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Humean Nature
Humean Nature
How Desire Explains Action,
Thought, and Feeling

Neil Sinhababu

1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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© Neil Sinhababu 2017
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First Edition published in 2017
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Contents

Acknowledgments vii

1. The Return of the Humean Theory 1

1.1 The Humean Theory of Motivation 2
1.2 Smith’s Puzzle and his Treachery 5
1.3 Anti-Humean Views 12
1.4 Developing a Psychological Theory 17
1.5 The Rest of this Book 19
2. Five Properties of Desire 22
2.1 The Motivational Aspect 23
2.2 The Hedonic Aspect 28
2.3 The Attentional Aspect 33
2.4 Amplification by Vividness 36
2.5 The Desire–Belief Theory of Reasoning 38
3. Desire and Pleasure 45
3.1 The Feeling of Obligation 45
3.2 Darwall and Desires Formed in Deliberation 52
3.3 Bromwich and Saying What You Believe 55
3.4 Döring and Actions Expressing Emotion 57
3.5 The Hedonic Correlation 60
4. Moral Judgment 63
4.1 The Emotional Perception Model 63
4.2 The Metaethics of Emotional Perception 66
4.3 The Color Analogy 69
4.4 Experimental Evidence: Smells, Dumbfounding, and Psychopathy 74
4.5 Experientialism, Not Internalism, about Morality 79
5. Desire and Attention 83
5.1 Schueler and Combining Premises in Reasoning 83
5.2 Smith and the Explanation of Reasoning 86
5.3 Setiya, Practical Knowledge, and Belief about Doing 88
5.4 Shah and Velleman on Transparency in Deliberation 92
5.5 Towards a Theory of Daydreams 96
6. Intention 100
6.1 The Desire–Belief Theory of Intention 100
6.2 Bratman on Practical Deliberation and Planning 104
6.3 Ross and Schroeder on Cognitive Limitations 110
6.4 Pleasure and Intention 112
6.5 Joint Intentions 114
vi CONTENTS

7. Desire and Vividness 118

7.1 Procrastination 118
7.2 Searle and Akrasia 120
7.3 Scanlon, Reason-Judgments, and Akrasia 123
7.4 Tenenbaum and the Robustness of Desire-Driven Motivation 126
7.5 Predictable Irrationality and Dennett’s Normativism 128
7.6 Gendler and Alief 129
8. Willpower 135
8.1 Redirecting Attention to Control Vividness 135
8.2 Holton on Effort, Ego-Depletion, and Training 137
8.3 Sripada and Desire Strength in Willpower 141
8.4 Levy and Kahneman’s Dual-Process Framework 143
9. Reasons 146
9.1 The Humean Psychology of Reasons 146
9.2 Van Roojen and Acting on Advice about Reasons 150
9.3 Kant’s House of Lust and Practical Possibilities 152
9.4 Scanlon and Bracketing Reasons 154
9.5 Setiya and Reason-Choosing 156
9.6 Enoch and Deliberative Indispensability 160
9.7 Morality Isn’t about Reasons 163
10. Agency and the Self 167
10.1 Humean Self-Constitution 167
10.2 Wallace, Holton, and Agency in Desire 169
10.3 Korsgaard and Unified Agency 172
10.4 Moreau’s Paradoxes of Character 177
10.5 Velleman and Miller on Alienated Agency 181
10.6 Frankfurt’s Unwilling Addict and Pleasure in Goals 185
10.7 Kant and I 187
11. Metaethics for Humean Beings 188
11.1 Human Incapabilism about Moral Judgment 188
11.2 Cognitivist Internalism Falls into Incapabilism 191
11.3 Smith’s Disjunctive Internalism 192
11.4 Sophisticated Noncognitivism Falls into Incapabilism 194
11.5 Externalism about Moral Judgment and Motivation 197
11.6 Come to Scotland with Me 199

Bibliography 201
Index 213
Acknowledgments

I started working on the ideas in this book in a term paper for Melissa Barry’s
metaethics class in 2000, and then in an undergraduate thesis advised by Raphael
Woolf the next year. This book probably wouldn’t exist without Melissa’s encour-
agement to keep pursuing the project and Raphael’s caring attention to his enthusi-
astic young student. Thanks go first to them.
That term paper became my writing sample for the University of Texas, where the
idea of using a rich account of desire to address objections to Humean views grew
into a dissertation. My dissertation co-advisors, Brian Leiter and David Sosa, each
helped me considerably and in opposite ways, fitting their opposite approaches to
philosophy. When I didn’t how to proceed on some issue, Josh Dever would explain
difficult things clearly so I could figure out what to do. After he arrived at Texas,
Jonathan Dancy read my dissertation and told me what I most needed to hear: that it
was done. My other teachers and my fellow students supplied the constant philo-
sophical engagement that has always sharpened my work. So did a welcoming
community of graduate students and faculty at the University of Michigan, where
I spent a wonderful year as a visiting student.
My NUS colleague and flatmate Ben Blumson organized a reading group on the
book where we read a chapter every week or two for a semester. The reading group
not only gave me feedback, but also made me write so that there would be something
to read next week. Regular participants in addition to Ben included the meticulous
Weng Hong Tang, the indefatigable Jay Garfield, and ardent foe of fascism Elena
Zillotti. Nina Powell, Stuart Derbyshire, and Ilya Farber helped with psychological
questions.
Chapter 8 owes a great deal to the undergraduate thesis research of Yongming
Han, who came to me having read my work on the Humean Theory and wanting to
help. He found a great deal of empirical work on willpower previously uncited by
philosophers that supported the Humean account I had hoped to build. As I write
this, Yongming is in his fourth year of the PhD at Brown University. He’ll be sending
out job applications before long, and I strongly recommend him to departments
looking for a talented and creative young philosopher who can advance the research
of others around him.
In 2014–15, the Murphy Institute at Tulane University gave me a one-year
research fellowship to work on this book. I thank everyone there for helpful conver-
sations and excellent company in New Orleans.
I had a wonderful time working with Peter Momtchiloff. I thank him for letting me
write this book and for the music of Talulah Gosh, Marine Research, and Tufthunter.
Eleanor Collins helped to guide me down the path to publication. Copy editor Phil
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dines did excellent work. Additional copy editing (supported by a NUS book grant)
was done at a very efficient pace by Julia Ramsey and Mary Salvaggio.
The three referees for this book all provided very helpful reports that improved it
significantly. One is Josh May, who went above and beyond the call of referee duty
with a thoughtful and detailed fourteen-page report alerting me to a great deal of
philosophical and psychological research that I needed to engage with. Another was
Mark Van Roojen, who both suggested stylistic improvements (thanks to him, this
book introduces no abbreviations) and convinced me to include additional sections
that I now see as among the most important in the book. Thanks to the suggestions of
a third still anonymous referee, this book is now more responsive to recent work on
reasons than it had been.
Generous travel support from the National University of Singapore let me travel
the world presenting material that found its way into this book. Places I gave talks
include Australian National University, Boston University, Bowling Green State
University, Brandeis University, Bridgewater State University, Cardiff University,
Charles Sturt University, Claremont College, Dartmouth College, DePauw Univer-
sity, Duke University, Florida State University, Franklin & Marshall College, George-
town University, Georgia State University, Hong Kong University, Kansas State
University, King’s College London, Louisiana State University, Metropolitan
University of Tokyo, Murdoch University, Northern Illinois University, Portland
State University, Portland State University, Princeton University, St. John’s Univer-
sity, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, Tufts University, Underwood Inter-
national College Yonsei, University at Buffalo, University College Dublin, University
of Aberdeen, University of Adelaide, University of Antwerp, University of Arkansas
at Little Rock, University of Auckland, University of California at Riverside, Univer-
sity of California at Santa Cruz, University of Central Arkansas, University of
Chicago, University of Connecticut, University of Delaware, University of Edin-
burgh, University of Glasgow, University of Illinois, University of Macau, University
of Maryland, University of Missouri at St. Louis, University of Nevada at Las Vegas,
University of New South Wales, University of Nottingham, University of Oregon,
University of Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, University of Queensland,
University of Sheffield, University of Stirling, University of Texas, University of
Utah, University of Vermont, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, University of
York, Virginia Commonwealth University, Wayne State University, William and
Mary, and Yale University. I also presented at conferences including the Australasian
Association of Philosophy, the Global Themes in Ethical Naturalism Conference
at NUS, the Joint Session, the Moral Psychology Research Group at Tulane, the
Naturalisms in Ethics Conference at Auckland, and the Queensland Club. I hope the
hundreds of philosophers at these places with whom I had helpful conversations and
Q&A exchanges will forgive my not thanking them individually.
My heads of department, Sor-hoon Tan and now Mike Pelczar, generously
supported all this travel. Mike’s comments on the book also improved it stylistically
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix

and philosophically. I deeply appreciate the tireless efforts of Rosna Buang and
Melina Loo Shi Jie, the administrative staff who helped me navigate our travel
bureaucracy and dealt with the endless paperwork that my travels generated.
I thank my family not only for their constant support over the years, but for efforts
that directly made this book better. My father Achintya and my sister Supriya read
the whole thing and made a variety of useful suggestions. My brother Robin told me
helpful things about the significance of section 2.5. My mother Pranati provided a
delicious and desire-satisfying example that recurs in this book.
 1
The Return of the Humean Theory

In 1739, David Hume described prevailing views of motivation and declared his
campaign against them:
Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of the combat
of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and assert that men are only so far
virtuous as they conform themselves to its dictates. Every rational creature, it is said, is
obliged to regulate his actions by reason; and if any other motive or principle challenge the
direction of his conduct, he ought to oppose it, till it be entirely subdued, or at least brought
to a conformity with that superior principle. On this method of thinking the greatest part of
moral philosophy, antient and modern, seems to be founded; nor is there an ampler field,
as well for metaphysical arguments, as popular declamations, than this supposed pre-
eminence of reason above passion. The eternity, invariableness, and divine origin of the
former have been displayed to the best advantage: The blindness, unconstancy, and
deceitfulness of the latter have been as strongly insisted on. In order to shew the fallacy
of all this philosophy, I shall endeavour to prove first, that reason alone can never be a
motive to any action of the will; and secondly, that it can never oppose passion in the
direction of the will. (2.3.3)

