Based on the belief that computational modeling (thinking in terms of representation and computations) can help to clarify controversial issues in emotion theory, this article examines emotional experience from the perspective of the Computational Belief–Desire Theory of Emotion (CBDTE), a computational explication of the belief–desire theory of emotion. It is argued that CBDTE provides plausible answers to central explanatory challenges posed by emotional experience, including: the phenomenal quality,intensity and object-directedness of emotional experience, (...) the function of emotional experience and its relation to cognition and motivation, and the relation between emotional experience and emotion. In addition, CBDTE avoids most objections that have been raised against cognitive theories of emotion. A remaining objection, that beliefs are not necessary for the emotions covered by CBDTE, is rejected as empirically unsupported. (shrink)

This paper argues that Donald Davidson''s account ofassertions of evaluative judgments contains ahere-to-fore unappreciated strategy forreconciling the meta-ethical ``inconsistenttriad.'''' The inconsistency is thought to resultbecause within the framework of thebelief-desire theory assertions of moraljudgments must have conceptual connections withboth desires and beliefs. The connection withdesires is necessary to account for theinternal connection between such judgments andmotivation to act, while the connection withbeliefs is necessary to account for theapparent objectivity of such judgments.Arguments abound that no class of utterancescan coherently (...) be understood as having suchconceptual connections to attitudes of bothsorts, hence that an inconsistency results. Buton Davidson''s account assertions of evaluativejudgments have just such connections to boththe relevant desire and a belief concerning anevaluative matter of fact. I argue that thisaccount has the resources to respond tostandard objections, and at least meritsconsideration as one among other plausiblealternatives. (shrink)

In this article we take issue with theory theory and simulation theory accounts of folk psychology committed to (i) the belief-desire (BD) model and (ii) the assumption of universality (AU). Recent studies cast doubt on the compatibility of these commitments because they reveal considerable cross-cultural differences in folk psychologies. We present both theory theory and simulation theory with the following dilemma: either (i) keep the BD-model as an account of the surface properties (...) of specific explicit folk psychologies and give up AU in light of the cross-cultural evidence; or (ii) defend AU with respect to core capacities underlying different culture-specific folk psychologies, and explain why the BD-model will be genuinely explanatory at this level. (shrink)

My concern here is with the Humean claim that no purely cognitive state could, in combination with appropriate other beliefs, but with nothing else, originate a process of rational motivation. The starting point of such motivation must always include some other element: a desire. Let's call this claim, following David McNaughton the belief-desire theory, or BDT for short. The theory is widely believed but intensely controversial. I argue here that it is true.

Many philosophers hold that for various reasons there must be psychological laws governing beliefs and desires. One of the few serious examples that they offer is the _belief-desire law_, which states, roughly, that _ceteris paribus_ people do what they believe will satisfy their desires. This paper argues that, in fact, there is no such law. In particular, decision theory does not support the contention that there is such a law.

The question why Bevir's account of intentionality is conceptualized purely in terms of individual beliefs is important as such a conceptualization appears to depart from standard accounts of intentionality within the philosophy of mind, that include reference to individual desires. It is beliefs and desires which are usually considered the rock?bottom components of individual intentional states, yet Bevir defines weak intentions solely in terms of the former while explicitly rejecting attention to the latter. There are a number of difficulties which (...) an account of meaning that excludes reference to desires faces. Nevertheless, there are a number of reasons for historians of ideas to embrace a theory of meaning that includes reference to beliefs but not desires. Through an extension of a different argument put forward by Bevir, it is suggested that such a belief?based definition of the nature of meaning is made defensible through reference to an account of the identity of the history of ideas as a discipline, a distinct area of academic enquiry that can be ? and for good reasons is ? individuated from the history of human action. (shrink)

We adjudicate a recent dispute concerning the desire theory of well-being. Stock counterexamples to the desire theory include “quirky” desires that seem irrelevant to well-being, such as the desire to count blades of grass. Bruckner claims that such desires are relevant to well-being, provided that the desirer can characterize the object in such a way that makes it clear to others what attracts the desirer to it. Lin claims that merely being attracted to the object (...) of one’s desire should be sufficient for it to be relevant to one’s well-being. The capacity to characterize the desire as Bruckner requires does no work in the explanation of the welfare-relevance of the desire, Lin claims, especially since Lin’s account and Bruckner’s account are extensionally equivalent. In response, we provide a conceptual analysis of desire based on conceptual role semantics. Our analysis shows the plausibility of and motivation for Bruckner’s account. As well, it shows that the extensional equivalence of the accounts is no accident, but due to what it is to have a desire. Lin has not succeeded in providing an alternative to Bruckner’s account, but merely reformulated it, though in an illuminating way that supports Bruckner’s original case. (shrink)

