Desire and What It’s Rational to Do

Shaw, Ashley

doi:10.1080/00048402.2020.1822424

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Desires also have a phenomenological role, especially in connection with affective phenomenology, and human and animal desires are connected to our biological drives. Chang (2004) and Shaw (2021) appeal to these features in accounts of the significance of desire for action for reasons, and they are likely to be absent in many or all artificial RL systems.…”

Section: Action For Reasonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reinforcement learning and artificial agency

Butlin

2023

Mind & Language

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There is an apparent connection between reinforcement learning and agency. Artificial entities controlled by reinforcement learning algorithms are standardly referred to as agents, and the mainstream view in the psychology and neuroscience of agency is that humans and other animals are reinforcement learners. This article examines this connection, focusing on artificial reinforcement learning systems and assuming that there are various forms of agency. Artificial reinforcement learning systems satisfy plausible conditions for minimal agency, and those which use models of the environment to perform forward search are capable of a form of agency which may reasonably be called action for reasons.

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Section: Action For Reasonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reinforcement learning and artificial agency

Butlin

2023

Mind & Language

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“…Hume's conclusion is that ultimately no preference can be challenged or justified. We can “diagnose and defuse” this kind of nihilism by appealing to the etiology of primitive motivational states (cf., Shaw, 2021). The bodily urges are reasons for actions.…”

Section: Conclusion: Empiricism Dogmatism and Bodily Urgesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hunger, homeostasis, and desire

Matthen

2023

Mind & Language

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Hunger is a psychological state that serves physiological energy homeostasis. I argue that it is a pure underived desire to eat and examine its role in homeostasis. After scene‐setting explanations of homeostasis and desire, I argue that hunger is a close phenomenological match with underived desire. Then, I show why desire is an apt instrument for energy homeostasis. Finally, I argue that energy homeostasis is a multi‐factorial future‐regarding behavioural strategy. Hunger is a special purpose sensory state that serves only to implement the strategy. Thus, it is a sensory desire. I conclude by reflecting on the credibility of this desire.

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“…Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for THEORIA for raising this concern. 5 Some authors seem to conceive standing desires as dispositional states that last a long time and contrast them to occurrent desires, which would only last for a short period of time and would consist in a phenomenally conscious state (see for instanceDöring and Ekker, 2017;Butlin, 2017;Shaw, 2020). I think this is wrong.…”

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confidence: 99%

Defending the motivational theory of desire

Pineda

2021

THEORIA

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In this paper I offer a defense of the motivational theory of desire. According to the motivational view, a desire is basically a disposition to bring about the desire’s content. First, I argue that two rival views on the nature of desire, the evaluative theory and the deontic theory, fall prey to the problem of the death of desire and that, when one tries to develop a plausible version of these theories which is able to overcome this problem, one ends up with a view that is not relevantly different from the evaluative view. Second, I respond to some objections to the claim that motivations are sufficient for desire, namely, the Radioman objection and the objection that some motivational states like intentions and habits are not desires.

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Desire and What It’s Rational to Do

Cited by 5 publications

References 27 publications

Reinforcement learning and artificial agency

Reinforcement learning and artificial agency

Hunger, homeostasis, and desire

Defending the motivational theory of desire

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