He could’ve written the same thing today. Most contemporary ethicists, including
some who describe their views as Humean, think we can act on processes of
reasoning not driven by passion. Many of them argue that Hume’s view can’t explain
how we deliberate and act.
This book joins Hume’s side, arguing that his view best explains human action as
well as the thoughts and feelings surrounding it. His opponents argue that Humean
theories fail to explain a variety of phenomena. The properties of desire help the
Humean Theory provide the best explanations of all these phenomena. These
explanations show us how our desire-driven nature explains the psychology of
action, providing illuminating accounts of moral judgment, intention, willpower,
and agency.
Section 1.1 presents the Humean Theory of Motivation. Section 1.2 explains
its metaethical significance. Section 1.3 discusses anti-Humean views. Section 1.4
presents my methodology for psychological theorizing. Section 1.5 outlines the rest of
the book.
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY

1.1 The Humean Theory of Motivation

The Humean Theory of Motivation consists of two principles describing human
action and reasoning. A, E, and M suggest “action”, “end”, and “means”:
Desire–Belief Theory of Action: One is motivated to A if and only if desire that
E is combined with belief that one can raise E’s probability by A-ing.
Desire–Belief Theory of Reasoning: Desire that M is created as the conclusion of
reasoning if and only if the reasoning combines desire that E with belief that
M would raise E’s probability. It is eliminated as the conclusion of reasoning if and
only if the reasoning eliminates such a combination.
The Humean Theory is a psychological claim about what motivates action and
changes desire through reasoning in human beings. It isn’t a conceptual analysis of
action or reasoning. And it isn’t a normative claim concerning the rationality of
actions or what there is reason to do. According to the Humean Theory, being
motivated to act and forming new desires through reasoning require no mental
states except desires and beliefs about how various events would change the prob-
ability of desire-satisfaction.
Chapter 2 clarifies the most important term in the Humean Theory, “desire”.
Motivating action is one of desire’s many effects. Desire also causes pleasure when
we learn that it’ll be satisfied or daydream about its satisfaction. It directs our
attention towards things we associate with its object. Vivid representations of its
object amplify all these effects. This rich account of desire exposes the Humean
Theory to counterexamples if desire’s other properties aren’t correlated with motiv-
ation and practical reasoning. But it helps the Humean Theory explain the correl-
ations if they exist.
According to the Desire–Belief Theory of Action, all action is motivated by desire
combined with means–end belief. I may desire to eat, believe that I can raise the
probability of eating by asking my mother for food, and ask my mother for food.
A ranges over intentional action, where the agent intends to do something. It doesn’t
include involuntary bodily movements or reflexes, or mental events that aren’t
actions like forming beliefs or having perceptual experiences. It does include impul-
sive actions and intentional omissions. Not acting or not performing some specific
action are possible values of A, so desires motivate omissions when combined with
beliefs that not acting would raise the probability of satisfaction.
Motivation to act is a psychological disposition to act. Part of the meaning of
“motivation”, as I use it, is that you do whatever you’re most motivated to do. The
strength of this disposition is only roughly correlated with how strongly one feels an
urge to act. The substantive question at issue between Humeans and their opponents
is whether desires are necessary for motivation. People who are motivated to do
something might never do it if they never find themselves in the right conditions.
I might be motivated to eat truffles, but never eat them, if they’re always so expensive
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY 

that my desire to save money creates greater motivation not to eat them. Dispositions
are like this. The fragile glass has a disposition to break if struck, but it may never
break if nothing ever strikes it, or if it’s well cushioned whenever struck.
The Humean Theory invokes beliefs about raising the probability of desired ends.
Actions and means can do this causally or constitutively. If you desire to win at
basketball, passing the ball to your open teammate is a causal means to your end.
Ending the game with more points than the other team is a constitutive means to
your end.
My formulation counts low subjective probabilities that acting would bring about
ends as beliefs, because they can play belief ’s role in motivation. Mowgli will run
from a tiger if he desires to survive and believes that his 10 percent chance of
outrunning the tiger is his only chance to survive. We don’t usually call such low
subjective probabilities beliefs. I formulate the Humean Theory with “belief ” mainly
because it’s familiar to more of my readership than “subjective probability”. But
subjective probability enables more precise predictions, and Chapter 2 uses it more.
Beliefs are caused by sensations, produce and eliminate each other along lines of
logical inference, and combine with motivational states to cause action. Both high
and low subjective probabilities can stand in these relations, with their effects
corresponding to the magnitude of the probability.
Beliefs might not seem necessary for motivation in cases where one desires to
produce an immediate bodily movement like moving one’s hand. Does this require
the trivial belief that by moving one’s hand, one will make it more likely that one
moves one’s hand? The Humean Theory requires the trivial belief. If I desired to move
my hand and denied the trivial truth that by moving my hand I’d make it more likely
that I moved my hand, I probably wouldn’t move my hand. Perhaps I’d feel disap-
pointed or resigned to my perceived inability. This is why the Desire–Belief Theory of
Action requires belief. Still, the view that beliefs aren’t necessary in these trivial cases
remains a plausible Humean position. I’m not laying out the boundaries of all possible
Humean theories. I’m simply stating a true theory within those boundaries.
The Desire–Belief Theory of Reasoning says that only one process of reasoning
changes desires—instrumental reasoning, which makes new desires out of pre-
existing desires and beliefs about the means to their satisfaction. The new desires
are called instrumental desires. The initial desires from which instrumental-desire
formation begins are called intrinsic desires. Neither kind of desire has to concern
one’s own actions. If my desire that Ronnie dance combines with my belief that he’s
more likely to dance if the DJ plays “Boom” by Wild Flag, I’ll instrumentally desire
that the DJ play “Boom”, even if I know I can’t influence the DJ’s choices. Here
my desire for Ronnie to dance and my belief about how “Boom” would make him
dance combine to constitute a new desire for “Boom”, which lasts as long as the
desire and belief are combined. While the Desire–Belief Theory of Reasoning allows
instrumental desires to be formed in this way, it prevents reasoning from generating
intrinsic desires.
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY

Intrinsic desires can change, but not as conclusions of reasoning. After puberty,
one desires many things that one didn’t desire before. Through conditioning, some-
thing can be associated with pleasure to increase desire for it, or with electric shocks
to decrease desire for it. Absorbing our friends’ infectious enthusiasm for sports
teams or rock bands can make us desire the team’s victory or desire to hear the band’s
music as well. (This may be a case of conditioning. If pleasure can condition us into
desiring things, empathically absorbing others’ pleasure can too.) Puberty, condi-
tioning, and social acquisition of emotion aren’t reasoning, so the Desire–Belief
Theory of Reasoning lets them change desires.
I use “reasoning” as a psychological term, not a normative term. Nothing in the
Humean Theory entails that any way of acting or forming desires would be right,
wrong, rational, or irrational. The Humean Theory just describes action and how
reasoning assembles and disassembles instrumental desires. This makes it a straight-
forwardly psychological theory, not a normative theory. Perhaps some norms apply
specifically to processes of reasoning, and perhaps our acceptance of particular norms
sociologically explains our views about reasoning, but the concept of reasoning itself
isn’t normative. While Chapter 9 embraces theories connecting desire and normative
reasons suggested by Bernard Williams (1979) and developed by David Sobel (2001),
Donald Hubin (2001), Mark Schroeder (2007), and Kate Manne (2014), such theories
neither entail the Humean Theory nor are entailed by it. They’re normative theories;
the Humean Theory is a psychological theory.
One distinctive mark of reasoning is that it involves mental states quickly produ-
cing others because of syntactic relations between their contents. Beliefs combine
with other beliefs, producing beliefs in their logical consequences. Desires for ends
combine with beliefs about means for raising the probability of ends, producing
desires for the means. I have no general account of what distinguishes reasoning from
other mental processes like perception and forgetting, but I hope this indicates which
processes I’m calling “reasoning”.
The Desire–Belief Theory of Reasoning is significant for moral philosophy and
ordinary life. Our most basic desires are hard to change, even when we judge that we
should lose existing desires or gain new ones. Ascetic values that condemn one’s
sexual desires famously don’t change those desires. They simply leave one hating
oneself. Judging that it would be better to requite the sexual desire of a wonderful
person with whom one could be very happy, if only one could reciprocate the desire,
doesn’t bring the wished-for desire into existence. It just leaves one wistful about
what could’ve been, and sad about disappointing one’s admirer. One can imagine
creatures who systematically and swiftly form the desires that they believe they
should have. I count these ways of changing desires as processes of reasoning. But
they’re kinds of reasoning that humans can’t do.
Both principles in the Humean Theory require desires and beliefs to “combine”.
Chapter 5 describes how desires can cause such combining by directing attention to
ways we believe we can raise their probability of satisfaction. Desires and beliefs may
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY 

fail to combine as the Humean Theory requires. If my desire to go downtown and

my belief that a particular bus would take me downtown don’t combine, I won’t be
motivated to take the bus. When distraction, drunkenness, or exhaustion depletes
our attentional resources, desire–belief pairs may not come together. And even
attentive, alert, sober people can fail to put complicated or unusual desire–belief
pairs together.
My formulation of the Humean Theory is true to Hume’s goal. Suppose we take
“desire” to be what Hume calls “passion”. And suppose, following some of Hume’s
most forceful arguments, we take reason to operate through inferences drawn from
beliefs alone and not from desires. Then we can see how the Humean Theory
expresses Hume’s claim that reason alone can’t motivate action or oppose passion.
According to the Desire–Belief Theory of Action, actions can’t be motivated by
beliefs alone. According to the Desire–Belief Theory of Reasoning, reasoning can’t
generate new desires from beliefs alone. Someone without the relevant desires, then,
can’t be motivated to act by any chain of reasoning that begins only in beliefs—
“reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will.” And except by
changing a means–end belief, beliefs can’t prevent desire from motivating action.
They can’t intervene directly in action or produce new mental states through
reasoning which themselves motivate action—they “can never oppose passion in
the direction of the will.”
The Humean Theory is distinctive among views of motivation given Hume’s name
in at least two ways. First, it’s bolder in including the Desire–Belief Theory of
Reasoning, as many nominally Humean views only include something like the
Desire–Belief Theory of Action. Second, it’s more cautious in limiting itself to
human psychology, rather than trying to describe all possible creatures that can
act. In both respects, it differs from the most prominent supposedly Humean view—
that of Michael Smith (1994). Smith puts his theory into the context of a puzzle about
moral judgment and motivation. This puzzle displays the metaethical significance of
the Humean Theory and the metaethical insignificance of Smith’s formulation. I’ll
turn to it now.

