One difficulty in understanding recent debates is that not only have many terms been used to refer to weakness of will – “akrasia” and “incontinence” have often been used as synonyms of “weakness of will” – but quite different phenomena have been discussed in the literature. This is why the present entry starts with taxonomic considerations. The second section turns to the question of whether it is possible to freely and intentionally act against one’s better judgment.
This volume is a collection of papers, all but one of which were presented at a conference on the same topic at the University of Montreal in 2001. The editors have also added a brief introduction, half of which is devoted to a very quick overview of some of the relevant background literature on weakness of will and practical irrationality, while the other half summarizes the main claims of each of the papers in the volume. The contributors, in (...) order of appearance, are Michael Smith, Richard Holton, Philip Pettit, Christine Tappolet, Sarah Stroud, Sergio Tenenbaum, Gary Watson, Ralph Wedgwood, Duncan MacIntosh, Joseph Heath, and Ronald de Sousa. As is common in reviews of collections such as this one, I will first briefly summarize each contribution, and then comment in more detail on one of the papers. (shrink)
The standard account of weakness of will identifies it with akrasia, that is, with action against one's best judgment. Elsewhere I have argued that weakness of will is better understood as over-readily giving up on one's resolutions. Many cases of weak willed action will not be akratic: in over-readily abandoning a resolution an agent may well do something that they judge at the time to be best. Indeed, in so far as temptation typically gives rise (...) to judgment shift -- to a tendency to change one's judgment so that one values the tempting option as the best -- weak willed action will typically be akratic. But conversely, strong willed action now looks as though it will be akratic. I argue though that it need not be, once we distinguish between actual judgment, and dispositions to judge. Within this framework, the issue of inverse akrasia looks rather different. I argue that whilst Huckleberry Finn plausibly does show weakness of will in abandoning his resolve to turn Jim in, it is far from clear that he is akratic: a point brought out well in Twain's later additions to the text. Whilst cases of inverse akrasia are clearly theoretically possible, I suggest that, given cognitive dissonance mechanisms, they are unlikely to be very common. (shrink)
I begin with a resume ofJ ackson's position. I shall follow this with some counter- examples; and end with a diagnosis of why the problems with Jackson's account arise. In objecting to Jackson's account I am not presupposing the truth of one or other particular account of akrasia. What I am supposing is that unless we recognize some kind of conflict of mind as engaged at the time of action, we are not speaking of akrasia. I hive argued that Jackson, (...) in supposedly giving an account of the akratic conflict between 'reason and desire', turns it into a temporal relation between states of a person which can obtain without a conflict of the relevant kind obtaining at all. The account therefore fails to clarify the nature of the conflict out of which an akratic action may arise. It does in fact seem that a Humean view of the relation between reason and desire is ill-fitted to recognition of the phenomenon of weakness of will. But Humeans have proved themselves most ingenious over two centuries. Perhaps they will yet manage to effect the fit. (shrink)
Experimental philosophers have recently begun to investigate the folk conception of weakness of will (e.g., Mele in Philos Stud 150:391–404, 2010; May and Holton in Philos Stud 157:341–360, 2012; Beebe forthcoming; Sousa and Mauro forthcoming). Their work has focused primarily on the ways in which akrasia (i.e., acting contrary to one’s better judgment), unreasonable violations of resolutions, and variations in the moral valence of actions modulate folk attributions of weakness of will. A key finding that has (...) emerged from this research is that—contrary to the predominant view in the history of philosophy—ordinary participants do not think of weakness of will solely in terms of akrasia but see resolution violations and moral evaluations as playing equally important roles. The present article extends this line of research by reporting the results of four experiments that investigate (i) the interplay between hastily revising one’s resolutions and the degree of reasonableness of the actions one had resolved to undertake, (ii) whether ordinary participants are willing to ascribe weakness of will to agents whose actions stem from compulsion or addiction, and (iii) the respects in which akratic action, resolution violations, and the seriousness of an addiction impact attributions of weakness of will to agents acting in accord with their addictions. (shrink)
This article focuses on both daily forms of weakness of will as discussed in the philosophical debate (usually referred to as akrasia) and psychopathological phenomena as impairments of decision making. We argue that both descriptions of dysfunctional decision making can be organized within a common theoretical framework that divides the decision making process in three different stages: option generation, option selection, and action initiation. We first discuss our theoretical framework (building on existing models of decision-making stages), focusing on (...) option generation as an aspect that has been neglected by previous models. In the main body of this article, we review how both philosophy and neuropsychiatry have provided accounts of dysfunction in each decision-making stage, as well as where these accounts can be integrated. Also, the neural underpinnings of dysfunction in the three different stages are discussed. We conclude by discussing advantages and limitations of our integrative approach. (shrink)
In this article, I develop an Aristotelian account of akrasia as a primary failure of intentional agency in contrast to a phenomenon I refer to as ‘ordinary weakness of will’: I argue that ordinary weakness of will is best understood as a secondary failure of intentional agency, that to tackle akrasia.
