in the work of Iris Murdoch (following Simone Weil), conceives of the will as instead engaged in a life-long activity of loving attention and discernment, capable of becoming attached to (better or worse) objects, and of transforming one's desires in a way that affects not only the person's decisions, but the space of alternatives available to the agent, and the manner in which they appear to her in the moment of choice(Murdoch, 1970). The writings of John McDowell are the most developed version of this view, which, as JenniferWhiting (2022) argues, has Aristotelian origins.7 Thanks to the participants of the Georgia State reading group on Feeling Like, to Tamar Schapiro for generous discussion of her views, and to Eric Wilson for incisive comments on a draft.…”