1.2 Smith’s Puzzle and his Treachery

Smith’s puzzle consists of three propositions. Many philosophers find each one
attractive. But the truth of all three entails the impossibility of moral judgment, so
at least one must be false. Here are simple versions of the propositions:
Cognitivism: Moral judgments are beliefs.
Internalism: Moral judgments can produce their own motivational force.
The Humean Theory of Motivation
Here I haven’t spelled out the Humean Theory of Motivation. Smith and I formulate
it in different ways that change the shape of the puzzle. We also formulate
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY

internalism differently. I’ll explain why people find cognitivism and internalism
appealing before discussing the Humean Theory.
Cognitivism is appealing because treating moral judgments as beliefs explains how
they can be true or false and how they fit into moral arguments. On the opposing
view, noncognitivism, moral judgments aren’t beliefs. They’re some other state of
mind like desire or emotion. As Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton (1992) write, “A
classic problem for noncognitivists is that moral judgments have so many earmarks
of claims to objective truth” (145). Beliefs, unlike desires and emotions, are capable of
truth and falsity. We often say that beliefs are true or false, but we don’t say this about
other mental states like desires and emotions. It’s an important feature of moral
judgments that they can be true or false. Most of us regard nineteenth-century
abolitionists who judged that slavery was morally wrong as knowing the truth
about an objective fact—one about which many people of their time had false beliefs.
When semantic theorists like Crispin Wright (1992) and Paul Horwich (1993)
extend truth-talk to mental states that aren’t beliefs, they invariably bend a natural
distinction between states of mind that can be true and states of mind that can’t, as
Jamie Dreier (1996) argues. I reject noncognitivism because it can’t explain how
moral judgments are true in the usual sense of the word.
Cognitivism explains how moral judgments fit into arguments by treating them as
beliefs, which can be true or false. Consider the following valid argument:
P1: Murder is wrong.
P2: If murder is wrong, it’s wrong to pay others to murder.
C: It’s wrong to pay others to murder.
P1 and P2 imply C. But if P1 can’t be true or false, and if the antecedent and
consequent of P2 can’t be true or false either, it’s hard to see how the argument
can be valid, or why it’s an argument at all. If P1 and the parts of P2 can’t be true, they
can’t entail C. John Searle (1962) and Peter Geach (1965) note that if moral judg-
ments aren’t beliefs, it’s hard to see how they could make arguments like this valid.
Recent noncognitivists including Allan Gibbard (1990, 2003) suggest clever solutions
to this problem. Nicholas Unwin (1999) and Mark Schroeder (2008) argue that they
can’t solve all the problems like this.
Smith, Simon Blackburn (1998), and others find internalism appealing because it
explains why judging something to be wrong is correlated with motivation not to
do it. On their view, moral judgments simply motivate us not to do what we judge to
be wrong. On the opposing view, externalism, moral judgments aren’t what produces
the motivational force. Motivation comes from some other mental state accompany-
ing the moral judgment like a desire to act rightly, in combination with the moral
judgment. The terms “internalism” and “externalism”, while being used for too many
things in philosophy, provide a useful metaphor here. Internalists take the motiv-
ational force to come from within the moral judgment (or some mental state it
directly produces through reasoning), while externalists take the motivational force
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY 

to come from some mental state outside the moral judgment. I’ll discuss a variety of
internalism that connects moral facts with reasons in Chapter 9, but the term will
refer to the connection between moral judgment and motivation until then.
This motivation need not be overriding, and can be undermined by general
motivational pathologies. People who judge that taking bribes is wrong may still
take bribes if they really need the money, but internalism can still hold if their
judgment provides some conflicting but overridden motivation. Internalism isn’t
violated if psychological conditions like depression or exhaustion that generally
prevent motivation also prevent moral motivation, as Steven Swartzer (2015) notes
in response to Michael Stocker (1979). Smith addresses this by qualifying internalism
to say that one must be motivated by a moral judgment or be practically irrational.
I think it’s better simply to note that general motivational pathologies aren’t counter
examples than to invoke this ungainly disjunction of the descriptive and the nor-
mative. All internalists need is that moral judgments under normal psychological
conditions could themselves produce motivation to act, when combined with
means–end beliefs. So if I judge that eating meat is wrong, believe that eating this
taco will be eating meat, and am under normal psychological conditions, those
mental states will provide some motivation not to eat this taco. Swartzer argues
that internalism is best formulated as the explanatory thesis that moral judgments
can motivate action under some ordinary conditions, not as the modal thesis
that moral judgments necessarily are accompanied by motivation. My formulation
follows his arguments.
Internalism is false if moral judgments motivate only in the following way:
Desiring to do what’s right and believing that voting is right motivate me to vote.
Here the moral judgment simply tells me how to achieve my antecedently desired
moral end. Sigrún Svavarsdóttir (1999) and Vanessa Carbonell (2013) suggest this
externalist account. Internalists deny that moral judgments motivate us only as
beliefs about means to antecedently desired moral ends like doing good or acting
rightly. They may accept that we can be motivated this way too, but they ascribe a
further motivational role to moral judgments. They claim that moral judgments can
drive motivation just as desire does, perhaps with the moral concepts of right and
wrong giving beliefs desire-like motivational force.
To me, the most attractive thing about internalism is its unified account of what
all moral judgments are about. As G. E. Moore (1903) suggests, false moral theories
aren’t internally contradictory or conceptually confused. Even obviously false moral
claims usually seem substantively false like “My grandmother lives on Mercury”
rather than definitionally or conceptually false like “My grandmother isn’t my
relative.” If the concept of moral rightness is so open that so many false moral
theories aren’t conceptually confused, what does it even involve? Gibbard (1990)
presents the internalist answer: motivation. People can think a wide range of different
things are right without contradiction or conceptual confusion. But grasping the
concept of rightness always involves being motivated to act rightly. If you say that
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY

something is right, but you have zero motivation to do it, you haven’t really grasped
the concept of rightness. I used to envy internalists for having this tidy story about
moral concepts. With the experientialist account of moral concepts in section 4.5,
I envy them no longer.
This brings us to the third proposition—the Humean Theory. As I’ve discussed,
the Humean Theory implies that beliefs alone can’t motivate action. The Desire–
Belief Theory of Action requires desire for action, preventing beliefs alone from
motivating action directly. The Desire–Belief Theory of Reasoning prevents beliefs
alone from generating desires through reasoning. Since action requires desire and
belief alone can’t generate desire, belief alone can’t motivate action.
Now we can put the puzzle together. Cognitivism and internalism together say that
moral judgments must be beliefs that can produce their own motivational force. But
according to the Humean Theory, beliefs can’t produce their own motivational force.
So we lack the mental state that moral judgment has to be. If cognitivism, internalism,
and the Humean Theory are true, moral judgment is impossible. The problem isn’t
that our moral judgments are often false or that we lack good reasons for them. If
cognitivism, internalism, and the Humean Theory are true, we’re psychologically
incapable of making moral judgments at all.
This book defends the Humean Theory not as a conceptually or metaphysically
necessary truth about all possible agents, but as a psychological law about human
minds. Restricting the Humean Theory to typical humans leaves the puzzle equally
gripping. Then if cognitivist internalism is true, some nonhuman creatures and
atypical humans might be capable of making moral judgments, because their psych-
ology includes beliefs that produce motivational force. But if there’s anything we
know about moral judgment, it’s that typical humans do it. Cognitivism and intern-
alism, combined with the Humean Theory as a psychological law about typical
humans, entail that we can’t. This is why the Humean Theory is philosophically
important even if it’s just a psychological law about ordinary humans, and not a
necessary truth about all possible agents.
If cognitivism, internalism, and the Humean Theory are all true, humans are in a
surprising metaethical predicament. We’ve long thought that while we could make
moral judgments, other animals like dogs didn’t have the mental states required do
so, and objects without mental states definitely couldn’t. We have the practical
reasoning ability required for moral judgment, and they don’t. But if these three
theses are all true, we’re the dogs. Our psychology leaves us incapable of making
moral judgments, because moral belief alone could never motivate us. Superior
creatures capable of motivation from belief alone could make moral judgments, but
we can’t. Perhaps there is, or will be, moral judgment in our universe. But it’ll have to
be in the minds of aliens or robots or technologically modified future humans. If the
Humean Theory is false only of humans under unusual psychological conditions,
maybe those people can make moral judgments. But typical humans, like dogs and
pigs and piggy banks and hot dogs, will be incapable of moral judgment. I call this
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY 

result human incapabilism about moral judgment. Chapter 11 discusses it in more

detail. If those who accept cognitivism and internalism on conceptual grounds ask
how an empirical discovery like the Humean Theory could possibly undermine their
views, I answer that the price of holding those views is accepting that typical humans
can’t make moral judgments.
So between cognitivism, internalism, and the Humean Theory, reasonable people
will choose at most two. I choose cognitivism and the Humean Theory. I’ll argue
against internalism in Chapter 4, but for now, let’s appreciate the philosophical
interest of this puzzle. These are three theses of which we can accept only two, on
pain of an abhorrent consequence. The Humean Theory is important in metaethics
because it’s part of this puzzle.
Now I turn to Smith’s formulation. As Ralph Wedgwood (2002), Jay Wallace
(1990), and Terence Cuneo (2002) note, Smith doesn’t include anything like the
Desire–Belief Theory of Reasoning:
R at t constitutes a motivating reason of agent A to φ iff there is some ψ such that R at t consists
of a desire of A to ψ and a belief that were he to φ he would ψ.

