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Desire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Richard Swinburne
Richard Swinburne
Affiliation:
Oriel College, Oxford
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Extract

There is a natural contrast often made in ordinary language between the actions which we do because we want or desire to do them, and the actions which we do although we do not want to do them. It is a contrast which has been ignored by much modern philosophy of mind which has seen desire as a component of all actions, and the reasons for all actions as involving desires of various kinds. The ignoring of the distinction between desire and the active component in every action (call it ‘trying’ or ‘seeking’ or ‘having a volition’) leads a man to suppose that he can no more help doing what he does than he can help his desires. But ‘desires’, in the normal ordinary language sense of the word, are natural inclinations to actions of certain sorts with which we find ourselves. We cannot (immediately) help our natural inclinations but what we can do is choose whether to yield to them, or resist them and do what we are not naturally inclined to do.

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Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 60 , Issue 234 , October 1985 , pp. 429 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1985

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References

1 See e.g. Warner, Richard, ‘Enjoyment’, Philosophical Review 89, No. 4 (10 1980), 507–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 In his book Reason and Value (Cambridge University Press, 1983), Bond, E. J. frequently makes the point that satisfaction of desire does not in itself necessarily give pleasure (see e.g. p. 61). But by this he means that the satisfaction of pre-existing desire does not do this.Google Scholar

3 An object, such as fame, knowledge, or the welfare of a friend, is desired, not because we foresee that when obtained it will give us pleasure; but vice versa; obtaining it gives us pleasure because we previously desired it or had an affection carrying us to it and resting in it— Price, Richard, A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals, 3rd edn, 1787 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 74. The final clause suggests that ‘previously’ is to be interpreted as ‘immediately previously’.Google Scholar

4 This point that reason alone, without ‘desires’ or ‘pro-attitudes’, suffices to explain behaviour, barring the operation of irrational factors, is made at length in Don Locke, ‘Beliefs, Desires, and Reasons for Actions’, American Philosophical Quarterly 19, No. 3 (July 1982), 241–249. Bond (op. cit., e.g. 14) claims that unless an agent has in some wide sense a ‘desire’ to do an action, there will be nothing to motivate his doing it. But there is no clear content to this thesis, since the only understanding which Bond can provide of his wide sense of ‘desire’, is that it is whatever is necessary to motivate action. Bond seems to be trying to save a false thesis—‘people do only what they desire to do’—by saying that the crucial word ‘desire’ must be understood in whatever way is necessary to make the thesis true.Google Scholar

5 On weakness of will explaining a man's failure to act on reasons of prudence, see Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), especially Chapter 8.Google Scholar

6 Although ‘desire’ gets a major place in Davidson's accounts of action, he does often stress that desires are only one kind of ‘pro-attitude’ which motivates to action. See his Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). Thus (p. 102) ‘wants, desires, principles, prejudices, felt duties and obligations provide reasons for actions and intentions, and are expressed by prima facie judgements; intentions, and the judgements that go with intentional actions, are distinguished by their all-out or unconditional form’. The trouble is that he does not always bring out adequately that desires have a causal influence on the agent greater than their believed rational value, which distinguishes them from ‘felt’ ‘duties and obligations’.Google Scholar

7 I take it that it is this kind of point which St Paul is making by saying: ‘Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor … and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing’ (I Corinthians, 13.3).Google Scholar

8 Frankfurt, H. G., ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’, Journal of Philosophy 68, No. 1 (January 1970), 5–20.Google Scholar