1 See, e.g., Gorgias 468b.

2 Leviathan, chap. 14.

3 But, it may be objected, what about caring moralists whose ethic tells them to love their neighbours as themselves, and whose conscientious sentiments, in accordance with this, give equivalent weight to the realization of others' -desires and their own? Suppose A and B are two such moralists and C is some body else. Would it not amount to unacceptable double-counting to require A to feel conscientious concern for the realization of each of C's goals because C desires it and additional conscientious concern for the same result because B's conscience too includes a wish for its furtherance? The air of paradox may be reduced, though, by the reflection that, ex hypothesi, any disappointment of C would, in itself and apart from other considerations, tend to sadden C and B equally, so that whoever loved them both would thereby have a double reason to favour the realization of each such goal of C's. However, what about B's conscientious wish for avoidance of the disappointment of A insofar as A -is concerned to see a goal of C's realized for the sake of B? If such other-regard ing desires actually can pile up without limit, then that is just what the ethic of love demands. If they cannot, then that is not demanded, and no problem arises in this case either.

4 “[A]ll those things and only those things are actually in our (objective) interests, which we would on balance desire if apprised of so much information -about their potential effects that no additional information about their poten -tial effects would modify our desires further” (Goldstick, D., “Objective Inter ests,” reprinted in Critical Perspectives on Democracy, edited by Legters, Lyman H., Burke, John P., and DiQuattro, Arthur [Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994], p. 155)Google Scholar. The “information” in question here is, of course, exclu sively value-neutral information—information the possession of which does not logically necessitate the possessor's caring in any specific way.

5 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, chap. 1, sec. 6.

6 Sergio Tenenbaum has pointed out that the restriction here to information about the “potential effects” of what is in your interests may be unnecessary after all, in view of the need for a different proviso even in that case to exclude in general desire causation mechanisms of the wrong sort )including the sort -by which, in the example proposed, accurate knowledge could give rise to hos -pital phobia). The point here is that there is a regular way whereby )the pos session of) information-or-misinformation gives rise to desires. It gives rise -regularly to the desire for something when it is specifically information-or-mis information to the effect that this something is apt to be a good means to something else. There certainly are as well irregular psychological mechanisms through which desires get caused by knowledge-or-belief, but none of these processes)however accurate the knowledge involved) can make what a person desires as a result be thereby something in that person's interests.

7 It is perhaps worth contrasting this approach with that of Brandt, Richard B. (A Theory of the Good and the Right [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979])Google Scholar. The topic of the Brandt book differs from what is being discussed here because it is not people's interests with which Brandt is essentially concerned, but rather “what a 'rational' person might want and choose to do” and “how to criticize our basic motivations” (Ibid., Preface, p. v.) The book does, however, devote -some space (Ibid., pp. 328-31) to exploring inconclusively the concept of “self interest.” Brandt, in accordance with the primary focus of his inquiry, is pre pared to stigmatize a prejudice against something, caused by a conditioned psychological association of it with something else, as being an “irrational” aversion if it would be curable by sufficiently intense and prolonged attention to factual information contradicting any notion of a real connection existing between the two, even though there had not actually been any belief in the -existence of such a connection (Ibid., pp. 11-12). But, from theinterests stand point of the present discussion, while it may be in people's interests to be cured of such an aversion if this should readily be possible, it does not follow that in the meantime they have an interest in acting, or being treated, as if they were -cured already. (Brandt himself makes a point like this, in effect, on p. 161.) Sec ondly, Brandt restricts himself for his purposes to “all available information,” understood as “the propositions accepted by the science of the agent's day, plus factual propositions justified by publicly accessible evidence … and the principles of logic” (Ibid., p. 13), in contrast “with the beliefs an omniscient being might have, beliefs in all true propositions, since we do not know the identity of such beliefs and can hardly use them as a tool of criticism” (Ibid., p. 12). But, once again, the case has got to be different from the standpoint pertinent here, which is concerned with people's interests. In the first place, something can hardly be in our true interests merely because current science erroneously considers it to have a certain effect. Then, on the other hand, very often a scientific inquiry is at least partly motivated by the aim of finding out certain things precisely in order to be able to determine what is and what is not, in fact, in our interests. By contrast with what is in our interests, however, what probably is in our interests does depend upon the actually available evi dence only. (The foregoing is adapted from n.13 of my “Objective Interests” [Ibid., pp. 162-63].)

8 Ayer, A. J., The Origins of Pragmatism (London: Macmillan, 1968), p. 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Even philosophers unwilling to ascribe beliefs to non-human animals may still admit that some minds incapable of second-order thought could nonetheless have beliefs.

10 The case seems to rest on the sort of counter-example Donald Davidson advanced in his article “Freedom to Act” (in Essays on Freedom of Action, edited by Honderich, Ted [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973], p. 153).Google Scholar Roderick M. Chisholm for his part proposed an earlier example to the same effect in his “Freedom and Action” (in Freedom and Determinism, edited by Lehrer, Keith [New York: Random House, 1966], p. 30).Google Scholar The basic objection being raised against belief-desire theory would seem to be that sometimes what one does results from a belief that doing it will increase the chances of some undesired outcome (e.g., you drop a valuable dish as a result of nervousness -caused by reflecting on the damage letting go of it will likely bring about). How ever, even there it is not the case that in general, if there were things you believed you could do (without too much trouble) which would increase that outcome's chances, such a belief would have any tendency to make you try to do some of those things. It is this that, in the relevant respect, makes the causal mecha nisms involved in such counter-examples irregular in the sense of n.6 (above).

11 Goldstick, Daniel, “Belief,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 26, 3 (July 1989): 231–38.Google Scholar

12 Armstrong, D. M., Belief, Truth and Knowledge (New York: Cambridge Uni versity Press, 1973), p. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Ramsey, F. P., The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1931), p. 238.Google Scholar

13 To this Davidson objects, in effect (see “Freedom to Act,” p. 151), that you might fail to take those means, in spite of desiring something about which you knew all this with certainty, because your knowledge might “simply fail to occur” to you. But, if this information did simply fail to occur to you in such circumstances—if, as we say, “it slipped your mind”—can we not rule that in such a case you at least temporarily have ceased to know it?

14 Some philosophers insist on denying that any logical consequence follows so -readily that one cannot still somehow fail to draw it. But, no matter how con -fusing one mayfindwords or other symbols, there would surely be wide agree ment that one cannot, for example, count as believing a conjunction without believing each conjunct. And surely no one counts as believing that the Pope is a bachelor who does not believe the Pope is an unmarried man (as opposed, that is, to merely believing the Pope to be an “unmarried man”—someone or something to whom or which those English words apply). These issues are in effect considered further in my “Cognitive Synonymy” (Dialectica, 34, 3 [1980]: 183–203).CrossRefGoogle Scholar We can call a strict implication “trivial” where it is logically impossible to believe the implicant without believing the implicate. In such a -case, what the implicant asserts will be “trivially sufficient” for what the impli cate asserts.

15 Or could you? If your belief that you desired some result gave rise in the way a desire does to seeking-behaviour aimed at bringing it about, might that not be enough to ensure that you then did desire it? 16 I am indebted to Glen Melanson and Stephen Talmage for pointing out the gaps in the argumentation advanced in “Objective Interests” which make the present article necessary.

16 I am indebted to Glen Melanson and Stephen Talmage for pointing out the gaps in the argumentation advanced in “Objective Interests” which make the present article necessary.