When doing philosophy, when trying to understand something better, one should optimally do a combination of the following: think about the topic, research what others have said, and talk to friends and colleagues about the topic. Here I’m writing the results of the first and hoping to engage in the third. I’m feeling a bit lazy about doing the second, at this point.

Thinking about desire, I am fairly perplexed. One way to begin thinking about desire is to say that a person desires X if she finds it valuable. But finding something valuable is certainly not sufficient for desiring it. I find the Mona Lisa to be valuable, but I don’t desire to possess it and only desire a bit to see it. If not sufficient, is judging something valuable necessary for desire? Are there cases of true desire that don’t involve valuing something? I cannot think of any, though that is by no means decisive.

Perhaps desire is the result of certain kinds of judgments of value. For example, if I judge X as producing or being some kind of benefit to me then I will desire X. Does this presuppose that one desires benefits? Is appealing to benefit to explain or make sense of desire circular, then?

Perhaps it is that benefits are valuable in my eyes. My valuing them prompts me to desire them. Then when I recognize something as a benefit, I desire it. So the book I desire I find valuable qua perceived benefits to me. Benefits are valued more basically and give rise to my desiring the book. But we might wonder, then, whether saying that a person’s valuing benefits merely means that she desires them. So it is not that one values benefits and then desire those benefits. That is an extra step. Perhaps there is a basic connection between perceived benefits and desire. Perception of benefit then transfers desire onto the thing perceived as beneficial.

But what if we dig deeper into the idea of benefits? What is it for something to be a benefit? Is something a benefit if it satisfies a desire, either a preexisting one or one newly generated? But what about desires for things that are harmful? Think of cases of akrasia. But those involve the desire for some perceived good that happens to produce foreseen harm. Perhaps, then, a benefit is in general the satisfaction of a desire that doesn’t produce undesired harm.

But what about cases of benefit in which the thing beneficial is not desired at all? Think of a father giving a teenage son advice on his finances. The advice would perhaps be of benefit if listened to, but the son refuses to listen, desires anything else but the advice, and denies the benefit. Should we say that the son ought to desire the advice, since it is beneficial? And it is beneficial to the son because the son has other desires about having money? That seems to be on the right track.

So there is a close connection between benefit and desire. Something is desirable if it is perceived as beneficial; it is beneficial if it satisfies a person’s desires without producing undesired harm. Is there an undesirable circularity here? Perhaps this seeming circularity can be relieved by noticing the difference in the desires. I desire a book because it is beneficial and it is beneficial because it satisfies my desire to learn about, say, trees. Let’s assume I value knowledge about trees as an end in itself. Now what do we say? What does it mean to say that I value knowledge of trees as an end in itself? Are we not back to where we began with the question of the connection between valuing and desire? Does my valuing something as an end in itself entail my desire for that end? So with the example of the Mona Lisa, my valuing it doesn’t produce desire because I don’t value it as a necessary means to on one of my ends or as one of my ends. I desire the chocolate in the kitchen, not because it is a necessary means to my end of feeling pleasure, but because it is an available means to that end. Is that it then? Is there simply an inherent, direct entailment between perceiving something as an end and desiring it?

So S desires X means that S perceives X to be valuable as one of S’s ends or as a necessary or available means to one of S’s ends. Is that right?

What if we try a different tact? Desiring X seems to mean something like wanting to possess (in a broad sense of “possess”) X. But “want” is pretty close to “desire” in meaning, so that’s not all that helpful. What if we try to explain desire more basically, and without appeal to means and ends, as follows: S desires X means that S says/thinks of X, “This should be mine!” So desire is analyzed in terms of unconscious formulations of imperatives. Is thinking of desire in this way beneficial or a dead end? Using Kant’s distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives, it would seem that the above imperative, “This should be mine!”, would be hypothetical. If that is correct, the problem becomes that hypothetical imperatives are made sense of in terms of desired ends: If you want to learn about trees, you should read about them, talk to someone who knows about trees, or go examine them. So it seems we are led back to the valuing of things as means and ends: S desires X means that S perceives X to be valuable as one of S’s ends or as a necessary or available means to one of S’s ends. What are the problems with that analysis?