Abstract

One of the author's central theses in this admirable book is that in order to explain adequately the role of desire in practical reasoning and the explanation of action, it is necessary to distinguish between a broad sense of "desire," which "might be called the philosopher's sense," according to which the term applies to whatever moves a person to act, and a narrower, "more ordinary sense," according to which a person can decide to do things he has no desire to do and also decide not to do other things he does have a desire to do. Since, Schueler argues, we do sometimes do things which we do not want to do, and we do not do other things which we do want to do and can do, the first sense of "desire" is too broad to enable us to explain how this is possible. This is because those who use "desire" only in the broad sense fail to distinguish between what Schueler terms "pro attitudes" and "desires proper" and in effect maintain that it is only desires proper, never pro attitudes by themselves, that move us to act. Thus, to use an example from Schueler, my belief that I have a duty to do something, such as attend a meeting at my son's school, might lead me to have a pro attitude toward attending it and to decide to do so even though I do not want to do it but instead want to stay home and read. Schueler's distinction between pro attitudes and desires proper has obvious implications for moral philosophy, some of which he discusses briefly.