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The Nature of Desire
 The Nature of Desire

Federico Lauria
Edited by
and Julien A. Deonna

1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© Oxford University Press 2017

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address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Lauria, Federico, author. | Deonna, Julien A., author.
Title: The nature of desire / Federico Lauria & Julien Deonna.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017008872 (print) | LCCN 2016047086 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780199370962 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780199370979 (pdf) |
ISBN 9780199370986 (online course)
Subjects: LCSH: Desire (Philosophy)
Classification: LCC B105.D44 L38 2017 (ebook) | LCC B105.D44 (print) |
DDC 128/.3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017008872

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
CONTENTS

Acknowledgmentsâ•… vii
Contributorsâ•… ix

Introduction: Reconsidering Some Dogmas

about Desiresâ•… 1
Federico Lauria and Julien A. Deonna

PART I ╇ |╇ Conceptions of Desire

Evaluative Views: Desire and the Goodâ•… 27
CHAPTER 1 Desire and the Good: In Search of the Right Fitâ•… 29
Graham Oddie
CHAPTER 2 Desire, Mental Force and Desirous Experienceâ•… 57
Daniel Friedrich

Motivational Views: Desire and Actionâ•… 77

CHAPTER 3 Desires without Guises: Why We Need Not Value What
We Wantâ•… 79
Sabine A. Döring and Bahadir Eker
CHAPTER 4 Desires, Dispositions and the Explanation
of Actionâ•… 119
Maria Alvarez

The Deontic Alternative: Desires, Norms, and Reasonsâ•… 137

CHAPTER 5 The “Guise of the Ought-to-Be”: A Deontic View of the
Intentionality of Desireâ•… 139
Federico Lauria
 CHAPTER 6 Desires, Values and Norms 165
Olivier Massin
CHAPTER 7 Might Desires Be Beliefs about Normative Reasons for
Action? 201
Alex Gregory

Empirical Perspectives: Desire, the Reward System,

and Learning 219
CHAPTER 8 Empirical Evidence against a Cognitivist Theory
of Desire and Action 221
Timothy Schroeder
CHAPTER 9 Learning as an Inherent Dynamic of Belief
and Desire 249
Peter Railton

PART II | Desiderative Puzzles

CHAPTER 10 Desiderative Inconsistency, Moore’s Paradox,
and Norms of Desire 279
David Wall
CHAPTER 11 Deliberation and Desire 305
G. F. Schueler
CHAPTER 12 Introspection and the Nature of Desire 325
Lauren Ashwell

Index 337

vi | Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T he project of this book took shape in 2012 as we organized the confer-

ence The Nature of Desire at the University of Geneva, which most of
the contributors to this volume participated in. While Federico was writ-
ing his dissertation on this topic, it had become apparent that there was no
serious contemporary debate on what desires are. Hence the conference.
To our eyes and ears, it was a great success: the papers presented were
challenging, exemplified very different perspectives, and revealed that
there was much more to desire than lots of stale dogmas receiving cursory
treatment in the literature. This naturally spurred us to collect the papers
for a special volume and add a few more to the mix, forming an ensemble
that would bring fresh insight and stimulate further explorations on the
nature of desire. We were delighted that Oxford University Press shared
our enthusiasm, and we feel elated today to finally have our desire for the
finished product gratified.
This project would not have been possible without the assistance, exper-
tise, and support of several people. First, we wish to express our gratitude
to the contributors to this volume for their precious work and persever-
ance. The help and patience of Lucy Randall from Oxford University Press
was crucial; we are very grateful to her. This book is an achievement of
the Swiss National Science Foundation Project “Desire, Emotion, and the
Mind,” and we thank the Foundation for its support. We thank the Swiss
Center for Affective Sciences, the interdisciplinary center for the study
of emotions of the University of Geneva, which hosted this project. We
owe a word of appreciation also to Thumos, the Genevan research group
on emotions, values, and norms, to all its members, friends, and many
visitors. Finally, our most important debt is to the following three per-
sons: Kevin Mulligan, who taught us what philosophy is about and how it
should be done ; Gianfranco Soldati, for his incisive questions and friend-
ship ; and Fabrice Teroni, our best philosopher friend.

viii | Acknowledgments
CONTRIBUTORS

Maria Alvarez is a reader in philosophy in the Department of Philosophy,

King’s College London. Her research focuses on the philosophy of action,
including the nature of agency, the metaphysics and explanation of actions,
choice and moral responsibility. She has also published widely on the
nature of reasons, especially practical reasons and normativity. She is the
author of Kinds of Reasons: An Essay in the Philosophy of Action (Oxford
University Press, 2010).
Lauren Ashwell is an associate professor of philosophy in the Department
of Philosophy at Bates College. Her areas of specialization include meta-
physics, epistemology of mind, and feminist philosophy. Her published
work includes articles in Philosophical Studies, the Australasian Journal
of Philosophy, Philosophy Compass, and Social Theory and Practice.
Julien A. Deonna is an associate professor of philosophy at the University
of Geneva and a project leader at the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences.
His research interests are in the philosophy of mind, in particular the phi-
losophy of emotions, moral emotions, and moral psychology. In addition
to many articles in the area, he is the co-​author of In Defense of Shame
(Oxford University Press, 2011) and The Emotions: A Philosophical
Introduction (Routledge, 2012). He is the co-​director of Thumos, the
Genevan philosophy research group on emotions, values, and norms.
Sabine A. Döring is the chair of practical philosophy at Eberhard Karls
Universität Tübingen. Research interests are (meta)ethics and the the-
ory of agency with an emphasis on the emotions. Recent publications
include “Expressing Emotions: From Action to Art,” in Art, Mind, and
Narrative: Themes from the Work of Peter Goldie, edited by Julian Dodd
(Oxford University Press, in print); “What’s Wrong with Recalcitrant
Emotions? From Irrationality to Challenge of Agential Identity,” in
Dialectica (2015); “What Is an Emotion? Musil’s Adverbial Theory,”
in the Monist (2014); and (with Eva-​Maria Düringer) “Being Worthy of
Happiness: Towards a Kantian Appreciation of Our Finite Nature,” in
Philosophical Topics (2013).
Bahadir Eker is a PhD student at Eberhard Karls University Tübingen.
Daniel Friedrich works as a data analyst. He did his PhD at the Australian
National University. He has published articles on desire, motivation, prom-
ises, and the ethics of adoption.
Alex Gregory is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Southampton.
He works mostly in ethics and meta-​ethics, and more specifically on the
role that desires play in explaining and justifying behavior and related
questions about moral motivation and reasons for action.
Federico Lauria is a postdoctoral researcher in the Philosophy Department
and Swiss Center for Affective Sciences of the University of Geneva. He
was recently associate researcher at Columbia University. His work is at
the intersection of philosophy of mind, ethics, and aesthetics. More spe-
cifically, he is interested in issues in philosophy of desire and emotions,
such as self-​deception, musical emotions, and epistemic emotions.
Olivier Massin is a lecturer at the University of Geneva. His research lies
at the confluence of metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and value theory.
He has published several papers on perception, pleasure and pain, effort,
and willing.
Graham Oddie is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado
at Boulder. He has broad interests in the theory of value, metaphysics, and
epistemology, about which he has written a number of articles and books,
including Value, Reality and Desire (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Peter Railton is the Kavka Distinguished University Professor and Perrin
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. His research has
been in meta-​ethics, normative ethics, philosophy of science, and philoso-
phy of psychology. A collection of some of his papers can be found in
Facts, Values, and Norms (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and he is a
co-​author of the recent interdisciplinary book Homo Prospectus (Oxford
University Press, 2016).