Smith’s formulation of the Humean theory requires that actions be motivated by

Desire–Belief pairs, much like the Desire–Belief Theory of Action. This formulation
differs most significantly from mine in not including the Desire–Belief Theory of
Reasoning. Smith allows beliefs to produce new desires through processes of reason-
ing that don’t involve any antecedent desires. I’ll discuss Smith’s focus on motivating
reasons and his argument for his formulation before returning to this.
Smith’s formulation differs from mine in discussing “motivating reasons”—the
reasons for which we act. He usefully distinguishes these from normative reasons—
the reasons for which we should act. A psychologically and metaethically interesting
Humean view need not be formulated in terms of reasons of either kind. (The causal
process called “reasoning” should be in the formulation, but that’s something
different.) Smith claims that motivating reasons are constituted by beliefs and desires.
Jonathan Dancy (1995, 2000) argues against this. As Chapter 9 will discuss, Humeans
shouldn’t treat desires themselves as the reasons for which we act. We can instead treat
the desires as background conditions for reasons, following Mark Schroeder (2007).
Smith’s argument for his version of the Humean view (or really, for the inability of
belief alone to motivate action, which is important for the puzzle) comes from his
famous description of desire’s “direction of fit” as its essential property: “Being in a
state with which the world must fit is desiring” (55). Smith argues that desire is
necessary for motivation, as motivation involves making the world be the way we
desire it to be. He presents a clever argument that these desires can’t simply be beliefs.
While beliefs must change to fit the world when we perceive that the world doesn’t
correspond with what’s believed, desires make us try to change the world to fit them
when we perceive that the world doesn’t correspond with what’s desired. Since beliefs
stop existing and desires keep existing when we perceive that the world doesn’t fit
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY

their content, beliefs can’t be desires—“the idea that there may be a state with both
directions of fit is just plain incoherent” (56). Nothing can both stop existing and
keep existing simultaneously. So beliefs alone can’t motivate us.
Margaret Little (1997) and Huw Price (1989) note a problem with Smith’s argument.
We can give a belief-like direction of fit to the entire content of moral judgment,
while giving a desire-like direction of fit to the action believed to be right. The belief
that voting is right can be created or maintained by perceptions that voting is right,
and eliminated by perceiving that voting is not right. That’s a belief-like direction
of fit for the whole content of the judgment. Meanwhile, this belief can motivate
someone to vote. That’s a desire-like direction of fit for the action believed to be right.
So the content of the belief (that voting is right) could consistently have a different
direction of fit from the part of its content that picked out the action it caused
(voting). By not having incoherent directions of fit for either, it would escape Smith’s
objection. This is one way that Smith’s argument doesn’t block beliefs from motiv-
ating action.
Now I’ll describe how the lack of a Desire–Belief Theory of Reasoning makes
Smith’s view compatible with cognitivist internalism in another way. Moral judg-
ments can be beliefs which generate new desires through reasoning. These new
desires then are the immediate causes of motivation. On such a picture, moral
judgments are beliefs, upholding cognitivism. They produce their own motivational
force by creating motivationally potent desires through reasoning, upholding intern-
alism. And all motivation issues immediately from Desire–Belief pairs, regardless of
how the desires were made, upholding Smith’s weakly Humean view.
This is how Smith solves the puzzle. He sees the solution as coming from his
ambiguous claim that “If an agent believes that she has a normative reason to φ, then
she should rationally desire to φ” (148). This looks like a normative claim about what
someone should desire, with no psychological consequences. Smith makes it look
that way by putting it in his chapter against Humean views of normative reasons.
(It would be an implausible normative claim—wildly mistaken beliefs about normative
reasons don’t make it rational to desire in accordance with them.) But Smith isn’t just
accepting a normative claim. He’s accepting the anti-Humean descriptive psycho-
logical claim that believing it’s rational to do something can, by reasoning, generate a
desire to do it. As he writes, “the new desire is acquired precisely because it is believed
to be required for us to be rational” (160). He counts this sort of desire-formation as
reasoning, writing that when an evaluative belief “in itself” gives rise to a new desire in
this way, “it seems entirely right and proper to suppose that this new desire has been
arrived at by a rational method” (160). He adds that this psychological process
can also explain how we might come to lose old desires as well . . . our belief that such desires
are ad hoc may then cause us to lose them. And, if so, then it will seem sensible to describe this
as a loss that is itself mandated by reason; as again straightforwardly analogous to the loss of an
unjustifiable, because ad hoc, belief. (160)
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY 

So Smith’s solution requires rejecting the Desire–Belief Theory of Reasoning.

Smith discusses motivation at length because the Humean Theory completes the
trilemma with cognitivism and internalism. His achievement is supposed to be
solving the trilemma. His solution works because his weakly Humean view makes
it a false trilemma. Had he called attention to how weakly he formulates the theory,
the achievement of reconciling it with cognitivism and internalism would’ve looked
less impressive, as it obviously would’ve been a false trilemma. And had he explicitly
argued against the Desire–Belief Theory of Reasoning, it would’ve been clear that
rejecting strong Humean views was essential to his solution. Instead, after discussing
how Hume treats beliefs as having “no rational impact on our desires” (8) in the
introduction of his book, he denies the Desire–Belief Theory of Reasoning without
any sustained argument. He’s clear about being an anti-Humean about normative
reasons, but this doesn’t entail anything interesting about descriptive psychology,
and definitely not that beliefs about reasons can change our desires. So you could
easily miss how weak Smith’s version of the Humean theory is, if you weren’t warned
by his later work (2003, 2004). It isn’t the version that shaped our expectations about
Humean views when we heard it from Hume himself, and which makes the trilemma
genuine and hard. His project seems interesting because he initially seems to be a
friend of strong Humean views, but he solves his puzzle by rejecting them.
This is why Smith’s formulation of the Humean theory isn’t interesting. It’s too
weak to generate a real trilemma. As he proudly explains, we can accept it along with
cognitivism and internalism. His book successfully demonstrates that it lacks the
consequences that make Humean views metaethically interesting. My formulation
forces us to choose only one of cognitivism and internalism, on pain of incapabilism
about moral judgment. If you accept cognitivism and internalism, you can shrug at
Smith’s formulation. But you must deny mine.
Hume writes that “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and
can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” (2.3.3). On the
standard interpretation ably defended by Elizabeth Radcliffe (1999), Hume’s view
“concerns the incapacity of reason to generate the motivating passions in the first
place, and not just the ineffectiveness of beliefs, without passions, to produce action”
(101). Hume uses his theory in arguments with the structure of Smith’s puzzle.
Radcliffe notes that Hume’s theory “provides crucial support for a famous claim in
his argument against the moral rationalists” (102). But according to Smith, beliefs
can eliminate our desires through reasoning, and can create new desires even in
people who lack any desires. So to Smith, as to Stephen Darwall (1983), Thomas
Nagel (1970), Immanuel Kant (1997), and Plato (380 BCE), reason is passion’s master
rather than its slave. By weakening Hume’s theory, Smith leaves him defenseless
against his rationalist foes, who now dominate metaethics. And so it’s true to this day
that “the greatest part of moral philosophy, antient and modern” is founded on the
“supposed pre-eminence of reason above passion.” The pre-eminence of reason is
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY

upheld even by the philosopher regarded as the greatest contemporary Humean

about motivation.
Smith is no defender of Hume, but a traitor. Humeans don’t allow reason on its
own to create and destroy passions. If they did, their view would be irrelevant to
central metaethical debates. Smith’s solution to his puzzle reveals him as an enemy of
any historically genuine and metaethically interesting Humean theory of motivation.
I’ll use “the Humean Theory” to refer only to the formulation at the beginning of this
book, since it’s the one that deserves Hume’s name.

1.3 Anti-Humean Views

The Humean Theory provides an ontologically simple psychological explanation of
all human motivation and practical reasoning. It’s hard to imagine simpler plausible
explanations of these phenomena. Its opponents fall into two categories. Many think
that causal explanations of human motivation require a richer ontology of psycho-
logical states and processes than the Humean Theory allows. I’ll use the properties of
desire to explain the phenomena they say Humeans can’t explain, and then use
Occam’s razor to cut away their additional entities. Others reject all explanations of
this kind. My strategy against them is to provide explanations too good to reject. I’ll
discuss the former opponents at length before turning to the latter.
Kantians and other cognitivist internalists often present the traditional objection
to the Humean Theory: accounting for the complexity of human psychology requires
more motivational states than desire. One version of this objection, made by John
Searle (2001), T. M. Scanlon (1998), J. G. Schurman (1894), W. R. Sorley (1919), and
others whose last names don’t begin with S, is that the Humean Theory can’t explain
the phenomenology of obligation. Our feelings about keeping burdensome promises
differ from our feelings about going to fun parties. Claiming that the same mental
state of desire motivates us in both cases doesn’t explain the difference in how we feel.
I’ll respond in section 3.1, but for now I’m simply noting the basic structure of the
objection. Anti-Humeans point to a feature of human psychology, and argue that the
Humean Theory can’t explain it.
The litany of objections like this is long. Anti-Humeans claim that the Humean
Theory can’t account for a vast range of psychological phenomena, including those
involved in intention, willpower, weakness of will, answering questions, expressing
emotions, acting on reasons, and agency. These objections sometimes come from
Kantians who defend cognitivism and internalism, but also from philosophers with
no such allegiances who regard the phenomena surrounding human motivation as
too complex for the Humean Theory to be true.
If desire were merely a mental state that combined with means–end belief to move
us about, many of these objections wouldn’t have answers. Much more happens
when we act than behavior. We have different thoughts and feelings when we engage
in different actions, and the objections to the Humean Theory illustrate this variety.
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY 

Responding requires much more than a motivational account of desire. As Steven

Arkonovich (2001) writes in response to Scanlon, “the true advantages and disad-
vantages of Humeanism cannot be made clear until more detailed treatment is given
to our understanding of desire”, and “even the most passing reflection upon our
desires must recognize that desires are not just states that assail us with various
strengths, and then move us to bring about some very specific state of affairs”
(518–19).
Purely motivational construals of desire explain very little about even the simplest
cases of desire-driven action. The hungry person’s desire to eat doesn’t just cause the
behavior of eating—it focuses attention on food and causes pleasure upon finding
unexpected opportunities to eat. All other desires similarly affect our thoughts and
feelings, so our account of human desire should involve much more than motivation.
Chapter 2 describes how desire also causes pleasure and displeasure when we think of
its object, directs attention towards its object, has stronger effects when its object is
vividly represented, and is unaffected by many forms of reasoning that can change
beliefs. All these effects are common to all desires, from those we feel in hunger and
sexual lust to our desires to help others and do the right thing.
Those who defend views of motivation more complex than the Humean Theory
would be foolish to deny that the states that move us when we’re hungry or lustful
have these properties. So they can’t deny that desire, roughly as I characterize it, is a
motivational state humans have. I’ll use such a rich account of desire to explain all the
phenomena cited in the objections. These phenomena are caused by desire in
combination with mental states like belief, imagination, and sensation that any
good psychological theory will accept. Once we see how these mental states interact
with each other, we can understand the phenomena.
My opponents use their counterexamples to argue that there are additional causal
processes, so my explanations fit within a simpler psychological theory than theirs.
They think explaining these phenomena requires motivational states other than
desire, such as intention, willpower, or the freedom of rational beings to do some-
thing just because they believe they should do it. But they can’t plausibly deny that
desire exists, and that it has the psychological effects I describe. Denying this will
leave them unable to explain how we think, feel, and act in the simplest cases of
pursuing food, water, sex, and love. Including motivational states that aren’t desire
commits them to additional types of causal powers, so a psychology built around the
Humean Theory will be simpler than one built around their views. If the Humean
Theory accounts for all the phenomena, its simplicity will make it superior. Usually
I’ll agree that things my opponents invoke are real (such as intention, willpower, and
agency), and show that the motivation they produce simply is that of desire.
Sometimes I’ll reject the entities or processes they invoke (such as motivationally
potent beliefs and libertarian free will). Both the former reductive move and the latter
eliminative move preserve the Humean Theory’s simplicity, invoking no fundamental
motivational states other than desire.
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY

