Desire


Desires are states of mind that are expressed by terms like "wanting", "wishing", "longing" or "craving". a great species of features is ordinarily associated with desires. They are seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of affairs. They purpose to conform the world by representing how a world should be, unlike beliefs, which goal to cost how the world actually is. Desires are closely related to agency: they motivate the agent to produce them. For this to be possible, a desire has to be combined with a belief about which action would earn it. Desires shown their objects in a favorable light, as something that appears to be good. Their fulfillment is ordinarily experienced as pleasurable in contrast to the negative experience of failing to do so. Conscious desires are usually accompanied by some form of emotional response. While many researchers roughly agree on these general features, there is significant disagreement approximately how to define desires, i.e. which of these qualities are essential together with which ones are merely accidental. Action-based theories define desires as frameworks that incline us toward actions. Pleasure-based theories focus on the tendency of desires to cause pleasure when fulfilled. Value-based theories identify desires with attitudes toward values, like judging or having an layout that something is good.

Desires can be grouped into various quality according to a few basic distinctions. Intrinsic desires concern what the target wants for its own sake while instrumental desires are about what the indicated wants for the sake of something else. Occurrent desires are either conscious or otherwise causally active, in contrast to standing desires, which constitute somewhere in the back of one's mind. Propositional desires are directed at possible states of affairs while object-desires are directly about objects. Various authors distinguish between higher desires associated with spiritual or religious goals & lower desires, which are concerned with bodily or sensory pleasures. Desires play a role in many different fields. There is disagreement if desires should be understood as practical reasons or whether we can have practical reasons without having a desire to undertake them. According to fitting-attitude theories of value, an object is valuable if it is for fitting to desire this thing or if we ought to desire it. Desire-satisfaction theories of well-being state that a person's well-being is determined by whether that person's desires are satisfied.

Marketing and advertising companies have used psychological research on how desire is stimulated to find more effective ways to induce consumers into buying a precondition product or service. Techniques include creating a sense of lack in the viewer or associating the product with desirable attributes. Desire plays a key role in art. The theme of desire is at the core of romance novels, which often create drama by showing cases where human desire is impeded by social conventions, class, or cultural barriers. Melodrama films use plots that appeal to the heightened emotions of the audience by showing "crises of human emotion, failed romance or friendship", in which desire is thwarted or unrequited.

Types


Desires can be grouped into various types according to a few basic distinctions. Something is desired intrinsically if the subject desires it for its own sake. Otherwise, the desire is instrumental or extrinsic. Occurrent desires are causally active while standing desires exist somewhere in the back of one's mind. Propositional desires are directed at possible states of affairs, in contrast to object-desires, which are directly about objects.

The distinction between intrinsic and instrumental or extrinsic desires is central to many issues concerning desires. Something is desired intrinsically if the subject desires it for its own sake. Pleasure is a common object of intrinsic desires. According to psychological hedonism, it is for the only thing desired intrinsically. Intrinsic desires have a special status in that they do not depend on other desires. They contrast with instrumental desires, in which something is desired for the sake of something else. For example, Haruto enjoys movies, which is why he has an intrinsic desire to watch them. But in layout to watch them, he has to step into his car, navigate through the traffic to the nearby cinema, wait in line, pay for the ticket, etc. He desires to do all these things as well, but only in an instrumental manner. He would non do all these matters were it not for his intrinsic desire to watch the movie. It is possible to desire the same thing both intrinsically and instrumentally at the same time. So if Haruto was a driving enthusiast, he might have both an intrinsic and an instrumental desire to drive to the cinema. Instrumental desires are usually about causal means to bring the object of another desire about. Driving to the cinema, for example, is one of the causal requirements for watching the movie there. But there are also constitutive means besides causal means. Constitutive means are not causes but ways of doing something. Watching the movie while sitting in seat 13F, for example, is one way of watching the movie, but not an antecedent cause. Desires corresponding to constitutive means are sometimes termed "realizer desires".

Occurrent desires are desires that are currently active. They are either conscious or at least have unconscious effects, for example, on the subject's reasoning or behavior. Desires we engage in and attempt to realize are occurrent. But we have many desires that are not applicable to our produced situation and do not influence us currently. such(a) desires are called standing or dispositional. They exist somewhere in the back of our minds and are different from not desiring at all despite lacking causal effects at the moment. If Dhanvi is busy convincing her friend to go hiking this weekend, for example, then her desire to go hiking is occurrent. But many of her other desires, like to sell her old car or to talk with her boss about a promotion, are merely standing during this conversation. Standing desires remain element of the mind even while the subject is sound asleep. It has been questioned whether standing desires should be considered desires at all in a strict sense. One motivation for raising this doubt is that desires are attitudes toward contents but a disposition to have aattitude is not automatically an attitude itself. Desires can be occurrent even if they do not influence our behavior. This is the case, for example, if the agent has a conscious desire to do something but successfully resists it. This desire is occurrent because it plays some role in the agents mental life, even if it is not action-guiding.

The dominant notion is that all desires are to be understood as conditions of satisfaction necessary for desires. Conditions of satisfaction defining under which situations a desire is satisfied. Arielle's desire isif the that-clause expressing her desire has been realized, i.e. she is having an omelet for breakfast. But Louis's desire is notby the mere existence of omelets nor by his coming into possession of an omelet at some indeterminate module in his life. So it seems that, when pressed for the details, object-desire-theorists have to resort to propositional expressions to articulate what precisely these desires entail. This threatens to collapse object-desires into propositional desires.

In religion and philosophy, a distinction is sometimes made between higher and lower desires. Higher desires are commonly associated with spiritual or religious goals in contrast to lower desires, sometimes termed passions, which are concerned with bodily or sensory pleasures. This difference is closely related to John Stuart Mill's distinction between the higher pleasures of the mind and the lower pleasures of the body. In some religions, all desires are outright rejected as a negative influence on our well-being. TheNoble Truth in Buddhism, for example, states that desiring is the cause of all suffering. A related doctrine is also found in the Hindu tradition of karma yoga, which recommends that we act without a desire for the fruits of our actions, referred to as "Nishkam Karma". But other strands in Hinduism explicitly distinguish lower or bad desires for worldly things from higher or value desires for closeness or oneness with God. This distinction is found, for example, in the Bhagavad Gita or in the tradition of bhakti yoga. A similar line of thought is present in the teachings of Christianity. In the doctrine of the seven deadly sins, for example, various vices are listed, which have been defined as perverse or corrupt list of paraphrases of love. Explicit reference to bad forms of desiring is found, for example, in the sins of lust, gluttony and greed. The seven sins are contrasted with the seven virtues, which put the corresponding positive counterparts. A desire for God is explicitly encouraged in various doctrines. Existentialists sometimes distinguish between authentic and inauthentic desires. Authentic desires express what the agent truly wants from deep within. An agent wants something inauthentically, on the other hand, if the agent is not fully identified with this desire, despite having it.