Abstract
I make a case for the thesis that no one can refrain from trying to attain the object of his or her currently strongest desire. (More precisely, I argue for this given that our domain of concern doesn’t include desires for things—such as visiting with a deceased relative or flapping one’s arms and flying—that one deems unattainable, but rather is restricted to desires for things one might deliberate about pursuing.) I arrive there by defending an argument by Peter van Inwagen for a relatively mild conclusion about the way desires limit our abilities, and by arguing that if van Inwagen’s conclusion is correct, and correct for his reasons, so is my bolder thesis. I close with replies to objections, such as the objection that it is better to take my argument as a reductio ad absurdum of van Inwagen’s than to take my conclusion seriously.
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Notes
Say I desire all of X, Y, and Z, and that I desire X more than the others. And say I am now given a choice between X or (exclusive ‘or’) Y and Z, and that I would rather have Y and Z than X alone. I intend for the claim that we always act on our strongest desire to entail that I would choose Y and Z over X.
This, for reasons to be explained, is amended from the definition at van Inwagen (1989, p. 408).
See van Inwagen (1989, p. 408). I have taken the liberty of adding the temporal component (van Inwagen leaves it tacit).
This claim had been uncontroversial until Jack Spencer (2017) argued against it recently. His paper warrants a longer discussion than would be fitting for the present paper. Here I can only record my belief that the sense of ‘able’ in which he shows that we are able to do the impossible (for, on my view, he does show it) is not the sense that is relevant in van Inwagen’s argument. Imagine that one man is examining a broken-down motorcycle when another asks him whether he is able to ride. The first man will be puzzled since there are two things the question could mean. In the in one’s power sense of ‘able’, he is of course unable to ride; but in the sense of a skill, perhaps he is. Now, the sense in which van Inwagen is claiming that we are unable to do the impossible is the former, in one’s power, sense (cf. van Inwagen 1983, pp. 10–13). I believe that if Spencer succeeds in showing that we are able to do the impossible, it is only in a sense akin to the sense of skill.
I am not certain whether the example of desire-production offered by Fischer and Ravizza is of the normal sort—like the dinner guest—or of the relevant sort. They imagine a case in which a man has a strong desire for a certain act, but produces and then acts upon a desire to refrain from it in order to prove that he can act contrary to his strongest desire (p. 433). Now, if we suppose the agent already has a desire to prove his freedom, then there is in fact opposition to his initial desire and the case is not of the relevant sort. If, on the other hand, we suppose he has no such opposing desire, then we do indeed have the relevant sort of case, but, first, experience offers no reason to think this can be done, and, secondly, there is good reason to think generating a desire to refrain from an unopposed desire is impossible, as I am about to show.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for this objection, and for suggesting the second and third examples that follow.
As noted above, however, the overall thesis of his paper is far from mild: it is that we have “precious little free will” (p. 405) if we have free will at all. Still, it is a mild claim that he makes about the influence of desires in particular—though by “mild” I by no means want to suggest obvious or uninteresting.
I beg pardon from those who have read Snow’s The Masters (from which van Inwagen takes the case of Nightingale) and who are grimacing at this anachronism.
Of course, Kant does not claim that having a desire for a particular act that duty requires is incompatible with one performing it with a good-will. For one could perform the act not on the basis of desire but rather on the basis of duty.
It might be thought that I am assuming the controversial view that reasons for action are always grounded in desires. I am not; what I have argued is consistent with, for example, John Searle’s view that a reason for action may be “prior to the desire and the ground of the desire” (2001, p. 170; italics removed). I am indeed assuming that we do not act on desire-independent reasons unless they do ground a desire. Searle seems to assume the same. Sometimes he speaks of desire-independent reasons grounding motivations (e.g., p. 171), but these terms appear to be used interchangeably.
Note that Kane rejects the thesis that one is only morally responsible for an act if one was able (at that time) to do otherwise, for he thinks one may be responsible for an unfree act in virtue of earlier character-forming decisions that were free. See, e.g., Kane (1996, p. 72).
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Acknowledgements
My thanks to Jeremy Dickinson, John Martin Fischer, Dan Korman, Corey McGrath, Aaron Zimmerman, and three anonymous referees for very helpful suggestions or discussion.
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Looper, B. Free Will and Desire. Erkenn 85, 1347–1360 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-0080-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-0080-y