Desire and the Good

Sergio Tenenbaum
University of New Mexico

In this paper I present a partial defense of what I call a 'scholastic view' of desires and other practical attitudes. According to this scholastic concept to desire X is to conceive X as good in some way. The scholastic view (of course, not under this title) has been the target of a series of criticisms in recent the literature. A number of points raised by David Velleman receive special attention: the claim that a scholastic view cannot account to the whole "motley crew" of human beings (which is best exemplified in its inability to deal with the perhaps not-so-human character of Satan--who seems proudly to desire what he conceives to be evil), that the scholastic view cannot explain the acquisition of desires in the normal development of a human being, and that desires do not bear to facienda (the practical equivalent of facts) the same relation that beliefs bear to facts.