Are There Passive Desires?

Are There Passive Desires?David Wall†

Abstract

What is the relation between desire and action? According to a traditional, widespread andinfluential view I call ‘The Motivational Necessity of Desire’ (MN), having a desire that p entailsbeing disposed to act in ways that you believe will bring about p. But what about desires like adesire that the committee chooses you without your needing to do anything, or a desire that yourchild passes her exams on her own? Such ‘self-passive’ desires are often given as a counter-example to MN. If MN is true then self-passive desires seem absurd: if someone has a self-passive desire she will be disposed to act, thereby preventing her from getting what she desires.But it seems that we can reasonably, and often do, have such desires. However, I argue thatself-passive desires are not, in fact, counter-examples to MN: close consideration of the contentof these desires, the contexts in which we ascribe them, and what is claimed by MN show thatthey are not a problem for that view. I also argue that strengthened versions of the examples areunsuccessful, and I offer a diagnosis of why these kinds of case are commonly thought to raisea challenge to MN.

Introduction

According to a view I call The Motivational Necessity of Desire, or MotivationalNecessity (MN) for short, having a desire entails being disposed to act in ways thatyou believe will bring about what you desire. A common objection to this viewclaims that there is a certain kind of desire, which I call a ‘self-passive’ desire, thatis a counter-example to MN. Self-passive desires are desires such as a desire thatyour child passes her exams on her own, or a desire that United win the match fairly:they are desires that something comes about without your bringing it about throughyour own actions. If MN is true then it seems that someone with a self-passivedesire will be disposed to act to bring about what she desires, thereby preventingthe satisfaction of that very desire. Self-passive desires would be self-frustratingdesires.Yet there are circumstances in which people do have self-passive desires andare reasonable to do so. It seems that in these cases people are not disposed to act tosatisfy their self-passive desires, so they are a counter-example to MN.

In fact, however, self-passive desires are not counter-examples to MN: theymerely appear to be such because of a misunderstanding of their content and amisunderstanding of what is claimed by MN. Furthermore, I argue that possible

† Department of Philosophy, School of Social Sciences, The University of Northampton,Park Campus, Boughton Green Road, Northampton NN2 7AL, UK; Email: [email protected]

dialectica Vol. 63, N° 2 (2009), pp. 133–155DOI: 10.1111/j.1746-8361.2009.01187.x

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ways of strengthening the examples also fail to provide counter-examples. Thissuggests that the contexts in which we might attribute a self-passive desire tosomeone lead us to overlook how she is disposed to act and to mistakenly thinkthat she is not so disposed at all.

Motivational necessity

In everyday experience it is often the case that when someone has a desire she willtry to bring about what it is that she desires. If Moe wants to attract families to hisbar he will tend to do things such as serve a range of affordable, enjoyable meals,decorate the walls with fun paraphernalia, and rename the bar ‘Moe’s FamilyFoodbag’. If Apu wants to maximize his profits at the Kwik-E-Mart he will tendto do things such as keep the shop open for 24 hours a day, alter the expiry dateson food products so that he can sell out-of-date stock, surround the counter withtempting additional purchases such as beef jerky and donuts, and so on. This isreflected in our practices of making predictions about peoples’ behaviour based onour knowledge of their desires, and of attributing desires to people based on theirbehaviour. Indeed, according to Anscombe, ‘[t]he primitive sign of wanting istrying to get’ (Anscombe 1957, 68).1 Of course, people will not always act to getwhat they want. If Principal Skinner wants to catch Bart playing truant he mightnot do so, or even try to do so, if he mistakenly believes that Bart has gone to themuseum, or if he has to stay in school to meet with Superintendant Chalmers, orif he wants to see Mrs Krabapple at recess more strongly than he wants to catchBart. Nonetheless, we might still say that Skinner is disposed to try to catch Bartplaying truant. By this we mean roughly that Skinner is constituted such that insuch-and-such circumstances he will try to catch Bart playing truant. These cir-cumstances will probably include things such as his having the appropriate truebeliefs about Bart’s whereabouts and how to get there, his having the means to getwhere Bart is at the time Bart is there, his not having any other, overriding desires

1 It seems that Anscombe’s aim in the passage that this is taken from is to distinguishdesire as the pro-attitude that is relevant to practical reason and action from other pro-attitudeslike hopes or wishes that she says are not connected in this way with acting. However, it is theclaim about someone’s actions being ‘the primitive sign of’ desire that is relevant here: she seemsto be saying that how someone acts is the most basic evidence of their having certain desires.Indeed, Anscombe may even be claiming that there is a stronger connection between desiring andtrying to get than just an evidential connection. A different way of understanding the claim thata is a sign of b is as a claim that b is partly constituted by a, that a is necessary for b. It is in thisway that the term ‘sign’ is sometimes used in medicine, for example where a distinction is drawnbetween signs of a certain disease or condition, which are diagnostic criteria for it, and symptomsof a certain disease or condition, which are evidence for it. However, I will here take Anscombeto be making only the weaker claim, that there is an evidential connection between desiring andtrying to get. The stronger claim is, according to a natural interpretation of trying to get in termsof being disposed to act, just the thesis MN.

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that dispose him more strongly to act in ways that are incompatible with trying tocatch Bart playing truant, and so on. So the regular correlation between desiringand acting can plausibly be explained in terms of a connection between desiringand being disposed to act.

In addition to being intuitively plausible, it is a traditional and influential viewin philosophy that desires are connected with acting and being disposed to act:Hume famously described desires as ‘motivating passions’ (Hume 1975), and it isadvocated in some form by, for instance, behaviourists such as Ryle (1949) andSkinner (1953) and by the majority of functionalists in philosophy of mind,including Humberstone (1992), Jackson (1996), Lewis (1983), Smith (1994) andStalnaker (1984) amongst others. According to MN this connection betweenhaving a desire and being disposed to act to bring about what you desire is anecessary connection. It is summarized more precisely by the following thesis.

(MN) If S desires that p then S is disposed to act in ways that S believes will bringabout p.

Note that this thesis is restricted in a number of ways: first, it is a claim about anecessary condition for having a desire; it does not claim that being disposed to actin ways that you believe will bring about what you desire is a sufficient conditionfor having a desire.2

Second, it is a view about the mental state of having a desire. There are anumber of kinds of pro-attitude that are discussed in everyday talk and in variousfields of philosophy, such as wishes, hopes, intentions, preferences, and so on. MNis a view about desires in particular, the mental state that we attribute to peoplewhen we say things such as, ‘Milhouse wants Lisa to like him’, and ‘Mr Burnsdesires that there is a fall in the price of uranium’. It is uncommitted about therelations between other kinds of mental state, including other kinds of pro-attitudeor conative state, and dispositions to act.

