Why Do Desires Rationalize Actions?

Gregory, Alex

doi:10.3998/ergo.12405314.0005.040

Cited by 8 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…The present proposal about desire and dreams should be contrasted with a recent view developed by Alex Gregory (see Gregory 2013, 2018). Similar to the present proposal, Gregory maintains that desires involve a representation of the desirer’s reasons for action.…”

Section: The Normative Power(s) Of Dreamscontrasting

confidence: 54%

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The Intersection of Hopes and Dreams

Milona¹

2020

Journal of Social Philosophy

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Section: The Normative Power(s) Of Dreamscontrasting

confidence: 54%

“…See Oddie (2005) and Tenenbaum (2007) for defenses of this alternative view of desire. For an argument that it is more plausible that desires represent reasons than goodness, see Gregory (2013) and Milona and Schroeder (2019). Gregory disagrees with Milona and Schroeder about the nature of these representations.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Intersection of Hopes and Dreams

Milona¹

2020

Journal of Social Philosophy

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“…Some hold theories of desire according to which they are beliefs about the good (Humberstone, 1987; Little, 1997; McNaughton, 1988; Gregory, 2018). There is something to this approach, at least as it pertains to anorectic desires.…”

Section: Anorectic Desirementioning

confidence: 99%

Wanting and willing

Marcus

2020

European J of Philosophy

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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.

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“…As we will shortly consider, affect-based accounts claim that desire is a mental state that essentially involves a certain kind of affective experience (Chang, 2004;Smithies & Weiss, 2019;Strawson, 1994). The literature also contains other views that centralise other aspects of desire like pleasure (Schiffer, 1976), evaluative judgment (Gregory, 2018), attention (Scanlon, 1998), their quasi-perceptual role (Stampe, 1987), their role in reward-based learning (Schroeder, 2004) or some combination of these elements.…”

Section: Pro-attitude Versus Desire Propermentioning

confidence: 99%

Do affective desires provide reasons for action?

Shaw

2020

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It is widely assumed that desires can contribute to what it is rational for one to do. Some desires rationalise action in virtue of reasons on which they are based. For instance, suppose I learn that the restaurant next door serves the best falafel in town, and I form a desire to dine there for that reason. If I were to act on this desire, my action would be rationalised by that reason. Some philosophers have argued that there are desires that rationalise actions without being based on reasons. Some desires, it is claimed, have the power to provide reasons. This paper focuses on arguments by Ruth Chang and, more recently, by Declan Smithies and Jeremy Weiss, that claim that such desires provide reasons without being based on reasons in virtue of having an affective nature. §2 clarifies the operative notion of desire and outlines the two main accounts of affective desire. §3 clarifies the claim that desires are capable of 'providing' reasons by distinguishing several distinct formulations of the thesis. I then apply them to extant accounts of affective desires to clarify the sense in which such desires provide reasons. §4 evaluates a key argument by Chang that affective desires constitute normative reasons for action. §5 motivates scepticism concerning explanations of why desires are rationally significant that appeal to their conscious phenomenology. I outline an alternative approach that centralises the function of such experiences.

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Why Do Desires Rationalize Actions?

Cited by 8 publications

References 29 publications

The Intersection of Hopes and Dreams

The Intersection of Hopes and Dreams

Wanting and willing

Do affective desires provide reasons for action?

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