Abstract
Delia Graff Fara (2013) maintains that many desire ascriptions underspecify the content of the relevant agent’s desire. She argues that this is inconsistent with certain initially plausible claims about desiring, desires, and desire ascriptions. This paper defends those initially plausible claims. Part of the defense hinges on metaphysical claims about the relations among desiring, desires, and contents.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Lycan (2012) presents somewhat similar arguments against standard semantic theories of desire ascriptions. Unfortunately, I do not have space to discuss Lycan’s arguments here.
Fara (2013, pp. 270–272) mentions Shier (1996) and Bach (1997), who argue that belief ascriptions underspecify their contents. Fara does not mention either Lewis (1994) or Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson (2007), but they also endorse theories of belief on which ordinary belief ascriptions do not fully specify the contents of agents’ belief-states.
For similar reasons, I also ignore views (such as Crimmins 1992) that say that attitude verbs are ternary predicates.
Desire ascriptions that contain quantifier phrases in their content clauses, such as ‘Fiona wants to catch a fish’, seem ambiguous between a notional reading and a relational reading. Many theorists attribute this apparent ambiguity to a scope ambiguity. Fara (2013) discusses hypothetical replies to her argument that appeal to such ambiguities. But I will not appeal to such ambiguities. When I discuss a desire ascription that contains a quantifier phrase, I will always have in mind a reading in which all of the quantifiers in the ascription’s infinitival phrase take maximally narrow scope.
Lycan (2012, pp. 203–204) discusses a similar principle, and (following Stampe 1986) brings up a seemingly serious problem with it. Suppose that, on Monday, I want to eat spaghetti on Tuesday, and that I will, in fact, eat spaghetti on Tuesday. The Specification Component entails (or strongly suggests) that my desire to eat spaghetti on Tuesday is already satisfied on Monday. We might avoid this consequence by revising the Specification Component to mention something about the time at which the agent has the desire and the temporal content (if any) of the relevant proposition. Fortunately, we can ignore matters of time and tense here.
In an earlier paper (Fara 2003, p. 159), Fara seemingly endorses the claim that X stands in the desiring relation to P iff X has a desire whose content entails P. This claim is inconsistent with the Content Component.
I use the term ‘event’ so that it subsumes both short-lived events, such as Fred’s desire to eat, and long-lived events, such as my long-standing desire to see the Grand Canyon.
Properties of desiring propositions (e.g., the property of desiring that Sasha exercise) are also reasonable candidates for being desires. I shall ignore them, for I think that the claim that some desires are desiring-properties raises basically the same issues for the Content Component as does the claim that some desires are desired propositions.
If the extreme view is correct, then no ordinary, reasonably short, desire ascription fully describes the complete content of any human agent’s (single, mighty, all-inclusive) desiring-event.
Plausibly, there are many more events occurring, such as an event of the ball’s spinning at exactly rate R, and an event of its spinning at a rate in the range of R ± δ, and so on. The example is modeled after one given by Davidson (1969). My arguments concerning it are inspired by Lewis’s (1986) theory of events, as are my arguments below concerning desiring-events.
Alternatively, we can imagine that Fiona is not disposed to want to catch a fish, even after reflection: imagine that when we ask her ‘Do you want to catch a fish?’ she sincerely says ‘I want to catch a meal-sized fish but I do not want to catch a fish’. This might show that Fiona does not want to catch a fish. It might also show that she is irrational (I am of two minds about whether it does). But none of this would make a difference to my criticism of (11b). (Note that I am imagining that Fiona does not want to catch a fish; I am not imagining that Fiona wants not to catch a fish. The negations in the preceding ascriptions take different scopes.)
I am focusing here on what Fara uses the phrase ‘her desire’ to (speaker-) refer to. If Fiona has more than one desire, then the phrase ‘her desire’ (in a context in which ‘her’ refers to Fiona) is semantically like an improper definite description. But Fara may nevertheless use the phrase to speaker-refer to a particular desire of Fiona’s.
References
Bach, K. (1994). Conversational impliciture. Mind and Language, 9, 124–162.
Bach, K. (1997). Do belief reports report beliefs? Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 78, 215–241.
Bach, K. (2000). Quantification, qualification, and context. Mind and Language, 15, 262–283.
Bach, K. (2001). You Don’t Say? Synthese 128, 15–44.
Bach, K. (2005). Context ex machina. In Z. G. Szabó (Ed.), Semantics vs. pragmatics (pp. 15–42). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Braddon-Mitchell, D., & Jackson, F. (2007). Philosophy of mind and cognition: an introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Braun, D. (2011). Implicating questions. Mind and Language, 26, 574–595.
Crimmins, M. (1992). Talk about beliefs. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Davidson, D. (1969). The individuation of events. In N. Rescher (Ed.), Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel, Dordrecht: Reidel (pp. 216–234). Reprinted from Essays on actions and events, pp. 265–283, by D. Davidson Ed., 1980 Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fara, D. G. (2003). Desires, scope, and tense. Philosophical Perspectives, 17, 141–163.
Fara, D. G. (2013). Specifying desires. Noûs, 47, 250–272.
Hintikka, J. (1969). Semantics for propositional attitudes. In J. Davis, et al. (Eds.), Philosophical logic (pp. 21–45). Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Lewis, D. (1986). Events. In D. Lewis (Ed.), Philosophical papers (Vol. II, pp. 241–269). New York: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. (1994). Reduction of Mind. In S. Guttenplan (Ed.), A companion to philosophy of mind (pp. 412–430). Oxford: Blackwell. Reprinted in D. Lewis, Papers in metaphysics and epistemology (pp. 291–324), 1999 Oxford: Blackwell.
Lycan, W. (2012). Desire considered as a propositional attitude. Philosophical Perspectives, 26, 201–215.
Montague, R. (1973). The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary english. In J. Hintikka, J. Moravcsik, & P. Suppes (Eds.), Approaches to Natural Language (pp. 221–242). Dordrecht: Reidel. Reprinted from Formal philosophy, pp. 247–270, by R. Thomason Ed., 1974, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Shier, D. (1996). Direct reference for the narrow minded. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 77, 225–248.
Soames, S. (2005). Why incomplete definite descriptions do not defeat Russell’s theory of descriptions. Teorema 24, (pp. 7–30). Reprinted in S. Soames, Philosophical essays (vol. 1, pp. 377–399), 2009, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Soames, S. (Ed.). (2009). The gap between meaning and assertion. In Philosophical essays (Vol. I, pp. 278–297). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Stampe, D. (1986). Defining desire. In J. Marks (Ed.), The ways of desire (pp. 149–173). Chicago: Precedent Publishing.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Delia Graff Fara, Gail Mauner, and Sarah McGrath for helpful discussions, to Kent Bach for extensive written comments on an early draft, to David Christensen for expert correspondence on principles of rational desire, and to Fabrizio Cariani for detailed written comments on a late draft.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Braun, D. Desiring, desires, and desire ascriptions. Philos Stud 172, 141–162 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0281-4
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0281-4