Third, in the following discussion I will take desires to be propositionalattitudes and assume that the objects of desire are states of affairs. That is, I willassume that attributions of desires for an object, or desires to do something aremore correctly understood as desires for states of affairs involving those objectsor actions. So I assume that desires to have something or to do somethingcan always be paraphrased as desires that such-and-such is the case.3 I take

2 So, MN is not a theory of desire if that is understood as a set of necessary and sufficientconditions for having a desire that p.

3 In this respect I am following, for example, Fernandez (2007): I am assuming thatpropositions are states of affairs although beyond that I am making no commitments about thenature of propositions or about the relationship between a mental state and its propositionalobject.

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this to be the common consensus as it is about beliefs being propositionalattitudes.4

Fourth, MN is concerned with a connection between desiring and being dis-posed to act, rather than actually acting. There is considerable disagreement aboutwhat is involved in having a disposition to act.5 In particular, there is disagreementabout how to specify the conditions under which a particular disposition willmanifest. Such a specification must not be too permissive, so as to exclude casesof mimicking, and it must not be too restrictive, so as to exclude cases of finkishinterference and masking.6 I will remain neutral about much of this debate. For thesake of this paper, when saying that S is disposed to F in conditions C, I will takethis to be partly explained by saying that S has some intrinsic property B such thatif conditions C obtain and S were to retain B then S would F because it is the casethat C, and because S has B. This is a modest view of dispositions, appealing to theintuitive idea that having a disposition is related to having a certain intrinsicproperty that causes its manifestations.7 On this view, MN can be paraphrased asthe following: if S desires that p then S has some intrinsic property B such that ifconditions C obtain and S were to retain B then S would act in ways that S believeswill bring about p. As mentioned, I will not attempt here to specify what conditions

4 See for example Field (1978), Smith (1994), Stalnaker (1984), Stampe (1987). Seealso Strawson, who takes his argument against MN to generalize to states like beliefs becauseboth desires and beliefs have in common that their object is a proposition. He says, ‘Chapter 9considers the case of desire and hence, more generally, the case of the so-called “propositionalattitudes” ’ (Strawson 1998, 434).

5 See Fara (2006) for an overview of current debates in the literature on dispositions.6 Finkish (and reverse finkish) disposition occurs when the conditions in which a

particular object loses (or gains) a disposition are the same as the condition in which thedisposition is supposed to manifest. Perhaps the most famous examples are from Martin (1994),such as a naturally live wire connected to a device that senses when it is about to touch aconductor and alters the wire to make it dead and prevent it from conducting electricity in suchcircumstances. Intuitively the wire is disposed to conduct electricity but because of the presenceof the fink it loses the disposition, and so fails to conduct electricity, in just those circumstancesin which it would conduct electricity if it had the disposition. Masking is similar in preventing adisposition from manifesting in conditions in which it should do, although it differs fromfinkish-ness in that the interference in masking is external to the object whereas in finkish casesthe interference involves a change in the object itself, causing the object to lose the disposition.For example, Johnston (1992) describes a case in which a fragile vase, which is disposed toshatter if dropped because of its fragility, is carefully packed in protective material such thatwhen it is dropped it does not break. But intuitively the vase is still fragile, even though it doesnot manifest the disposition in the conditions in which it should do. Mimicking, also discussedby Johnston (1992), is the opposite of masking. It occurs where something that intuitively doesnot have a particular disposition nonetheless exhibits the characteristics of that disposition in theconditions in which it would be expected to manifest because of the influence of some factorexternal to the object. For example, a sturdy gold chalice that is caused to break when droppedbecause of the magical powers of an envious wizard seems to exhibit the characteristics offragility. Yet intuitively it is not fragile, despite this.

7 See, for example, Fara (2006), Lewis (1997), Armstrong (1968), Bird (1998) andMolnar (1999) for discussion of various aspects of this idea.

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are included in C except to highlight that it is plausible and relatively uncontro-versial that C includes that S believes of some action, A, that A is a way of bringingabout p. However, this does not mean that someone must have such a belief inorder to have the disposition to act attributed to MN if she has a desire but only inorder for that disposition to manifest in her actually acting. This will be relevant inthe subsequent discussion.

Finally, MN is concerned with dispositions to perform actions, where this is tobe contrasted with mere bodily movements. Intuitively there is a differencebetween the movements that are an agent’s actions and those that are her merebodily movements.8 For example, a case in which someone acts to curl her toes isdifferent from a case in which her toes curl merely as a plantar reflex, because thesole of her foot has been stroked from heel to toe: and these cases are different incertain real respects and not merely in the way that they are described. It is notnecessary here to commit to any particular account of the distinction betweenactions and mere bodily movements. All that is necessary is to recognize that thereis a distinction and to emphasize that MN claims that having a desire disposes anagent to act in particular ways.

The significance of MN

What turns on the truth or falsity of MN: why should we be interested in it beyondproving or disproving the views of people like Hume? In fact, MN has a muchbroader significance. As mentioned above, it is an important and widely held viewin philosophy of mind, but it is also presupposed by a number of active andcontentious debates in other fields of philosophy. So whether or not it is true haswide-ranging importance. For example, MN is presupposed by the debate betweenInternalists and Externalists, and by the debate between Descriptivists and Expres-sivists in meta-ethics. This is one of the crucial issues in meta-ethics and is whatSmith calls ‘The Moral Problem’ in his book of the same name (Smith 1994). Theissue concerns the apparent conflict between three common and powerful intui-tions about moral judgments and about moral psychology. The first intuition is thatthere are moral facts and that our moral judgments express beliefs about thesefacts. The second is that making a moral judgment seems to provide one with acorresponding motivation to act, other things being equal. And the third, due to

8 This is the distinction that Davidson attempts to explicate in his 1971 essay ‘Agency’when he asks, ‘[w]hat events in the life of a person reveal agency; what are his deeds and hisdoings in contrast to mere happenings in his history; what is the mark that distinguishes hisactions?’ (Davidson 1971, 43). He continues by distinguishing a person’s actions, as thosemovements that they perform intentionally under at least one description, from their mere bodilymovements, which are those movements that are not done intentionally under any description(see, for example, Davidson 1971, 45–46). Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for clarificationshere.



