Conflicts of Desire

In standard presentations of functionalism in the philosophy of mind, it is generally assumed that our mental states determine our behavioral dispositions as a holistic unit. Thus, although our mental states may them-selves conflict, the behavioral dispositions we have in virtue of these mental states do not. On the other hand, the everyday experience of desiring is often that of competing wants pushing and pulling us in different directions. Our ordinary conception of desiring involves thinking of desires as forces that battle against each other, that cause us to feel torn, and that may overpower each other. Such desire conflicts, I will argue, give us reason to think that the behavioral dispositions we have in virtue of having these desires can themselves conflict—the conflict that we experience when we have conflicting desires is mirrored in the conflicting ways that we are disposed to behave. In this paper I develop a metaphysics for the mind that better respects this sort of conflict, and which requires treating dispositional properties as fundamental properties out of which a mind is constructed.