x | Contributors
Timothy Schroeder grew up on the Canadian prairies, an environment
that afforded him plenty of time for philosophical speculation. He received
his BA from the University of Lethbridge and his PhD from Stanford
University and is now a professor of philosophy at Rice University. He is
the author of Three Faces of Desire (Oxford University Press, 2004) and,
with Nomy Arpaly, of In Praise of Desire (Oxford University Press, 2014).
G. F. Schueler is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of
Delaware. He is the author of Desire (MIT Press, 1995) and Reasons and
Purposes (Oxford University Press, 2003) as well as articles on ethics, phi-
losophy of action, and philosophy of mind in various philosophy journals.
David Wall was most recently a lecturer in philosophy at the University
of Northampton. His research interests lie in philosophy of mind, episte-
mology, philosophy of action, and moral psychology. In particular he is
interested in theories of desire, introspection and self-​deception, Moore’s
Paradox, akrasia, and animal ethics, and has published articles on some of
these subjects.

Contributors | xi
The Nature of Desire
 Introduction
Reconsidering Some Dogmas about Desires
Federico Lauria and Julien A. Deonna

Our life is imbued with desire. While some people desire to see the ocean,
others want to live in New York. While some people want to understand
the laws of the universe, Juliet simply aspires to kiss Romeo. Some desires
are stronger than others. Some last longer than others. Sometimes we are
happy because one of our desires is gratified; on another occasion, we may
cry due to the frustration of a desire. These are among the many platitudes
of the life of desire. One may wonder: What is this thing called ‘desire’?
What is the essence of desire? This is the main question addressed in this
volume.
Desires play an important role in our lives. Yet contemporary philos-
ophy has neglected the issue of the nature of desire as compared with
investigations of perception, belief, emotion, intention, and other types
of mental states. Although there are some notable exceptions to this
neglect (Marks 1986; Stampe 1986, 1987; Schroeder 2004; Oddie 2005;
Tenenbaum 2007; Friedrich 2012; Arpaly and Schroeder 2013), it is fair
to say that no live debate on the nature of desire is presently taking place
(see Schroeder 2015 for a similar diagnosis). The aim of this volume is to
redress this imbalance by bringing together scholars who adopt different
perspectives on the subject. The volume aspires to draw a taxonomy of the
main conceptions of desire and to create a fruitful debate about this under-
explored topic. But why is it important to understand desire, and what
does the philosophy of desire consist of? In what follows, this question is
answered from three distinct angles.
Beyond the Dogma of the Motivational Conception
of Desire

The lack of a real debate about desire is perplexing. The central explana-
tion for this fact is, we believe, that one intuitive view of desire is often
taken for granted in the philosophical literature. It is, we conjecture, the
main dogma of desire. Since Hume, most philosophers have assumed that
desire is essentially a motivational state (Armstrong 1968; Stampe 1986;
Stalnaker 1984 Smith 1994; Dretske 1988; Dancy 2000; Millikan 2005).
In this “hydraulic” view of desire (McDowell’s 1998 expression), desire
is the spring of action par excellence. To desire, for example to listen to
a symphony, is nothing but being inclined to do so—​end of story. The
motivational conception of desire is rarely defended in detail, but it is pre-
supposed in numerous debates. Most interpretations of the notion of direc-
tion of fit rely on it; functionalist accounts of desire often mention it in
passing; standard views of action and decision making in philosophy and
economics build on it; and disagreements about whether desires can be
reasons for acting often revolve around it. From this perspective, action
and motivation are key to understanding desire. But is motivation all there
is to desiring?
There are reasons to doubt it. To start with, our folk concept of desire
appears much richer. When we acknowledge our desires, are we merely
talking about our motivations to act? Intuitively, professing my desire to
see Juliet seems to go beyond conveying the motivation to act so as to
see her; it seems to express something deeper. Furthermore, looking at
the history of philosophy or the contemporary literature, there is another
approach to desire that deserves special attention. On this conception, to
desire something is to evaluate it in a positive light. Desiring to swim in
the river is to represent this state as good in some way or other. According
to this evaluative conception, which can be traced back to Aristotle at least
and which has found new advocates recently, goodness is the crux around
which desire revolves.1 Given their historical pedigree, we shall call the
motivational and evaluative conceptions the “classical views of desire.” On
the face of it, they seem very different. The evaluative view is centered on
goodness, while the motivational view concentrates on motivation. Now,
goodness and motivation seem to be distinct concepts despite the intimate
relations that exist between them. As the debate on moral motivation has
taught us, it might be that one could positively evaluate a state of affairs
without being motivated to realize it. It is thus fair to ask which one of the
two conceptions captures desire best. Is desire essentially a motivational

2 | The Nature of Desire

state? Is it a positive evaluation? Is it both? Or is it neither? Most of the
essays in this collection explore the classical views of desire. This is one
way of going beyond the dogma that desiring is the state of being moti-
vated and of adopting a more critical stance on the nature of desire.

Revisiting Other Philosophical and Empirical Dogmas

of Desire

The philosophy of desire touches on many other issues, however. A survey

of the philosophical literature reveals that several principles about desire
are often taken for granted and are rarely put into doubt. In other words,
there are other dogmas of desire. This book aims to discuss these dogmas
too, covering more minutiae than is usually the case, from the perspec-
tive of the nature of desire. A brief presentation of these dogmas is thus
in order.
Desires are often contrasted with beliefs in terms of their direction of
fit. According to this metaphor or figurative way of talking, beliefs are sup-
posed to fit the world, while the world is supposed to fit our desires.2 In the
case of a mismatch between the world and our beliefs, our beliefs should
change—╉not the world. Changing the world so as to fit a belief would be
inappropriate. Consequently, beliefs have the mind-╉to-╉world direction of
fit: they aim at truth. In contrast, when the world does not correspond to
some desire, the world should change. Changing a desire simply because
it is frustrated would be wrong. Desires thus have the world-╉to-╉mind direc-
tion of fit: they aim at satisfaction. There is an important debate about
the meaning of this notion (see Smith 1994; Humberstone 1992; Zangwill
1998; Gregory 2012; Archer 2015). Despite these controversies, the stan-
dard interpretation of the world-╉to-╉mind direction of fit of desire is moti-
vational in spirit: in the case of a mismatch between desire and the world,
subjects should act to bring about the satisfaction of the desire. This com-
mon interpretation fits well the motivational view of desire. Is it correct?
Does the world-╉to-╉mind direction of fit reveal that desires are essentially
motivations (see Gregory, Lauria, Railton this volume; for detractors of the
metaphor, see Sobel and Copp 2001; Milliken 2008; Frost 2014)?
In addition to aiming toward satisfaction in the way explained, desires
are often said to aim at the good, just as beliefs aim at the truth (De Sousa
1974; Velleman 2000; Hazlett unpublished). One way of understanding
this slogan is to interpret it as follows: one cannot desire something with-
out “seeing” some good in it. Call this the “guise of the good” thesis. The