Hume, is that beliefs cannot motivate someone to act, that only desires can do this,so to be motivated to act in a certain way one must have both a desire and a beliefthat the desire can be satisfied by acting in that way (Smith 1994, 7–11). The moralproblem is to reconcile these intuitions: it must be explained how moral judgmentscan express beliefs about facts yet provide motivation themselves, or entail havingan appropriate desire, despite the fact that we think that beliefs can do neither ofthese things. The conflict threatens us with moral nihilism, as it seems that there isno psychological state that has the properties required for it to be a moral judg-ment. If that were the case it would suggest that we cannot make such judgments(Smith 1994, 13). There are a number of ways of responding to the problem.Externalists about moral judgments9 deny the second intuition, that making amoral judgment necessarily motivates someone to act in accordance with it. Othersrespond by denying the first intuition, that moral judgments express beliefs aboutobjective facts. Such Expressivists10 typically claim that moral judgments areactually expressions of, for example, our approval or disapproval of certain waysof behaving, or of desires for such things, or of commands to others to behave incertain ways, or of some other kind of motivating, non-belief state. Others, theAnti-Humeans, deny the third intuition and claim that having a particular beliefcan itself motivate one to act or can entail having a corresponding desire.11 I willnot engage with this debate here. What is important is to note that all sides of thedebate typically assume that if those positions that claim that making a moraljudgment is a matter of having a desire to act in accordance with that judgment, orentails having such a desire, are true then the second intuition follows straightfor-wardly from this. It is presupposed by the debates that if someone has a desire toact in accordance with her moral judgment then she is motivated to act in that way.Even Externalists typically accept that if Expressivism is true and moral judgmentsexpress desires then the second intuition follows from this and Internalism is true.They just deny that such versions of Expressivism are true. On the other hand, evenExpressivists typically accept that if Externalism is true and making a moraljudgment does not entail being motivated then moral judgments are not expres-sions of our desires and those versions of Expressivism that claim this are false.They just deny that Externalism is true. And even Anti-Humeans accept that ifExpressivism is true then their denial of the third intuition is unmotivated: that ifmoral judgments are expressions of desires then this is sufficient for there to be anecessary connection between making a moral judgment and being motivated to

9 For example, Frankena (1958), Foot (1972), Scanlon (1982), Railton (1986), Brink(1989), Copp (1997) and Shafer-Landau (2003).

10 For example, Ayer (1936), Hare (1952), Mackie (1977), Blackburn (1984) andGibbard (1990).

11 For example, Nagel (1970), McDowell (1978), Platts (1979), McNaughton (1988),Darwall (1983), Dancy (1993), Scanlon (1998) and Schafer-Landau (2003).

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act. There is then no reason to deny the Humean psychological view in thiscontext. So MN seems to be presupposed by all sides in this key debate inmeta-ethics.

The analogous debate in practical reasoning presupposes MN in a similar way.Indeed, moral judgments are sometimes taken to be just particular examples ofjudgments about what reasons to act you have.12 For example, an Internalist aboutpractical reason judgments will typically claim that judging that you have reasonto act in a particular way entails being motivated to act in that way, whereas anExternalist will typically deny this and claim that whether or not you are motivatedto act in accordance with your judgment depends on whether you have, in addition,desires to act in that way. That debate intersects with one between Expressivistsabout practical reason judgments, who say that such judgments are expressions ofapproval of acting in a certain way, or of desires to act in that way, and so on, andDescriptivists, who say that practical reason judgments are expressions of beliefsabout what reasons one has. Again, these debates presuppose MN in an analogousway to the debates in meta-ethics.

Finally, consider the debate between different pretence accounts of fiction andour responses to fictions in aesthetics and in philosophy of language. Some views,such as the view of Nichols and Stich (2003), claim that an individual’s reactionto fictions can be explained in terms of her having genuine beliefs and desires, forexample beliefs about how people tend to act in the fictional situations and desiresto act in similar ways. In contrast, other views, such as those of Currie andRavenscroft (2002) and Velleman (2000), claim that responses to fiction can beexplained in terms of her having merely belief-like and desire-like attitudestowards and about the fictions. One of the arguments often given against the firstkind of view appeals to the fact that people tend not to be motivated to act inresponse to fictions in the same ways as they would be motivated to act in similarreal situations. Someone watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers is typically notmotivated to actually run away or to call the police. The presumption seems to bethat if the individual had a genuine desire when responding to a fiction then shewould be motivated to act. As she is not motivated to act she can have only adesire-like attitude that differs from a genuine desire in that it does not entail beingmotivated to act in accordance with it. In response, those who favour the first kindof account attempt to explain away the apparent lack of motivation to act in termsof the individual’s other desires, say her desire not to be embarrassed or her desireto act like others in the cinema. They claim that these other desires conflict with

12 See, for example, Rosati (2006), who says, ‘Moral motivation is an instance of a moregeneral phenomenon – what we might call normative motivation – for our other normativejudgments also typically have some motivating force. When we make the normative judgmentthat something is good for us, or that we have a reason to act in a particular way, or that a specificcourse of action is the rational course, we also tend to be moved.’ See also Smith (1994, 61–62).



and outweigh her motivation to act in response to the fiction. They do not deny thathaving a desire to act in response to the fiction would motivate her to act accord-ingly. Hence, it seems to be presupposed in this debate that having a desire entailsbeing motivated to act, which is just what is claimed by MN.

So MN has widespread significance. It is presupposed by a number of livelyand important debates in various areas of philosophy. It is a significant matterwhether or not it is true and we should take seriously any challenges to it. On theother hand, the widespread presumption of MN and its prima facie plausibility inlight of experience places the burden of proof on someone who is trying tochallenge it.

Self-passive desires13

According to MN, if S desires that p then S is disposed to act in ways that Sbelieves will bring about p. There are at least two ways in which an opponentmight attempt to provide a counter-example to MN. First, she might try to describea particular agent that has a desire of any kind but is not disposed to act. This is thekind of case Galen Strawson attempts to provide with his example of the WeatherWatchers in his (1994) Mental Reality. Of course, a complete defence of MN mustrespond to cases like the Weather Watchers, but they are not my concern in thispaper.

Alternatively, an opponent might try to describe a particular kind of desire suchthat if any agent has this kind of desire she will not thereby be disposed to act inways that she believes will bring about what she desires. What I call ‘self-passive’desires are putatively a counter-example of this kind: because of the particular kindof object of these desires it seems as though someone who has a self-passive desirewill not thereby be disposed to act in ways that she believes will bring about whatshe desires.14 Timothy Schroeder describes the objects of this kind of desire as

ends that the agent hopes to obtain but that the agent would not be willing, under anycircumstances, to cause to obtain. Suppose I desire that a committee make up itsmind in my favour without my intervention. This is a state of affairs I might wantvery much, yet because of the very nature of the desire it makes no sense to try to actso as to satisfy it. What I want is that the committee make a certain decision withoutmy needing to do anything (Schroeder 2004, 17).