In this paper, we take issue with the belief–desire model of second- and third-person action interpretation as it is presented by both theory theories and cognitivist versions of simulation theory. These accounts take action interpretation to consist in the (tacit) attribution of proper belief–desire pairs that mirror the structure of formally valid practical inferences. We argue that the belief–desire model rests on the unwarranted assumption that the interpreter can only reach the agent's (...) practical context of action through inference. This assumption betrays a deep-seated bias toward disengaged, observational interpretation strategies. On our alternative picture, the interpreter can start off on the assumption of a shared practical context and proceed to reason discourse in those cases in which this assumption runs aground. Following Brandom's non-formalist account of reason discourse, we suggest that interpreting other people's actions in terms of reasons is not a matter of following the principles of formally valid practical syllogisms, but of endorsing practical material inferences that are correct in virtue of a shared practical world. (shrink)

A venerable view, still very much alive, holds that human action is to be explained at least in part in terms of beliefs and desires. Those who advocate the view expect that the psychological theory which explains human behavior will invoke the concepts of belief and desire in a substantive way. I will call this expectation the belief-desire thesis. Though there would surely be a quibble or a caveat here and there, the thesis would be (...) endorsed by an exceptionally heterogeneous collection of psychologists and philosophers ranging from Freud and Hume, to Thomas Szasz and Richard Brandt. Indeed, a number of philosophers have contended that the thesis, or something like it, is embedded in our ordinary, workaday concept of action. If they are right, and I think they are, then insofar as we use the concept of action we are all committed to the belief-desire thesis. My purpose in this paper is to explore the tension between the belief-desire thesis and a widely held assumption about the nature of explanatory psychological theories, an assumption that serves as a fundamental regulative principle for much of contemporary psychological theorizing. This assumption, which for want of a better term I will call the principle of psychological autonomy, will be the focus of the first of the sections below. In the second section I will elaborate a bit on how the belief-desire thesis is to be interpreted, and try to extract from it a principle that will serve as a premise in the argument to follow. In the third section I will set out an argument to the effect that large numbers of belief-desire explanations of action, indeed perhaps the bulk of such explanations, are incompatible with the principle of autonomy. Finally, in the last section, I will fend off a possible objection to my argument. In the process, I will try to make clear just why the argument works and what price we should have to pay if we were resolved to avoid its consequences. (shrink)

At the outset of The Possibility of Altruism Thomas Nagel charts two paths out of the fundamental dilemma confronting metaethics. The first path rejects the claim that a persuasive account of the motivational backing of ethical judgments must involve an agent’s desires. But it is the second path, a path that Nagel charts but does not himself take, that is the focus of this essay. This path retains the standard account, upon which all motivation involves desire, but denies that (...) desires are given prior to reason. Instead, these attitudes that motivate are themselves open to rational assessment. One reason for this focus is that many philosophers, including Quinn, Raz, and Scanlon, have come to reject the claim Nagel takes to block this path – that desires are somehow given prior to reason, hence are not in the relevant way proper objects of rational assessment. A second reason is that unlike the first path, this second does not require the rejection of the belief-desire theory, only the rejection of one assumption about the nature of conative attitudes. Unlike Nagel’s chosen path, then, the second holds out the prospect of reconciling ethical objectivity, internalism, and the belief-desire theory within a unified account. I argue that the account of desire found in Quinn, Raz, and Scanlon, augmented by aspects of Davidson’s account of propositional attitudes, yields a coherent account of the involvement of reason even in basic desires, an account that is well suited to Nagel’s intriguing path not taken. (shrink)

