Abstract
This paper develops a novel puzzle about desire consisting of three independently plausible but jointly inconsistent propositions: (1) all desires are dispositional states, (2) we have privileged access to some of our desires, and (3) we do not have privileged access to any dispositional state. Proponents of the view that all desires are dispositional states might think the most promising way out of this puzzle is to deny (3). I argue, however, that such attempts fail because the most plausible accounts of self-knowledge of desires do not explain how we possess privileged access to dispositional desires. I conclude by offering what I take to be a more promising solution to the puzzle, one that involves the rejection of (1) on the grounds that some desires possess phenomenology.
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Notes
I am unaware of anyone in the literature who has explicitly developed and discussed this puzzle. The closest analogy to it can be found in the work of Boghossian (1989), where the latter raises a problem for the compatibility of privileged access and content externalism. Briefly put, Boghossian’s concern is that insofar as the content of thought is individuated externally, this poses a threat to our alleged privileged access to contentful states. Boghossian argues that content externalism and privileged access are indeed incompatible since we cannot have privileged access to relational properties. The puzzle I am interested in is not couched in terms of content, but rather in terms of dispositional analyses of desire, analyses that can be coupled with internalist accounts of content.
Schroeder (2004; p. 11).
Ibid (p. 27).
For instance, one might think that T.M. Scanlon’s (1998) attention-based understanding of desire is also strictly dispositional in nature. Roughly, Scanlon’s view can be understood as follows: For S to desire p is for the thought of p to keep occurring to the organism in a favorable light, so that its attention is directed insistently toward considerations that present themselves as counting in favor of p. One might reasonably interpret this as the agent being disposed to think of P in a favorable light. I should note that Scanlon himself shies away from the claim that all desires are to be understood along attention-based lines.
I want to stress here that my claim is only that SDD is the prevailing view of the metaphysics of desire. I do not mean to suggest that there are no non-strictly dispositional accounts of desire. However, such accounts are clearly minority views. I offer the broad contours of a non-strictly dispositional account of desire in the conclusion of this paper.
Schwitzgebel might follow Ryle (1949) in holding that what it is for S to instantiate a dispositional property is merely for a certain complex counterfactual to be true of S. But if one rejects this view in favor of what is sometimes called a realist account of these properties, one can still think, as Mumford (1998) and others do, that S instantiating a dispositional property entails that a certain counterfactual is true of S. Most metaphysicians who work on dispositions, at the very least, think that dispositional properties entail certain complex counterfactuals.
See Moran (2001) for a similar way of characterizing privileged access. Byrne (2005, 2011b) calls (a) privileged access and (b) peculiar access. He, however, notes that a number of philosophers are comfortable construing the former as the conjunction of (a) and (b), which is the way I have construed it above. Alston (1971) provides a nice overview of various ways of understanding privileged access.
I stress the qualified nature of this claim. I certainly think more needs to be said in defense of (2) before we embrace the view that this part of the puzzle is true. This is all the more the case given that a growing number of philosophers think we either lack privileged access to any mental state or, less radically, that the scope of such access is much more limited than has previously been thought. See Medina (2006), Schwitzgebel (2008) and Carruthers (2005, 2011) for some recent defenses of this type of skepticism.
Gertler (2011a; p. 73).
Michael Smith has indicated to me that he would deny (3).
See Gertler (2001), Chalmers (2003), Horgan and Kriegel (2007) and Balog (2012) for contemporary acquaintance theorists who posit a constitutive relationship between first-order mental states and second-order judgments about those mental states. See Gertler (2012) for a nice overview of the acquaintance approach to self-knowledge.
It bears mentioning here that most acquaintance theorists think we can only be acquainted with objects for which there is no appearance/reality distinction. Occurrent sensations are prime candidates for states for which there is no appearance/reality distinction because the appearance, ostensibly, just is the reality. Dispositional states on the other hand are states for which there is an appearance/reality distinction.
Carruthers (2005) is also sympathetic with the view that inner sense accounts of self-knowledge cannot afford us with uniquely first-personal knowledge for similar reasons. That being said, he is also skeptical that any “observational” account of self-knowledge can explain privileged access to dispositional states.