Richard Holton (2009) and Josh May (2013) caution us against appealing to
simplicity too quickly. Holton writes, “We are evolved creatures; we should not
expect our basic mechanisms to be uniformly simple and elegant. Rather than
looking to reduce, philosophers would do better to explore the distinctions that
our commonplace psychological thinking, and our commonplace psychological
experience, suggest” (xiii). May writes, “The history of psychological theory has
shown a trend in the proliferation of moving parts, such as types of mental states,
processes, or modules. At this point, the value of even seeking to appeal to
Occam’s razor is not immediately obvious, at least given the domain in which
it is being employed” (800). They’re right that the data of psychology is complex,
and that there are limits on the elegance we can expect from a theory that is
supposed to address it. Even as I explain some motivational and deliberative
phenomena in terms of desire and belief, I’ll invoke many other mental states
that don’t have Desire–Belief explanations themselves, including sensation,
imagination, attention, and tiredness.
Here I follow Einstein (1934): “It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of
all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible
without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of
experience” (165). Of the theories best fitting the data, we should choose the one
with the simplest ontology of fundamental explanatory entities. This respects the
complexity of the psychological data that Holton and May describe, while also
respecting simplicity considerations that save psychology from ruin. One can fit all
the data just as well by invoking a thousand additional mental states, none of which
affect the observable data, or whose effects on the data collectively cancel each other
out in every case. One can similarly fit the data while drawing spurious psychological
distinctions between desires on each day of the week, doing the same work with seven
types of desire that a sane theory would do with one. Good criteria for theory choice
should lead even those who initially accepted such absurdities to remove them
from their theories. So simplicity, or something like it, must be one of our criteria.
Any other way lies madness.
Simpler explanations are often deeper, telling us more about why things are the
way they are. Regard intention as a fundamental psychological state irreducible to
belief and desire, and you close your eyes to a further explanation of why intending
something motivates us to do it and causes us to reason about how to achieve it.
Regard intention as desire combined with means–end belief, and you can see why it
drives motivation and reasoning—because it’s made of desire, and that’s what desires
do. Of course, if this reductive story doesn’t fit our observations about intention, we
should reject it. But if it fits the data, it provides a deeper and more satisfying account
of how our minds work. Most of this book develops accounts of this kind. I consider a
wide variety of data including my opponents’ supposed counterexamples, and show
how a theory built around the Humean Theory provides simple, deep, and unified
explanations of it all. Data elegantly explained becomes part of the evidence for a
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY 

theory, and this book will turn anti-Humean counterexamples into evidence for the
Humean Theory.
Seeking simple explanations of a broad range of phenomena, we find laws of
nature. Some theories of laws, such as those of David Lewis (1973) and Frank Ramsey
(1977), treat simplicity and strength as essential for lawhood. Whether or not
simplicity partially constitutes lawhood, it certainly helps us discover laws. Newton’s
(1687) law of gravity was one of the great simplifications in the history of science,
unifying earthly and celestial gravitation under one principle. I follow this well-
trodden path in using the simplicity and explanatory power of the Humean Theory
to argue that it’s a psychological law, so that cognitivist internalism renders humans
incapable of moral judgment.
We seek the simplest total psychological theory, not the simplest explanation of
any individual phenomenon. Often an individually simple account of one phenom-
enon should be rejected because it adds new fundamental entities to our total
psychological theory. Otherwise no phenomenon could be explained by multiple
factors—it’s always simpler individually to invoke a single new fundamental force
that provides a full explanation, cluttering our overall theory with a fundamental
force for each phenomenon. Unfortunately, I can’t actually explain all of psychology,
or this book wouldn’t fit in a backpack. So I’ll show that the Humean Theory
provides the simplest explanation of the broad range of psychological phenomena
connected to motivation, while not interfering with good explanations elsewhere in
psychology. There’s more to say about how to apply simplicity, but it’ll make more
sense when we’ve got into the details of the cases, so I’ll postpone it for then.
Another class of opponents can only be indirectly addressed in this book—those
who reject psychological explanations in which desires and beliefs are causes. They
may deny that commonsense folk-psychological states like desire and belief exist, or
that these mental states causally explain actions. Eliminative materialists like William
Ramsey et al. (1990) and Paul Churchland (1981) think today’s folk psychology will
be superseded by a future science of the mind that doesn’t use quaint notions like
desire and belief, and explains far more using terms yet to be invented. Desire and
belief will then join phlogiston and luminiferous ether on the pile of rejected scientific
entities. Wittgensteinians like Elizabeth Anscombe (1957) and Charles Taylor (1964)
think that explanations involving desires and beliefs are fine in their way, but that
they aren’t actually causal explanations. Perhaps they instead serve some socially
important purpose distinct from causal explanation, like helping us understand each
other as rational agents.
As Jerry Fodor (1987) explains, Desire–Belief explanations have the predictive
power of genuine causal explanations. Suppose there’s a long line of people waiting to
check in at the ticket counter of a busy airport. Which empirical test lets us predict
where they’ll sleep tonight? Figuring out the physics of the whole world and feeding it
into a ridiculously powerful computer is one way to get the answer. I don’t know that
much physics or have such a nice computer, but I still have a really good test: asking
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY

them. They’ll express their beliefs about where they’re going or their intentions to get
there. In most cases the places they name, out of all the places in the universe, will be
the places they sleep. The theory predicts even more—which city names on the
loudspeakers will sustain their attention, and which flight delays will displease them.
As Fodor writes, “the theory from which we get this extraordinary predictive power is
just good old commonsense belief / desire psychology” (3).
When a theory accurately predicts diverse phenomena, it’s reasonable to infer real
causal structures in the world that underlie its predictions, explaining the predicted
events. Meteorology, geology, and chemistry generate powerful predictions, so we
regard them as describing real causal structures. We should regard Desire–Belief
explanations as causal in whatever way meteorological, geological, and chemical
explanations are. They all earn this status by being robustly predictive empirical
theories. If broader philosophical commitments lead you to deny that hurricanes,
tectonic plates, and acids are causes, I can see why you won’t think desires are causes.
But if you accept that those things are causes, you should think the same of desires.
The intentionality of psychological states (their being about things) doesn’t stop
them from being causes. Since psychology invokes intentionality while neurosci-
ence and physics don’t, some philosophers think psychological explanation can’t
be grounded in explanations at these lower levels. This might make dualism and
eliminativism our only options. But higher-level sciences often invoke things that
don’t appear at lower levels without dualist or eliminativist consequences. Hurricanes
and tectonic plates are entities of higher-level theories that physics doesn’t name.
Instead of concluding that they’re immaterial or unreal, we see them as constituted
by entities from physics. We can do the same with desires. Fodor (1974) and Jaegwon
Kim (1992) offer competing metaphysical accounts of how desire relates to lower-
level entities, both of which suit the Humean Theory.
Lewis (1970), Rudolf Carnap (1963), and Frank Ramsey (1977) developed a way to
determine the physical realizers of psychological states, grounding psychological
causation in physical causation. As the details of Ramsification are technical, I’ll
offer a metaphor. Psychology draws a map of how psychological states causally relate
to each other and to other things. If this map is detailed enough, laying it on top of a
map of causation from physics will reveal which physical things play the causal roles
of psychological states. Those physical things constitute the psychological states.
Even if physics doesn’t say in its language that anything is “about eating”, it lets
the physical stuff constituting desires that are about eating cause the physical event
constituting eating.
Neuroscientific research collected by Timothy Schroeder in Three Faces of Desire
(2004) supports the psychological reality of desire. Schroeder identifies neurological
connections between the regions of the brain responsible for representing certain
states of affairs as rewards and the regions responsible for motivation and pleasure.
These connections track the folk-psychological properties that an intuitive functional
characterization of desire would involve, and that I’ll describe in Chapter 2. If you
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY 

suspect that neuroscience will show that many of our psychological terms don’t
correspond to natural kinds, you should still expect ‘desire’ to survive.
It matters that Desire–Belief explanations are causal, like other scientific explan-
ations, because I’ll defend the Humean Theory as one defends a causal theory in
science. I’ll criticize other theories for poorly fitting the data and employing unneces-
sary entities. If psychological explanations are like other scientific explanations, these
are the arguments to use. But the debate might take a different shape if psychological
explanations are normative judgments, or part of a social language-game that doesn’t
describe anything, or of some unscientific kind that only the Pittsburgh senior faculty
can name.
I don’t have much more to say to those who think desires aren’t real, or that they
only figure in non-causal explanations. My arguments that desires are real causes of
psychological phenomena will be more seductive than deductive. Appreciate the
beauty of Humean explanations, and you’ll accept that desires are real things that
cause us to act and feel pleasure.

