Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Semantic analyses for dyadic deontic logic
- 2 A problem about permission
- 3 Reply to McMichael
- 4 Why ain'cha rich?
- 5 Desire as belief
- 6 Desire as belief II
- 7 Dispositional theories of value
- 8 The trap's dilemma
- 9 Evil for freedom's sake?
- 10 Do we believe in penal substitution?
- 11 Convention: Reply to Jamieson
- 12 Meaning without use: Reply to Hawthorne
- 13 Illusory innocence?
- 14 Mill and Milquetoast
- 15 Academic appointments: Why ignore the advantage of being right?
- 16 Devil's bargains and the real world
- 17 Buy like a MADman, use like a NUT
- 18 The punishment that leaves something to chance
- 19 Scriven on human unpredictability (with Jane S. Richardson)
- Index
6 - Desire as belief II
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Semantic analyses for dyadic deontic logic
- 2 A problem about permission
- 3 Reply to McMichael
- 4 Why ain'cha rich?
- 5 Desire as belief
- 6 Desire as belief II
- 7 Dispositional theories of value
- 8 The trap's dilemma
- 9 Evil for freedom's sake?
- 10 Do we believe in penal substitution?
- 11 Convention: Reply to Jamieson
- 12 Meaning without use: Reply to Hawthorne
- 13 Illusory innocence?
- 14 Mill and Milquetoast
- 15 Academic appointments: Why ignore the advantage of being right?
- 16 Devil's bargains and the real world
- 17 Buy like a MADman, use like a NUT
- 18 The punishment that leaves something to chance
- 19 Scriven on human unpredictability (with Jane S. Richardson)
- Index
Summary
REASON AND PASSION
Hume wrote that “we speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” (Treatise, Bk. II, Pt. III, Sect. III). What did he mean?
In the first place, Hume's “passions” are sometimes none too passionate. He speaks of some passions as “calm”. We would do best to speak of all “passion”, calm and otherwise, as “desire”.
In the second place, we call someone “reasonable” in part because his desires are moderate and fair-minded. But when we do, I suppose we speak not strictly and philosophically. Strictly speaking, I take it that reason is the faculty in charge of regulating belief. And so I read Hume as if he had said that belief is the slave of desire. Our actions do, or they ought to, serve our desires according to our beliefs. More precisely, taking account of the fact that both belief and desire admit of degree, and not begrudging the usual idealizations that make the topic tractable, our actions serve our subjective expected values according to our subjective degrees of belief. For short: they serve our values according to our credences.
Values and credences belong to propositions: classes of maximally specific possibilities (perhaps egocentric and tensed).
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- Chapter
- Information
- Papers in Ethics and Social Philosophy , pp. 55 - 67Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999