Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVol. LXXXIX No. 2, September 2014doi: 10.1111/phpr.12139© 2014 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LLC

Pr�ecis of In Praise of Desire

NOMY ARPALY

Brown University

TIMOTHY SCHROEDER

Ohio State University

Writing In Praise of Desire, we had two main goals. The first was to articu-late and defend a desire-centered theory of three phenomena at the core ofmoral psychology: acting for the right reasons, praiseworthy action, and vir-tue. We called this core theory “Spare Conativism” because of its focus onplain desires in moral psychology, and some of its features will come outbelow. The second goal was to show that it is possible to capture a lot ofthe richness and complexity of the motives, feelings, and thoughts of theordinary moral (and immoral) agent just by focusing on how rich and com-plex desires are in ordinary people. Unfortunately, this will be harder tosuggest in what follows; perhaps something will come across nonetheless.

In Praise of Desire begins with a discussion of the roles of Reason andAppetite (including acting for reasons) in the Introduction and chapters 1 to3. We argue that, because reasoning is a kind of (mental) action, reasoning(and so Reason) cannot be where practical reasons come from. This makessome room for theories according to which intrinsic desires (and so Appe-tite) are the sources of practical reasons. We give a complementary positiveaccount of how it is possible to act for reasons, and not merely because ofreasons, in chapter 3. We then consider the nature of Appetite (that is,intrinsic desires) in chapters 4 through 6, arguing that it has been rathermisunderstood in recent philosophy, in a way that supports a thoroughlydesire-centered moral psychology (without, admittedly, requiring one).These conclusions are then applied to developing theories of praiseworthi-ness and virtue in chapters 7 through 9 (much more on this in a moment).The book finishes with two problem cases for a desire-centered moral psy-chology in chapters 10 and 11. Rather than follow this outline in explainingthe work, it will probably be best to take things in a different order andbegin by focusing on intrinsic desires.

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Philosophy andPhenomenological Research

What is it to want something for its own sake? Contemporary moral the-orists often share Michael Smith’s view: to want something is to be in anon-cognitive state that tends to motivate one to act in a way that appears(given what one believes) likely to bring about the wanted thing (Smith1994). To want something for its own sake is, then, for this belief-sensitivemotivational tendency not to be contingent on the apparent usefulness ofthe wanted end for getting some other wanted end.

But imagine approaching intrinsic desires differently. Perhaps intrinsicdesires are just the things in us that in fact play the causal roles we stronglyassociate with paradigmatic intrinsic desires: for food and water, the wellbe-ing of a loved one, the victory of the Boston Red Sox, the experience ofgreat dance performances, the taste of peaches, the discovery of philosophi-cal truths. . . These causal roles would include, of course, the production ofbelief-sensitive impulses to act. But they would also include getting pleasurewhen it seems that what is wanted is actual, and getting displeasure when itseems that the wanted thing will not come to be. These causal roles wouldinclude the effects of our intrinsic desires on our thoughts and patterns ofattention, and perhaps also on motivated irrationality. They would includethe fact that it is hard or impossible to generate or lose a strong intrinsicdesire at will and that intrinsic desires are most commonly gained and lostslowly, over time.

It turns out that there is a unique thing in us that plays all of the roles,driven both by low-level representations (of blood sugar and salt levels,etc.) and high-level representations (of people, musical works, etc.). This isthe brain’s much discussed “reward system” (see, e.g., Holton 2009, Yaffe2013). What the reward system does, by its nature, is drive a certain formof unconscious learning (Schroeder 2004, chapter 2). But the same systemthat drives this form of unconscious learning in response to it being the casethat one is returned to homeostasis in blood sugar, or it being the case thatone’s father is well, or it being the case that the Red Sox have won, is alsowhat generates motivation to support eating, paternal health and (if one seesa way) team victory, is also what generates positive feelings when given achance to restore blood sugar or the father is well or the team wins, andgenerates negative feelings when one is food deprived or the father is notwell or the team loses. It is also what shapes some thoughts and patterns ofattention around these topics. It is a system that is slow to change, and notsubject to a person’s will. In short, it does what intrinsic desires do.

We argue that this makes it true that intrinsic desires are states of thisunconscious learning system. Intrinsic desires contingently, in us, play cer-tain causal roles in acting and feeling and cognizing. But intrinsic desirescan fail to play these roles while remaining desires, and things that are notintrinsic desires can (and, in actual people, sometimes do) play one or moreof these roles.