Introductionâ•… |â•…3
“guise of the good” thesis has an important historical pedigree: it can be
traced back to at least Plato, was at the heart of the scholastic conception
of desire in the Middle Ages, and is often referred to in the contemporary
literature.3 Although friends of the evaluative conception of desire natu-
rally embrace this thesis, other views are compatible with it: that desiring
involves a positive evaluation does not imply that it is a positive evalua-
tion. Can we not desire something without seeing any good in it? If so,
what does this teach us about desire (see Oddie, Massin this volume; for
detractors of this thesis, see Stocker 1979; Velleman 1992; Döring and
Eker this volume)?
Another dogma that is less often examined concerns a form of impos-
sibility in desire. Since Plato, it is common to think that one cannot desire
what one already has. Consider that I want to climb Mount Etna. The intu-
ition is that as long as I have a desire to climb Mount Etna, I have not
climbed it. As soon as I have, my desire extinguishes itself. Desires are
for absences, or, less metaphorically, they are about what is not actual.4
Although some scholars disagree about the formulation of the principle
(see Boghossian 2003; Oddie 2005; Lauria this volume), some version of
the principle is often taken for granted. What does this reveal about desire
(see Oddie, Lauria, Massin this volume)? And is it true (for detractors, see
Heathwood 2007; Oddie this volume)?
Finally, leaving armchair philosophy, it is uncontroversial in the neu-
rosciences that desires are strongly implicated in the reward system and
are closely connected to the neurotransmitter dopamine (Schultz 1997;
Schultz, Tremblay and Hollerman 1998; Schroeder 2004). According to
the standard neuroscientific picture, desire involves the anticipation of
reward and the encoding of prediction errors: in desiring something, one
anticipates some reward (say, a banana) and then compares the expected
reward with the actual obtaining of the reward. In this way, desires are cru-
cial for learning in the sense of adapting one’s behavior to one’s environ-
ment. How can this help us understand the nature of desire (see Schroeder,
Railton, Lauria this volume)? Examining these four dogmas is another
way of questioning the received wisdom about desire and has the potential
to shed new light on its essence.

Beyond the Philosophy of Desire

The issue of the nature of desire is important per se, but it can also illu-
minate other philosophical puzzles—╉controversies in which desires are

4â•… |â•… The Nature of Desire

frequently mentioned and their role examined without sufficient attention
being paid to what they are. In the absence of a clear conception of desire,
these debates are on shaky ground. This is especially so given that the
motivational view of desire is often simply assumed. Let us present three
examples of important debates featuring desires in, respectively, philoso-
phy of mind, ethics, and meta-​ethics, which could benefit from a deeper
understanding of what they are. This will reveal the wider philosophical
significance of this book.
The direction of fit of desire is often considered an essential feature
of desire, but it has broader ramifications in the philosophy of mind and
of language (Searle 1983). In the philosophy of mind, it is used as a tool
to contrast conations or states meant to modify the world (e.g. desires,
intentions, needs) from cognitions or states meant to represent the world
(beliefs, perceptions, etc.). This Humean picture of the mind is at the heart
of traditional philosophical accounts of agency and the main models of
decision making in economics. If our exploration into the nature of desire
can elucidate the metaphor of direction of fit, it will eo ipso clarify the
general issue of the taxonomy of the mental and of other types of repre-
sentations suggested by the metaphor. This has far-​ranging implications,
since it can help to put in perspective traditional accounts of agency in
philosophy and economics (see Railton this volume).
In ethics the most significant line of research about desire concerns its
role in the explanation and justification of action. Can desires be reasons
for acting in a certain way? If they can, are they motivating reasons, nor-
mative ones, or both? Although scholars disagree on how to answer these
questions, they often rely on implicit and varying conceptions of desire—​
most of the time presupposing that desiring is nothing but the motivation
to act. Addressing the issue of the nature of desire should thus help to solve
the puzzle of their practical role. How can one determine whether desires
are reasons for acting without knowing what they are? Four contributions
in this volume attest to the fact that one’s stance on the nature of desire
has relevant implications for this investigation (Döring and Eker, Alvarez,
Friedrich, Gregory this volume).
Finally, in meta-​ethics desires appear in the debate about the very
nature and definition of value. According to the mainstream fitting attitude
analysis of value, what is good is just what is worth desiring (Broad 1930).
Prima facie, this debate seems disconnected from the question of desire’s
essence and seems to rest on an intuitive grasp of what counts as a desire.
Yet, as Oddie’s essay reveals, the question of the nature of desire can con-
tribute to this meta-​ethical puzzle as well.

Introduction | 5
 A more detailed examination of what desires are can thus lead to a bet-
ter understanding of important and various philosophical concerns. We
have focused here on established controversies where desires surface, but
it goes without saying that more neglected issues will also benefit from
this inquiry (see the second part of this volume).
With these clarifications in mind, the aim of this volume can be further
specified as follows. In addition to examining the classical views of desire,
this collection of essays purports to explore the dogmas about desire one
finds in the literature. And it does so with an eye to the implications the
nature of desire has with regard to wider controversies.
The book is divided into two parts. The first tackles directly the ques-
tion of the essence of desire; the second addresses unexplored issues
in the philosophical literature that bear on conceptions of desire. In the
remainder of this introduction, we summarize each contribution and raise
questions that connect each with other essays in the volume. This should
convince the reader that a fruitful and rich debate about the nature of desire
has begun.

I.╇Conceptions of Desire
Are desires positive evaluations? Are they motivations? Are there alter-
native conceptions? What does the empirical evidence suggest about the
nature of desire?
This section is divided into four subsections corresponding to each
question raised.

Evaluative Views: Desire and the Good

Is goodness the key for understanding desire? In their contributions,

Oddie and Friedrich, elaborating on previous work, answer this ques-
tion affirmatively. To desire, they argue, is to be struck by the goodness
of certain things. Imagine a person who is disposed to switch on any
radio she encounters (Quinn 1993). She is not doing this because she
enjoys it or thinks there is something good about turning on radios (e.g.
she considers it a means to listen to music). Rather she does not see
any good whatsoever in the action she is performing. Does she desire to
turn on radios? Quinn’s (1993) intuition, which is shared by Oddie and
Friedrich, is that this person does not desire to switch on radios precisely
because she does not see any good in it. Hence a desire should involve
a positive evaluation. Ultimately it might be that desire is essentially a
positive evaluation. Which type of evaluation? Both contributors agree

