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Are Desires Beliefs about Normative Reasons?
Author(s) -
Archer Avery
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
analytic philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2153-960X
pISSN - 2153-9596
DOI - 10.1111/phib.12169
Subject(s) - normative , george (robot) , citation , computer science , library science , philosophy , epistemology , artificial intelligence
There has been an ongoing debate about whether desires are beliefs. Call the claim that they are the desire-as-belief thesis (DAB). This paper sets out to impugn the two versions of DAB that have enjoyed the most support in the philosophical literature: the guise of the good and the guise of reasons accounts. According to the guise of the good version of DAB, the desire to j is identical to the belief that j is good. According to the guise of reasons version of DAB, the desire to j is identical to the belief that one has a normative reason to j. My paper presents a pair of objections to DAB: the first specifically targets the guise of reasons account defended by Alex Gregory, while the second aims to undermine DAB more generally.