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Because intrinsic desires are not mere dispositions to motivationalimpulses, it is worth re-examining their roles in moral psychology, espe-cially in acting for reasons, acting in a praiseworthy manner, and being vir-tuous. Such a re-examination might take at least two different forms. Onesort would look at the criticisms made of intrinsic desires in moral psychol-ogy and rebut them, point by point. Another sort would build positive theo-ries of acting for reasons, praiseworthiness, virtue, and related topics,relying centrally on intrinsic desires, and let the positive theories speak forthemselves.

In Praise of Desire takes both forms, but leans more toward the second.We develop a thoroughly desire-centered moral psychology that coversdeliberation, acting for reasons in general and moral reasons in particular,that covers Rosalind Hursthouse’s “arational actions” (Hursthouse 1991)and the influence of alcohol, lithium, and other drugs on agency, that coversthe nature of love and care, that theorizes the relation between pleasure anddesire, that revises and (we hope) improves the account of praise- andblameworthiness in Arpaly (2003) and explains the ways in which judg-ments of moral worth are sensitive to contrast classes, that shows how aneo-Humean motivational psychology can be made consistent with Kantianand other normative theories that require side-constraints on action, thatgives a theory of virtue in general and some particular virtues, includingso-called virtues of ignorance, that explains the way that enjoying violentvideo games might or might not reflect poorly on one’s character, thatexplains how a desire-centered moral psychologist can account for the fullphenomenology of struggling against one’s baser tendencies, including mak-ing rational (at least sometimes) acts of self-denial over acts of self-indul-gence, and that shows how addicts act for bad reasons because they do notgenerally have the desires they appear to have.

In doing this (and more), we focus on “plain” intrinsic desires, that is, onintrinsic desires that an agent happens to have quite independently ofwhether these intrinsic desires are in accord with higher-order desires(Frankfurt 1988), or are the desires one judges it would be reasonable tohave (Smith 1994), or are desires that would survive reflection (Tiberius2002), or were appropriately embraced by the agent in her past (Fischer andRavizza 1998), or are otherwise massaged, managed, or mandated.

Though we do our best to build a wide-ranging moral psychology, thecore of it is simple enough to explain. According to In Praise of Desire,most of what is important in moral psychology is a matter of good will.And good will, we hold, is a plain intrinsic desire for the right or good, cor-rectly conceived.

Throughout, we do our best to be neutral about the correct normativetheory of morality, presupposing mainly that there is one, and that it is non-trivial (roughly, that it says something more than “the right action is the

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one that is right”). So we don’t offer a positive theory of the correct con-ception of the right or the good. The reader is invited to fill in her own pre-ferred theory: the maximization of happiness, or acting only in a mannerthat can be universalized, or promoting preference-satisfaction within limitsset by consent, or. . .But whatever the correct normative theory might be, itsets the correct conceptualization of the right or good, the conceptualizationfound in the person who has good will. She intrinsically desires the right orthe good so conceived: conceived of as maximized happiness, or as person-respecting, or as both preference satisfying and consistent with the consentof those involved.

A person who has good will is a person who can act for the right rea-sons. When she acts on her good will, i.e., on her intrinsic desire to maxi-mize happiness, or to act only in ways that are universalizable, or. . ., sheacts for the right reasons. That’s all that needs to happen. If she acts rightlyin so doing, she is praiseworthy. If her good will (her intrinsic desire) isstrong, then she is virtuous.

One thing to emphasize here is that In Praise of Desire follows Arpaly(2000; 2003) in arguing that the attitude on which one must act in order tobe praiseworthy (that is, good will) really needs to be an attitude directedtoward the right or good via the right concepts. In particular, one does nothave good will in virtue of intrinsically desiring to do what is right, good,or reasonable conceived of as such. Our arguments repeat and expand onthe earlier efforts of Arpaly here: characters such as Huckleberry Finn guideour reasoning. Finn, and characters like him, seem to us to show that actingfor the right reasons does not come down to being motivated by one’s ideaof the right or good conceived as such (which, as in Huck’s case, is badmotivation because his theory of the right is false) but being motivated byone’s idea of the right or good conceived as the ideal normative theorywould have it (as human freedom, or happiness, or treating everyone as anend in herself, or. . .).