6â•… |â•… The Nature of Desire

that the evaluation that is crucial to desire does not amount to desires
being evaluative judgments.
In his contribution “Desire and the Good: In Search of the Right Fit,”
Oddie defends the “value appearance view.” In this conception, to desire
something is for this thing to appear good. Juliet’s longing for Kyoto is
the same thing as Kyoto appearing good to her. More specifically, Oddie
expounds on the idea that desire and goodness fit like hand in glove,
defends the view against objections, and presents a new argument in its
favor. If we conceive of desires as value appearances, we may hope to
fruitfully address issues surrounding the nature of values. The argument
proposed concerns chiefly the fitting-​attitude analysis of value: the thought
that goodness is what is fitting to favor, in particular, what is fitting to
desire. This analysis has been criticized on the grounds that it cannot
account for “the wrong kind of reasons” to favor something (Rabinowicz
and Rønnow-​Rasmussen 2004) and for the existence of “solitary goods”
(Bykvist 2009). Oddie elegantly specifies desiderata for the positive atti-
tude that is part of the analysis so as to make it immune from these prob-
lems and to find the right fit between goodness and desire. The positive
attitude should be a representation of a value and should neither entail a
belief about goodness nor the presence of this value outside the mind of
the favorer. Moreover, Oddie stresses that value judgments should stem
from an experiential source that is not an evaluative belief and that entails
desire. Desires, he argues, can fit this bill provided they are value seem-
ings, i.e. representations of values. As the experiential source of value,
they imply neither beliefs about goodness nor the existence of the value
represented. And they entail desires.
Friedrich defends another variant of the evaluative conception in his
“Desire, Mental Force and Desirous Experience.” His approach is origi-
nal in that he addresses the issue by means of the distinction between
mental force and mental content. Consider the contrast between assert-
ing p and ordering p. Intuitively, both representations involve the same
content, p, but they differ in their linguistic force. Friedrich’s proposal is
that desires are positive evaluations in the sense that they involve a mental
force that is evaluative in nature. Desiring is thus the representing of a state
of affairs with the mental force of goodness. In this picture, desire differs
from evaluative beliefs and value appearances: it is not a cognitive state
but consists in a sui generis evaluation. What is this evaluation and evalu-
ative mental force? Building on a similar proposal for the case of pleasure,
Friedrich proposes to account for evaluative mental force in phenomenal
terms. Desiring, in this view, involves a distinctive feeling—​the ‘desirous

Introduction | 7
experience’—╉consisting of the feeling of felt need. When desiring a cup
of coffee, one represents having coffee as good, in that one feels the need
for coffee and that one must have it. This captures the phenomenal tone of
desire and can in turn explain desire’s special motivational power.
The intuition that desires are evaluative representations is compelling.
The authors do a great job of exploring it and rebutting several objections
to the evaluative conception. Still, some questions remain and other con-
tributions in the volume help to frame them.
Is it enough to represent a state of affairs in a positive way to desire that
state of affairs? There are reasons to doubt it. For instance, one might posi-
tively evaluate that Mozart lived a longer life yet not desire this: one would
rather wish that he lived longer (Döring and Eker this volume). Similarly,
one can evaluate positively the fact that Obama was elected without desir-
ing so, as one is aware that this state of affairs has obtained (Döring and
Eker this volume). And, having lost hope, Pollyanna could believe that
being in jail is after all a good thing without desiring to be there (Döring
and Eker this volume). Or consider that Othello is clinically depressed: he
represents Desdemona’s well-╉being as a good thing but, because of his
depression, fails to desire that she fare well (Lauria this volume). Aren’t
these possible scenarios? Strictly speaking, the evaluative conception does
not entail that all positive evaluations are desires; some might be other
phenomena such as emotions or long-╉standing affective states that involve
desires only indirectly (see Oddie this volume). But isn’t, then, the evalua-
tive conception too modest as an account of desire? The appeal to the feel-
ing of felt need might be helpful, since it seems to go beyond mere positive
evaluation. But does this not amount to giving up on an evaluative account
of desire and switching to a deontic approach like the one explored by
Lauria and Massin in this volume?
The second question that we can raise about the evaluative conception
of desire is more dramatic: Do all desires involve a positive evaluation?
Do we desire everything under the “guise of the good”? This question is
answered negatively by Döring and Eker, who open the exploration of the
motivational conceptions of desire.

Motivational Views: Desire and Action

Desires bear a special relation to action and are usually thought of as

explaining intentional actions. The fact that you are reading this book,
say, can be explained by your desire to do so. This explanatory role is
often understood in terms of two further features of desire. The first is that
desires explain intentional actions in virtue of being dispositional states.

8â•… |â•… The Nature of Desire

The second is that they explain intentional action because they involve an
evaluative component. In their respective contributions, Döring and Eker
and Alvarez examine this explanatory role of desire and, in particular, the
two facets just mentioned.
In “Desires without Guises: Why We Need Not Value What We Want,”
Döring and Eker approach the issue of desire’s role in the explanation
of actions by questioning the guise of the good thesis. They retrace the
motivation for thinking that we desire only what seems good to us to the
intuition that desires explain action through the evaluative component they
involve, as Radioman-​type scenarios are meant to reveal. However, in an
original manner, they argue that Radioman’s scenario does not support
the evaluative view. Indeed, Radioman’s behavior is not made more intel-
ligible by appealing to his positive evaluation of switching on radios; quite
the reverse. For such an evaluation is puzzling in itself. And this seriously
undermines the main motivation for the evaluative picture. More gener-
ally, the authors argue that the evaluative conception, whether in its doxas-
tic or appearance version, is inadequate. As has already been pointed out,
evaluation might not be sufficient for desiring. The authors go as far as to
argue that evaluation is not a necessary feature of desire: one might desire
to tell a joke despite being aware that it is a bad thing, desire to go to the
kitchen to have a drink without any positive representation of this state
taking place, or want to watch a movie without having made up one’s mind
about its value. Desires thus do not involve the guise of the good. This
is not to say that they are just dispositions to act, however. The authors
propose a more holistic motivational conception of desire: desires might
involve wider agential dispositions, such as the disposition to form long-​
term plans or agential policies. This, they suggest, is absent in Radioman’s
case while he undergoes an urge to switch on radios. Agential dispositions
might thus suffice to make sense of his behavior without reference to the
“guise of the good.”
Döring and Eker’s contribution is very challenging, as it casts doubt
on one of the main dogmas of desire and does so by disputing the classi-
cal lesson drawn from Radioman’s scenario. They rightly point out that
appealing to evaluation would not help make Radioman’s behavior less
bizarre. Yet doesn’t a desire provide pro tanto justification for some action,
irrespective of how strange the desire is (see Oddie this volume)? Consider
that Radiowoman desires to switch on radios because she represents this
action as good. Would it not be irrational to refrain from turning on radios
given her state of mind? Isn’t the oddness of an action distinct from its jus-
tification? And would the appeal to a policy of switching on radios make

Introduction | 9
Radiowoman’s behavior less puzzling? This touches on the vexed question
of whether desires justify actions and how they could do so.
In her contribution, “Desires, Dispositions and the Explanation of
Action,” Alvarez tackles this issue from an unexplored angle. She agrees
that desires figure into action explanation in virtue of being dispositions.
She thus proposes to explore the role of desire in action explanation by
investigating the dispositional nature of desire. Dispositions can exist at
some point in time without being manifested at that time: a sugar cube can
be soluble even if it does not dissolve now. Similarly, I can desire some-
thing, at some point in time, even if I do not manifest my desire at this
time. Desires are thus dispositions. But to what are they dispositions? In
other words, how are we to characterize their manifestation? The traditional
answer to this question is that desires are dispositions to act. By contrast,
Alvarez argues that the manifestations of desire constitute a much richer
set: it encompasses behaviors (e.g. actions), expressions (e.g. linguistic
acts), and inner mental states (e.g. anticipated pleasure). By exploring the
variety of desire’s manifestations, Alvarez proposes an integrative approach
to desire that reconciles rival accounts of desire (e.g. the hedonic and the
motivational conceptions of desire). In addition, investigating further the
relation between desires and their manifestations sheds new light on how
desires explain action. Desires differ from physical dispositions such as fra-
gility and solubility. A glass is still fragile even if it never breaks or mani-
fests its fragility in some way; what is needed is that it would do so in some
circumstances. Desires are not like this: one cannot desire something with-
out manifesting the disposition in some way or other, i.e. being disposed
to act or expect some pleasure, etc., as is attested by the fact that we do not
attribute a desire for holidays to a person who never thinks about holidays,
never expects pleasure from a holiday, or never considers taking one. It
appears that desires are dispositions that cannot exist without at least one
of their manifestations taking place. This invites us to think about the way
desire explains action in a more holistic fashion than is usually the case.
At this junction we may wonder how the dispositional profile of desire
relates to the classical views of desire. For instance, does the fact that
desires are dispositions admitting of various manifestations go against the
thought that they are essentially evaluations? Is the evaluative nature of
desire not one way of unifying their manifold manifestations? We begin
to appreciate how complex the relations between the different conceptions
of desires and the various perspectives we may have on them can become.
Another question concerns the intuitive distinction between disposi-
tional or standing desires, on the one hand, and occurrent or episodic ones,

