What it means to want

Wanting is an easy concept to use. Talk to any three year-old and you'll know they've mastered it. Wanting is important, too. We understand one another in no small part through what they want, and wanting is a pillar in theories of mind and ethics. An account of wanting, then, must do dual duties: be powerful enough to carry this theoretical burden and simple enough to explain wanting's effortless use in daily life. The first two Chapters of this dissertation discharge these duties in part. The latter two Chapters complicate the task of discharging them further. Chapter 1. Folk psychology and decision theory both represent our belieflike and desire- and preference-like states. Both use these representations to explain and predict our actions. If we can't account for one in terms of the other, we'd have a dubious dualism-two competing systems of representation, prediction, and explanation. I give a decision-theoretic account of a key folk psychological notion-wanting.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Phillips-Brown, Milo.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stephen Yablo.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124093

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/124093