Desire S Direction

To desire something is a condition familiar to everyone. It is uncontroversial that desiring has something to do with motivation, something to do with pleasure, and something to do with reward. Call these "the three faces of desire." The standard philosophical theory at present holds that the motivational face of desire presents its unique essence--to desire a state of affairs is to be disposed to act so as to bring it about. A familiar but less standard account holds the hedonic face of desire to reveal to true nature of desire. In this view, to desire something is to tend to pleasure if it seems that the desired state of affairs has been achieved, or displeasure if it seems otherwise, thus tying desire to feelings instead of actions. In Three Faces of Desire, Schroeder goes beyond actions and feelings to advance a novel and controversial theory of desire that puts the focus on desire's neglected face, reward. Informed by contemporary science as much as by the philosophical tradition, Three Faces of Desire discusses recent scientific discoveries that tell us much about the way that actions and feelings are produced in the brain. In particular, recent experiments reveal that a distinctive system is responsible for promoting action, on the one hand, and causing feelings of pleasure and displeasure, on the other. This system, the brain's reward system, is the causal origin of both action and feeling, and is the key to understanding the nature of desire.

Desires matter. What are desires? Many believe that desire is a motivational state: desiring is being disposed to act. This conception aligns with the functionalist approach to desire and the standard account of desire's role in explaining action. According to a second influential approach, however, desire is first and foremost an evaluation: desiring is representing something as good. After all, we seem to desire things under the guise of the good. Which understanding of desire is more accurate? Is the guise of the good even right to assume? Should we adopt an alternative picture that emphasizes desire's deontic nature? What do neuroscientific studies suggest? Essays in the first section of the volume are devoted to these questions, and to the puzzle of desire's essence. In the second part of the volume, essays investigate some implications that the various conceptions of desire have on a number of fundamental issues. For example, why are inconsistent desires problematic? What is desire's role in practical deliberation? How do we know what we want? This volume will contribute to the emergence of a fruitful debate on a neglected, albeit crucial, dimension of the mind.

This book examines Lacanian psychoanalysis and Christian mystical theology demonstrating the former’s potential for reinvigorating spiritual direction. The author outlines how current methods of spiritual direction become saturated with self-help psycho-pop methodologies, and that desire has therefore been foreclosed in these practices. He suggests that the root of this is a focus on ‘positive affective experientialism’, which means spiritual direction must focus on emotional wholeness, healing and positivity. Finally, he argues that a new dialogue between John of the Cross (a mystic whose writings on spiritual direction formulate part of the core of the Catholic spiritual tradition) and Jacques Lacan can open the way for a spiritual direction beyond the confines of experientialism. The book concludes that we can only escape the experiential commodification of spiritual direction by critiquing the drive to experience in and of itself. This novel work will appeal in particular to students and scholars of psychoanalysis, religion, philosophy and critical theory.

A popular model of human action treats it as universally explicable by appeal to what we want. A related view evaluates our actions as rational or otherwise by appeal to what we want. However, these dominant views sit in tension with two other common sense ideas. First, that our normative beliefs — such as our beliefs about what we ought to do — sometimes explain our actions. Second, that those beliefs are crucial for determining whether our actions are rational. To try and resolve these tensions, this book defends 'desire-as-belief', the view that desires are just a special subset of our normative beliefs. This view entitles us to accept orthodox models of human motivation and rationality that explain those things with reference to desire, while also making room for our normative beliefs to play a role in those domains. This view also tells us to diverge from the orthodox view on which desires themselves can never be right or wrong. Rather, according to desire-as-belief, our desires can themselves be assessed for their accuracy, and they are wrong when they misrepresent normative features of the world. Hume says that it is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of your finger, but he is wrong: it is foolish to have this preference, and this is so because this preference misrepresents the relative worth of these things. This book mounts an engaging and comprehensive defence of these ideas.

First Published in 2017. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.

Desireless action is typically cited as a criterion of the liberated person in classical Indian texts. Contemporary authors argue with near unanimity that since all action is motivated by desire, desireless action is a contradiction. They conclude that desireless action is action performed without certain desires; other desires are permissible. In this book, the author surveys the contemporary literature on desireless action and argues that the arguments for the standard interpretation are unconvincing. He translates, interprets, and evaluates passages from a number of seminal classical Sanskrit texts, and argues that the doctrine of desireless action should indeed be taken literally, as the advice to act without any desire at all. The author argues that the theories of motivation advanced in these texts are not only consistent, but plausible. This book is the first in-depth analysis of the doctrine of desireless action in Indian philosophy. It serves as a reference to both contemporary and classical literature on the topic, and will be of interest to scholars of Indian philosophy, religion, the Bhagavadgita and Hinduism.