1.4 Developing a Psychological Theory

The Humean Theory is a psychological theory that uses desire and other mental
states to explain empirical data. I’ll describe the way I understand the task of building
such a theory, and the methods I’ll employ in doing so.
In folk psychology, as within many sciences, there are different theories which
make different predictions, and whose advocates disagree. When Hume claimed that
reason couldn’t motivate action or oppose passion in directing the will, he was part of
a folk-psychological debate against Platonists, Aristotelians, and eventually Kantians.
The Humean Theory remains very controversial within folk psychology. I’ll defend it
on grounds of its simplicity and explanatory power.
I’ll draw on many sources of evidence: commonsense knowledge of how people
think and act, analysis of concepts like “belief ” and “desire”, introspection about
present experience, experimental results from psychology, and discoveries from
neuroscience. Folk psychology serves us well in predicting how those around us
will behave and feel, provides a useful beginning for theorizing, and can be improved
by scientific research. Introspection doesn’t provide reliable direct access to the
causal processes in our minds, but it’s reliable about matters of immediate experience
like whether one currently feels pleasure. Intuitive psychological theories should be
revised to more elegantly explain introspective data about when people experience
pleasure and various emotions. Hume built his theory using these old and ordinary
methods of psychological theorizing, and I’ll use them too.
Experimental psychologists and neuroscientists will ultimately discover whether
the Humean Theory is true. This book provides systematic explanations of some
empirical data, particularly on moral judgment, willpower, and desire itself. As
psychology and neuroscience are still young, I can’t rely on them as heavily as future
 THE RETURN OF THE HUMEAN THEORY

