This is perhaps a contentious statement to some philosophers, but that contention comes from the fuzzy definition of desire. When I talk about DesiresDesires
What is desire?
What I mean when I say desire. This term should be defined clearly because I use it everywhere.
I do not have a concise and atomic definition of Desire however we can infer a defin... in this case- I am simply stating that before the body may move there must first emanate an impulse for movement. This impulse may be conscious or unconscious.
This is to say that before I can pick up my cup to drink my coffee- the nerves in my arm must fire, and before those nerves fire they are sent by the brain and before they are sent by the brain there is something and whatever this something is I will call desire. I can say that there is something because as far as I can tell all things in material reality (perhaps all of the universe material or otherwise) is causal– i.e. there must be something that caused the brain to trigger the nerves to move, because all natural phenomena are caused by something.
References
Colin McGinn, Belief, Desire, and Action
You can do something simply because you have a sudden urge to do it, and you can also do something because you believe you desire to (though you don’t)—in either case you lack one of the components postulated by CT. So there are now three types of case to consider: (i) belief and desire in combination, (ii) desire alone, and (iii) belief alone. Some theorists have argued that moral motivation consists of nothing but a moral belief; we need not take a stand on that issue to accept that beliefs _about_desire can play a motivational role. Being under the impression that you have a certain desire can act as a prompt to action, whether you have that desire or not. Maybe the only general thing we can say is that the action has to look desirable to you—there is something to be said in favor of doing it. This can take the form either of desire plus belief, or simply desire, or believed desire (or maybe just belief that the action would be morally good).