Wishful thinking and hopeful attitudes

Abstract

This paper proposes the role of wishful thinking as a new possible perspective to enhance our understanding of hopeful attitudes or hopefulness. Hopefulness is a relatively new and developing framework in the philosophy of hope amidst theories addressing hope as an action (or hoping, in a sense). The theories addressing hope as an action uses desire as part of their explanation of how hoping works, however, I argue that desire in the case of hoping is not entirely suitable or appropriate to be used when understanding hopeful attitudes due to the lack of action present in the latter. I thus offer wishful thinking as a possible perspective to explain how there is motivation for an agent to be disposed to think or feel positively towards their object or situation of hope, but the motivation is insufficient to compel an agent to act to promote their object or situation of hope.