Beliefs & Desires

A trio of authors argue in the January 2004 issue of American Philosophical Quarterly that conscious desires are impossible. They begin with a distinction between beliefs and desires, showing that the difference has to do with the “direction of fit” with the external world. Beliefs (and perceptions) arise from the mind, but are checked and controlled by the world; if a belief proves false, we adjust the beliefs accordingly. Desires, however, have a different direction of fit; a desire is not checked by the fact that what we desire is not in fact the case, since desire is by definition about wanting the world to be different than it in fact is. The authors are not locked into this account of “direction of fit,” but stilll conclude that desire and belief/perception differ in their direction of fit. Thus, “Since desires and the like have a direction fo fit different from perceptual experience, it can be shown that there are no conscious desires.” “Conscious desire,” the concede, has a sensible meaning, but desire is not conscious “in any interesting sense.”

To prove the impossibility of conscious desire, they imagine sitting in front of a piece of chocolate desiring it. What in the consciousness IS the desire? Certainly not the sensible perception of the chocolate. And not some inner command “get that chocolate,” since that inner command, like external commands, can be “uttered” inwardly without desiring chocolate: “if you say ‘Get that chocolate!’ to yourself because you are trying to think up examples of imperative sentences and that one pops into your had . . . .then your inner utterance is not sincere and does not express a desire.” Nor are conscious feelings and inner utterances CAUSED BY desire the same as conscious desire itself: “a feeling caused by a desire no more makes for a conscious desire than a feeling caused by a brick makes for a conscious brick.” They also point to evidence in neuroscience that suggests that desire and conscious thought are centered in different parts of the brain.

Fun stuff all around.