It is not clear whether Lawlor thinks we have uniquely first-personal, highly epistemically secure knowledge via causal self-interpretation, as opposed to such a process affording us with knowledgesimpliciter of our dispositional desires. This is because Lawlor couches her discussion in terms of knowledge not privileged access. Other philosophers have suggested a similar way by which we can know our desires (as opposed to having privileged access to them) including Ashwell (2013). And it should be mentioned that a similar line of thought has been used to defend the view that we know our dispositional beliefs in this manner as well. See Silins (2012) for a defense of this latter view. One philosopher who I think is unsympathetic with the view that causal self-interpretation affords us with privileged access to our desires is Cassam (2014).
For most action-based theorists of desire, the essential manifestation of desire would be action, or more broadly, behavior. Non-essential manifestations would ostensibly include internal promptings such as taking pleasure in the thought that P, etc. But some action-based theorists might think of the essential manifestation of desire as a phenomenal state that motivates action. See below for a development of this view.
Note that if one didn’t think this was possible, then one should, it seems, embrace some version of the hedonic theory of desire discussed above.
It might be objected that in focusing on only one type of internal prompting, I am presenting a misleading view of Lawlor’s position. After all the latter claims that we can, in principle, have access to a number of different internal promptings, and that therefore our evidential base for inferring that we have a given dispositional desire would be much more robust than I am making it out to be. However, I think the same question I posed above concerning hedonic internal manifestations can be raised about these other non-essential manifestations as well.
If one is, however, sympathetic with the view that we do have privileged access to our dispositional desires via such awkward inferences, the point I make in the next paragraph, I believe, suffices to put to rest the claim that a strict dispositionalist sympathetic with AD can vindicate the latter by appeal to such inferences.
I should also mention here that I am not convinced we do have privileged access to our dispositional desires on the basis of making inferences from PM-states. I am not convinced we do because I think it’s possible that we can, with some regularity, token PM-states without those states being either: (i) caused by dispositional desires or (ii) engendering dispositional desires. If this is the case, then our inferences from PM-states back to an underlying dispositional desire might not be highly reliable. That being said, I don’t need to defend the controversial claim that we lack privileged access to our dispositional desires via such inferences in order to advance my argument against strict dispositionalist defenses of AD. See Gertler (2011b) for skepticism concerning the view that we have privileged access to our dispositional beliefs via a similar type of inference.
I thank an anonymous reviewer of this paper for encouraging me to consider how strict dispositionalist theorists of color properties would explain our knowledge of the latter as a possible analogue to the way in which an SDD-ist might explain our privileged access to dispositional desires.
Merely “possible” because, as noted above, what we take to be non-essential manifestations of an underlying dispositional desire might very well not be.
It should, I hope, be clear at this point that I don’t think the problem with an SDD-ist invoking causal self-interpretation in defense of AD is that when a dispositional desire manifests itself it is not longer dispositional in nature. The problem is rather that in order to have highly reliable knowledge of our dispositional desires on the basis of our inner manifestations, it seems that we are going to need to make inferences from states that are occurrent desires. Non-essential internal manifestations of a desire are not going to afford us with highly reliable inferential knowledge.
One might object to the above discussion by claiming that the inferential processes described above for how we might come to know that our internal manifestations are caused by dispositional desires are over-intellectualized. Instead, one might contend that we are simply hard-wired to believe that we have an underlying dispositional property in most situations in which we token particular types of non-essential internal manifestations (or, perhaps, sets of such manifestations). Of course, we would need (empirical) reasons for thinking that we are hard-wired in such a way. And it would seem, as suggested above, that there are going to be a number of instances in which we token types of states that could be internal manifestations of a particular underlying dispositional desire but aren’t. Additionally, while I won’t dwell on this point, it bears mentioning that a number of philosophers are convinced that self-knowledge of any of our mental states, not just dispositional desires, is not a result of such a brute causal process. This is one major reason why a number of philosophers reject inner sense accounts of self-knowledge. See Peacocke (1998) and Zimmerman (2004) for developments of this type of criticism of inner sense theories of self-knowledge.