defenders of the Humean Theory might. Colin Klein (2010) notes difficulties in
understanding what neural imaging tells us about the brain, and further difficulties
in applying knowledge of the brain to psychological theory. Psychology itself is
currently in the midst of a replication crisis, with many widely cited results not
recurring when other researchers attempt the experiments. It’s hard to know which
results will hold up, and I can’t be confident that all the seemingly well-confirmed
experimental phenomena I try to explain will be replicated. Even so, developing
precise accounts of basic psychological components like desire and showing how
they combine into simple explanations of these complex phenomena may be useful.
If subtle differences in experimental procedure are causing replication failures, a
well-articulated general theory might help us discover what those differences are.
I hope the theory I develop will be useful in this way. Perhaps it’s ambitious for a
philosopher to offer help in solving this problem, but the Humean Theory is an
ambitious theory.
If I say some surprising things about desire (for example, that we can desire past
events, or that desire can make us draw inferences in mathematical reasoning), please
understand that this often happens with natural kinds appearing in scientific explan-
ations. New evidence can push us to surprising new theories about them. Water is
composed of two different elements, each of which on their own are gases. Surprise!
Well, it was a big surprise in 1800. Scientists accepted this surprising claim because
electrolyzing water produced these gases, and used it to explain what water does. We
can know some things about desire through conceptual analysis, for example that it
motivates action when combined with a means–end belief. We learn many other
things empirically, for example that the causal powers of desires increase as their
objects are represented more vividly.
We’re decades from having enough good empirical data for Humeans to triumph-
antly declare checkmate, or even mate in three. But even at this stage of the game,
I can show that the Humean Theory is in a winning position, as the usual objections
to it aren’t genuine threats. I’ll develop an account of desire that can defend the
Humean Theory against the standard attacks, leaving it with a material advantage.
The moves I suggest will leave the Humean Theory poised for victory as we enter the
empirical endgame.
I hope psychology and neuroscience will, within a century, show that the claims in
this book are true, or minor revisions from the truth. But even if my claims are
unsalvageably false, I’ll have accomplished something if presenting them clearly helps
us understand how psychological evidence bears on philosophical debates about the
nature of moral judgment. It’ll be wonderful if psychologists and neuroscientists read
this book and see how their research could help us answer longstanding philosoph-
ical questions. And while I work on the Humean Theory to fight the Kantians, I hope
it will be useful to nonphilosophers who care about psychology only for its own sake.
This makes it important for me to write in a simple and nontechnical style, making
this book accessible to readers outside philosophy.
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with them on my way south to Dentam. During those two days—for I
flew only two days—I was attacked by a newly fledged hawk, and I
gave him the best defeat of his life. It was in this wise; one morning
as I was flying over the woods below Sikkim, I heard the wind
screech overhead. I knew what that meant now, so I played a trick. I
stopped all on a sudden and the hawk, who was falling upon me,
missed me and fell away down, grazing his wing on a tree-top. I rose
higher and flew fast, but he caught up and then I began to make
circles in the air. I rose high, oh so high that my lungs could not
breathe the air there, and I had to come down again.
"But no sooner had I descended than with an ominous screech and
cry the hawk fell upon me. Fortunately, then and there, for the first
time in my life I tried to tumble as I had seen my father do, and I
succeeded in making a double tumble, then shooting up like a
fountain. Again the hawk missed and rose to attack, but I gave him
no chance. I flew at him. And just as I was passing him, he dipped
down, then up, and clutched at me; again I tumbled, striking him so
hard that he lost his balance. I do not know what happened, but that
very moment I felt something sucking me down down to the depth of
the earth. My wings were powerless. I fell as an eagle falls—heavy
and inevitable—striking the hawk on the head with my full weight. I
think the blow stunned him. He too fell, and was lost in the woods
below, but I was glad to find myself on the branch of an ilex tree.
"I had been sucked down by an air current. Since that first
experience of mine, I have met many others like it but I have never
understood why it was that above certain trees and streams the air
gets very cold and makes a current that draws into itself the bird that
strikes it. I had to learn the lesson of flying in those currents after
being whirled up and down by them. But I do not hate them, since
the first air current I encountered saved my life.
"Sitting on that ilex tree I became so hungry that it drove me to fly
home. Luckily, no soulless hawk obstructed my arrow-like flight.
"But my successful escape from that newly-fledged murderer gave
me back my courage, and as soon as you came home I said to
myself: 'Now that he, my friend, has seen me alive, he will not worry
about me. I must fly anew through the falcon-infested air and test my
courage.'
"Now began my real Odyssey. I went northwards to the eagle's nest,
and stopped at the Lamasery where a holy man had blessed me on
an earlier occasion. There I re-visited Mr. and Mrs. Swift, my old
friends. Moving further north I went past Singalele at last and
reached the eyrie of the eagles who had flown away. So I made
myself comfortable there, but not too happy, for the eagles leave all
kinds of refuse in their nests, and I am afraid they swarm with
vermin. Though I spent my day in the eagle's nest, I decided to
spend the night in a tree, free from horrid insects. After a couple of
days, my going in and out of the eyrie gave me great prestige among
other birds. They feared me, perhaps because they took me for a
sort of eagle. Even the hawks began to give me a wide berth. That
gave me all the confidence that I needed, so early one morning,
seeing a white wedge of birds coming south, flying very high, I joined
them. They did not mind my joining them, they were wild geese
going towards Ceylon and beyond, in the quest of a sunny ocean.
"Those geese, after two hours' flight, as the day became warmer,
descended onto a rapid mountain stream. Unlike the eagles, they
rarely looked downwards, but watched the horizon lines. They spied
a little ribbon of whitish blue far off against the sky, and flew in a
slowly declining straight line till it seemed as if the earth were rising
to meet us, and soon all plunged into the silver stream, for now, the
waters looked more silvery than blue. They floated on the water, but
as I knew that I was not web-footed, I sat on a tree and watched their
antics. You know how flat and ugly the bills of geese are, but now I
saw the reason for it. They used them like pincers on things such as
shells that grew on the side of the banks. Every now and then a
goose would put his bill on a plant or a shell, then wring it out of
position as a butcher would wring a duck's neck. After that it would
devour its victim wholesale, crushing it in its powerful throat, but ere
it passed very far down its size dwindled to nothing. I saw one fellow
do worse than that. He found a fish—as lean as a water snake—in a
hole under the bank; he began to pull it. The more he pulled the
thinner and longer it got. Slowly, after a terrific tug of war, the poor
fellow was dragged from his hole. Then the goose hopped up the
shore and flung it on the ground. His bill had crushed the part it had
held onto, nearly into pulp, so no wonder his wriggling victim was
already dead. Then from nowhere walked up to him another goose.
(By the way, are not geese the most ungainly birds when they are
not flying or swimming? On the water they resemble dreams floating
on pools of sleep, but on land they hobble like cripples on crutches!)
By now the two geese were quarrelling. They pulled one another's
feathers, they slapped with their wings, they kicked each other with
their feet every time they hopped up above the ground. While they
were thus engaged, oblivious of their bone of contention, a cat-like
creature, probably an otter, pounced from among the reeds, grabbed
the dead eel and vanished. Now the geese declared a truce, but too
late! Oh, they have no more sense than, well—geese! Compared
with them, we pigeons seem paragons of cleverness.
"After they had stopped fighting, the chief goose cried—'Cluck, caw,
caw, caw!' That instant all of them paddled hard to gather
momentum. A few extra wing-beats and they were in the air. How
beautiful they looked now! That soft soughing of vast wings, their
necks and bodies like drawings against the sky, making a severe
eye-pleasing wedge. I shall never forget it.
"But every flock has its straggler. One fellow was left behind,
because he was still struggling with a fish. At last he secured it, and
flew up in quest of a tree where he could eat it under cover.
Suddenly from the empty air an enormous hawk attacked him. The
goose rose higher but the indefatigable hawk did not relent. Up and
up they circled, screaming and quacking. Suddenly a faint but clear
echo of a honk was heard. The chief of the flock was calling the
straggler; that distracted him. Hardly knowing what he was doing, he
honked back an answer. That instant the fish fell from his mouth. It
began to fall like a leaf. The hawk dipped, and just as he was going
to pierce it with his talons, down the air came a surge and roar. In a
trice an eagle fell as a rock falls down a high precipice. That hawk
ran for his life, and that gave me a great deal of pleasure to behold.
"Under the eagle's two wings like vast sails, the talons forked out
lightning fashion and grabbed the fish—then the monarch of the air
in his shining armour of brown gold sailed away, the wind ruffling the
feathers above his knees. Far away, the hawk was still running for
his life!
"I am glad he went very far away, for I had to fly about in quest of a
caravan road where I could get some seeds dropped by men. I soon
found some and after a tolerably decent meal, I perched on a tree
and went to sleep. When I woke it was mid-afternoon. I decided to fly
away up, to reach the blessed Lamasery, and visit my friends the
swifts. My flight was unattended by any mishap, for I had learned to
fly carefully by now. I generally went very far up and looked down, as
well as at the horizon. Though I have not as long a neck as a wild
goose, yet I turned and took side glances every few minutes in order
to make sure that nothing was attacking my rear.
"I reached the monastery just in time, as the Lamas were getting
ready to stand on the edge of their chapel in order to pour
benediction upon the world during sunset. Mr. and Mrs. Swift were
flying near the nest where their three youngsters were put to bed. Of
course they were glad to receive me. After their vesper services, the
monks fed me, and the sweet old Lama said something about a
blessing that some one called Infinite Compassion had put upon me.
Then I flew from his hand feeling absolutely fearless. In that state of
mind and body I entered my nest next to the swifts under the eaves
of the Lamasery.
"The nights in October are cold. In the morning while the priests rang
their bells, the little swifts flew about for exercise while their parents
and I had to fly to shake off the chill of the morning. That day I spent
there in order to help them make preparations for their journey south.
I was surprised to learn that they intended to build a nest in Ceylon
or Africa whither they were going. I explained to them that a swift's
nest is not at all an easy thing to construct. Then in order to assuage
my thirst for knowledge they told me how they erect their homes."
CHAPTER VIII
 GAY-NECK'S ODYSSEY (Continued)
n order to make clear to you the swift's skill at
architecture, let me first of all draw attention to the
swift's handicaps. He has a small beak fit for
catching flying insects. His mouth is very wide to
enable him to catch his prey while he is on the
wing. Very few insects can escape his wide open
mouth as he comes down on them. As he is very
small, Mr. Swift cannot lift much weight. No wonder his house is built
out of slender materials such as straw and twigs of trees no thicker
than a middle-sized needle.
"The first time I saw a swift he looked paralysed and deformed. All
swifts know that they have wretched legs. The bird has hardly any
legs to balance upon. His small feet, made for sticking on to places
like fish-hooks, emerge right out of his body; his little hooklike claws
seem inflexible. He has not enough leg between his body and his
feet, and this deprives him of the springiness which longer legs
supply to other birds. No wonder he cannot hop nor jump. But that
defect is squared by his one advantage—he can cling to stone
palisades, marble eaves, and alabaster friezes of houses as no other
bird can. I have seen my friend Swift hang on to polished walls as if
they were corrugated surfaces.
"Under these handicaps, all he can do is to choose holes in walls
just under the eaves for his home. But there he cannot lay his eggs,
for they would roll off. So he catches flying straws and small falling
leaves, and glues them to the stone floor of his nest with his saliva.
That is the secret of his skill at architecture. His saliva is wonderful; it
dries and hardens like the best glue of the cabinet makers. When the
nest is made ready, the long white eggs are laid. Among the swifts
women are not so emancipated as amongst the pigeons. Our
women enjoy equal rights with men, but the female swift has always
the larger part of the work to do. For instance, Mr. Swift never sits on
the eggs; he lets his wife do it. Occasionally he brings her food
during the day, but otherwise he spends all his waking hours visiting
male swifts whose wives are similarly occupied. I told my friend Swift
he ought to copy the pigeons and give more freedom to his wife, but
he seemed to think this a pet joke of mine.
"At last our preparations were made and one fine autumn morning
the five swifts and I set out in a southerly direction, piloted by Mr.
Swift. We never went in a straight line, but zig-zagged east or west,
though we held to a general southern course. The swifts eat flies and
gnats that float on rivers and lakes. They go about fifty miles an hour
—a blinding speed for a small bird—and do not like woods because
while their gaze is fixed downwards in search of insects, they may
break their wings on a tree. They prefer open clear spaces above the
waters and with their scythe-like long wings they cleave the air as
swiftly as an eagle falls on its prey. Think of the precision of the
swift's eye and mouth! While he is whirling over the water he snaps
up flying insects with such ease that the space he traverses is
completely cleared of all the gnats and flies who a few moments
before danced in the sunlight.
"Thus we went over streams, ponds and lagoons. By the way, Mr.
Swift eats his food in a hurry and takes his drink the same way. He
flies over the water, skimming up drops as he goes and swallowing
them at a very high rate of speed. No wonder that he hates to fly in a
place crowded with boughs, larches, and saplings.
"But so much flight in open air has its drawbacks. While a swift is
eating insects with such speed, a sparrow hawk may fall on him from
above. Under these circumstances the swift cannot dip down, for
that would mean death by drowning. I must tell you of one such
attack on my friends. They were busy catching their dinner on a vast
lake one afternoon, and while I was flying about keeping an eye on
the younger swifts, down came a sparrow hawk. I who had
undertaken to look after the children had to act quickly even at the
risk of my own life. Without an instant's hesitation I plunged and
tumbled, inserting my body between the enemy and the young ones.
Well, the sparrow hawk had never expected so much nerve from a
member of the dove family, nor did he calculate my weight. I was at
least five ounces heavier than he. He struck my tail with his talons,
tore a few feathers, and thinking that he had got something he
circled the air for a moment or two. Before he realized that he had
only my feathers, all the swifts were safe, clinging to the bark of a
tree out of anybody's reach. But the small sparrow hawk was so
infuriated that he fell on me with the fury of a large one. However, his
body was very small and his talons smaller, and I knew they could
not pierce my feathers and my skin very far. So I accepted his
challenge and tumbled up. He followed. I shot downwards; he too
dived after. Then I began to rise high. He pursued as before. But
those little hawks fear the upper air, and his wings lagged now. To
my two wing-beats he could make but one. Seeing him hopeless and
tired, I planned to teach him the lesson of his life. No sooner had I
conceived than I executed my plan. I shot downwards. He plunged
after. Down, down, down! The water of the lake rose towards us,
higher and higher every second till it looked no farther than the width
of my wing. Then I flung forward a few inches and struck a warm air
current which helped me upwards. As you know, air warmed in the
hollow places and valleys of mountain country has a tendency to
shoot up into cooler regions. We birds look for these currents to help
us when we have need to make a sudden upward flight. Now I
tumbled three times, and when I looked down I found that sparrow
hawk drowning in the water. He had not been able to reach the air
current. After a considerable ducking, he laboriously flew ashore,
and there under thick leaves hid his disgrace. That instant the swifts
came out of their hiding place and flew southwards.
"The next day we met some wild ducks. They had coloured throats
like mine, but otherwise they were white as snow. They were stream
ducks, whose habit is to float down a mountain brook after fish.
When they have gone far, they rise out of the water and fly back to
their starting place. So they spend the day like shuttles going back
