A Solution to the Problem of Desire Acquisition for Desire Satisfactionism

Abstract According to desire satisfactionism, it is good to get what you desire. If it is good to get what you desire, then it also seems good to desire what you will get. If you are about to be fired, then it would be really great if you could quickly develop a strong desire to get fired. This apparent counterintuitive entailment is a problem for desire satisfactionism. I will argue desire satisfactionists need not commit themselves to the goodness of desiring what you will get by appealing to the familiar concept of higher-order desires. The goodness of acquiring new desires should be understood relative to whether one desired such desires.