Kent Bach

There is a simple view of motivation on which desires are like pain-killers; they come in different strengths, and their strength determines their efficacy. That is, the stronger a desire the greater its motivational force and, when two desires conflict, the stronger one “wins out” over the weaker. This view makes it puzzling how anyone could ever exhibit “strength of will” and act on the weaker desire, even when it is a desire for something more highly valued than what is more strongly desired. When the will, as the agent of reason, enters the fray, an explanation of what a person is motivated enough to do must reckon not only with competing desires and their motivational forces, but also with the will’s capacity to be affected by different ones in ways not proportional to their force. However, this complication sheds little light, for if the will must bestow its stamp of approval on a desire before the desire leads to action, then, it would seem, motivational force should be measured by strength of effect on the will. And if that’s the way to measure motivational force, then, since by that measure one always acts on the desire that affects one’s will most, there is no problem of strength of will after all. But the problem seems real, however inapt the label.

Nothing can be said about a nonexistent object, but something can be said about the act of (unsuccessfully) attempting to refer to one or, as in fiction, of pretending to refer to one. Unsuccessful reference, whether by expressions or by speakers, can be explained straightforwardly within the context of the theory of speech acts and communication. As for fiction, there is nothing special semantically, as to either meaning or reference, about its language. And fictional discourse is just a distinctive use of ordinary language: pretended communication and within it, pretended reference. However, discourse about fiction is not pretense but is normal communication, a kind of indirect discourse. To describe the world of a fiction is to state what the fiction says (or implies); and what seems to be reference to a fictional character is really attributing (usually implicitly) a feigned reference by the author.

Can two promises add up to an agreement? Not according to Margaret Gilbert. 1 She has forcefully challenged the orthodox view that an agreement is an exchange of promises. She works through an intricate series of examples of promise-exchanges and argues that none qualifies as an agreement. Assuming that she has not overlooked any plausible candidates, she concludes that agreements are essentially different. It seems, however, that her examples are all exchanges of promises only in an attenuated sense of "exchange." I propose to defend the orthodox view by considering what it is for promises to be exchanged in a fuller sense and what sorts of promises thus exchanged can comprise an agreement.