The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. In this engagingly written book, Martha Nussbaum maintains that these Hellenistic schools have been unjustly neglected in recent philosophic accounts of what (...) the classical "tradition" has to offer. By examining texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm - including Epicurus, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Chrysippus, and Seneca - she recovers a valuable source for current moral and political thought and encourages us to reconsider philosophical argument as a technique through which to improve lives. In describing the contributions of Hellenistic ethics, Nussbaum focuses on each thinker's treatment of the question of emotion. All argued that many harmful emotions are based on false beliefs that are socially taught, and that good philosophical argument can transform emotions, and, with them, both private and public life. Written for general readers and specialists, this book addresses compelling issues ranging from the psychology of human passion through rhetoric to the role of philosophy in public and private life. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article: Nikolaj Nottelmann, ‘Belief‐Desire Explanation’. Philosophy Compass Vol/Iss : 1–10. doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2011.00446.xAuthor’s Introduction“Belief‐desire explanation” is short‐hand for a type of action explanation that appeals to a set of the agent’s mental states consisting of 1. Her desire to ψ and 2. Her belief that, were she to φ, she would promote her ψ‐ing. Here, to ψ could be to eat an ice cream, and to φ could be to walk (...) to the ice cream vendor. Adherents of belief‐desire explanation, often labelled “Humeans”, standardly assume that appeals to such belief‐desire pairs sufficiently explain many human and animal actions, and also that all actions are explainable thus, at least in so far as they are guided by the agent’s intentions. Humeans take their lead from David Hume’s famous dictum that “Reason...is only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” In its original context, this passage from the Treatise is naturally taken to convey the thesis that mental states subservient to epistemic rationality – such as beliefs – are never in themselves sufficient to motivate action. Thus, an appeal to an agent’s beliefs is never in itself sufficient to lay bare her motivations and explain her actions, but must be supplemented by an appeal to “passions” such as desires. Many philosophers, so‐called Anti‐Humeans, have sharply disagreed. Some have pointed to certain beliefs with alleged motivational force in isolation from desires, most commonly evaluative beliefs. Others have argued that belief‐desire psychology fails to cut up mental space in a way fruitful to action explanation. Instead, only appeals to other types of mental state will adequately explain many types of intentional action. The debate for and against Humeanism is a highly complex one, which is likely to persist along with any general interest in the theory of action explanation.Author RecommendsHume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. 2nd ed. Edited and with an Analytical Index, by L. A. Selby‐Bigge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.Part III. Sect. III. of the Treatise is the classical source of the Humean view. Any in‐depth understanding of contemporary Humeanism must take it as its starting point.Stroud, Barry. Hume. London: Routledge, 1977.This is an excellent introductory text. Chap. VII treats on Humeanism and the key part of the Treatise listed above.Smith, Michael. ‘The Humean Theory of Motivation.’Mind 96.381 : 36–61.This is an authoritative modern account of Humeanism. Even if a bit imprecise in some regards, the text is lucidly written and nicely captures the structure of the debate over Humeanism.Schaefer‐Landau, Russ. Moral Realism. A Defence. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003.Chapt. 5 contains another fine, more recent, introduction to Humeanism and the typical arguments for and against it. This introduction is particularly recommendable in virtue of its clarity and comprehensiveness.Ratcliffe, Matthew. Rethinking Commonsense Psychology. A Critique of Folk Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.This monograph treats on a very wide number of subjects pertaining to action explanation and harbours many highly controversial theses. Still, it is a refreshing eye‐opener re the immense complexity of the topic of action explanation and the great variety of such explanations in our folk practices. On my view Ratcliffe makes plausible the view that neither our folk practices nor our scientific practices single out a unique model of action explanation as the only appropriate one. Rather our practices of action explanation constitute a rather motley family. The consequence of this to the debates over Humeanism is obvious: The combatants must get clear on the exact models of action explanation within which they discuss the place of belief‐desire references instead of pretending to fight over action explanation in general.Gendler, Tamar Szabó. ‘Alief and Belief.’Journal of Philosophy 105 : 634–63.This paper, together with Gendler’s contemporary sister paper ‘Alief in Action ’, is an engaging proponent of the view that belief‐desire psychology and its associated practice of Human action explanations gets psychological reality radically wrong. Gendler presents a number of cases where, allegedly, relevant human actions are only explicable by appeal to a type of mental state, which Gendler dubs “alief”. Aliefs are neither beliefs nor desires; but share certain characteristics with both.Online MaterialsSample SyllabusWeek I: David Hume’s viewHume, Treatise, Part III. Sect III.Stroud: Hume, Chapt. VII.Week II: Modern HumeanismSmith, ‘The Humean Theory of Motivation’.Nottelmann, ‘Belief‐Desire Explanation’.Week III: Modern Humeanism continued: The Dialectics of the DebateSchaefer‐Landau, ‘Motivational Humeanism’.Week IV: Intention, Agency and CausationDavidson, Donald. ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’ & ‘Freedom to Act’, both in: Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.Week V: Modern Anti‐Humeanism, The Neo‐Kantian VersionScanlon, T. M. What we Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1998, Chapt. 1. ‘Reasons’.Week VI: Modern Anti‐Humeanism, The Cognitive Science VersionGendler, Tamar Szabó. ‘Alief and Belief’, supplemented with excerpts of her ‘Alief in Action ’. Mind and Language 23.5 : 552–85.Focus Questions1 Which kinds of explanation do belief‐desire explanations belong to?2 In so far as belief‐desire explanations provide causal explanation of action, how are we to understand the causal nexus between belief‐desire pairs and successful agency?3 How are we to understand the notions of belief and desire as appealed to in belief‐desire explanations? Are they even conceptually distinct from the concept of a belief‐desire explanation of human action?4 May evaluative judgments such as moral judgments motivate and/or rationalize action in isolation from accompanying distinct co‐native states of the agent?5 Are certain types of intentional action better explained with sole reference to mental states different from belief as well as desire? (shrink)