13 Thanks to Daniel Friedrich for extensive discussion about this kind of case.14 Note that self-passive desires present a putative counter-example in a different way

from Strawson’s Weather Watchers. We can see this in terms of the different responses that mustbe made in defence of MN to each kind of case. A defender of MN must deny that there can beindividuals such as the Weather Watchers, or that such individuals can have desires. In contrast,a defender of MN must deny that self-passive desires are genuinely desires, or deny that if anindividual has such a desire then she will not be disposed to act. There is not scope within a singlepaper to give proper treatment to both kinds of counter-example, so for the purposes of this paperI will focus only on the challenge raised by self-passive desires.

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Schroeder’s example is a desire that the committee choose him without hisneeding to do anything. More precisely, it is a desire that the committee choosehim and that he does not act to bring about that the committee choose him. Whyis this putatively a counter-example to MN? It seems that what Schroeder wants isthat the committee choose him. According to MN, if he desires that the committeechoose him then he is disposed to act in ways that he believes will bring about thatthe committee choose him. But it seems that when Schroeder has this desire he isnot disposed to act in any way that he believes will bring about that the committeechoose him. According to Schroeder, he cannot sensibly be disposed to act if hehas this kind of desire: if he manifested this disposition and acted in a way that hebelieved would bring about that the committee choose him then in virtue of doingso he would not get what he desires. He would not bring about that the committeechoose him without his acting in a way he believed would bring this about. So thisseems to be a desire for which S desires that p and S is not disposed to act in waysthat S believes will bring about p. If so then it is a counter-example and MN isfalse.

Moreover, this is not an isolated example.15 Of course, one counter-example issufficient to show that a theory is false, but it might seem plausible to explain awayisolated cases as aberrant or as anomalies. This is not possible here, however: wecan imagine lots of everyday situations in which someone might intelligibly havea self-passive desire. For example, Marge might desire that Bart passes his examson his own, Mr Smithers might desire that Mr Burns comes to love him for whohe is, Mrs Krabapple might desire that Principal Skinner had it in him to stand upto his mother, Homer might desire that the Springfield Isotopes win the pennant ina fair game, and so on. These are familiar and reasonable desires that someonemight have yet are all like Schroeder’s example. So self-passive desires present asignificant challenge to MN.

Defending MN

How might we respond in defence of MN? One response is to flatly deny that thecase provides what is needed for a counter-example. Schroeder describes a case inwhich he has a desire and does not act. But this does not show that he is notdisposed to act, and this is what a counter-example to MN must show. However,

15 Galen Strawson also cites this kind of desire as a counter-example to MN (Strawson1994, 287; 1998, 473). Strawson gives the example of a ‘desire that Wimple beat Ivanov fairlyand squarely, in the course of an argument that wanting something does not entail being disposedto do anything about it’ (Strawson 1998, 473). Because what Strawson wants is that Wimple winsfairly this is a self-passive desire: if he, Strawson, were to act to bring about that Wimple beatsIvanov then Wimple would not have won fairly, and thereby his desire would be frustrated. So itseems that he cannot sensibly be disposed to act in ways that he believes will bring about thatWimple wins merely in virtue of having this desire.



this line of response threatens to end in a stalemate of conflicting intuitions so Iwill not pursue it here. Grant that when Schroeder desires that the committeechoose him and he does not act to bring about that the committee choose himthat he is not disposed to act in ways that he believes will bring about that thecommittee choose him. Nonetheless, the case fails to provide a counter-example.

What must a counter-example to MN be like? According to MN, if S desiresthat p then S is disposed to act in ways S believes will bring about p. So to providea counter-example there must be a case in which S desires that p and S is notdisposed to act in ways S believes will bring about p. But Schroeder’s example isnot like this. Recall, in Schroeder’s example he has a desire that the committeechoose him and he does not act to bring about that the committee choose him,and he is not disposed to act in ways that he believes will bring about that thecommittee choose him. But MN does not claim that he will have this disposition.This is because Schroeder’s desire here is not a desire that the committee choosehim. Rather, it is a desire that the committee choose him and that he does not actto bring about that the committee choose him. What he wants is a conjunction: hewants a particular state of affairs to come about and that it does not come about ina certain set of ways. MN entails that he is disposed to act in ways that he believeswill bring about this conjunction: he is disposed to act in ways that he believes willbring about that the committee choose him and he does not act to bring about thatthe committee choose him. Schroeder says nothing about whether in this case hehas this disposition, and it is irrelevant to MN that he lacks a disposition to act inways that he believes will bring about that the committee choose him. So Schroed-er’s case is not a counter-example to MN.

We can make this response more precise: consider again his example and theexamples of other self-passive desires that I gave in the previous section. They allhave in common that the propositional object of the desire is a conjunction: theagent desires that a particular state of affairs come about and that she does not actin a way that she believes will bring about this state of affairs. We can representthem all as a desire that p and I do not act to bring about p. Call this conjunction‘q’. According to MN, if S desires that q then S is disposed to act in ways that Sbelieves will bring about q. In Schroeder’s example he has a self-passive desirethat q and he is not disposed to act in a way that he believes will bring about p. Thisis not a counter-example to MN.

Moreover, in Schroeder’s example, and in the other examples of self-passivedesires, it is plausible that each person has the disposition that MN attributes tothem. Each is disposed to act in ways that she believes will bring about q, or, moreprecisely, she is disposed to act in ways that she believes will bring about p and shedoes not act to bring about p. Consider Schroeder’s desire that the committeechoose him and he does not act to bring about that the committee choose him.As Schroeder claims, it is plausible that he is not disposed to act in ways that he

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believes will straightforwardly bring about that the committee chooses him: he isnot disposed to do things such as bribe the committee members or sabotage theother candidates for the position. But suppose he believes that if he wears a sharpsuit and prepares thoroughly for the interview then this will convince the commit-tee to choose him. In addition, suppose he believes that doing these things wouldnot constitute acting to bring about that the committee choose him: after all, evenin normal circumstances the committee might fail to choose him even if he didthese things.16 It is intelligible to take Schroeder as believing that wearing a sharpsuit and preparing thoroughly for his interview are ways that he can bring aboutthat the committee choose him and he does not act to bring about that thecommittee choose him. And if he desires that the committee choose him and hedoes not act to bring about that the committee choose him it is plausible that hewill be disposed to act in these ways: he will be disposed to wear a sharp suit andprepare thoroughly for his interview. This is just what MN predicts so the exampledoes not raise a challenge to MN.