10 | The Nature of Desire

on the other (see Döring and Eker this volume). Some desires, like Romeo’s
desire that Juliet fares well, are dispositional or standing: they typically
last longer than others (Romeo desires this his whole life long); they still
exist when they are not conscious (e.g. when Romeo is sleeping); and
they admit future manifestations (every time Juliet is suffering, Romeo’s
desire that she fare well manifests itself). Other desires, like Sam’s desire
to smoke a cigarette right now, are episodic or occurrent: they are short-​
lived, typically conscious, and do not admit of reiterated manifestations.
How does this distinction connect with the thought that desires are essen-
tially dispositions? Isn’t there a tension between the view that desires are
dispositions and the distinction between episodic and dispositional desires
that is standard in the literature? Are there two senses of dispositionality
involved here? This important ontological question will be left open here.

The Deontic Alternative: Desires, Norms, and Reasons

So far we have concentrated our attention on the classical views of desire

and have briefly presented more holistic conceptions that build on them.
Very recently an alternative perspective on desire has emerged: the appeal
to deontic entities such as norms or reasons as opposed to values and
motivation.
In his contribution “The ‘Guise of the Ought to Be’: A Deontic View
of the Intentionality of Desire,” Lauria criticizes the classical pictures of
desire and proposes the deontic view. In this conception, which can be
traced back to Meinong (1917), to desire a state of affairs is to represent
it as what ought to be or as what should be. Desiring to see the ocean
is representing this state as what ought to be. Desires involve a specific
manner of representing content: a deontic mode. Lauria provides three
arguments for this picture, which correspond to the dimensions of desire
that the classical views cannot accommodate: the arguments of direction
of fit, of death of desire, and of explanatory relations. This is not to say
that there is no grain of truth in the classical conceptions. Lauria suggests
that desires are grounded in evaluations and, in turn, ground motivations.
In other words, it makes sense to explain my desire to see the ocean by
my positive evaluation of such a landscape. And desiring to see the ocean
can explain why I am disposed to do so. This explanatory profile of desire
is illuminated by the deontic view as follows. Some states of affairs (say,
that people don’t die of cancer) ought to be because they are good, and
subjects ought to bring them about because these states of affairs ought to
be. If desires are deontic representations, it is not surprising that they are
explained by evaluations and, in turn, explain motivations. For this is the

Introduction | 11
mental counterpart of the meta-​ethical explanatory relations already men-
tioned. The deontic view can thus accommodate the intuitions that drive
classical views of desire. Yet as far as desire is concerned, these concep-
tions slightly miss their target.
Lauria’s contribution brings a new perspective to the classical views. One
line of criticism raised by other contributors to this volume concerns the
“death of desire” principle—​one of the dogmas of desire. Lauria assumes
that a desire ceases to exist when one represents that its content obtains.
And he argues that this is satisfactorily explained by the deontic view,
because norms cease to exist when they are satisfied: a state of affairs, say,
that it rains, cannot be such that it ought to obtain and is obtaining at the
same time. Yet both the explanandum and the explanans are questionable.
Consider that Hillary wants to be the first female president of the United
States and that at some point she becomes president (Oddie’s example in
this volume). Can she not still desire to be the first female president of the
United States despite knowing that she has won the election? Moreover,
can she not believe that things are exactly how they should be and rightly
so (Massin this volume)?
Another question concerns the degree of sophistication that desires end
up having in the deontic view. It seems that babies and non-​human animals
have desires. Do they really represent things as what ought to be? Prima
facie, this seems a quite complex representation compared to evaluations
or motivations. This worry is reminiscent of the objection often raised
against doxastic views of desire (see Friedrich, Döring and Eker this vol-
ume) and examined by some contributor (see Gregory’s reply).
Adopting a similar approach in his “Desire, Values and Norms,” Massin
argues that the formal object of desire is better construed as being deontic
than evaluative. In other words, desiring something implies representing it
under the guise of the ought-​to-​be or of the ought-​to-​do (the “guise of the
ought” thesis). Unlike Lauria, Massin appeals to norms in general, not only
norms of the ought-​to-​be type. Moreover, he considers that the “guise of
the ought” thesis is necessary but not sufficient to desire. The argument he
proposes focuses on the polarity of desire. Aversion is the polar opposite
of desire, as hate is the polar opposite of love. Still, the two pairs of oppo-
sites differ. The opposition between desire and aversion, argues Massin, is
best understood in deontic rather than evaluative terms, and this contrasts
with love and hate. A detour in deontic logic reveals why. Logic teaches us
that obligation and interdiction are interdefinable: they define each other
with the help of negation. Something is forbidden (say, stealing) if, and
only if, it is obligatory that this thing does not happen (it is obligatory not

12 | The Nature of Desire

to steal); something is obligatory (say, stopping at the red traffic light) if,
and only if, it is forbidden that this thing does not happen. Goodness and
badness, however, aren’t interdefinable in the same way. A state’s being
good is not equivalent to its negation being bad. It might be elegant to wear
a hat, but this does not mean that not wearing it is bad: not wearing it might
be neutral. Now, Massin argues, desires and aversions are interdefinable,
just as obligation and interdiction are. Desiring something is equivalent to
being averse to its negation, and being averse to something is to desire it
not to happen. Desiring to wear a hat is equivalent to being averse to not
wearing it: it is incompatible with being indifferent to not wearing it. In
contrast, liking something is not equivalent to disliking its negation: liking
cheesecake is compatible with indifference toward not eating cheesecake.
Therefore, desire is to aversion what obligation is to interdiction, and love
is to hate what goodness is to badness. The “guise of the ought” thesis thus
fares better than the “guise of the good.”
Massin’s approach sheds light on the polar opposition characteristic of
desire by appealing to polarity in meta-​ethics, two issues that are rarely
discussed. It can be put in perspective with the help of two questions.
The first concerns the restriction to obligation. Does a desire for some-
thing involve representing this thing as being obligatory? The other deon-
tic accounts defended in this volume appeal to deontic entities like what
ought to be (Lauria) or reasons (Gregory) without putting an emphasis on
obligation. How are we to capture the deontic entity that is relevant for
understanding desire?
The second issue concerns the relation between the polarity of desire
and the essential features of desire. As observed, one might divorce the
two features: that the polar opposition of desire is best understood in deon-
tic terms is prima facie neutral with regard to desires being essentially
deontic representations. This, however, contrasts with what other of our
contributors assume. From the perspective of the evaluative view, it is nat-
ural to think that the polar opposite of desire, i.e. aversion, is a negative
evaluation precisely because desiring is a positive one (Oddie, Railton this
volume). What is the relation between polarity and the essence of desire?
In his contribution “Might Desires Be Beliefs about Normative Reasons
for Action?,” Gregory defends another type of deontic view: the desire-​
as-​belief view. He argues that desires are beliefs about reasons to act.
Desiring to drink coffee is to believe that one has a normative, defeasible
reason to do so. This claim differs importantly from all others, since desire
is understood as a kind of belief rather than an appearance (Oddie this vol-
ume) or a non-​cognitive attitude (e.g., Friedrich, Döring and Eker, Lauria