It might also be maintained that in only focusing on action-based accounts of desire, my discussion of the causal-interpretation-defense of AD has been too quick. The thought here is that such a process might fare better with respect to non-action based accounts of desire. However, I think such alternative accounts of desire can be treated similarly. In short, I think that with respect to these alternative accounts, either the most direct, plausible route to possessing privileged access to dispositional desires will involve making an inference from occurrent states that, given the most plausible metaphysical views, will be occurrent desires, or a similar problem concerning how to determine in a highly reliable manner that certain states are actually the manifestations of an underlying dispositional state (in a way that is consistent with SDD), will confront the SDD-ist, AD-ist.
Byrne appears to think that what it is for x to be desirable is for x to have the type of qualities that tend to cause us to want x— properties such as being pleasant, agreeable, delectable, and goodly. See (2011b; p. 76) for this suggestion.
I take it as obvious that Byrne means for his account to be an account of knowledge of desire simpliciter as opposed to, e.g. all-things-considered desire. If the account is only meant to apply to the latter, then it is a much more limited account of self-knowledge than it at first appears to be.
See (2011b; p. 178) for this claim. Byrne thinks something similar is true in the case of the self-knowledge of our beliefs. He thinks that merely trying to conform to the following rule—BEL: If P, believe that you believe that P—leads to reliably produced beliefs about what we believe. I think it is more plausible that BEL is what Byrne calls strongly practically self-verifying, than that DES is. But while I will not argue for this claim at length here, I think that BEL, pace Byrne, is not strongly practically self-verifying either.
Byrne notes that trying to follow an epistemic rule involves believing that the consequent of that rule is true because one believes that the antecedent obtains, regardless of whether the antecedent actually does obtain. See his (2011b; p. 171) for this claim.
In what follows I focus on Byrne’s account of self-knowledge as opposed to Moran’s account because it is much easier to determine how Byrne’s account is supposed to explain privileged access to our desires than it is to determine how Moran’s view is supposed to. In fact, as O’Brien (2003) and Shoemaker (2003) point out, it is not entirely clear how Moran’s account provides an explanation of our self-knowledge of our attitudes. If one is concerned, however, that I have given Moran’s view too short shrift, I should mention that a number of the critical points I make concerning Byrne’s position vis-á-vis Access Dispositionalism will also apply, mutatis mutandis, to Moran’s account.
Belief here is being understood broadly to include both (occurrent) judgments and dispositional beliefs.
In what follows, unless otherwise noted, when I use the term desire this should be understood as shorthand for what strict-dispositionalist action-based theorists of desire such as Stalnaker and Smith think desires are.
I think this is also the case if desires are dispositions to have certain pleasurable experiences. It might not be the case if desires are dispositions to judge that something is desirable or valuable; however, examples below will call into question this particular strictly dispositional account of desire.
This case is discussed in Gertler (2011b) in the context of her criticism of Byrne’s theory of the self-knowledge of belief. It is being used here for different purposes.
It deserves mention here that the type of accidie cases Byrne discusses appear to call into doubt crude judgment-based accounts of desire—viz. the view that to desire that P is to judge or be disposed to judge that P is desirable. As Byrne’s example illustrates, it seems like desiring that P can come apart from judging or being disposed to judge that P is desirable. Byrne, for example, judges that going cycling is desirable, but it seems intuitively plausible to think he does not desire to go cycling. If this is correct, then such crude versions of judgment-based accounts of desire are untenable.
One might also object that there must be something better overall about meeting Sam as opposed to reading because if there weren’t, then I wouldn’t get out the door. I am not convinced this is the case. But if it is, note that this too causes problems for Byrne’s view because it seems like one who thought this should say something similar with respect to the cycling case above. It seems, then, that if one offering this objection is right about the Labyrinths’ case, then Byrne’s defeater doesn’t provide an adequate response to the cycling case after all. We can formulate the worry I am offering as a dilemma: either the Labyrinths’ case is a counterexample to DES Defeater, or if it isn’t, then we have good reason to believe that DES Defeater doesn’t work in the cycling case, and the latter still poses a problem for Byrne’s view. I thank Lauren Ashwell and Brie Gertler for helpful discussions concerning the Labyrinths’ case.
