Why representationalists can’t be desire theorists (and vice versa)
Synthese May 7, 2026 Matthew Kinakin
When you sprain an ankle or eat a favorite dessert, the experience feels unpleasant or pleasant, prompting action to end or continue it. The standard view explains this by a second-order desire about the experience's quality—wanting the unpleasantness to stop or the pleasantness to continue. But a popular theory of phenomenal character, strong representationalism, holds that we are directly aware only of external objects, not the experiences themselves. This conflicts with the second-order desire account, which requires direct awareness of experiences. The author argues that desire theorists should instead adopt object-involving desires that require direct awareness of experiences, making representationalism and desire theory incompatible.