The point generalizes: consider Marge’s desire that Bart passes his exams onhis own. It is plausible that Marge is not disposed to act in ways that she believeswill straightforwardly bring about that Bart passes his exams: she is not disposedto do things like steal the answers to the exam from Mrs Krabapple’s deskbeforehand, or bribe Mrs Krabapple to give Bart a passing score regardless of hisanswers. But suppose that Marge believes that if she encourages Bart to study inthe week before the exam and if she prepares a quiet study space for him then hewill be well enough prepared to pass his exams. In addition, suppose, as seemsreasonable, that she does not believe that doing these things would constituteacting to bring about that Bart passes his exams: after all, even in ordinarycircumstances Bart might fail his exams even if she acts in these ways. So we canplausibly understand Marge as believing that encouraging Bart to study andpreparing a quiet study space for him are ways that she can bring about that Bartpasses his exams without her acting to bring about that Bart passes his exams. Andit is plausible that Marge is disposed to act in these ways if she desires that Bartpasses his exams on his own. Again, this is just what MN predicts and we wouldfind likewise for the other examples of self-passive desires given above.

16 Is there a conflict in Schroeder’s having these two beliefs, that wearing a sharp suitand preparing for the interview will convince the committee to choose him, and that doing thesethings would not constitute acting to bring about that the committee choose him? This woulddepend on how Schroeder understood acting to bring something about, and whether he thoughtthat convincing someone to do something themselves counted as acting to bring that thing about.But even if he did have conflicting beliefs this is no problem for the response. People often haveconflicting beliefs or are confused, but this does not prevent them acting on, or being disposed toact on, those beliefs. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this point.



This generalization suggests that the reason self-passive desires fail to becounter-examples to MN is not merely a formal point about their content. But whyare self-passive desires often taken to be counter-examples to MN if, as thisgeneralization suggests, they are not? The reason is contextual. In the particularcontexts in which it is appropriate to attribute self-passive desires our attention isfocused on particular actions. When we see that the agent is not disposed toperform those particular actions we might take her to not be disposed to act at all,overlooking the fact that she is disposed to perform other actions that are relevantto the satisfaction of her desire. Hence, we reach that mistaken conclusion whichwould suggest that self-passive desires are counter-examples to MN. If a self-passive desire is a desire that p and I do not act to bring about p, call the desirethat p the corresponding ‘straightforward’ desire. In everyday contexts when weattribute a desire to someone we typically attribute a straightforward desire. Forexample, when saying that ‘Homer wants that he has a beer’, or ‘Lisa desires thatshe wins first prize at the science fair’ we are attributing a desire that p to each.However, this is somewhat misleading. A typical agent will be aware of a numberof ways in which what she wants could come about. But plausibly she would notwant the object of her desire if it were to come about in certain of those ways. Lisa,for example, would not want that she wins first prize at the science fair if this wereachieved by default, say if she is the only entrant, or if it comes about as the resultof some tragedy, say if Homer sacrificed his life to obtain the nuclear material togo into her project. In most cases when we attribute a desire that p to someonewhat we actually attribute is a desire that p provided it does not come about insuch-and-such ways. However, in everyday contexts there is no need to make thisexplicit: we tacitly assume that people are not so unscrupulous as to want everydayobjects of desire irrespective of how they might be achieved, so we tacitly excludecertain kinds of ways in which a particular agent’s desire that p might be satisfiedfrom being ways in which she would still want that p.17 When we attribute aself-passive desire to someone we are making this kind of exclusion explicit: weare highlighting that an agent wants something but that there are particular ways inwhich the agent does not want it to come about. These particular ways are thoseways that the agent believes will bring about a certain state of affairs through herown actions. But what we see by considering the particular examples of contextsin which we attribute a self-passive desire to someone is that only certain kinds ofaction are salient and are being excluded; that is, those actions that the agentbelieves will have a direct influence on the desired state of affairs coming about.In Schroeder’s case, this might be actions such as bribing the committee or

17 This suggests that people rarely, if ever, have straightforward desires. With theexception of madmen and obsessives, it is likely that an agent’s desires will always be restrictedto exclude certain ways in which they might be satisfied.

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sabotaging the other candidates. But there are plausibly a number of actions thathe might perform that are relevant to whether or not p comes about that we wouldnot consider as directly interfering to bring about p. For example, we would notconsider his wearing a sharp suit or his preparing thoroughly for the interview asdirectly interfering to bring about that the committee choose him, despite the factthat these actions might convince the committee to choose him. Of the actionsthat are causally relevant to p’s coming about, we can make a rough distinctionbetween actions that directly bring about p and actions that indirectly bring aboutp. This is an intuitive distinction but it is also one that is sensitive to context. Incontexts in which we tend to attribute self-passive desires it is those actions that webelieve directly bring about that p that are salient and that we are excluding byattributing a self-passive desire. In contrast, those actions that we take to be onlyindirectly related to bringing about p are not considered and are not ruled out.Nonetheless they are actions that we believe will bring about what we desire.According to MN, if Schroeder has this self-passive desire then he is disposed toact in ways that he believes will bring about what he wants simpliciter. So if he isdisposed to act in ways that he believes will indirectly bring about that thecommittee choose him then the case is not a counter-example to MN. But becausein the contexts in which we are considering self-passive desires we are consideringthose actions that we believe directly bring about p this tends to be overlooked andwe mistakenly think that he is not disposed to act at all.18 Close consideration ofthe examples reveals this mistake and shows that they are not counter-examples toMN.

Strengthening the case – self-passive desires and straightforward desires

If what I have argued so far is correct then everyday self-passive desires such asSchroeder’s desire that the committee choose him without his needing to do

18 Perhaps the expression ‘bring about p’ in MN also contributes to mistakenly takingself-passive desires to be counter-examples. It might initially suggest a strong relation betweenthe agent’s action and what is desired, close to determination. But self-passive desires are desiresfor which the agent will not be disposed to act in ways she believes will determine that what shewants occurs. In fact, the notion of bringing about is imprecise and need not be taken with thisstrong reading. Perhaps a more accurate expression would be ‘make more likely’, but this itselfis problematic. For instance, it raises a question about how much more probable someone mustbelieve a particular outcome is made by an action for her to plausibly take that action as relevantto the occurrence of that outcome; and it is plausible that someone who has no concept ofprobability or likelihood can nonetheless believe of some action that it will bring about aparticular outcome, etc. It is plausible that the relation between what is desired and an action thatan agent believes will bring it about is also something that is sensitive to the context and can varydepending on what is desired, the context of ascription of the desire, and so on. There is not scopeto adequately discuss in this paper how this relation might vary so I will continue to use theexpression ‘bring about p’, where this is to be understood as a placeholder for a more accurate(perhaps variable) specification of this relation. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressingme on this point.



anything are not counter-examples to MN. They are not cases in which the agentlacks a disposition to act that MN claims she will have. Indeed, in the everydayrealistic cases it is plausible that the agent will have the disposition to act that MNattributes to her: she is disposed to act in ways that she believes will bring aboutp and I do not act to bring about p if she has any such beliefs. But might theexample given by Schroeder be strengthened so that it does provide a counter-example? There are at least two ways in which someone might try to do this: (i) thecase could be one in which someone has both a self-passive desire that p and I donot act to bring about p and a straightforward desire that p, (ii) the case could beone in which someone desires that p and I do not act to bring about p and is notdisposed to act in ways that they believe will bring about p and I do not act to bringabout p. However, as I will argue in the remainder of the paper, neither of theseways of strengthening the case is successful.