One might think Byrne should just stipulate that in most cases in which (a)–(c) are met, one will not follow DES and conclude that they want to \(\upvarphi \). This emendation, however, would be problematic. First, insofar as Byrne made this move, he would be conceding that there are cases in addition to the types of cases Ashwell mentions in which desirability and desiring come apart. Such cases, in sum, would, it seems, be enough to call into doubt DRT. Second, the types of cases that cause problems for Byrne’s defeater do not seem uncommon. Given this, it is not clear that in most cases in which Byrne’s conditions are met, one will respond in the way Byrne thinks they will.
Or at least embrace the conjunctive view that appearances of value and being disposed to have such appearances are desires.
The point I am making here is influenced by Robert Audi’s (1994) discussion of the distinction between dispositional beliefs and dispositions to believe. I am arguing that dispositions to have appearances of goodness are more like dispositions to believe in that the latter are not, as Audi convincingly argues, mental states at all.
An SDD-ist could embrace the view that desires just are a species of belief. Lewis (1988, 1996) criticizes such views. And while there have been responses to Lewis’s criticism (e.g. Price 1989) no one to my knowledge has offered a robust defense of the view that desires just are beliefs of some kind.
This is not to say that the manifestations of dispositional properties lack phenomenology. Consider: an agent might dispositionally believe that there is no solution to the Liar’s Paradox. A manifestation of this dispositional belief might be the agent’s judgment that the Liar’s Paradox has no solution. Some have held that a judgment of this sort has phenomenology. Searle (1992) and Silins (2012) for instance, think judgments do have phenomenology. But even if judgments possess phenomenology, dispositional beliefs themselves lack it. They lack phenomenology in the same way that the dispositional property of fragility lacks the property of sharpness that a manifestation of fragility—broken glass—possesses.
It might be thought that: (a) if there really are occurrent desires and (b) such desires are, at least in some cases, the manifestations of underlying dispositional desires, then (c) this offers us a way of explaining how we do have privileged access to some of our dispositional desires. We have such access, it might be thought, by inferring that we have a particular dispositional desire via our awareness of an occurrent desire. According to this line of thought, occurrent desires serve as a guide that enables us to have highly epistemically secure knowledge of our dispositional desires. I addressed this possibility on pages 14–15 where I noted that even if we can possess privileged access to our dispositional desires in this way, this would be a hollow victory for the strict dispositionalist. For such a defense of AD would entail the falsity of SDD. I also provided reasons in f.n. 24 for thinking that even if there are occurrent desires, it is still not obvious that we possess privileged access to our dispositional desires on the basis of inferences that rely on the fact that we have occurrent desires.
In “How to Defend the Phenomenology of Attitudes”. See Peterson (forthcoming).
Special thanks to Baron Reed, Brie Gertler, and Lauren Ashwell for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper, as well as to Sanford Goldberg, Jennifer Lackey, Fabrizio Cariani, Kyla Ebels-Duggan, Richard Fumerton, Michael Glanzberg, Ruth Chang, Eli Alshanetsky, Eric Schwitzgebel, Alex Byrne, Raff Donelson, Matt Duncan, Derek Green, Nicholas Leonard, Rebecca Mason, Carlos Pereira Di Salvo, and audience members at the 2016 Pacific APA for their insightful comments concerning issues related to this project.
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Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Baron Reed, Brie Gertler, and Lauren Ashwell for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper, as well as to Sanford Goldberg, Jennifer Lackey, Fabrizio Cariani, Kyla Ebels-Duggan, Richard Fumerton, Michael Glanzberg, Ruth Chang, Eli Alshanetsky, Eric Schwitzgebel, Alex Byrne, Raff Donelson, Matt Duncan, Derek Green, Nicholas Leonard, Rebecca Mason, Carlos Pereira Di Salvo, and audience members at the 2016 Pacific APA for their insightful comments concerning issues related to this project.
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Peterson, J. A puzzle about desire. Synthese 196, 3655–3676 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1606-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1606-6