In Praise of Desire

Nomy Arpaly received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and is now Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. She is the author of Unprincipled Virtue (OUP 2002) as well as Merit, Meaning, and Human Bondage (2006) and various articles.Timothy Schroeder grew up on the Canadian prairies, an environment that afforded him plenty of time for philosophical speculation. He received his B.A. from the University of Lethbridge and his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and is now Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ohio State University.

Praise of Desire combines Arpaly and Schroeder's great strengths to produce a book populated with engaging and naturalistic examples, argued with great systematic sophistication... The authors powerfully illuminate the nature and importance of the role played by the aspect under which we undertake actions in determining whether we count as responding fittingly to the situations in which we find ourselves and the amount of praise and blame due us for doing so.

• Contents ; Introduction ; 0.1 Moral Psychology ; 0.2 Reason and Appetite ; 0.3 Intrinsic, Instrumental, and Realizer Desires ; 0.4 The Many Guises of the Good ; 0.5 The Work to be Done ; Part I: Reason ; Chapter 1: Deliberation ; 1.1 The Nature of Deliberation ; 1.2 The Rationality of Acts of Deliberation ; 1.3 Deliberation and Regress ; 1.4 Other Objections ; 1.5 Deliberative Exceptionalism ; 1.6 Is there an Ambiguity? ; 1.7 If not Deliberation, Then Representation? ; 1.8 Thinking and Acting for Reasons without Deliberation ; Chapter 2: How Deliberation Works ; 2.1 The Role of Deliberation ; 2.2 How Deliberation Works ; 2.3 The Moral of the Story ; Chapter 3: Thinking and Acting for Reasons ; 3.1 Objective Reasons and Rationalizing Reasons ; 3.2 Physical Properties, Contents, and Reasons ; 3.3 Because of Reasons ; 3.4 Reasons, Causes, and Mountain Climbers ; 3.5 Acting for Bad Reasons ; 3.6 Thinking and Acting for Multiple Reasons and Non-Reasons ; 3.7 Habit and Inaction ; 3.8 Acting for Moral Reasons ; Part II: Desire ; Chapter 4: Love and Care ; 4.1 Love ; 4.2 Care ; Chapter 5: What Desires Are Not ; 5.1 Action is not the Essence of Desire ; 5.2 Feeling is not the Essence of Desire ; Chapter 6: What Desires Are ; 6.1 The Reward and Punishment Systems ; 6.2 The Reward System Causes what Desires Cause ; 6.3 Intrinsic Desires are a Natural Kind ; 6.4 Solutions and Promissory Notes ; Part III: Virtue ; Chapter 7: Credit and Blame ; 7.1 Attributability and Accountability ; 7.2 Good Will and Ill Will ; 7.3 A Theory of Praise- and Blameworthiness ; 7.4 Side Constraints ; 7.5 Conceptualization ; 7.6 Too Much Credit, Too Much Blame ; 7.7 Partial Good and Ill Will ; Chapter 8: Virtue ; 8.1 A Theory of Virtue ; 8.2 The Theory Applied ; 8.3 Virtues and Their Effects ; 8.4 Virtue and Involuntary Attitudes ; 8.5 Virtuous Irrationality ; 8.6 The Unity of the Virtues ; Chapter 9: Virtue and Cognition ; 9.1 Familiar Cognitive Effects of Desires ; 9.2 The Effects of Good Will on Cognition ; 9.3 The Vice of Being Prejudiced ; 9.4 The Vice of Being Close-Minded ; 9.5 The Virtue of Being Open-Minded ; 9.6 Modesty and Immodesty ; 9.7 Vicious Dreams ; Part IV: Puzzles ; Chapter 10: Inner Struggle ; 10.1 Akrasia ; 10.2 The Experience of Inner Struggle ; 10.3 Inner Struggle Explained ; Chapter 11: Addiction ; 11.1 The Puzzle ; 11.2 The Science of Addiction ; 11.3 The Philosophy of Addiction ; 11.4 The Blameworthiness of Addicts ; 11.5 Addiction in Moral Psychology ; Conclusion ; 12.1 Taking Stock ; 12.2 Looking Forward ; Works Cited ; Index