Young children’s failures in reasoning about beliefs and desires, and especially about false beliefs, have been much studied. However, there are few accounts of successful belief-desire reasoning in older children or adults. An exception to this is a model in which belief attribution is treated as a process wherein an inhibitory system selects the most likely content for the belief to be attributed from amongst several competing contents [Leslie, A. M., & Polizzi, P. (1998). Developmental Science, (...) 1, 247–254]. We tested this model with an ‘avoidance false belief task’ in which subjects predict the behavior of a character, who wants to avoid an object but who is mistaken about which of three locations it is in. The task has two equally correct answers—in seeking to avoid the location where she mistakenly believes the object to be, the character might equally go to the location where the object actually is, or to the remaining empty location. However, the model predicts that subjects will prefer one of these answers, selecting the object’s actual location over the empty location. This bias was confirmed in a series of five experiments with children aged between 4 and 8 years of age. A sixth experiment ruled out two rival explanations for children’s biased responding. Two further experiments found the opposite bias in adults. These findings support one selection model as an account of belief-desire reasoning in children, and suggest that a different model is needed for adults. The process of selecting contents for mental state attributions shows a developmental shift between 8 years of age and adulthood. (shrink)

This paper begins with an exposition the apparent tension between externalist theories of content and common-sense belief/desire psychology, with a view to resolving the conflict between these two views. The second part of the paper is a criticism of Fodor’s reformulation of Twin Earth type cases.I argue that this attempt to mitigate the damage such cases do to the tenability of folk psychological explanation cannot work, because Twin Earth cases pose a metaphysical problem for content and explanation, not (...) a nomological one, as Fodor argues. I discuss this in detail, by arguing that Twin Earth cases are illustrations of a metaphysical appearance/reality distinction for content.The paper concludes with a strategy for blending content externalism with a robust folk psychology: one that centers on the distinction between causation and causal explanation. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Daniel Dennett’s well-known intentional systems theory of belief and desire from the perspective of physicalism. I begin with a general discussion of physicalism. In the course of that discussion, I present familiar ways that one might attempt to reconcile physicalism with belief-desire realism. I then argue that intentional systems theory will not provide a reconciliation of physicalism and belief-desire realism.

Preliminary draft of November 2010—please do not circulate without permission.

I present and explore a normative theory of non-doxastic attitudes like desire, hatred, and admiration. The viewpoint is general and abstract: independent of any particular flavor or source of normativity, I explore general features any acceptable way of forming these attitudes would have, especially in contrast to doxastic attitudes like belief. The first three chapters present a relatively unified picture of non-doxastic attitude formation, grounded in types of non-doxastic attitudes we can have in contrast to their impossible (...) doxastic analogues. In particular, I defend a kind of externalism; I apply it to a specific attitude, desire, to show how the approach works; and then based on a different aspect of the view, I present what I take to be some of the best ways to motivate the view, and some of the best ways to criticize it, as well. In the last chapter, I develop a theory about how these attitudes are best communicated, this time meant to capture how belief is best communicated, too, though it is inspired by certain features of non-doxastic attitudes. (shrink)

Rationalizations of deliberation often make reference to two kinds of mental state, which we call belief and desire. It is worth asking whether these kinds are necessarily distinct, or whether it might be possible to construe desire as belief of a certain sort — belief, say, about what would be good. An expected value theory formalizes our notions of belief and desire, treating each as a matter of degree. In this context the (...) thesis that desire is belief might amount to the claim that the degree to which an agent desires any proposition A equals the degree to which the agent believes the proposition that A would be good. We shall write this latter proposition ‘A◦’ (pronounced ‘A halo’). The Desire-as-Belief Thesis states, then, that to each proposition A there corresponds another proposition A◦, where the probability of A◦ equals the expected value of A. (shrink)

This book offers a defense of the Property Theory of Content, according to which properties rather than propositions are the contents of our beliefs, desires, and other cognitive attitudes. New arguments for the theory are offered, objections are answered, and applications to problems in the philosophy of mind are discussed.

