Structural Rationality in Desire

Can desires be irrational? This paper focuses on the possibility that desires might be irrational in virtue of failing to cohere with other mental states of the person in question. Recent literature on structural irrationality has largely neglected structural requirements on desire, and this paper begins to rectify that neglect. This paper endorses various rational requirements on desire, but primarily focuses on the instrumental requirement to desire the means to our ends. It explains how this requirement should be understood, and defends it from numerous objections, such as the worry that there are no real instrumental desires but only combinations of ultimate desires and beliefs (Arpaly and Schroeder 2014; Sinhababu 2017; Smith 2004), and the worry that an instrumental requirement on desire has implausible consequences (Broome 2005; Wedgwood 2011).