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Desiring is a state of mind. Known also as wanting and wishing, this state of mind is one that is a normal cause of coordinated actions, feelings, and thought processes. For example, a desire that one's father be healthy is a normal cause of reminding him to take his medication (and other actions), a normal cause of feeling disturbed when one learns he has developed a cataract and feeling relieved when the cataract is successfully treated (and other feelings), and a normal cause of paying attention to news items about health care for older men (and other thought processes).

Although desires are commonly associated with actions, feelings, and thoughts, there remain two key questions about desires for theorists to answer. First, which of these effects (if any) are essential to desires and which are inessential? Second, which of these effects (if any) have normal causes other than desires?

Desires and related notions (appetites, passions, and the like) have been discussed by philosophers since at least ancient Greece. It has only been since the 1980s that advances in neuroscience have made empirical science a substantial partner with philosophy in the investigation of desire, but already the payoffs have been substantial.

Philosophical Theories

Philosophical theories of desire come in three main types. One holds that the essence of desire is its role in causing actions, and another holds that the essence of desire is its role in causing feelings. These two types of theories identify desire with something that is familiar to everyone who has desires. The third type of theory holds that the essence of desire is its role in causing a certain form of unconscious learning. This type of theory strongly distinguishes what desires are, in themselves, from the very familiar effects that we all assume desires cause.

Action-Based Theories

Desires obviously play an important role in action. A sheep will walk from one place to another because it desires to eat grass, and a person will spend years in law school because she desires to fight environmental degradation. Action-based theories of desire make this role the essence of desire. One such theory (defended recently by philosopher Michael Smith) holds that to desire some state of affairs, p, is to be in a state that makes it true that one is disposed to take action A if it seems that taking A will bring about p (or make p more likely). Thus, if Katie desires to learn quantum mechanics, then she must be disposed to take actions that she believes will make her learn quantum mechanics, and if Katie is disposed to take actions that she believes will make her learn quantum mechanics, then it must be true that Katie desires to learn quantum mechanics.

Action-based theories are the most prominent philosophical theories of desire; some would say that some version of this theory is an obvious truth, no more disputable than that a bachelor is an unmarried man. Among philosophers who embrace an action-based theory of desire, the main question is whether all actions are caused by desires (as the theory just proposed requires) or whether some actions might be caused by something other than a desire (such as a sense of moral obligation).

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