Timothy Schroeder

This chapter considers T. M. Scanlon’s (1998) theory of action as a specific instance of cognitivist theories of action. It raises an unusual sort of objection to Scanlon’s cognitivism and its nearest philosophical neighbors: given what is known about the low-level neuroscience of action, there is no reasonable way to interpret the brain’s action-producing neural pathways consistent with this sort of theory. Interpreting the action-producing neural pathways as requiring a cognitive representation of reasons to be involved in action production meets a variety of objections, depending on just which parts of the action-producing neural pathways one interprets as these cognitions about reasons. The chapter proposes that a desire-based interpretation of the neural pathways addresses the obstacles raised to Scanlonian and related cognitivisms and suggests that a desire-based theory of action is thus preferable.

Neo-Humeans hold that to act for a reason, to act in a way for which one might be morally responsible, praiseworthy, or blameworthy, is to act on a desire. One familiar objection is that this commits the neo-Humean to holding that acting on a compulsion is acting on a desire, and so acting in a way for which one might be responsible, though this seems the wrong conclusion to draw. People with the sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder in which their obsessions and compulsions center around moral scrupulosity present what appears to be a particularly pressing version of this objection. This chapter considers the options available to the neo-Humean hoping to avoid this potential counterexample.

In a series of publications, we have advanced the idea that people are blameworthy for acting badly in either of two ways: acting on a desire for the wrong or bad, or acting in a way that expresses a dearth of desire for the right or good. The application of this theory to the case of addicts who act badly because of their addictions appears to lead to an unwelcome result: that there is no morally important difference between the addict and the person who acts badly because he very much wants to. We show that a better understanding of addiction explains why our preferred theory of blameworthiness in fact reaches the more plausible result – that there is something partially exculpating about actions performed because of addiction – without giving up on the idea that blameworthiness is a matter of what desires are expressed in action.

In this chapter, we begin with a discussion of motivation itself, and use that discussion to sketch four possible theories of distinctively moral motivation: caricature versions of familiar instrumentalist, cognitivist, sentimentalist, and personalist theories about morally worthy motivation. To test these theories, we turn to a wealth of scientific, particularly neuroscientific, evidence. Our conclusions are that (1) although the scientific evidence does not at present mandate a unique philosophical conclusion, it does present formidable obstacles to a number of popular philosophical approaches, and (2) theories of morally worthy motivation that best fit the current scientific picture are ones that owe much more to Hume or Aristotle than to Kant.

Theorists in the philosophy of art and philosophy of psychology are converging on the view that imagining is a distinct propositional attitude. When one imagines that P (while engaging with a fiction, daydreaming, contemplating, etc.), one tokens a representation that P, and this representation plays the functional role that is distinctive of imagining. In particular, this representation plays a role that is distinct from the role of belief, but that also triggers the kinds of strong feelings (emotions) that beliefs trigger. This chapter begins by surveying this trend to convergence and the evidence presented for it, and then turns to adding a further piece of evidence. The claim _imagining that P can cause strong feelings_ is, at bottom, a causal claim amenable to neuroscientific investigation. But philosophers have not yet paid much attention to the available evidence from neuroscience. This chapter rectifies this omission, tracing the causal network between tokenings of representations that P, on the one hand, and strong feelings, on the other. It concludes that there is all but decisive evidence in favour of the view that imagining is a propositional attitude, distinct from belief, and capable of causing the strong feelings associated with its exercise.

This chapter explores the relationship between ideas and fictional characters. It begins by giving an account of ideas, taking them to be historical entities not unlike species. Initially an idea exists only in the head of its inventor. But ideas may spread from person to person, and in time an idea may be lost and cease to exist. If there are ideas then, plausibly, these include ideas of fictional characters, such as the idea of Sherlock Holmes and the idea of Watson. The chapter argues that those who accept that there are fictional characters should identify them with the corresponding ideas. Conversely, those who deny the existence of fictional characters should take many of the intuitions that are invoked to motivate fictional realism to concern, not fictional characters, but rather our ideas of them.

Theoretical and practical deliberation are voluntary activities, and like all voluntary activities, they are performed for reasons. To hold that all voluntary activities are performed for reasons in virtue of their relations to past, present, or even merely possible acts of deliberation thus leads to infinite regresses and related problems. As a consequence, there must be processes that are nondeliberative and nonvoluntary but that nonetheless allow us to think and act for reasons, and these processes must be the ones that generate the voluntary activities making up ordinary deliberation. These nondeliberative, nonvoluntary processes by means of which we are able to deliberate for reasons are the fundamental processes by means of which we can think or do anything for a reason: once it has been seen that they must exist, it can be recognized that they are ubiquitous. As a result, the usefulness of deliberation to rational belief and action is intermittent, contingent, and modest. Deliberation is a tremendously valuable tool for increasing human capacities to think and act for good reasons in challenging contexts, but in the end it is merely a tool, wielded by people through the same nondeliberative, nonvoluntary capacities to think and act for reasons that they are enhancing the effectiveness of by deliberating.

This chapter presents a summary of what is believed about the production of bodily movement by the mind, a summary of how motivation and inhibition get bodies out of bed and engaged in the varied activities of life. The focus is placed on the sources of motivation and inhibition, namely trying, having a prior intention, being rewarded, being pleased and desiring. It considers both what is thought about these phenomena by people of common sense and what neuroscientists have to say about them. Moreover, the book sets out the various advantages and disadvantages presented by the standard theory of desire, the hedonic theory, and the reward theory as theories explaining how desires motivate. It is generally believed that the reward theory of desire emerges as the strongest of the three theories under consideration.

