Either drink tea or hang yourself, or Logical aspects of desires in argumentation about actions

We propose a methodology for logical-argumentative analysis of desires employed as premises of deliberative arguments, the non-demonstrative practical arguments about actions intended to fulfill them. Representation and evaluation of deliberative arguments are hampered by the non-cognitive nature of desires, difficulties in distinguishing between their cognitive and non-cognitive elements, and vague criteria for their acceptability. We suggest a solution by dividing desires into relative, which require bringing the state of affairs in accordance with the desired, and absolute, which do not imply this; reconstructing deliberative arguments using the “to consequences” argumentation scheme; distinguishing between a noncognitive goal premise expressing a priority desire and a conditional cognitive goal-means premise expressing agent’s opinion about efficacy of her preferences in the way of its implementation; and representing the conclusion of such an argument as an intention by which the agent makes a commitment to adhere to the line of behavior, by analogy with the commitment to consider the conclusion of a demonstrative argument true. Based on the idea of the conditional obligation in dynamic deontic action logic, we semantically explicate the conditioning the preferences by the priority and evaluate the acceptability of such arguments depending on whether the preferred way allows the priority desire to be fulfilled. This provides an explanation why only relative, but not absolute desires can be justified or criticized in that way. We illustrate the results using the examples from the Russian literature.