It is important to contrast desire in the crucial sense which I have now delineated with the agent's belief about what he will enjoy doing or having.69 As we have seen, enjoyment consists in the satisfaction of desire, in the yielding to
inclination. To enjoy playing golf is to be playing golf and in doing so to be yielding to inclination. To enjoy being in Spain is to be in Spain when you want to be in Spain (i.e. when you would be naturally inclined to put yourself in Spain if you were not there already). But it is one thing to have a present desire to do some action or be in some situation; and a different thing to have a present belief that when you are doing it you will be satisfying a desire existing at that time.
It follows that an agent may desire now to do some action or bring about some state of affairs which he believes he will not enjoy, when he has succeeded. This is obvious as regards states of affairs. A man may desire his own death or a certain disposition of his property after death. You cannot enjoy what you do not know about; and you cannot believe that you will enjoy that of which,
69 ‘An object, such as fame, knowledge, or the welfare of a friend, is desired, not because we foresee that when obtained it will give us pleasure; but vice versa; obtaining it gives
us pleasure because we previously desired it or had an affection carrying us to it and resting in it’—Richard Price, A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals (third edition, 1787), ed. D. D. Raphael (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974), p. 75 . The final clause suggests that ‘previously’ is to be interpreted as ‘immediately previously’.
you believe, you will have no knowledge. But there are examples, too, which concern actions, which necessarily the agent will know that he is performing when he performs them. There is the man with the desire to run a Marathon, which he believes he will in no way enjoy doing when he is doing it.
Can a man believe that he will enjoy doing something and yet not desire to do it? I shall argue shortly that necessarily an agent has some desire for what he believes to be good. Since, I suspect, no agent can have a conception of the good unless he regarded the satisfaction of desire as in some respect a good thing (even if on balance not a good thing), all agents must have some minimal desire for future enjoyment by themselves and by others. But it is evident that a desire to perform a future action or bring about a future state of affairs which an agent believes that he will enjoy, may be fairly weak compared with such desires as to avoid the trouble and embarrassment of bringing these things about. A man's desire to go to a party which he believes that he will enjoy when he gets to it may be fairly weak.
However, it is a notable feature of humans that their desires are in general largely and sometimes exclusively for actions and states of affairs which they believe they will enjoy when they get them. The examples which I gave where desire diverges from belief about future enjoyment are unusual ones. Men could have been so made that they desired the future happiness of their fellows as much as their own future happiness. But they are not so made, or, at least, not in general. They do sometimes have desires for the well-being of others, but the desires are for the well-being of those very close to them and often are not nearly as strong as desires for their own well-being. A belief that one will enjoy doing a certain action often goes with occurrent thoughts of viewing with pleasure the prospect of doing the action (i.e. the yielding to having such thoughts being the yielding to inclination), and occurrent thoughts of regret at its present absence (which force themselves upon us, despite inclination). Since belief in future enjoyment normally goes with desire, such a pattern of thoughts is a good indication of desire. But it is not to be equated with it; since a desire may exist in the absence of a belief that one will enjoy the thing desired and a fortiori in the absence of thoughts about that thing. When social scientists measure strength of desire, they may be measuring any of three different things, or some weighted average thereof. They
may be measuring strength of desire in my sense, i.e. comparative strength of spontaneous inclination to action in the absence of beliefs about consequences or worth. They may be measuring what agents believe that they will enjoy most. Or they may simply be measuring what agents do. Clearly, often these will diverge. A man may be faced with a choice of slouching before the TV, going to the theatre, or going to church. He may be most inclined naturally to slouch in front of the TV; that is his desire (in my preferred sense). But he may believe that he would enjoy going to the theatre most—if only he made the effort to get there. Yet he may go to church all the same, believing that to be the most worthwhile thing to do.
Desires are distinct from mental events of the other kinds which I have claimed to be the elementary constituents of the mental life. I have already distinguished desires from beliefs and thoughts about future enjoyment, and there are no more plausible beliefs and thoughts with which to equate desire. The natural inclination which is desire is different from any belief or thought about it or its consequences. Desires are also distinct from sensations—my desire for fame need have nothing sensory about it. There are, however, desires which are accompanied by sensations, e.g. hunger, the desire for food which is accompanied by ‘pangs’ of hunger, i.e. by sensations which, we believe, the satisfaction of the desire will remove and which we desire to remove. But the desire for food is not the same as, and need not at all involve, the occurrence of unpleasant sensations. And finally, desires are distinct from purposings. Desires are inclinations to act in the absence of various beliefs, but, faced with beliefs about the worth and consequences of the act, an agent must choose whether to yield to desire, or purpose to act contrary to it.