Suppose we admit for the sake of argument that "folk" explanations of human behavior--explanations in terms of beliefs and desires--sometimes succeed. They sometimes enable us to understand and predict patterns of motion that otherwise would remain unintelligible and unanticipated. Is the only explanation for such success that folk psychology is a viable proto-scientific theory of human psychology? I shall describe an analysis which yields a negative answer to that question. It was suggested by an observation and an analogy, both (...) of which may initially seem remote from the topic at hand. (shrink)

Does the desirability of a proposition depend on whether it is true? Not according to the Invariance assumption, held by several notable philosophers. The Invariance assumption plays an important role in David Lewis’ famous arguments against the so-called Desire-as-Belief thesis (DAB), an anti-Humean thesis according to which a rational agent desires a proposition exactly to the degree that she believes the proposition to be desirable. But the assumption is of interest independently of Lewis’ arguments, for instance since both (...) Richard Jeffrey and James Joyce make the assumption (or, strictly speaking, accept a thesis that implies Invariance) in their influential books on decision theory. The main claim to be defended in this paper is that Invariance is incompatible with certain assumptions of decision theory. I show that the assumption fails on the most common interpretations of desirability and/or choice-worthiness found in decision theory. I moreover show that Invariance is inconsistent with Richard Jeffrey’s decision theory, on which Lewis’ arguments against DAB are based. Finally, I show that Invariance contradicts how we in general do and should think about conditional desirability. (shrink)

The property theory of content takes the content of each cognitive attitude (each belief, desire, and so on) to be a property to which the subject of the attitude is related in the appropriate psychological way. This view is motivated by standard cases of de se belief and other attitudes. In this paper, I consider a couple of related objections to the property theory of content. Both objections have to do with the possible non-existence of (...) the subject. More specifically, the objections are based on attitudes, the contents of which entail the non-existence of their subjects, and also on attitudes that commit their subjects to preferences regarding situations in which the subjects do not exist. I show that the property theory can answer these objections adequately, and I argue that my answer to the objections is more plausible than other possible responses. (shrink)

Finding out why we have beliefs and desires is important for a thorough understanding of the nature of our minds (and those of other animals). It is therefore unsurprising that several accounts have been presented that are meant to answer this question. At least in the philosophical literature, the most widely accepted of these are due to Kim Sterelny and Peter Godfrey-Smith, who argue that beliefs and desires evolved due to their enabling us to be behaviourally flexible in a way (...) that reflexes do not—which, they claim, is beneficial in epistemically complex environments. However, as I try to make clear in this paper, upon closer consideration, this kind of account turns out to be theoretically implausible. In the main, this is because it fails to give due credit to the powers of reflex-driven organisms, which can in fact be just as flexible in their behaviour as ones that are belief/desire-driven. In order to improve on this account, I therefore propose that beliefs and desires evolved, not due to their enabling us to do something completely different from what reflexive organisms can do, but rather due to their enabling us to do the same things better. Specifically, I argue that beliefs and desires evolved for making the generation of behaviour more efficient, since they can simplify the necessary cognitive labour considerably. I end by considering various implications of this account. (shrink)

On Hume’s account of motivation, beliefs and desires are very different kinds of propositional attitudes. Beliefs are cognitive attitudes, desires emotive ones. An agent’s belief in a proposition captures the weight he or she assigns to this proposition in his or her cognitive representation of the world. An agent’s desire for a proposition captures the degree to which he or she prefers its truth, motivating him or her to act accordingly. Although beliefs and desires are sometimes entangled, they (...) play very different roles in rational agency. In two classic papers (Lewis 1988, 1996), David Lewis discusses several challenges to this Humean picture, but ultimately rejects them. We think that his discussion of a central anti-Humean alternative – the desire-as-belief thesis – is in need of refinnement. On this thesis, the desire for proposition p is given by the belief that p is desirable. Lewis claims that ‘[e]xcept in trivial cases, [this thesis] collapses into contradiction’(Lewis 1996, p. 308). The problem, he argues, is that the thesis is inconsistent with the purportedly plausible requirement that one’s desire for a proposition should not change upon learning that the proposition is true; call this the invariance requirement. In this paper, we revisit Lewis’s argument. We show that, if one carefully distinguishes between non-evaluative and evaluative propositions, the desire-asbelief thesis can be rendered consistent with the invariance requirement. Lewis’s conclusion holds only under certain conditions: the desire-as-belief thesis conflicts with the invariance requirement if and only if there are certain correlations between non-evaluative and evaluative propositions. But when there are such correlations, we suggest, the invariance requirement loses its plausibility. Thus Lewis’s argument against the desire-as-belief thesis appears to be valid only in cases in which it is unsound. (shrink)

