Desire That Amounts to Knowledge

Abstract

Abstract I argue that desire sometimes amounts to knowledge, in the same sense that belief sometimes amounts to knowledge. The argument rests on two assumptions: that goodness is the correctness condition for desire (which is one articulation of the idea that we desire things under the ‘guise of the good’) and that knowledge is apt mental representation (which is a generalized virtue-theoretic account of knowledge). Desire that amounts to knowledge—or ‘conative knowledge’—is illustrated by cases in which someone knows the goodness of something despite not believing that it is good.