ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a distinction that is crucial to a correct account of free action and to an adequate conception of human motivation and responsibility. A related possibility that presents considerable problems for the understanding of free agency is this: some desires, when they arise, may 'color' or influence what appear to be the agent's evaluations, but only temporarily. Harry Frankfurt's picture of practical judgement seems to be that of an agent with a given set of (first-order) desires concerning which he then forms second-order volitions. On the Bayesian model of deliberation, a preference scale is imposed upon various states of affairs contingent upon courses of action open to the agent. On the Platonic picture, the rational part of the soul itself determines what has value and how much, and thus is responsible for the original ranking of alternative states of affairs.