This essay evaluates John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza's mature semi-compatibilist account of moral responsibility, focusingon their new theory of moderate reasons-responsiveness as a model of "moral sanity." This theory, presented in _Responsibility and Control_, solves many of the problems with Fischer's earlier weak reasons-responsiveness model, such as its unwanted implication that agents who are only erratically responsive to bizarre reasons can be responsible for their acts. But I argue that the new model still faces several problems. It does not (...) allow sufficiently for non-psychotic agents (who are largely reasons-responsive) with localized beliefs and desires incompatible with full responsibility. Nor does it take into account that practical "fragmentation of the self" over time may also reduce competence, since moral sanity requires some minimum level of narrative unity in our plans and projects. Finally, I argue that actual-sequence accounts cannot adequately explain sane but weak-willed agency. (shrink)
Sarah Stroud and Christine Tappolet present eleven original essays on weakness of will, a topic straddling the divide between moral philosophy and philosophy of mind, and the subject of much current attention. An international team of established scholars and younger talent provide perspectives on all the key issues in this fascinating debate; the book will be essential reading for anyone working in the area. Issues covered include classical questions, such as the distinction between weakness and compulsion, (...) the connection between evaluative judgment and motivation, the role of emotions in akrasia, rational agency, and the existence of the will. They also include new topics, such as group akrasia, strength of will, the nature of correct choice, the structure of decision theory, the temporality of prudential reasons, and emotional rationality. Because these questions cut across philosophy of mind and ethics, the collection will be essential reading for scholars, postgraduates, and upper-level undergraduates in both these fields. (shrink)
Sarah Stroud and Christine Tappolet present eleven original essays on weakness of will, a topic straddling the divide between moral philosophy and philosophy of mind, and the subject of much current attention. An international team of established scholars and younger talent provide perspectives on all the key issues in this fascinating debate; the book will be essential reading for anyone working in the area.
Weakness of will has been widely discussed from at least three points of view. It has been examined historically, with Aristotle recently occupying centre stage. It has been analysed conceptually, with the question of its nature and possibility in the forefront. It has been considered normatively in relation to both rational action and moral character. My concern is not historical and is only secondarily conceptual: while I hope to clarify what constitutes weakness of will, I presuppose, (...) rather than construct, an account of it. My chief aim is to assess the bearing of weakness of will on the rationality of actions that exhibit it--incontinent actions. Philosophers have tended to assume that incontinent action is a paradigm of irrationality, and none to my knowledge has seriously criticised this assumption. I challenge it and in doing so try to clarify rationality in general. (shrink)
Philosophical orthodoxy identifies weakness of will with akrasia: the weak willed person is someone who intentionally acts against their better judgement. It is argued that this is a mistake. Weakness of will consists in a quite different failing, namely an over-ready revision of one's intentions. Building on the work of Bratman, an account of such over-ready revision is given. A number of examples are then adduced showing how weakness of will, so understood, differs from (...) akrasia. (shrink)
According to the traditional view of weakness of will, a weak-willed agent acts in a way inconsistent with what she judges to be best.1 Richard Holton has argued against this view, claiming that ‘the central cases of weakness of will are best characterized not as cases in which people act against their better judgment, but as cases in which they fail to act on their intentions’ (1999: 241). But Holton doesn’t think all failures to act on (...) one’s prior intentions, or all revisings of intentions, are cases of weakness of will (WW). Rather, he thinks an intention-revision is a case of WW only when it occurs ‘in circumstances in which [one] should not have revised [the intention]’. Holton points out that according to the traditional view of WW, to call an agent ‘weak-willed’ is to make descriptive claim about the agent (about whether an action in fact is inconsistent with what (s)he judges to be best). But according to Holton’s account, the question of whether the agent was weak-willed ‘will depend on which intentions [the agent] should have stuck with as a rational intender. That is a normative question’ (my emphasis) (241-3, 247-8. (shrink)
