How does pornography change desires? A pragmatic account.

This article focuses on refining Rae Langton and Caroline West's discourse-theoretic model of pornography to explain how pornography changes viewers' desires, not just their beliefs. Building on Langton and West's account that pornography implicitly adds declarative contents to the common ground via presupposition accommodation, the authors propose that pornography also issues implicit directives that update viewers' to-do lists—specifically the bouletic (desire-related) component—thereby influencing desires. They argue that these directives arise through pragmatic inference from the declarative premises combined with general principles already present in viewers' preferential discourse components. The paper further addresses variability in desire-change among viewers, the distinction between pornography and other fictional media in terms of epistemic authority, and why desire-change does not necessarily lead to corresponding actions. This extension preserves the original model's explanatory power while filling a key gap regarding pornography's influence on desires.