Timothy Schroeder

Desires move us to action, give us urges, incline us to joy at their satisfaction, and incline us to sorrow at their frustration. Naturalistic work on desire has focused on distinguishing which of these phenomena are part of the nature of desire, and which are merely normal consequences of desiring. Three main answers have been proposed. The first holds that the central necessary fact about desires is that they lead to action. The second makes pleasure the essence of desire. And the third holds that the central necessary fact about desires is that they open us to reward-based learning.

Imagine you are looking at a cat and make the following inference: That cat sneezed; That cat is missing an ear; thus There exists a sneezing cat missing an ear. Such an inference is valid only if there is no equivocation on the term “that cat.” If “that cat” in refers to Puss, but in refers to Midnight, then the inference is invalid. This much is elementary. Now imagine that Puss is the cat in front of you when you think, but that a nefarious semanticist quickly substitutes similar-looking Midnight for Puss, so that when you think, the cat in front of you is Midnight, though you believe it is Puss. If it is true that the switch changes the meaning of the term “that cat” from Puss to Midnight, then your inference is invalid although this fact is hidden from you. Two questions are then raised. Do we ever really know that our inferences are valid, given the uncertainty of apparent coreference? And, is it ever reasonable to think that our inferences are valid, given this uncertainty? Lawlor’s answers are “no” and “yes,” respectively.

This paper considers the hedonic aspect of emotions: the fact that part of an emotion is feeling good (pleasure) or feeling bad (displeasure), in various ways, to various degrees. It argues that some aspects of what might reasonably be called the modularity of emotions reduces to the modularity of the hedonic aspects of emotions. In this regard, the way in which pleasure and displeasure reflect what is expected at the visceral level (what one is jaded to, what one is hardened to, what one takes for granted...) receives particular discussion.