Consider the first way of strengthening the case. As discussed in the previoussection, in Schroeder’s original case in which he self-passively desires that p andI do not act to bring about p it seems that he is not disposed to act in those waysthat he believes will bring about p. But consider Schroeder*, who, in addition tohaving this self-passive desire, also has the corresponding straightforward desirethat p. So Schroeder* has a desire that p and I do not act to bring about p and adistinct desire that p. It seems empirically possible that someone could have sucha combination of desires.19 According to MN, if Schroeder* desires that p and hedesires that p and he does not act to bring about p then he is disposed to act inways that he believes will bring about p and he is disposed to act in ways that hebelieves will bring about p and he does not act to bring about p. But if Schroeder*is like Schroder in terms of not being disposed to act in ways that he believes willbring about p when he has a self-passive desire that p and I do not act to bringabout p then this is a counter-example to MN: it is a case in which S desires that

19 More strongly, we might think that having a desire that p and I do not bring about thatp entails having a desire that p. If we think that desire is like belief in that it distributes overconjunction then this would be the case. It is commonly assumed that believing that p and qentails believing that p and believing that q. If desire similarly distributes over conjunction thendesiring that p and I do not bring about p would entail desiring that p and desiring that I do notbring about p. However, in fact, desire does not distribute in this way. It is possible to desire acomplex state of affairs without desiring the components of that state independently. Consider anelderly man’s desire that he retire and spend more time with his wife. We can imagine that if hiswife were to die suddenly, or if they were to separate, then he would not want to retire. So hisdesire for the conjunctive state of affairs does not entail that he has an independent desire for atleast one of the conjuncts simpliciter. Perhaps what this case suggests is that in many cases wherewe describe the object of a desire as a conjunction the conjuncts are not genuinely independent:a desire for one conjunct without the other would not be a desire for an aspect of the conjunctivestate but rather for something slightly different (and note that a desire that p and I do not act tobring about p is plausibly like this). But even if this is the case, it shows that desire cannot beassumed to distribute over conjunction in all cases that we naturally describe as desires forconjunctive states of affairs.

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p but is not disposed to act in ways that S believes will bring about p. If thiscombination of desires and dispositions to act is possible then MN is false.

In fact, we have no reason to think that this combination is possible. Schroeder’soriginal example shows that if he desires that p and he does not act to bring aboutp then he is not thereby disposed to act in ways that he believes will bring about p.However, it does not show that he cannot have this disposition. It only shows thathaving that self-passive desire does not entail having the disposition. The originalexample is silent about how he might be disposed to act in virtue of any of his otherdesires. So there is no reason to think that Schroeder*, who desires that p, will notbe disposed to act in ways that he believes will bring about p in virtue of having thisstraightforward desire and so as to be consistent with MN. Of course, this does notmean that Schroeder* will act differently from Schroeder in most situations. HowSchroeder* acts in a particular situation will depend on the relative strengths of hisself-passive desire and his straightforward desire as well as on his beliefs about thelikelihood of success of acting in the ways each disposes him to act. It is a commonassumption in philosophy of action that the relative strength of an agent’s desiresshould be understood in terms of which desire she will act on if she acts on any.20

Davidson, for example, takes it as almost a platitude that ‘if an agent wants to dox more than he wants to do y and he believes himself free to do either x or y, thenhe will do x if he does either x or y intentionally’ (Davidson 1969, 23). So ifSchroeder*’s self-passive desire is stronger than his straightforward desire and hebelieves that the likelihood of satisfying his self-passive desire is the same as orbetter than the likelihood of satisfying his straightforward desire then in mostsituations in which there is an opportunity to act on their respective desires bothSchroeder* and Schroeder will act in the same way: each will act in ways thatmanifest his disposition to act to bring about p and I do not act to bring about p,the disposition each has in virtue of his self-passive desire. On the other hand, ifSchroeder*’s straightforward desire is stronger than his self-passive desire and hebelieves that the likelihood of satisfying his straightforward desire is the same as orbetter than the likelihood of satisfying his self-passive desire then in many situa-tions in which there is an opportunity to act on their respective desires we would seeSchroeder* and Schroeder acting differently. Whereas Schroeder will manifest hisdisposition to act in ways that he believes will bring about p and I do not act to bringabout p, doing things such as wearing a sharp suit, Schroeder* will manifest hisdisposition to act in ways that he believes will directly bring about p, doing thingssuch as attempting to bribe the committee.

20 See, for example, Mele (1987), Davidson (1969), Watson (1975), Tenenbaum (1999)for discussion. Indeed, some take such a relation between strength of desire and disposition to actas analytic [see, for example, Wiggins (1987), although Wiggins does not obviously endorse it].For a contrasting view see, for example, Gert (2005).



In this latter kind of case we can see that Schroeder* is disposed to act in waysthat he believes will bring about p, as MN predicts. But even in the former cases,in which Schroeder*’s actions are the same as those of Schroeder, this does notshow that Schroeder* is not disposed to act in ways that he believes will bringabout p. Rather, Schroeder* does have this disposition but it is overriden by hisdisposition to act in ways that he believes will bring about p and he does not actto bring about p in most circumstances where the ways in which the dispositionsmanifest in action are incompatible.21 In these cases, what we might expect is thatin some circumstances, perhaps only extraordinary circumstances if Schroeder*’sself-passive desire is much stronger than his straightforward desire, Schroeder*would act in ways that he believes will directly bring about p. If that is correct thenwe can attribute Schroeder* with a disposition to act in ways that he believes willbring about p.22 So the fact that someone like Schroeder* can have a self-passivedesire and a corresponding straightforward desire at the same time does notprovide a counter-example to MN.