Introduction | 13
this volume). As mentioned earlier, there are some difficulties in account-
ing for desire in terms of beliefs. Gregory’s contribution goes a long way
toward rebutting a number of objections. He considers worries concerning
desires’ direction of fit, appetites, and objections about the sufficiency and
necessity of the view. Let us mention two examples that tightly connect
with other key issues in the volume. We already mentioned that desires
differ from beliefs in terms of direction of fit. How, then, could a desire
be a belief? Gregory argues that desires have both directions of fit and
that the same is true of beliefs about practical reasons. More importantly,
it is common to think that desires cannot be assimilated to beliefs on the
grounds that non-​human animals have desires but lack beliefs (Friedrich,
Döring and Eker this volume). Against this objection, Gregory considers
the possibility that non-​human animals have a minimal grasp of reasons to
act and thus, in a sense, have normative beliefs. Alternatively, it might be
that non-​human animals have drives rather than desires. Finally, Gregory
argues that his account is superior to the appearance view, i.e. the idea
that desires are appearances of the good (Oddie this volume) or of reasons
(Scanlon 2000). Appearances, he argues, are unlike desires in that they fall
outside our rational control.
Gregory does a great job at undermining the main difficulties associ-
ated with the desire-​as-​belief account. The objections examined are remi-
niscent of the ones that have been raised against the view that desires are
evaluative beliefs and that have often been used to dismiss it without being
carefully examined. This similitude raises the following question: Should
desires be understood in terms of beliefs about reasons rather than in terms
of beliefs about values or other normative entities such as norms? Are we
to identify values with reasons, in which case the two proposals would
boil down to the same thing? This is where the philosophy of desire meets
vexed meta-​ethical issues.
From another perspective, one might wonder whether identifying desire
with belief is supported by empirical evidence. Lewis famously argued
that reducing desire to belief cannot accommodate the regulation of desire
and belief predicted by Bayesian models of decision making, which is the
main empirical model in economics (Lewis 1988). It is also an open ques-
tion whether reducing desire to belief is compatible with neuroscientific
studies in this area. The next section touches on these questions.

Empirical Perspectives: Desire, the Reward System, and Learning

The nature of desire can also be approached with the help of the empirical
evidence on the subject, in particular through the lens of neuroscientific

14 | The Nature of Desire

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
marbles have been used to adorn some of the finest buildings in
America, including the National Capitol.

Fig. 67. On the Campus of the University of Tennessee

Around Knoxville are fine farms also, just as we find them about
Harrisburg, Hagerstown, Winchester, and almost everywhere else in
the Great Valley. Our view (Fig. 52) is taken near Knoxville and
shows sloping fields always ready to bear good crops. The soils
have been made by the wasting of the top parts of these same beds
of marble and of other rocks found along with it.
In Knoxville, on the edge of the city, is the University of
Tennessee, with many buildings upon its campus. It is an excellent
school and an old one as well, having been founded in 1794. It was
first named Blount College, from one of the prominent public men of
the valley at that time, and is now one of the foremost schools of the
South.
Only seven years before that date two old Revolutionary soldiers
rode through the woods and picked out these lands, which were
given to them as a reward for their service in the war. Here they built
as a defense against the savages a wooden fort, with log cabins at
the corners and a stockade with a stout barred gate. Such a fort was
greatly needed in those days whenever a new settlement was made.
After the two soldiers had planted corn they went back to North
Carolina to bring their families over the mountains. This was the
beginning of Knoxville, which grew up around the fort and soon
spread over the hills and down to the river. The settlement was
named in honor of Henry Knox, who was an able general in the
Revolution and a good friend of George Washington.
Now the railroads reach out in every direction. They bring in the
iron ore and the limestones of the valley. They also run up into the
Cumberland Gap, and to Harriman, Tennessee, and bring back
stores of coal, thus making Knoxville a place for working iron. To the
east the Southern Railroad leads up the French Broad (Fig. 61)
through deep gorges into the heart of the Great Smokies at
Asheville, and across the Blue Ridge to the lowlands of North
Carolina.
All this is very different from the samp mortars and the puncheon
floors of early times, but the pioneers had a keen eye for the soil and
the waters and the trees, and it is these which have helped to make
the valley rich to-day.
 Fig. 68. Marble Quarry near Knoxville
We must not forget that off to the west James Robertson had
founded a city that is even older than Knoxville. In the great bend of
the Cumberland, on its south bank, in northern Tennessee, stands
Nashville, as we have already seen.
If we visit a large city in one of the countries of Europe, we are
quite likely to be told, or to read in our guidebook, that its history
goes back hundreds of years, and any town that was started only a
hundred years ago would there seem young. But we measure age
differently in America, and a town like Nashville, founded in 1780, we
think is old indeed. It is not easy to remember, as we ride along the
streets and see the shops and mansions of Nashville to-day, that this
was once a place of log cabins, and that the first settlers had to
sleep always with one ear open for the Indian’s war cry.
 That James Robertson had to learn to read from his wife did not
keep Nashville from becoming one of the centers of education and
refinement in the South. It would take several lines to record the
names of all the colleges and universities that now have their seat in
this city. Robertson was the sort of man who, with the opportunities
of to-day, might have been the president of one of these schools, or
he might perhaps have gained a fortune with which to help in their
support. Farther west, on the Mississippi river, stands Memphis, a
city still larger than Nashville; indeed, few southern states can boast
of so many cities as Tennessee possesses. Besides these, there are
fertile valleys, fine rivers and mountains, productive forests, beds of
iron ore and coal, comfortable farms, and thriving towns. The state is
rich, too, in historical associations. Every part of Tennessee saw the
dark days of the Civil War, and in the fields south of Nashville a great
battle was fought.
When John Sevier went down the Tennessee river on his Indian
raids he noticed that the stream, making a great bend, turns away
from the valley and flows by a deep gorge through the highlands of
the Cumberland plateau. We can take the train now at Knoxville, and
a ride of a little more than a hundred miles will bring us to this place.