David Lewis [1988; 1996] canvases an anti-Humean thesis about mental states: that the rational agent desires something to the extent that he or she believes it to be good. Lewis offers and refutes a decision-theoretic formulation of it, the 'Desire-as-Belief Thesis'. Other authors have since added further negative results in the spirit of Lewis's. We explore ways of being anti-Humean that evade all these negative results. We begin by providing background on evidential decision theory and on Lewis's (...) negative results. We then introduce what we call the indexicality loophole: if the goodness of a proposition is indexical, partly a function of an agent's mental state, then the negative results have no purchase. Thus we propose a variant of Desire-as-Belief that exploits this loophole. We argue that a number of meta-ethical positions are committed to just such indexicality. Indeed, we show that with one central sort of evaluative belief--the belief that an option is right--the indexicality loophole can be exploited in various interesting ways. Moreover, on some accounts, 'good' is indexical in the same way. Thus, it seems that the anti-Humean can dodge the negative results. (shrink)

Examines the desire‐belief‐theory, as presented, for example, in the work of Donald Davidson, which holds that a reason for which somebody does something is a combination of a desire and a belief of the agent. Widely accepted, this theory is seldom defended, the most explicit argument being due to Michael Smith. However, not only is his argument found wanting on a number of counts but the desire‐belief‐theory also gives desire and (...) belief incompatible roles to fulfill. Desire is asked both to set a goal and to provide the impulse for pursuing it, and, correspondingly, belief is held to give the agent guidance both in the sense of informing and in the sense of directing him or her. (shrink)

The predominant view in developmental psychology is that young children are able to reason with the concept of desire prior to being able to reason with the concept of belief. We propose an explanation of this phenomenon that focuses on the cognitive tasks that competence with the belief and desire concepts enable young children to perform. We show that cognitive tasks that are typically considered fundamental to our competence with the belief and desire concepts (...) can be performed with the concept of desire in the absence of competence with the concept of belief, whereas the reverse is considerably less feasible. (shrink)

This dissertation interprets the lack of uniqueness in probability representations of agents' degrees of belief in the decision theory of Richard Jeffrey as a formal statement of an important epistemological problem: the underdetermination of our attributions of belief and desire to agents by the evidence of their observed behaviour. A solution is pursued through investigation of agents' attitudes to information of a conditional nature. ;As a first step, Jeffrey's theory is extended to agents' conditional attitudes (...) of belief and desire by introduction of a definition of conditional desirability. The second step is an analysis of agents' attitudes to conditionals. Following Adams it is argued that the probability of a conditional is the conditional probability of its consequent given the antecedent. Since numerous 'trivialization' results show that no proposition could be such that this were the case, it is proposed that conditionals express a variable proposition as a function of the context in which they are asserted. The consequent technical treatment of conditionals as proposition-valued functions of sets of possible worlds delivers Adams' thesis as a natural consequence without fear of trivialization. ;Conditionals are the underlying objects of the decision theory that is presented in the final chapter. A representation theorem is proven for preferences defined over sets of such conditionals satisfying certain closure conditions, where an agent is understood to prefer one conditional over another just in case she prefers that the former by true rather than the latter. The theorem establishes that a rational preference ranking of conditionals implies the existence of a unique probability function and a desirability function unique up to choice of scale, that agree with the preference ranking, and that these functions satisfy both the axioms of Jeffrey's decision calculus and Adams' thesis. The theorem is interpreted as saying that elicitation of an agent's choices amongst conditional options suffices to determine our attributions of belief and desire to them. (shrink)

Behaviorally, children’s explicit theory of mind (ToM) proceeds in a progression of mental-state understandings: developmentally, children demonstrate accurate explicit desire-reasoning before accurate explicit belief-reasoning. Given its robust and cross-cultural nature, we hypothesize this progression may be paced in part by maturation/specialization of the brain. Neuroimaging research demonstrates that the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) becomes increasingly selective for ToM reasoning as children age, and as their ToM improves. But this research has narrowly focused on beliefs or on undifferentiated (...) mental-states. A recent ERP study in children included a critical contrast to desire-reasoning, and demonstrated that right posterior potentials differentiated belief-reasoning from desire-reasoning. Taken together, the literature suggests that children’s desire-belief progression may be paced by specialization of the right TPJ for belief-reasoning specifically, beyond desire-reasoning. In the present study, we tested this hypothesis directly by examining children’s belief- and desire-reasoning using functional near-infrared spectroscopy in conjunction with structural magnetic resonance imaging to pinpoint brain activation in the right TPJ. Results showed greatest activation in the right TPJ for belief-reasoning, beyond desire-reasoning, and beyond non-mental reasoning (control). Findings replicate and critically extend prior ERP results, and provide clear evidence for a specific neural mechanism underlying children’s progression from understanding desires to understanding beliefs. (shrink)