Strengthening the case – pure cases

Now consider the second way in which the example could be strengthened.I argued that although in the everyday realistic cases such as Schroeder’s we

21 Can an agent be disposed to act in incompatible ways as this response requires? Notethat it is not being claimed that the agent has both conflicting dispositions in virtue of having asingle mental state. Rather, it is claimed that it is in virtue of having different mental states thatshe is disposed to act in conflicting ways. In virtue of having a desire that p Schroeder* isdisposed to act in ways he believes will bring about p. And in virtue of having a desire that p andhe does not act to bring about p he is disposed to act in ways he believes will bring about that pand he does not act to bring about p. The fact that these ways in which he is disposed to act invirtue of having his different desires might be incompatible should not be puzzling as we arefamiliar with how someone can have conflicting dispositions in virtue of her different charac-teristics. For example, someone might both be afraid of spiders, disposing her to run when shesees a spider, and embarrassed by her fear of spiders, disposing her to resist running in the samesituation. How she actually acts in a particular case will depend on the relative strengths of thesedispositions, something that might be influenced by dispositions she has as a result of otherbeliefs, desires, and so on. Merely because one disposition does not manifest on a particularoccasion is no reason to deny that she is so disposed. Something similar is going on inSchroeder*’s complex case here, so there is no problem with this line of response.

22 One way of deciding this is by considering alternative, perhaps remote, possibleworlds. That is, we consider some alternative scenario in which circumstances afford Schroeder*the opportunity to act on his desire that p but not on his desire that p and he does not act to bringabout that p (say if he believes that acting on his self-passive desire will be ineffective whereasacting on his straightforward desire will successfully bring about p) and then deciding whetherhe would act. Of course, this is only a rough suggestion, but this is a general problem for anyonewho thinks that it is possible to have, at the same time, dispositions that can manifest inincompatible ways. It is not a problem specific to desires, and it is not a problem specific to theconnection between desires and dispositions to act. So I will not attempt to explore this furtherhere.

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describe the agent’s desire as a desire that p and I do not act to bring about p it ismore accurately described as a desire that p and I do not act to directly bring aboutp. Because of contextual factors we neglect to consider the indirect ways that theagent can bring about p and overlook the fact that she is disposed to act in suchways. Hence, we mistakenly think that she is not disposed to act at all. But is itpossible to have what might be called ‘pure’ self-passive desires?23 A pure self-passive desire would be something such as a desire that p and I do not have anycausal influence on bringing about p.24 Realistic examples of pure self-passivedesires are harder to imagine but perhaps someone could have a desire such as adesire that the committee choose him and he has no influence on their decision, ora desire that something happens outside his light-cone (where grasping the idea ofa light-cone requires understanding that one cannot influence things outside it), ora desire that he receive something entirely by accident.25 Suppose that Schroeder#desires that the committee choose him and he has no influence on their decision.As in the original case it is plausible that Schroeder# is not disposed to act in waysthat he believes will directly bring about that the committee choose him: if he wereto act as a result of such a disposition then it would not bring about what he wants.But unlike in the original case, it is not plausible that Schroeder# is disposed to actin ways that he believes will indirectly bring about that the committee choose him,say that causally increase the likelihood that the committee choose him. If he wereto act in such ways then he would be acting in ways that he believes will influencethe committee, thereby failing to achieve what it is he desires. So it seems thatSchroeder# is not disposed to act in virtue of having his pure self-passive desire,in which case this is a counter-example to MN.

How might we respond to cases of pure self-passive desires in defence of MN?One response is to deny that such cases are possible. Although the originaleveryday self-passive desires seem like common and reasonable desires it is moredifficult to imagine examples of pure self-passive desires. We might reasonablydoubt whether there are any realistic cases. Or perhaps we could argue that theseare not desires at all but rather are hopes or wishes. I will not pursue this kind ofresponse here. Grant that there can be pure self-passive desires. Nonetheless, theyfail to provide a counter-example to MN.

23 Thanks to David Braddon-Mitchell for this term.24 Perhaps Schroeder intended his original example to be understood as such a pure

self-passive desire. Even if that is the case this would not make the preceding discussion ofeveryday cases redundant. The everyday cases are often taken as raising a problem for MN, andthis discussion, if successful, at the least shows that they do not do so and that potentialcounter-examples have to be sought in more extreme cases. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer forbringing this to my attention.

25 Thanks to David Braddon-Mitchell for suggesting the first example and to TimothySchroeder for suggesting the second and third examples.



Recall, according to MN if someone has a desire then she has a disposition toact in particular ways. The ways in which she is disposed to act in virtue of havinga particular desire will be conditioned by her beliefs about actions that will satisfyher desire. So if she believes that by doing A she can satisfy her desire thenaccording to MN she is disposed to do A in virtue of having this desire. However,for her to have any particular disposition to act she must have some belief about away of acting that will satisfy her desire. Recall the earlier discussion about howwe can understand a disposition to act in ways an agent believes will bring aboutp in terms of her actually acting if such-and-such conditions obtain, where thesemanifestation conditions plausibly include that she believes of some action A thatit is a way of bringing about p. A paraphrase of this would be to include this beliefcondition as part of the antecedent of MN. Although it is not explicit as MN isstated above, we can understand the antecedent of MN as containing both a desirecondition and a belief condition; that is, as claiming that if someone desires that pand believes that A is a way of bringing about p then she is disposed to do A.Making this explicit reveals why pure self-passive desires are not a counter-example to MN. In cases of pure self-passive desires the agent will typically lackany beliefs about ways of acting that will bring about what she desires. Becausewhat she desires is that p and she does not have any causal influence on bringingabout p she will typically lack any beliefs that by doing A she can bring about thatp and she does not have any causal influence on bringing about p. To have sucha belief she would have to believe that there was a way that she could act to bringsomething about without causally influencing it. A typical rational agent whounderstands what it is to act will not have such a belief. So if someone has a pureself-passive desire she will typically not satisfy the belief condition in the ante-cedent of MN. Hence, even if she does not have a particular disposition to act, sothe consequent is false, this does not provide a counter-example to MN.

Does this make MN vacuously true in these cases? In fact it does not. MNentails that if someone has a desire and an appropriate belief then she is disposedto act in accordance with that belief. So even if an agent, such as those with pureself-passive desires, lacks any appropriate beliefs, MN entails that she is such thatif she comes to have such a belief then she will be disposed to act in the particularways specified by her belief. This is a substantial claim: if we think that having adisposition is not merely a matter of what would happen in certain counter-factualsituations but is a matter of being in a certain state, or having a certain categoricalbasis (as discussed above), then MN claims that having a desire entails having acertain categorical basis. Furthermore, if we imagine situations in which the beliefcondition is satisfied for someone who has a pure self-passive desire then it isplausible that she will be disposed to act as MN claims. Suppose that Schroeder#comes to believe that praying to God to bring something about does not constitutehaving an influence on whether or not it comes about. And suppose he believes that

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by praying to God to bring about that the committee choose him he can bring aboutthat the committee choose him without his having any influence on the commit-tee’s choosing him. It is plausible that he will be disposed to pray to God to bringabout that the committee choose him. This is just what MN predicts so, as witheveryday self-passive desires, if we consider the case closely we can see that pureself-passive desires are not a counter-example.