Fig. 69. State House, Nashville

 By the river is a steep, high ground known as Cameron hill. Let
us go up to the top and look around. Stretching away at our feet on
the east is Chattanooga. Part of the city as we see it from Cameron
hill is shown in the picture (Fig. 70). Beyond is the Tennessee, and
we are looking up the river to the northeast. The bridge which we
see is the only bridge across the river at Chattanooga, even though it
is now a large and busy city. In the distance is high ground, a part of
Missionary Ridge, famous in the story of the Civil War.
If we turn around and look southward, we shall see Lookout
Mountain, rising fifteen hundred feet above the river. A battle was
fought on the steep slopes of this mountain also; and a few miles to
the southeast is Chickamauga, one of the bloodiest battle grounds of
the war. On the edge of the city, kept with care, is the National
Cemetery, where rest the bodies of more than twelve thousand
soldiers, northern and southern, who perished in the neighborhood
of Chattanooga. Now all the region is peaceful, and only the tablets
of iron and bronze, set up by the government on every battlefield in
the neighborhood, tell the story of the conflict as it raged about the
city.
Like Knoxville, Chattanooga has much coal and iron, is the
center of a number of railways, and does much business. The
railways run up the valley to Virginia, and south to Atlanta and
elsewhere in Georgia. They stretch even further southward to Mobile
and New Orleans, while the lines to the west reach Memphis and
Nashville. Chattanooga is sometimes called the “Gate City” because
it stands near the opening of the Great Valley into the wide plains
along the gulf of Mexico. The place, originally called Ross’s Landing,
was not settled until 1836, when Knoxville and Nashville were about
fifty years old. It has a noble site and may well become a great city.
Here passed the boats that bore the first settlers to Robertson’s
colony on the Cumberland. There are no Indians now to shoot from
the banks, and you will see on the river only rafts of logs floating
down from the forests in the mountains.
Fig. 70. Chattanooga, looking Northeast from Cameron Hill.
Missionary Ridge in the Distance
Atlanta also is often called the “Gate City” of the South. It stands
more than a thousand feet above the sea, in northern Georgia,
where the Appalachian mountain range is tapering down toward the
southern plains. Because Atlanta is so high it is cooler in summer
than most southern cities, and is always free from the scourge of
yellow fever and cholera.
It is a natural site for a city, for here at the end of the great
mountain system the long lines of railway that follow the Atlantic
coast swing around to the west, passing on to the Mississippi and
down to Mobile and the ports on the gulf of Mexico. Other railways
reach Atlanta from Chattanooga and Knoxville in the Great Valley,
and still others lead the way to Savannah and the Atlantic coast.
Thus twelve lines of railway reach out from Atlanta like the spokes of
a wheel and connect the city with all parts of the South. Let us take a
map of the United States and draw a line through Richmond,
Louisville, Nashville, and New Orleans. Notice how many states lie
southeast of this line, and remember that of all the towns which they
contain Atlanta is the largest and most important. Indeed, in trade
and influence it surpasses many northern cities which are much
larger.

Fig. 71. Atlanta: Broad Street, looking North

 Atlanta saw stirring times in the Civil War. It was small then,
having but about ten thousand people. In 1864 most of it was burned
to the ground, and we may truly say that it has grown to its present
size in the short period since that time. To-day its population
numbers more than one hundred thousand. During the recent
Spanish War the Department of the Gulf made its headquarters here,
so that Atlanta appears to be sought both in war and in peace. The
city was used as the capital of Georgia soon after the Civil War, and
in 1877 the people of the state voted that it should always be the
seat of government. Since that time they have erected a capitol
costing a million dollars, adorning the interior with marbles from their
own quarries.

Fig. 72. Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills, Atlanta

A few years ago an exposition was held at Atlanta to show the
world the achievements and hopes of the great South. Everybody
knew that the South raised cotton, but Atlanta wished to prove that
the South could also spin and weave her famous product. Mr. W. G.
Atkinson was the governor of Georgia at that time. During the
exposition a day was chosen in which something unusual should be
done. Men went out into a field in the morning and picked some
cotton. It was ginned and spun and woven in double-quick time.
Then tailors took some of the cloth, cut it, fitted it, and sewed it into a
suit of clothes. Governor Atkinson put on the suit and visited the
grounds of the exposition. In the morning the cotton was in the field,
in the evening it was on the governor. Suits are not made so quickly
as that on ordinary days, but the South spins and weaves millions of
dollars’ worth of cotton, turning the mill wheels with southern coal or
with the waters of swift southern streams.

Fig. 73. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta

Atlanta is not only at the southern end of the mountains, but it is
on the divide which separates the streams of the gulf from those of
the Atlantic. On the one hand, not far away, is the Ocmulgee, flowing
to the ocean, while westward, and distant but a few miles, the
Chattahoochee flows toward the gulf. The latter river has been
harnessed by man, and eleven thousand horse power measures the
amount of energy that can be carried over the wires to Atlanta to
move its cars and turn the wheels of its factories. The mills not only
spin the cotton of the gulf plains but also turn out fertilizers, work up
the timber of the region, and make a multitude of other things to
swell the city’s trade with her neighbors.
 Fig. 74. Iron Furnace, Birmingham
Appropriate to her needs, Atlanta has had since 1887 a school of
technology, in which she teaches her sons how to develop the great
resources of the South. Here are shops and departments of
engineering, and, not least, instruction in making textiles, so that the
cotton of southern fields need no longer go to Massachusetts or to
England to be spun and woven.
The youngest great town of the southern mountain region was
started on an old cotton plantation in 1871, thirty-four years before
the writing of these lines. The people knew that in Alabama as well
as in Tennessee coal and iron are found close together. So men built
an iron town and called it, after one of the greatest furnace towns in
the world, Birmingham. It is a noisy, busy place, with wide streets,
swift electric cars, and blazing furnaces. To see it grow is like
watching a new Pittsburg rise up in the heart of the South.
 From the Berkshire country at the north to the southern end of
the Appalachians, there are to-day thriving towns and fertile fields.
No longer does the mountain wall cut off the products of the West
from the markets of the East. Yet hardly a hundred years ago the
eastern strip of country was practically shut off from the whole
territory drained by the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Indian trails and
rough roads were the only means of communication between the two
sections. Great as are the natural resources of both regions, their
prosperity has been bound up in the development of roads and
railways, and is due in large measure to the energy, foresight, and
self-sacrifice of those who crossed the barrier and made it easy for
others to follow them.
 INDEX

Adams, Charles Francis, cited, 7

Adams, John Quincy, 100
Adirondacks, 32
Albany, N.Y., 6, 10, 15, 16
Alexander, Mt., 130
Alexandria, Va., 41, 86
Allegheny Front, 74, 78, 80, 82
Allegheny Portage Railway, 75, 76, 80
Allegheny river, 111
Allentown, Pa., 79
Altoona, Pa., 77;
description of, 81
Amsterdam, N.Y., 20
Ann, Fort, 32
Annapolis, Md., 88
Antietam, 132
Appalachians, southern, 174
“Arks” on the Susquehanna, 41
Arnold, Benedict, 37
Atkinson, Gov. W. G., 178
Atlanta, Ga., 174–180
Auburn, N.Y., 57

Bald Eagle valley, 80

Baltimore, Md., 53, 86, 101;
growth of, 107
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 99, 101, 102, 110
Barges on the Ohio, 116, 118
Barton, Clara, cited, 82
Bay Road, Mass., 4
Bedford, Pa., 71, 77
Bemis Heights, 38
Bennington, Vt., 38
Berkshires, 5;
railway through, 9, 10
Bethlehem, Pa., 79
Binghamton, N.Y., 52
Birmingham, Ala., 181
Black Rock (Buffalo), 47
“Blackbeard,” 130
Blockhouse at Pittsburg, 112
Blount College, 170
Blue Grass country, 127, 151, 166
Blue mountain, 79
Blue Ridge mountains, 88, 130
Boone, Daniel, early life, 144;
training, 145;
portrait, 145;
moves to North Carolina, 146;
serves with Braddock, 146;
camps in Kentucky, 147;
visits Cumberland Gap, 148;
founds Boonesborough, 148;
buys lands of the Indians, 149;
marks out the Wilderness road, 149
Boonesborough, 148
Boston, Mass., 1, 2, 7, 12
Braddock, General, 69, 90, 91, 146
Braddock, Pa., 83
Brant, Joseph, 33
Bristol, Tenn., 134
British, in New York, 32;
in the Ohio country, 156
Brownsville, Pa., 93, 117
Buffalo, 52, 57, 60, 110;
growth of, 61
Burgoyne, General, 32, 37
Burnside, General, 168
Business, increase of, 114, 118

