so we're here to talk about autonomy so what do we need to think about first well if autonomy is about doing the kinds of things that you see worth doing things that you think are valuable then that kind of means that to be autonomous you have to be able to do the kind of things that you want to do so what does it mean to want to do something well that means to have a desire right so that's what I want to talk about first is just a little bit about what we even mean by our desire so there's a bunch of different things that happen in our heads and philosophers like to cut these up in ways that are probably a little bit tidier than they actually are but let's not worry about all that let's just talk just suppose for a second that we have two different kinds of things that happen our head there's gonna be other stuff obviously but just start simple so there's beliefs and then there's things like desires and you know there's moods and other emotional states but let's just think about these so what does it mean to believe that so my dog is black right so that's a belief right I think that this sentence is true so what is it to say you know I want a taco well that's a desire and what that if that means is if I'm if I want a taco that means there's something like you know what we'd call a state of affairs you know just a way the world is you know it's something like Adam eating a taco I hope that's not off the camera what I want when I say that I wanna taco is really just I want this sentence to be true okay so the reason why I bring up beliefs and desires in this way as you can see beliefs are you know me thinking that a certain sentence is true right you know Adams dog is black that when I say I believe that I'm saying I think this sentence is true when I say I want a taco I'm saying that I have a certain kind of attitude towards this sentence right I want that sentence to be true okay so that's why both of these things here beliefs and desires are part of a family that you don't need to know the name but I'm gonna use it may be called propositional attitudes right so a a proposition right is just a sentence it's like a sentence right so it's an attitude towards the sentence so when I have so when I have a belief I have an attitude namely like thinking it's true towards a proposition a sentence and when I have a desire I have a sort of different kind of orientation towards the sentence and that sentence is something like you know Adam eats a taco right so that's how we that's the thing that's common between beliefs and desires and you'll see why I'm going into this in a second when we get to second order desires okay so let's think a little bit about what it would mean for you to let's use the phrase that is going to be very you know sort standard for us when we are talking about autonomy you know we say that you know you really want something you know like right you know sometimes we we say you know oh I want a taco but do I really want a taco well for me the answer is always yes and maybe I shouldn't use that example because you know for pretty much everyone that answer is gonna be yes but we sometimes say like you know like you know you're you you promised your friend that you're gonna you're gonna meet them at the bar right so right so wouldn't you know you make that promise to your friend you say hey I'll meet you at the bar you're saying you know you probably you probably want to go to the bar right so that's probably true when you you know when you make the promise but you know you have a long day at work you're kind of feeling lazy Netflix is calling you so sometimes when we say something like that like you know do I really want to go to the bar that means you're kind of like waffling on whether or not you actually have that desire right so maybe you wanted to go in the past but now you don't want to go anymore and when you ask yourself do I really want to go the answer's no I don't even want to go but there's another way that can play out which is kind of more important to us right so you can think of a certain range of options right these are just things you could do right you could you know say go to the bar you could watch them Netflix you could do your dumb business ethics homework no one's going to do this obviously you could you know pet your cat which you know if your cat is anything like mine used to be this could be an all-night affair right so you got a lot of things that you could do and you know you might have different kind of preferences for them right and those can shift around in a given moment but you know sometimes you don't even you know like these are all kind of constrained by your current situation right so here's another thing that you might want right you might want to be a you know rock star right that's like your dream right well how does that dream fit in there