Alex Gregory (2017a; 2017b; 2018; 2021) provides an ingenious, systematic defence of the view that desires are a species of belief about normative reasons. This view explains how desires make actions rationally intelligible. Its main rival, which is attractive for the same reason, says that desires involve a quasi-perceptual appearance of value. Gregory (2017a; 2018; 2021) has argued that his view provides the superior explanation of how desires are sensitive to evidence. Here, I show that the quasi-perceptual view fairs (...) better in this regard. Negatively, I argue that Gregory’s view overestimates the evidence-sensitivity of desires and implies that we are systematically mistaken in having different attitudes about desires and beliefs. Positively, I argue that quasi-perceptual appearances of value are brought into the scope of rational control through their dependence on prior representational states. I also provide a novel explanation of why some kinds of desires are resistant to rational control. I propose that desires are produced through exercises of an affective capacity to discriminate value. Variations in the way this capacity is exercised, and its links to prior representational states, can produce systematic insensitivity to evidence in certain kinds of desires. This paper advances the debate around desire on two fronts: first, it performs the neglected task of showing how the quasi-perceptual view can simultaneously explain both the sensitivity and insensitivity to evidence exhibited by desires and, second, it shows how the explanation offered is superior to one of its closest rivals, the view that desires are a species of normative belief. (shrink)

Argues for the humean theory of motivation on the grounds that rejecting it requires rejecting decision theory.

Richard Jeffrey regarded the version of Bayesian decision theory he floated in ‘The Logic of Decision’ and the idea of a probability kinematics—a generalisation of Bayesian conditioning to contexts in which the evidence is ‘uncertain’—as his two most important contributions to philosophy. This paper aims to connect them by developing kinematical models for the study of preference change and practical deliberation. Preference change is treated in a manner analogous to Jeffrey’s handling of belief change: not as mechanical outputs (...) of combinations of intrinsic desires plus information, but as a matter of judgement and of making up one’s mind. In the first section Jeffrey’s probability kinematics is motivated and extended to the treatment of changes in conditional belief. In the second, analogous kinematical models are developed for preference change and in particular belief-induced change that depends on an invariance condition for conditional preference. The two are the brought together in the last section in a tentative model of pratical deliberation. (shrink)

Richard Bradley’s landmark book Decision Theory with a Human Face makes seminal contributions to nearly every major area of decision theory, as well as most areas of formal epistemology and many areas of semantics. In addition to sketching Bradley’s distinctive semantics for conditional beliefs and desires, I will explain his theory of conditional desire, focusing particularly on his claim that we should not desire events, either positively or negatively, under the supposition that they will occur. (...) I shall argue, to the contrary, that permitting non-trivial desirabilities for events whose occurrence is known or assumed is both more intuitively plausible and more theoretically fruitful than Bradley’s approach. In the course of the discussion I will contrast Bradley’s broadly evidentialist picture of decision theory with my own more orthodox causal approach. (shrink)

Recent studies reveal spontaneous implicit false-belief understanding in infancy. But is this early ability genuine theory-of-mind? Spontaneous tasks may allow early success by eliminating the selection-response bias thought to underlie later failure on standard tasks. However, using anticipatory eye gaze, we find the same bias in non-verbal tasks in both preschoolers and adults. We argue that the bias arises from theory-of-mind competence itself and takes the form of a rational prior to attribute one's own belief to (...) others. Our discussion then draws attention to a number of other inferential hallmarks of early belief-desire reasoning that together suggest it is the real deal. (shrink)

Bryne & Hajek (1997) argue that Lewis’s (1988; 1996) objections to identifying desire with belief do not go through if our notion of desire is ‘causalized’ (characterized by causal, rather than evidential, decision theory). I argue that versions of the argument go through on certain assumptions about the formulation of decision theory. There is one version of causal decision theory where the original arguments cannot be formulated—the ‘imaging’ formulation that Joyce (1999) advocates. But I (...) argue this formulation is independently objectionable. If we want to maintain the desire as belief thesis, there’s no shortcut through causalization. (shrink)

