David Brink has posted The Significance of Desire on the Internet. Here is a taste:
There is a venerable tradition of treating practical reason and theories of the good, especially the agent’s own good, as grounded ultimately in facts about the responses that an agent does or would have to various situations and options upon suitable reflection. The most common, and I think the most interesting, form of response-dependence about practical reason and the good is a reductive form that aims to reduce facts about reasons and the good to facts about desire. Such desiderative conceptions of response-dependence treat practical reason and the good as consisting in facts about what an agent would desire to care about and pursue upon suitable reflection. Even those who deny that all reasons or intrinsic goods are grounded in desire often assume that some are desire-dependent. Though I will address the more modest claim that some aspects of practical reason or the good are desire-dependent, it will be easier to begin with pure desiderative conceptions. One possible focus is desiderative conceptions of practical reason. But many of the same issues arise for desiderative conceptions of the good as well, and it will be useful to discuss these at points. Indeed, it may be most plausible to assign desire an ultimate role when we turn our attention from practical reason or the good, as such, to the narrower topic of a person’s good or well-being.