Abstract

We must distinguish between a capacity for goal-directedness of a sort found in chess-playing computers and a capacity for robust desire, which involves finding there being something in favor of the relevant course of action in light of its significance to the subject. Existing accounts of desire, especially those given in terms of instrumental rationality, either ignore or presuppose such significance, in both cases failing to give an adequate account of robust desire. My positive thesis in this paper is that we can understand what it is to be a subject of significance and so what it is to have desires only in terms of the emotions, and I offer an explicit account of emotions, desire, and significance in terms of patterns of non-instrumental rationality the subject must display in its behavior.