I examine three attitudes: belief, faith, and hope. I argue that all three attitudes play the same role in rationalizing action. First, I explain two models of rational action—the decision-theory model and the belief-desire model. Both models entail there are two components of rational action: an epistemic component and a conative component. Then, using this framework, I show how belief, faith, and hope that p can all make it rational to accept, or act as if, (...) p. I conclude by showing how my picture can explain how action-oriented commitments can be rational over time, both in the face of counterevidence and in the face of waning affections. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue against the Humean theory of motivation, or “conativism” which claims that all actions are ultimately generated by desires. Conativism is supported by (1) a behavioral analysis of desire as a disposition to act in certain ways, and (2) the difference between belief and desire in terms of their different “direction of fi t” with the world. I will show that this behavioral account of desire cannot provide an adequate explanation (...) of action. Mere disposition to act (what I call “wanting”) does not explain why the agent acts; insofar as it explains the action desire is a feeling. I will then argue against the direction of fit argument by showing that beliefs about what we ought to do have both directions of fit—the belief has one direction of fit, and the content of the belief (the ought-clause) has the opposite direction of fit. (shrink)

This dissertation defends a cognitivist alternative to the Humean belief-desire theory of motivation against standard philosophical arguments. Moral judgments influence our action. For instance, someone might donate to charity because she believes she has a duty to give back to her community. According to the Humean orthodoxy, some additional state—some passion or desire—is needed to explain her action. She may want to donate the money, to give back to her community, or to fulfill her duty. Yet (...) there must be something she wants, the Humean insists, because only desires are capable of moving us. Even moral judgment is no more than desire’s slave. This dissertation explores the possibility that cognitive states are capable of playing a directly motivational role. I argue that the standard philosophical arguments against this possibility do not survive close scrutiny. Instead of proceeding from assumptions about rationality, morality, and agency that frequently drive motivational cognitivists, my arguments are distinctive in that they are built largely out of Humean materials; these arguments show how cognitivism is compatible with many of the considerations Humeans have used to make their account seem compelling. For instance, agents who are unmoved by their moral judgments are often taken as evidence for the Humean Theory. This is odd, since agents are not uniformly moved by their desires either. Moral beliefs and desires seem as though they may be closely analogous in this respect. I also try to show that desire-based motivation might serve as a useful model for cognitive motivation by arguing that cognitivists can explain motivated action in ways that parallel desire-based explanations. While these cognitivist explanations are committed to the existence of besires, I argue that this is no problem for the view. Humean a priori proclamations that besires would be incoherent or absurd notwithstanding, the arguments of this dissertation suggest that besires are not so bizarre. Indeed, I argue that their existence would follow from plausible empirical hypotheses. (shrink)

The Desire-as-Belief thesis (DAB) states that any rational person desires a proposition exactly to the degree that she believes or expects the proposition to be good. Many people take David Lewis to have shown the thesis to be inconsistent with Bayesian decision theory. However, as we show, Lewis's argument was based on an Invariance condition that itself is inconsistent with the (standard formulation of the) version of Bayesian decision theory that he assumed in his arguments against (...) DAB. The aim of this paper is to explore what impact the rejection of Invariance has on the DAB thesis. Without assuming Invariance, we first refute all versions of DAB that entail that there are only two levels of goodness. We next consider two theses according to which rational desires are intimately connected to expectations of (multi-levelled) goodness, and show that these are consistent with Bayesian decision theory as long as we assume that the contents of 'value propositions' are not fixed. We explain why this conclusion is independently plausible, and show how to construct such propositions. (shrink)

Explores the ancestry of the desire‐belief‐theory. It is generally assumed to derive from David Hume's conception, epitomized in his statement that the impulse for action does not arise from reason, but is only directed by it. In fact, though, this view is not credibly supported by argument and must rest, rather, on traditional assumptions. Their source is Plato: the doctrine of the soul in Phaedrus expounds, contrary to many scholars’ opinion, essentially the understanding of action that we (...) are familiar with from Hume. What made this understanding of action attractive becomes also apparent in considering Plato: if reason gives desire direction, there can be action in accordance with what there is. Nevertheless we should drop the idea: it brings with it domination within the soul. (shrink)

The paper presents a criticism of the metaphor of Direction of Fit as a criterion for beliefs/desires. It sketches an alternative account of belief/desire distinction based on Bayesian Decision Theory.

In standard decision theory, the probability function ought to be updated in light of evidence, but the utility function generally stays fixed. However, there is nothing in the formal theory that prevents one from instead updating the utility function, while keeping the probability function fixed. Moreover, there are good arguments for updating the utilities and not just the probabilities. Hence, the first puzzle is whether there is anything that justifies updating beliefs, but not desires, in light of evidence. (...) The paper argues that there is not, but that this raises a second puzzle. (shrink)

A traditional Humean view about motivation says that only desires motivate action. This theory meshes with the familiar ‘directions of fit’ metaphor: while beli.