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           (4) to concern, relate to, or affect

Wiki Markup"To speak of an agent's 'interests' is to speak of the way that agent's particular desires \ [wants, preferences\] could be rationally integrated into a coherent 'good life.'...I have an 'interest' in the satisfaction of anything which can be reasonably be termed a 'need'" (Guess 47. f.). "'Needs' are defined relative to the successful functioning of an individual or social organism; if the 'needs' of the organism are not satisfied, it will malfunction" (Guess 46). Thus whether +x+ has interests is not entirely a function of whether +x+ can make a rational judgement about which of its desires, wants, preferences, etc., out to be satisfied, because insofar as one has needs, one has an interest in satisfying them, with or without any rational judgement. "If agents are deceived or mistaken about their interests, we will say that they are pursuing 'merely apparent' interests, and not their 'real' or 'true' interests" (Guess: 48).

There are (at least) two different approaches to the definition of the "true" interests of a person or group. (1) On the "perfect-knowledge approach," a person's or group's "real," or "true," or "objective" interests are the ones he or she or it would have in the limiting case of having perfect knowledge. (2) On the "optimal conditions approach," the agent's or agents' "real" interests are the interests he or she or they would have found in "optimal," i.e., beneficent, conditions, conditions of non-deprivation, non-coercion, and minimally correct information.