Good will, so understood, is the beginning of the story but far from theend of it. Two refinements do quite a lot of work in In Praise of Desire.One is that good will can be either complete or partial. Complete good willis an intrinsic desire for all of the right or the good, just as the ideal moraltheorist would conceive it. Partial good will is an intrinsic desire for some-thing that is a pro tanto moral consideration, conceived in terms that couldreadily be seen to be such given the ideal moral theory. Thus, if the idealmoral theory has it that the right action is the one that maximizes happiness,then it would be an instance of partial good will to intrinsically desire thehappiness of one’s fellow francophones (so conceived), or to intrinsicallydesire to maximize human happiness (so conceived). These desires wouldbe for ends that are pro tanto moral reasons for action, but reasons thatmight be outweighed by other moral reasons (the happiness of beings other

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than French-speakers, or the happiness of non-human animals, in these twoexamples). Any normative theory that admits of defeasible pro tanto moralreasons will admit of partial good will.

A second refinement is that good will has its counterpart in ill will.Many of us intrinsically desire a few things (the defeats of particular peoplewe just can’t stand, power over others just for its own sake. . .) that arecredible candidates for being (transparently) instances of what is counter-moral, i.e., of what there is a pro tanto moral reason to avoid, in itself. (Noone but a cartoon villain intrinsically desires the whole of what is wrong orbad, conceived in ideal theoretical terms, surely. No one but a cartoon vil-lain wants to maximize unhappiness, or. . .). And then, more often than weact out of even partial ill will, our actions manifest a deficit of good will (ifwe would not have done as we did had we had more good will, that sug-gests our action can be said to have been done in part because we didn’tmuch care about the harm that would be done, the inequality that would begenerated, the lying that would be required. . .).

Acting for the right reasons is acting out of good will. A person who actsout of partial good will sometimes acts for the right reasons, when the protanto reason for which she acts is not outweighed by other moral consider-ations. Other times, a person who acts out of partial good will acts on a protanto reason outweighed (or overruled) by some other moral reason, andthen of course the agent does not act for the right reasons, even partially.

Acting in a praiseworthy manner is acting rightly out of good will (par-tial or complete); this follows straightforwardly from our thinking about act-ing for the right reasons, so long as one holds (as we do) that acting in apraiseworthy manner is just doing the right thing for the right reasons. Act-ing in a blameworthy manner is acting wrongly out of ill will (partial orcomplete), or out of moral indifference. And moral indifference is just adearth of good will. (Just how an action can count as one performed, inpart, out of an absence of good will is something explained by our accountof acting for reasons, back in chapter 3).

And finally, good will (either partial or complete), its prioritization overother contents one might intrinsically desire (hence an absence of indiffer-ence), and the absence of ill will (either partial or complete) are what makeup virtue, according to In Praise of Desire. To have a particular virtue is tohave either complete or (more typically) partial good will, that is, someintrinsic desire for some part of the right or good, correctly conceived. Or(in more complex cases) it will be to have priorities (relative strengths ofdesires) that correspond to what is required for complete good will, perhapsintrinsically desiring that people be happy and that one not lie, but desiringthe latter much more than the former, so that one would only have a ratio-nale for lying when many people’s fates are at stake. In other cases (morecomplex still) it will be to have cognitive attitudes that reflect one’s good

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will indirectly: for instance, to be open-minded because one’s intrinsicdesire that justice be done prevents one from leaping to biased conclusions.

Thus we arrive at Spare Conativism: theories of acting for the right rea-sons, in a praiseworthy manner, and out of virtue, all in terms of plain,ordinary intrinsic desires. There is much more than this in moral psychol-ogy, of course, but Spare Conativism is our starting point.

References

Arpaly, Nomy. 2000. “On Acting Reasonably Against One’s BestJudgment.” Ethics 110, 488–513.2003. Unprincipled Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press.

Fischer, John and Mark Ravizza. 1998. Responsibility and Control: Atheory of moral responsibility. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Frankfurt, Harry. 1988. The Importance of What We Care About. NewYork: Cambridge University Press.

Holton, Richard. 2009. Willing, Wanting, Waiting. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

Hursthouse, Rosalind. 1991. “Arational Actions.” Journal of Philosophy 88,57–68.

Schroeder, Timothy. 2004. Three Faces of Desire. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

Smith, Michael. 1994. The Moral Problem. Oxford: Blackwell.Tiberius, Valerie. 2002. “Practical Reason and the Stability Standard.”

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 5, 339–53.Yaffe, Gideon. 2013. “Are Addicts Akratic?” in Neil Levy (ed.) Addiction

and Self-Control. New York: Oxford University Press.

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