A Moorean paradox of desire

Wall, David G.

doi:10.1080/13869795.2012.646937

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Wittgenstein adds that it is ‘a most remarkable thing, that the verbs “believe”, “wish”, “will” display all the inflections possessed by “cut”, “chew”, “run” ’ (, II, §X, 190). His remark, albeit unclear, prompts the conjecture that analogous absurdity may be found in terms of desire (see Wall ; Williams ). For example, suppose that as we approach a bar, you ask me what I want to drink.…”

Section: Wittgenstein On the Paradoxmentioning

confidence: 97%

Moore's Paradox in Speech: A Critical Survey

Williams

2015

Philosophy Compass

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It is raining but you don't believe that it is raining. Imagine accepting this claim. Then you are committed to saying ‘It is raining but I don't believe that it is raining’. This would be an ‘absurd’ thing to claim or assert, yet what you say might be true. It might be raining, while at the same time, you are completely ignorant of the state of the weather. But how can it be absurd of you to assert something about yourself that might be true of you? This is Moore's paradox as it occurs in speech. What is the source of the absurdity? And why does it strike us that a contradiction is somehow at work when there is no contradiction in the content of what is asserted? In Section 2, I describe Moore's formulation of the paradox and evaluate his own solutions. In Section 3, I discuss Wittgenstein's influence in solving the paradox. In Section 4, I discuss Shoemaker's priority thesis that once the absurdity in belief has been explained, then this will translate into an explanation of the absurdity in assertion. In Section 5, I discuss work on omissive and commissive Moore‐paradoxical assertions, i.e. those of the forms p & I don't believe that p and p & I believe that not‐p. In Section 6, I discuss work on assertions of the form p & I don't know that p.

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Section: Wittgenstein On the Paradoxmentioning

confidence: 97%

Moore's Paradox in Speech: A Critical Survey

Williams

2015

Philosophy Compass

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“…This is not a totally unexplored territory. Some authors have already proposed principles that, at least to some extent, could be used to challenge the target consensus, such as recent Moorean analysis of norms of rational desire (Wall, 2012;Williams, 2014). In this piece, I would like to approach the issue from a more general, albeit self-contained angle.…”

Section: Purely Conative Normativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Norms for pure desire

Verdejo¹

2020

THEORIA

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According to a widespread, broadly Humean consensus, desires and other conative attitudes seem as such to be free from any normative constraints of rationality. However, rational subjects are also required to be attitude-coherent in ways that prima facie hold sway for desire. I here examine the plausibility of this idea by proposing several principlesfor coherent desire. These principles parallel principles for coherent belief and can be used to make a case for a kind of purely conative normativity. I consider several objections to a principle for consistent desiring and reply to them. I conclude that, if attitude-coherence is a mark of rationality, the broadly Humean consensus must be rejected.

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“…3 3 Dennett has nowhere replied to this objection Wall (2012). argues that desire parallels belief at least in admitting Moore's‐Paradox‐like cases, but he takes that finding to count against instrumentalism regarding desires. …”

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Desire Considered as a Propositional Attitude

Lycan¹

2012

Philosophical Perspectives

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We speak of "belief-desire psychology." Beliefs and desires are roughly equal partners in producing action, most likely by resulting in intentions which produce the actions more directly, and all in terms of content: We desire that P, and, guided by our beliefs, we come to intend that P, and then we act so as to make it the case, or make it more likely, that P. So much is endorsed by nearly all philosophers of mind other than eliminativists. 1 (They do not all mean the verbs like "producing" and "resulting in" in any robustly causal sense.) Some would say the belief-desire view is plain common sense; I doubt that.Mainstream philosophers of mind have implemented this picture in any of several ways. But they have just assumed that a single model of "the propositional attitudes" fits desire (and the other attitudes) as well as belief. That is not so. Or such is my thesis.Again not counting eliminativism, we inherit two main paradigms regarding the propositional attitudes: Dennettian interpretivism/instrumentalism, and the Sellars-Fodor language-of-thought model.

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A Moorean paradox of desire

Cited by 5 publications

References 17 publications

Moore's Paradox in Speech: A Critical Survey

Moore's Paradox in Speech: A Critical Survey

Norms for pure desire

Desire Considered as a Propositional Attitude

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