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No, @MartianNight said that (certain) paedophiles are sexually attracted to children, but don't want to fuck them. I'm saying that paedophiles do want to fuck children (duh, that's literally the definition of the word "paedophile"), but are choosing not to, in light of other considerations.
He said "consciously want". I interpret that to be equivalent to the higher-level decision making.
As far as I can tell you're in furious agreement about the underlying reality and just vehemently disagreeing about the words used to describe it.
Sure, maybe I'm misinterpreting. When I hear that someone "consciously wants" something, I take that to mean that they both want it and are consciously aware that they want it. Contrast that to someone who "unconsciously wants" something: they want it, but refuse to admit that they want it, even to themselves, or are in denial about it (a deeply closeted gay man); or aren't even aware that it's a thing that a person can want (a gay boy living in an Islamic theocracy so strict that he has literally never encountered the idea that men can have sex with other men, not even in a context in which such behaviour is condemned - and yet when he sees a shirtless man he feels something he can't explain).
Can someone unconsciously be a paedophile - experience sexual arousal when looking at or thinking about children, but refuse to acknowledge this, even to oneself? Sure, of course (I suspect the number of people meeting this description is very frightening). Can someone consciously be a paedophile, but deliberately choose not to act on one's desire to have sex with children? Again, of course. But can someone unconsciously be a paedophile, but consciously choose not to act on their desire to have sex with children? Well, I don't know about that. How can you choose not to act on a desire that you don't acknowledge that you have, not even to yourself? It just doesn't seem coherent to me.
I think the definition of "want"/"consciously want" @AshLael is using (and which I generally use as "want") is something akin to "weighted positively in decisions about what to do" or "latently intend to do barring external motivators". This is definitely a coherent and useful concept for things like game theory and working out compromises.
An obvious analogy is someone with anorexia nervosa. People with anorexia nervosa get hungry, but they frequently need to be force-fed; they apparently don't "want" to eat.
AshLael's point is that there exist paedophiles who, if you put them alone with a kid and gave them legal immunity (removing the external motivators), would not molest the kid.
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Then you're using a highly constrained meaning of "want". I think most people, when asked "do you want to steal food from the counter when you're hungry", say yes even though they more precisely mean "I want the food, but I choose not to steal it in light of other considerations".
I think most people recognise that they have multiple competing desires which cannot all be satisfied, and use the word "want" to refer to whichever of these is strongest or most important to them e.g. "of course I want to have sex with women other than my wife, but I also want to maintain a loving relationship with my wife based on mutual trust, which is incompatible with fucking other women behind her back".
I don't think my definition is "highly constrained" at all: even children understand the idea of desires that cannot or should not be acted upon, and that essentially everyone has such desires.
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