Wanting what’s not best

In this paper, we propose a novel account of desire reports, i.e. sentences of the form ⌜ S wants p ⌝ . Our theory is partly motivated by Phillips-Brown’s (Mind 130(518):413–437, 2021) observation that subjects can desire things even if those things aren’t best by the subject’s lights. That is, being best isn’t necessary for being desired. We compare our proposal to existing theories, and show that it provides a neat account of the central phenomenon.