Abstract

The notions of acting against one's better judgment and self-deception are notoriously problematic. Often, they have been deemed incoherent in a tradition which may be traced back to Socrates. My inquiry into these notions, unlike many others, explicitly draws upon considerations pertaining to the interpretation of speech and action and the role which rationality plays within it, the nature of psychological explanation and the framework in which it is embedded. This work is motivated by the view that, if carried out properly, a study of the mind which focuses on deviant phenomena will also improve understanding of standard cases of action and belief-formation. ;The possibility of acting against one's better judgment seems, prima facie, to be at odds with our notion of action. I begin by critically examining several arguments purporting to show that akrasia is in fact incompatible with the notion of a free intentional action. I show that, overall, an agent appears more rational, and thus more intelligible, if instances of local irrationality of this kind are acknowledged as such rather than re-interpreted as non-akratic actions. The position I reject represents the agent as significantly more inconsistent than necessary, and in some sense, undermines the endeavor of a psychological explanation. ;I proceed to argue that reasons play a unique role in the context of explaining actions. At the same time, the framework of action explanation must be expanded so as to include additional familiar elements such as emotions and fantasies in order to improve understanding of the choices we make. I argue that the causal influence of these elements cannot be fully captured as merely a source of reasons for actions; thus, some of the mental causes responsible for our actions lie outside the realm of reasons. Finally, I show how expanding the explanatory framework of actions makes the phenomenon of akrasia less puzzling in some respects; indeed, this expansion should incline us to expect that persons would act akratically on occasion. ;My discussion of self-deception focuses on two major questions: whether every case of self-deception involves the presence of an intention to form a belief and to what extent this phenomenon warrants a view of the mind as divided. With respect to the first question, I suggest that a view which refrains from interpreting every case of self-deception as involving an intention to form a belief is psychologically more plausible and accounts for some key cases for which the intentionalist view fails to account. As for the second question, I contend that there are at least two ways in which the mind may be properly seen as divided, yet divisions which introduce homuncularism should be rejected. What emerges from my discussion of self-deception, as well as the preceding discussion of akrasia, is a view of the mind that essentially incorporates both rational and non-rational elements