Cambria Steel Company, 83

Cameron hill, 173
Campbell, William and Arthur, 160
Canajoharie, N.Y., 24
Canals, 44;
Erie, 7, 46, 48, 50–52;
Pennsylvania, 74;
Chesapeake and Ohio, 98–101, 107;
Delaware and Hudson, 53;
at Louisville, Ky., 127
Carlisle, Pa., 71, 79, 132
Carroll, Charles, 101
Carry to Schenectady, the, 19, 22
Catch-me-if-you-can, 2
Catskill mountains, 15, 32
Chambersburg, Pa., 71, 132
Champlain, lake, 31, 37
Charlottesville, Va., 142
Chattahoochee river, 179
Chattanooga, Tenn., 135;
description of, 173–175
Cherokee Indians, 139, 149
Chesapeake bay, 86
Chesapeake and Ohio canal, 107;
building of, 98–101
Chicago, 110
Chickamauga, 174
Chissel, Fort, 135
Cincinnati, Ohio, description of, 123–127
Clark, George Rogers, raises an army, 156;
portrait, 157;
captures Kaskaskia and Vincennes, 158
Clay, Henry, stories of, 96, 114
Cleveland, Benjamin, 160
Clinch river, 134
Clinton, De Witt, 44, 49;
stirs up legislature, 40;
portrait, 43;
train, 53, 54
Coal, 104, 118, 122, 153, 170, 181
Cohoes, N.Y., 22
Coke ovens, 108
Columbia, The, 2
Columbia, Pa., 69, 74, 76
Columbus, Ohio, 94
Conemaugh river, 75, 82
Conestoga creek, 67
Conestoga Traction Company, 70
Conestoga wagons, 77
Connecticut river, 4
Construction, early railway, 105
Cooper, Peter, 106
Cornstalk, 155
Cornwallis, Lord, 158
Cotton, 178
Cumberland, Fort, 89, 90;
city of, 93, 95, 102
Cumberland Gap, 142, 148, 150, 152
Cumberland mountains, 134, 142
Cumberland river, 164, 174
Cumberland road, 93
Cunard, Samuel, 2
Cunard line, 2, 8

Dams, use of, 119

Danforth, Mr., and salt making, 27
Deerfield valley, 8
Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, 53
Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, 60
De-o-wain-sta, 23
Detroit, 41, 156
Dickens, Charles, 126
Dinwiddie, Governor, 89
Doak, Rev. Samuel, 160
Dongan, Gov. Thomas, 40
Dunlap’s creek, 96
Dunmore, Lord, 155
Duquesne, Fort, 91
Dutch, in New York, 14, 18, 31

Earle, Mrs. Alice Morse, cited, 55

Easton, Pa., 79
Edward, Fort, 31
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, cited, 1
Empire State Express, 56
England, interest of, in fur trade, 18;
railways of, 55
Erie canal, 7, 42, 46, 48, 50–52
Erie, lake, 18, 42, 98
Erie Railroad, 60
Euphrates river, 130

Fairfax, Lord William, 88

Falls of the Ohio, 127, 146, 152
Farms in Pennsylvania, 66
“Feeders” of Erie canal, 52
Ferguson, Patrick, 159
Finley, John, 146, 148
Fishing interests, 104
Flag, perhaps the first American, 34
Flatboats, 117
Floyd, Gen. William, 22
Forbes’s road, 71
Forts:
Orange, 17;
Stanwix, 22, 23, 34, 37, 61, 149;
Schuyler, 23;
Johnson, 26;
Edward, 31;
Ann, 32;
Ticonderoga, 32, 37, 38;
Cumberland, 89, 90;
Duquesne, 91;
Chissel, 135;
Sanders, 168
Franklin, Benjamin, 4, 69, 130
“Franklin,” state of, 166
Frederick, Md., 93
French, in Ohio country, 89
French and Indian War, 69
French Broad river, 135, 159, 170
Frostburg, Md., 90, 93
Fur trade, 18, 24, 40
Furnaces near Pittsburg, 121

Gansevoort, Col. Peter, 34

Gas, natural, 120
“Gate City,” the, 174
Genesee road, 24, 25
Genesee street, Utica, 23
Geneva, 24, 25
George, Mt., 130
Georgetown, D.C., 100
Georgia Institute of Technology, 179
Germans in Pennsylvania, 66;
in Tennessee, 136
Ginseng, 24
Gist, Christopher, 89
Glass mills, 122
Gray, Captain, 2
Great Kanawha river, 155
Great Smoky mountains, 134, 170
Great Valley, the, 71, 130, 132, 134, 136, 139
Gulliver’s Travels, 150
Gypsum, 104

Hagerstown, Md., 25, 132, 165

Half Moon, the, 15
Halifax, 2
Hambright’s Hotel, 70
Hamburg-American line, 108
Hamilton, Col. Henry, 156
Hancock, Gov. John, 2
Hanks, Abraham, 149
Harlem, 14
Harpers Ferry, 107, 130, 132
Harriman, Tenn., 170
Harrisburg, Pa., 74, 85, 132;
description of, 78
Henry, Patrick, 156
Herkimer, Nicholas, 29, 33, 35, 36
Hessians, 33, 38
Hill, Gen. A. P., 142
Hit or Miss, the, 77
Hiwassee river, 135
Hollidaysburg, Pa., 74
Holston river, 134
Honesdale, Pa., 53
Hoosac mountain, 5, 8
Hoosac tunnel, 9–11
Hoosick river, 5
Housatonic river, 5
Howe, General, 32
Hudson, Henry, 15, 16
Hudson river, 15
Huguenots, 136
Hulbert, cited, 105

Illinois, 158
Indiana, 158
Indians, 144, 149, 163, 164;
in New York, 14, 17, 18, 33;
at Watauga, 138;
at Point Pleasant, 155
Indies, hope of reaching, 15
Iron works, 121, 129, 170, 180
Iroquois Indians, 18

Jackson, “Stonewall,” 133

James river, 133;
gap, 134
Jefferson, Thomas, 156
Johns Hopkins University, 108
Johnson, Fort, 26
Johnson, John, 36
Johnson, Sir William, 20
Johnstown, N.Y., 20
Johnstown, Pa., 75, 76, 82
Joppa, 92
Juniata river, 74

Kaskaskia, Ill., 116, 157

Kentucky, 127, 154, 164;
becomes a state, 165
Kings Mountain, 158, 160
Knights, Sarah, 4
Knox, Gen. Henry, 170
Knoxville, 134, 166, 170

Lake Shore Railroad, 110

Lancaster, Pa., 65, 72, 78
Lancaster pike, 65, 67, 70
Lee, Arthur, 113
Lee, Richard Henry, 98
Lee, Gen. Robert E., 132
Legislators allowed boat hire, 87
Lewis, Andrew, 155
Licking river, 124
Limestones, 104, 132, 151, 169