This chapter discusses the motivational theory “the standard theory” of desire. It also briefly deals with the standard theory's main rival, the hedonic theory of desire. Then, it sketches out some of the recent neuroscience that hints at an alternative theory of desire. The standard theory has two central features: it holds that all desires are desires that P, for some proposition P; and they are action-guiding. Moreover, it explains why motivation is not essential to desire and motivation is not sufficient for desiring. It is stated that the standard theory treats the phenomenology as constitutive of a superficial distinction, rather than indicative of a deeper distinction.

This chapter begins with three sections dedicated to the three main fields of knowledge about the psychology of reward and punishment. The findings of common sense, behaviorism, and neuroscience are surveyed in turn, and found to have much in common. Then, these commonalities are used to produce a more unified theory of the nature of reward. A wide variety of organisms, including both rats and people, appear capable of constituting some things as rewards and others as punishments, in a sense that is perfectly unified, and perfectly compatible with common sense. Uncovering this common core of reward is this chapter's task. Moreover, the theories of reward and punishment are examined.

Pleasure and displeasure are phenomena so familiar that there seems no need for a summary of everyday knowledge of them. This chapter describes the folk psychology of hedonic tone and the evidence on neuroscience of pleasure. In addition, the four incorrect theories of pleasure are shown. It also provides the three brief arguments to defend the thesis that pleasure and displeasure are distinctive types of conscious events rather than behavioral styles. Moreover, a representational theory of pleasure and the objections to the theory are discussed. Lastly, pleasure and theories of desire are explained.

This book provides a full account of the nature of desire. It is a work about a single phenomenon that is more general than passionate yearning, but less general than the whole of the pro attitudes. It is a phenomenon for which everyday usage has at least three labels: ‘desiring’, ‘wanting’, and ‘wishing’. The book is a work on intrinsic desires, wants, and wishes: on desires. It faces a danger shared by other books importing science into philosophy: that it will be understood only by those who have made a special study of both fields.

This chapter reports a detailed version of the theory of desire and resolves the long list of questions appropriate to every theory of desire. It begins with a statement of a reward theory of desire. It also presents what is thought the most plausible set of positions available to a reward theorist on the metaphysically inessential, but very important, features of human desires. Specifically discussed are the desire strength, consciousness and desire, acquiring and losing desires, fleeting desires, instrumental desires and direction of fit. Lastly, the controversy of the reward theory on moral motivation is shown.

Here is an apparently straightforward philosophical story about concepts. In the style of Jerry Fodor, a concept is a mental “word” ; it means what it does because of its causal dependencies, and it contributes this meaning to the meanings of the mental “sentences” it helps to form. The mental word OWL means owls because owls have a special causal relationship to OWLs, and when the mental word OWL is combined with other mental words, such as THERE, IS, AN and NEARBY, the meaning of the resulting mental sentence, THERE IS AN OWL NEARBY, is a function of the meaning of the component words, plus the formal structure of the sentence. A cognitive system with these concepts is thereby able to represent the fact that an owl is nearby.

This chapter tries to resolve the lingering questions about the divide between theoretical reduction and elimination, and about the justifications for insisting on placing a single face of desire at the center of a theory of desire. It is shown that by reviewing the points of agreement and disagreement between the reward theory and common sense, the reward theory passes the test. Research on desire has suffered from the incompleteness of the knowledge applied. By putting together all the evidence available and all the theoretical resources available, a theory of desire that is neither particularly scientific nor particularly philosophical have been built.

Amanda works in a library, and a patron asks for her help in learning about duty-to- rescue laws in China. She throws herself into the task, spending hours on retrieving documents from governmental and non-governmental sources, getting electronic translations, looking for literature on Scandinavian duty-to-rescue laws that mention Chinese laws for comparison, and so on. Why? She likes to gain this sort of general knowledge of the world; perhaps the reason she works so hard is that she is learning fascinating facts in doing so. She is also a proud librarian; perhaps the reason she works so hard is that a patron needs her assistance. She is a library employee; perhaps her reason for working so hard is that this sort of effort is noted by her employer and gives her career a boost, or perhaps it is just that doing this sort of work is the condition of her continued employment. Perhaps the reason is that the patron is charming.

What is that makes an act subject to either praise or blame? The question has often been taken to depend entirely on the free will debate for an answer, since it is widely agreed that an agent’s act is subject to praise or blame only if it was freely willed, but moral theory, action theory, and moral psychology are at least equally relevant to it. In the last quarter-century, following the lead of Harry Frankfurt’s (1971) seminal article “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” the interdisciplinary nature of the question has been emphasized by various authors. Going beyond the boundaries of the traditional free will debate, they have attempted to describe the requirements for agent accountability by appeal to theories of personality, rational agency, and ethical choice. The approach has been a breath of fresh air in the often-stagnant free will debate, bringing new considerations to bear and provoking new lines of argument, and it is an approach that we will adopt in this paper. In the following pages, we hope to show that an under-noticed phenomenon of moral psychology, inverse akrasia, exemplified by Huckleberry Finn, has something to contribute to the understanding of agency and accountability. After presenting the phenomenon in section I, we will move in section II to a quick survey of a family of Frankfurt-inspired views and a critique of them based on the phenomenon in sections III and IV. A new theory will be offered in section V, and potential objections addressed in the final section of the paper.