and forth. Their bills were flatter than those of the geese, and they
are dented inside, for once they close on a fish the bills never slip.
They did not seem to care much for the shellfish, but that was
probably because the fish in the lake were so plentiful. The swifts did
not like the place because the ducks' wings beat the air continually
and blew away the insects that normally fly over any water surface.
Still they were glad to see ducks that loved and lived on mountain
torrents, never bothering about the calm water so dear to most
ducks.
"It was these ducks who warned us against the owls and other
murderers of the night which infested those regions. So we did our
best to hide in places too small for owls to go into. It was easy to find
holes in a tree small enough for the swifts, but I decided to stay in
the open and take my chances. Night came on apace. Pretty soon
my eyes could serve me no longer. Darkness within darkness like
layers of black cloth lay upon them. I commended myself to the
Gods of my race and tried to sleep. But who could sleep with those
owls who-whoing about? Terror seized me for the night. Not an hour
passed without some bird's shrieking in pain. The owls, too, hooted
in triumph. Now a starling, then a bulbul (the Indian nightingale)
would cry mortally, and die under the owl's grip. Though my eyes
were shut my ears knew the carnage that went on. A crow shrieked.
Then another, then another. Almost a flock flew up in terror and
smashed themselves against trees. But better that kind of death than
to be killed by the searing and tearing beaks and claws of the owls.
Soon to my utter confusion I smelt weasels in the air and then I felt
that death was at hand. That made me desperate; I opened my eyes
to see. A pale white light was shining on all things. There before me,
about six feet away, was a weasel. I flew up, though that increased
the danger of my being killed by the owls. And sure enough, along
came one hooting and screaming. Two more owls followed. I heard
their wing-beats and by the nature of the sounds I knew that we were
flying over the water, for it echoed back even the slightest shiver of
our feathers. I could not fly in any direction very far, since I saw not
more than six feet at a time, so I waited in the air groping for an air
current that sucked the air of the river up above the boughs that
hung over it. Alas, those owls were on me already, but I tumbled,
then swung into a circle. The owls would not give up the chase. I
rose further up. Now the moonlight like water dripped from my wings.
I could see a little more clearly and that brought me back my
courage. But my enemies did not relent. They too rose, and more
light fell on their eyes, blinding them, though not completely.
Suddenly two of them plunged towards me. Up I flew. The owls
missed—lo! they had fallen on each other. Their claws locked
together, their wings flapping helplessly in the air, they screamed like
fiends and fell among the reeds of the river bank.
"Now I looked about carefully and noticed to my surprise that I had
flown towards the dawning of day and not at the moon. My terror-
stricken eyes had not seen truly. But there were no more owls about;
they had begun to seek for places of hiding from the growing
sunlight. Although I felt safe, I kept away from the prodigious
shadows of the tall trees, for even now an owl might lurk there. I
stayed on a slender branch on a tree-top which caught the first flight
of the sun's arrows, transfiguring it into an umbrella of dancing gold.
Slowly the light spread further down till the white torrent below
trembled with colours like a weasel's eyes.
"Just then on the river bank I saw an appalling sight. Two large
crows, blacker than coal, were jabbing and prodding with their beaks
a helpless blinking owl, caught in the reeds. Now that the sun shone,
it could not open its eyes. Of course the night's slaughter done
amongst the crows was large, and it was the crows' turn to avenge
their wrongs, but I could not bear the sight of two of them killing that
trapped owl. So I flew away from the murderers and went to seek my
friends the swifts. I recounted some of my experiences, and the
parents told me that they had heard terrible cries of distress which
kept them from slumber. Mr. Swift asked if everything was safe
outside, and I thought it was. When we came out, I found that poor
owl lying dead, among the reeds!
"Strange to say, that morning we saw no ducks on the stream.
Apparently they had flown very early in the morning in a southerly
direction, and we decided to do the same. We planned not to seek
the company of other birds going our way. For during the season of
migration, wherever flocks of pigeons, grouse and other birds go,
their enemies such as owls, hawks and eagles go after them. In
order to avoid danger and such shocking sights as we had seen
before, we flew to the east and after going eastwards a whole day,
we rested in the village of Sikkim. The next day we flew south for half
a day and again eastward. That sort of round-about journey took a
long time, but it saved us no end of trouble. Once we were overtaken
by a storm, and were blown into a lake country, and there I saw an
amazing sight. I was on a tree-top, when below me I discerned a lot
of domesticated ducks floating on the water with a fish in each one's
mouth. But none of them swallowed his morsel. I had never seen
ducks resist the temptation to eat fish before, so I called the swifts to
behold the sight. They clung to the barks of several trees and looked
at the ducks, but they could hardly believe their eyes. What was the
matter with them? Pretty soon a boat hove in sight, poled by two
men, flat-faced and yellow. On seeing them the ducks paddled to the
boat as fast as they could go. Reaching it, they hopped up, and then
—can you believe it?—they dropped their capture into a large fish
basket, and jumped down into the lake to fish for some more, and
that went on for at least two hours. Apparently those Tibeto-Burman
fishermen never cast nets. They tied a string tightly, almost to the
choking point, around their ducks' necks, and then brought them to
the lake to catch fish. Whatever the latter caught, they brought to
their human masters. However, when their basket became full, they
undid the strings that were around the ducks' necks who then
plunged into the lake, and gorged themselves on fish.
"Now we flew away far from the lakes for a while in quest of harvest
fields. There the swifts fell on the insects that flew about newly mown
grain, and devoured them. I, too, ate to repletion of the grain, though
not of the insects. While sitting on the fence of a rice field I heard
someone hitting something. It sounded very much like a chaffinch
cracking open a cherry stone with his beak in order to get at its
kernel. (Isn't it strange that a little bird's beak has the power of a
nutcracker?) But, when I wandered nearer the place, under the
fence, whence the noise was coming, I found another bird—a
Himalayan thrush. He was engaged not in cracking cherry stones,
but in hitting a slowly moving snail with his beak. Tick, tack; tick, tack
—tack! He hammered on and on until the snail was stunned into
stillness. The thrush raised his head and looked around, poised
himself on tiptoe, opened his wings, took a quick aim and struck
three more blows—tack, tack, tack! The shell broke open, revealing
a delicious snail. He lifted it up with his beak, which was bleeding
slightly; apparently he had opened his mouth too wide and hurt its
corners. After balancing the snail correctly in his grasp, he flew up
and vanished into a tree where his mate was waiting for supper.
"The rest of our journey through the grain fields of Sikkim was
uneventful. The only thing that is worth remembering was the
trapping of peacocks by men in the forests. These birds come to the
hot southern marshes in quest of food and warmth when the snakes
and other creatures whom they eat go into winter quarters in the
north.
"Peacocks and tigers admire one another. The former like to look at
the tiger's skin and he enjoys the beauty of their plumes. Sometimes
at the water hole a tiger will stand gazing at the plumes of a peacock
on a bough, and the peacock will crane his neck to feast his eyes on
the beauty of the striped skin. Now comes man, the eternal
aggressor, on the scene. For instance, a man one day brought a
piece of cloth painted exactly like a tiger's skin, so that no bird could
tell by looking at it that it was not the striped one himself. Then he
set a noose on a branch of a tree nearby, and slunk away. I could tell
by the odour of the painted cloth that it was not a tiger, but peacocks
have no sense of smell worth speaking of. They are victims of their
own eyes. So in a few hours a pair of peacocks came and began to
gaze at the make-believe tiger from a tree-top, coming lower and
lower. They deceived themselves into the belief that the tiger was
asleep. Emboldened by that illusion, they came very close and stood
on the branch near the trap. It did not take them long to walk into it,
but how they both stepped into a single trap I cannot make out. No
sooner were they caught than they shrieked in despair. Then
appeared the trapper, and played another trick on them. He threw up
two large black canvas caps and lassooed them on each peacock's
head, hiding the poor birds' eyes. Once the eyes are darkened, a
bird never resists much. The man now tied their feet so that they
could not walk; then he set one on each end of his bamboo pole.
Slowly he lifted it by the middle, put it on his shoulder and walked off,
the long tails of the peacocks streaming down like cataracts of
rainbow before and behind him.
"There ends my Odyssey. The next day I said goodbye to the swifts.
They went further south, and I was glad to get home, a wiser and a
sadder bird. Now," demanded Gay-Neck, "tell me this. Why is there
so much killing and inflicting of pain by birds and beasts on one
another? I don't think all of you men hurt each other. Do you? But
birds and beasts do. All that makes me so sad."
PART II
CHAPTER I
 GAY-NECK'S TRAINING FOR WAR
fter we returned to town the air was filled with
the rumours of a coming war somewhere in
Europe. Now that winter was at hand, I decided to
give Gay-Neck such training as would be
necessary in case he was asked to be a carrier for
the British war department. Since he was used to
the climate of the northeastern Himalayas, he
would be an invaluable messenger for the army in any European
country. Even now, with the aid of wireless telegraph and radio, no
army can dispense with the help of carrier pigeons. All that will
become clear to you as the present story unfolds itself.
In training carriers for war work, I followed a plan of my own which
Ghond approved. By the way, the old fellow came all the way to town
with us. He stayed in our house two or three days, then decided to
leave, saying: "The city is unbearable. I never loved any city, but this
one frightens me with its electric tramway and how-aghari (wind
chariot)—the automobile. If I do not shake the dust of this town off
my feet very soon, I shall be nothing better than a coward. A tiger in
the jungle does not frighten me, but I cannot say the same of an
automobile. One crossing of a modern city street imperils more lives
in a minute than a day in the most dangerous forests. Farewell! I go
where the woods wear stillness for a dress, the air is free of odours
and dust, and the sky, a hollowed turquoise, is not cross-cut and
pierced with poles and telegraph wires. Instead of factory whistles I
shall hear the song of birds; and in the place of thieves and gunmen
I shall have innocent tigers and panthers face to face. Farewell!"
But before he left, he helped me to buy about forty more carriers,
and some tumblers. You may ask me the reason of my preference
for these two kinds. I do not know that I have any exclusive love for
tumblers and carriers, but it is true that fantails, pouters and other
pigeons are more ornamental than useful. In our house we had
some of these varieties but they proved so difficult to keep in
company with the carriers and travelers that I finally bestowed all my
appreciation on pure flyers.
In India we have a queer custom that I do not like. If you sell a carrier
no matter at what fabulous price, and it flies away from its new
owner and comes back to you, it becomes your property again and
no matter what the value, you never refund the price. Knowing that
to be the accepted custom among pigeon fanciers, I had to train my
newly acquired pets before anything else to love me. Since I had
paid for them, I did not wish them to return to their former owners. I
did my very best to make them cherish their new home loyally. But
life is practical. I had to begin with the most necessary steps. The
first few weeks I had to tie up their wings in order to keep them
completely within the bounds of our roof. The art of tying a pigeon's
feathers so that he is prevented from flying is delicate. You take a
thread, and pass one end of it over one feather and under the next,
very near its root, all the way until the entire wing is encompassed.
Then you pass the other end of the thread by the same process
under the first, over the second, and so on to the end of the wing,
where the two ends of the thread are tied. It is very much like
darning. It is an utterly painless form of captivity, for though it
prevents a pigeon from flying, yet he is not kept from opening or
flapping his wings. He can stretch them and can massage them with
his beak. After this I used to put my new pigeons at different corners
of the roof so that they might sit still, and with their eyes take in the
colour and quality of their new surroundings. At least fifteen days
should be allowed for this process.
Here I must record a cunning thing that Gay-Neck did when his
wings were tied in the above manner. I sold him early in November
just to see if he would return to me when his wings were freed from
their chain of threads.
Well, two days after purchasing Gay-Neck, his new owner came to
me and said: "Gay-Neck has run away."
"How?" I asked.
"I don't know, but I cannot find him in my house."
"Did you tie his wings? Could he fly?" I asked.
"His wings were tied." He answered.
That struck terror to my soul. I said: "Oh, you brother of a camel and
cousin of an ass, instead of running hither, you should have sought
for him in your own neighbourhood. Do you not see that he tried to
fly, but since his wings were tied, he fell off your roof? And by now he
has been killed and devoured by some cat. Oh, this is a slaughter of
a pigeon. You have robbed mankind of its diadem of carriers! You
have murdered the glory of pigeonhood!" Thus I reproached him.
My words frightened the man so thoroughly that he begged me to
come with him and hunt for Gay-Neck. My first thought was to
rescue the poor fellow from cats. We spent a whole afternoon, but in
vain. I examined more sordid alleyways in twelve hours, expecting to
find him at bay before some mangy cat, than I have done in all the
rest of my life. Alas, he was not to be found. That night I came home
late, for which I got a good scolding, and went to bed a broken-
hearted boy.
My mother, who understood my state of mind, did not wish me to
enter the world of sleep with hurt and excited feelings. She spoke:
"Your pigeon is safe. Go to sleep in a calm mood."
"Why, Mother?"
She answered: "If you are calm, your tranquil thoughts can help you.
If you are peaceful, your serenity will make him serene. And if he is
serene, his mind will work well. And you know, my beloved, how
keen Gay-Neck's mind is. If he sets to work with tranquillity he will
overcome all obstacles and reach home and safety. Now let us make
a prayer to Infinite Compassion, and calm ourselves." So we sat
surrounded by the silence of night for half an hour, saying: "I am
serene. All that exists is serene. Peace, peace, peace be unto all!
Om Shanti, shanti, shanti!"
As I was going to sleep my mother said: "You will now dream no bad
dreams. Now that God's peace and compassion are kindled in you,
you will have a night of fruitful rest. Peace!"
That it proved to be fruitful, there is no doubt. For about eleven in the
morning, Gay-Neck flew up across the sky. He rode high. How he
freed his wings I shall have to tell you in his own language. Let us
again use the grammar of fancy and the dictionary of imagination.
"O, master of many tongues," began Gay-Neck on our own roof, "I
could abide not more than a day in that man's house! He gave me
insect-infected grain to eat, and made me drink water that was not
fresh. After all, I am a soul; why should I be treated as a stone or
shard? Moreover, he tied my wings with evil-smelling fishing tackle.
Would I stay with such an one? Never! So hardly had he put me on
the white roof of his house and gone downstairs, than I flapped my
wings and flew. Alas! my wings were heavy, and it hurt me to fly. So I
fell on the awning of a shop in the lane nearby. There I sat waiting
and watching for help. I saw some swifts go by; I called to them but
they were not my friends. I saw a wild pigeon; I called, but he too
made no response. Just then I beheld a dark cat coming towards
me. Here was death on four feet. As it drew nearer and nearer, its
topaz eyes burnt with red. It crouched and made ready to spring. I,
too, sprang—clear over his head on to the cornice about five feet
above the awning, where a swift had made his home. Though it was
most difficult, I clung to that spot until the black one vanished. Now I
leaped again. Four or five feet above me was the roof. There I
perched. But my wing hurt. In order to ease my pain I massaged the
roots of my feathers. One by one my beak pressed and rubbed
them, and then something slipped. One small feather I had
succeeded in pressing out of the grip of the fishing tackle which
stank exceedingly. I kept on rubbing and pressing the next feather,
and behold it too was free. Oh, what a glorious feeling! Soon the
entire wing was free. Just then the black cat reappeared on the roof,
but now I was able to fly about ten feet and I reached the cornice of
a high building, where I found a convenient perch. Thence I watched
the deadly cat. He crouched and sprang upon the fishing tackle just
shed from my wing. That told me a new story: it was the stench of
the fishing tackle that had attracted him, and not me. Forthwith I
began to bite and press the cord that bound my other wing. By the
time I had freed half the feathers night came on, and when I had
thrown my last evil-smelling chain away from my wing, I was forced