Word.ws English Dictionary

conativism

conativism noun: the belief that the basis of all action lies in desire.

Noun

conativism (uncountable)

  1. The belief that the basis of all action lies in desire.
    • And — the crucial point for present purposes — they enable Hume to drive home the conclusion that moral cognitivism's first, or psychological, claim must be rejected, and moral conativism endorsed, if one is to understand the tie between morality and action.1996, John Bricke, Mind and Morality: An Examination of Hume's Moral Psychology, page 81
    • We have spent the last couple of chapters working out the core features of conativism: the nature of desiring and promotion, the issue of idealization, the nature of practical reasons, and an account of the weight of favorings.2018, Stefan Fischer, The Origin of Oughtness: A Case for Metaethical Conativism, page 248

Origin of conativism

From conative + -ism.

Questions about conativism

What does conativism mean?
Conativism means the belief that the basis of all action lies in desire.
What part of speech is conativism?
Conativism is a noun.

Words near conativism in the dictionary

  1. conational
  2. conations
  3. conative
  4. conatively
  5. conatives
  6. conativism
  7. conativist
  8. conativists
  9. Conatser
  10. Conatsers
  11. conatumumab

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: conativism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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