Introspection and the Nature of Desire

It is common to hold that introspective knowledge of one’s mental states is highly epistemically privileged. Often this is thought to be explained by introspective knowledge’s directness; we somehow know our mental states “immediately,” without inference from distinct states. This chapter argues that if one holds this view concerning privilege and directness about introspective knowledge of desire, then desires cannot be normative or evaluative judgments, nor can they entirely consist in appearances of value. Since motivation is one of the things we pay attention to in introspecting our desires, this implies that motivation is not an entirely separate state from the desire.