Desire Beyond Belief
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David Lewis [1988; 1996] canvases an anti-Humean thesis about mental states: that the rational agent desires something to the extent that he or she believes it to be good. Lewis offers and refutes a decision-theoretic formulation of it, the 'Desire-as-Belief Thesis'. Other authors have since added further negative results in the spirit of Lewis's. We explore ways of being anti-Humean that evade all these negative results. We begin by providing background on evidential decision theory and on...[Show more]
dc.contributor.author | Hajek, Alan | |
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dc.contributor.author | Pettit, Philip | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2015-12-10T22:31:15Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 0004-8402 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1885/55459 | |
dc.description.abstract | David Lewis [1988; 1996] canvases an anti-Humean thesis about mental states: that the rational agent desires something to the extent that he or she believes it to be good. Lewis offers and refutes a decision-theoretic formulation of it, the 'Desire-as-Belief Thesis'. Other authors have since added further negative results in the spirit of Lewis's. We explore ways of being anti-Humean that evade all these negative results. We begin by providing background on evidential decision theory and on Lewis's negative results. We then introduce what we call the indexicality loophole: if the goodness of a proposition is indexical, partly a function of an agent's mental state, then the negative results have no purchase. Thus we propose a variant of Desire-as-Belief that exploits this loophole. We argue that a number of meta-ethical positions are committed to just such indexicality. Indeed, we show that with one central sort of evaluative belief - the belief that an option is right - the indexicality loophole can be exploited in various interesting ways. Moreover, on some accounts, 'good' is indexical in the same way. Thus, it seems that the anti-Humean can dodge the negative results. | |
dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
dc.language.iso | en_AU | |
dc.publisher | Oxford University Press | |
dc.source | Australasian Journal of Philosophy | |
dc.title | Desire Beyond Belief | |
dc.type | Journal article | |
local.description.notes | Imported from ARIES | |
local.identifier.citationvolume | 82 | |
dc.date.issued | 2004 | |
local.identifier.absfor | 220399 - Philosophy not elsewhere classified | |
local.identifier.absfor | 220302 - Decision Theory | |
local.identifier.ariespublication | u4167262xPUB329 | |
local.type.status | Published Version | |
local.contributor.affiliation | Hajek, Alan, College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANU | |
local.contributor.affiliation | Pettit, Philip, Princeton University | |
local.description.embargo | 2037-12-31 | |
local.bibliographicCitation.issue | 1 | |
local.bibliographicCitation.startpage | 77 | |
local.bibliographicCitation.lastpage | 92 | |
local.identifier.doi | 10.1080/713659805 | |
dc.date.updated | 2015-12-09T10:09:04Z | |
local.identifier.scopusID | 2-s2.0-61149218633 | |
Collections | ANU Research Publications |
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