“GOING FOR IT” (AND CARING ABOUT IT)

A circle of conative concepts

In the last chapter, we learned that many animals have certain kinds of feelings. Can animals have desires? What are desires? One's first attempt to clarify this concept is likely to be in terms of other concepts equally in need of clarification: wants or preferences, perhaps. Desires, wants, and preferences all suggest being disposed to “go for” something; they all suggest action tendencies. But not just that. These terms, in their paradigmatic senses anyway, also suggest caring about what you're going for—there is an affective component to them. We do not say the wind-up toy desires the object toward which it ambulates, because, lacking consciousness, it doesn't care about this object (or anything else). But to care about something is to be concerned about getting it; it matters to one whether one gets it. Often, of course, what we desire and care about are not physical objects to be hunted down but changes in our situation; we might want rest, for example. And what we want and care about are things we like; we also care, in a negative way, about things we dislike, and they too matter to us.

What we have, then, is a tight circle of what I will call conative concepts: desires, wants, preferences, caring, concerns, mattering, liking and disliking, and perhaps others.