Note that this response need not appeal to counterfactual situations or possibleworlds in which the agent is so different from how she is in the actual world thatwe might doubt whether she is the same agent. If that were the case then we mightdoubt whether dispositions we attribute to her on the basis of considering suchdistant possible worlds are true of her in the actual world. But this is not a problem:we do not have to suppose, for example, that the agent becomes so irrational thatwe no longer recognize her as the rational agent in the actual world who has a pureself-passive desire. A typical agent does not have to become completely irrationalin order for her to have an irrational belief: she might be only partly irrational, withrespect to certain subject matter, or she might be momentarily confused, or, likeSchroeder#, she might simply have some false belief about agency and influence,and so on. So there is no reason to deny that a typical agent can be such that shecan come to have a, perhaps irrational, belief such as a belief that by doing A shecan bring about that p and she has no causal influence on bringing about p. Andthen there is no reason to deny that if she had such a belief and had an appropriatepure self-passive desire she would be disposed to do A.

In fact, the strangeness of pure self-passive desires offers another way ofresisting the challenge to MN. As mentioned above, unlike the everyday self-passive desires discussed earlier in the paper, pure self-passive desires are uncom-mon if there are any at all. It is instructive to consider the kind of situation in whichsomeone might realistically have a pure self-passive desire. Whereas Schroeder’severyday self-passive desire that the committee choose him and he does not act tobring about that the committee choose him seems reasonable, Schroeder#’s pureself-passive desire that the committee choose him and he has no causal influenceon bringing about that they choose him seems extreme. Why might Schroeder#have such an extreme desire? One reason someone might sensibly have such adesire is if she believed that she was the kind of person who is likely to interferein things that she believed that she should not interfere in.26 Perhaps Schroeder#has such a belief. For example, he might believe that he is likely to act in deviousways to bring about what he wants and has trouble restraining himself. Butsuppose he also disapproves of this characteristic and he believes that it is wrongfor him to act in such ways. In that case it would be reasonable for him to have thispure self-passive desire that the committee choose him and he has no causal

26 Thanks to David Braddon-Mitchell for suggesting this line of response.



influence on bringing about that the committee choose him. But in that case it isplausible that Schroeder# is disposed to act in certain ways: he is disposed to actin those ways that he believes will prevent him from interfering in the committee’sdecision. For example, he might be disposed to make himself very busy during thetime he believes that the committee are having their meeting, or disposed to leavethe room whenever he hears someone talking about the committee’s decision incase he finds out who is on the committee and be tempted to try to meet andinfluence them. In which case Schroeder# is disposed to try to satisfy his pureself-passive desire as MN predicts.

As in the case of everyday self-passive desires discussed above, this suggeststhe importance of considering the context in which we attribute these desires whenassessing their implications. In the case of Schroeder#, for example, we attributea pure self-passive desire to him because we are aware of his tendency forinterference and his disapproval of such interference. Because of this disapprovalit is plausible that he is disposed to act in particular ways in virtue of having hispure self-passive desire. But in these contexts the actions that are salient are thoseactions believed to bring about the first conjunct of his desire, that the committeechoose him. In contrast, the actions that Schroeder# is disposed to perform aredirected more towards satisfying the second, non-interference, conjunct of hisdesire. Hence we might tend to overlook them and think that he is not disposed toact at all. But study of the details of the particular cases suggests that this is amistake. So, for similar reasons to in the original examples, we see that pureself-passive desires are not a counter-example to MN.

Conclusion

MN, the view that having a desire that p entails being disposed to act in ways thatyou believe will bring about p, is a widespread and influential view. Thereforewhether or not it is true is an important matter. I have defended MN against arecently offered counter-example, self-passive desires. These are desires thatsomething come about without your bringing it about through your own actions.By paying close attention to the details of the counter-examples, the content ofself-passive desires, and what is claimed by MN I argued that these cases are notcounter-examples at all, but rather that MN makes the right predictions aboutthem. I argued that this was so even if the cases were strengthened in various wayseither by making the content of the desire more extreme as with pure self-passivedesires, or by considering complex cases in which an agent has a self-passivedesire as well as a straightforward desire. Such close consideration also suggestsa diagnosis of why these cases seem to be counter-examples: that is, the particular,perhaps extreme, circumstances in which we attribute these desires are circum-stances in which only certain kinds of action are salient. Although the agent is not

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disposed to act in these salient ways this makes us overlook other ways in whichshe is disposed to act. So we mistakenly think that she is not disposed to act at all.But close attention to particular cases highlights this mistake and shows thatself-passive desires are not a counter-example to MN.

In defending MN I have been explicit that I was only defending a necessarycondition for having a desire: I was not trying to provide a sufficient condition fordesiring that p. And I will not try to do so here. Although it might not be anintractable problem to do so, the literature on desire suggests how difficult thisquestion is to answer, showing a succession of attempts to specify such conditions.For instance, it has been argued by a number of people that having a desire consistsin having the kind of disposition to act described by MN (see, for example,Ryle 1949; Stalnaker 1984), or that it consists in being disposed to experiencepleasure if the agent has certain beliefs about the object of desire (see, for example,Mill 1863; Kim 1998; Fehige 2001), or that it consists in making a certain kind ofpositive evaluation of the object of desire (see, for example, Stampe 1987; Oddie2005), or, in a more recent proposal, that having a desire consists in the object ofdesire being a reward for the agent, where this is understood in terms of it havingeffects by conditioning or reinforcement learning on her (see, for example, Dretske1988; Schroeder 2004). The fact that further attempts to answer the question areongoing, and that none of the proposals so far seems convincing, suggests thedifficulty of giving sufficient conditions for having a desire. Perhaps this shouldnot be surprising if we take into account the variety and complexity of the relationsthat desires enter into: as these proposals and the discussion earlier suggest, desiresare involved in motivation, pleasure, evaluation, learning, moral and aestheticjudgment, drawing certain inferences in practical reasoning (see Millgram 1997),and so on. Given this complexity it is plausible that desires are, or are entailed byhaving, multi-track dispositions, as claimed by Smith (1998), which involve anumber of these relations. If what I have argued here is correct then among suchcollections of dispositions are dispositions to act.27

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27 I wish to thank David Braddon-Mitchell, Michael Brady, Daniel Friedrich, BrianGarrett, Timothy Schroeder and Daniel Stoljar, among others, for helpful suggestions anddiscussions about these issues and their comments on earlier versions of the paper. I am alsograteful for the comments of a number of anonymous reviewers.



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Are There Passive Desires?

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