Some authors have argued that, in order to give an account of weakness of the will, we must assume that the mind is divisible into parts. This claim is often referred to as the partitioning claim. There appear to be two main arguments for this claim. While the first is conceptual and claims that the notion of divisibility is entailed by the notion of non-rational mental causation (which is held to be a necessary condition of weakness of (...) the will), the second is explanatory and claims that the notion of divisibility is required for the causal explanation of weak-willed action. In this paper I want to argue that the partitioning claim remains unsupported, no matter how it is interpreted, and that weakness of the will can be made perfectly good sense of without the idea that the mind is divisible into parts. In fact, there are available various explanatory models each of which characterizes different psychological mechanisms that may be involved in weakness of will, none of which depends on any claims about mental division. I describe three familiar mechanisms and argue that weakness of will may occur as the result of any one of them. (shrink)
This volume is a collection of papers, all but one of which were presented at a conference on the same topic at the University of Montreal in 2001. The editors have also added a brief introduction, half of which is devoted to a very quick overview of some of the relevant background literature on weakness of will and practical irrationality, while the other half summarizes the main claims of each of the papers in the volume.
Weakness of the Will gives an excellent historical survey of philosophers' puzzles about the possibility of deliberately taking the worse course. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, a selection of medieval philosophers, and more contemporary philosophers are explored to illustrate why and how they avoid discussing the problem.
This book sets out to examine the medieval understanding of Aristotle's famous discussion of "weakness of the will" (akrasia, incontinentia) in the seventh book of his Nicomachean Ethics. The medieval views are outlined primarily on the basis of the commentaries on Aristotle's "Ethics by Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Walter Burley, Gerald Odonis and John Buridan. An investigation of the earlier Augustinian discussion concerning reluctant actions (invitus facere) rounds out the study. The recent studies of weakness of (...) the will have neglected the medieval philosophers. The present volume fills this gap in historical research and shows that especially the conceptual refinement of the fourteenth-century discussion makes contributions that are comparable to those of twentieth-century philosophers. (shrink)
Richard Holton has developed a view of the nature of weak-willed actions, and I have done the same for akratic actions. How well does this view of mine fare in the sphere of weakness of will? Considerably better than Holton’s view. That is a thesis of this article. The article’s aim is to clarify the nature of weak-willed actions. Holton reports that he is "trying to give an account of our ordinary notion of weakness of will" (...) (1999, p. 262). One way to get evidence about ordinary notions is to conduct survey studies with ordinary people. I conducted four such studies on weakness of will. (shrink)
My concern in this paper will be to explore and develop a version of nonsocratic skepticism about weakness of will. In my view, socratism is incorrect, but like Socrates, I think that the common understanding of weakness of will raises serious problems. Contrary to socratism, it is possible for a person knowingly to act contrary to his or her better judgment. But this description does not exhaust the common view of weakness. Also implicit in (...) this view is the belief that actions which are contrary to one's better judgment are free in the sense that the agent could have done otherwise. To take seriously the possibility of acting contrary to one's better judgment is at the same time to raise problems about the distinction between weakness and compulsion. I argue that the common view, according to which the differentiating feature is that the weak are able to conform their behavior to their practical judgments, is unjustified. Instead, I have proposed that weakness of will involves the failure to develop certain normal capacities of self-control, whereas compulsion involves desires which even the possession of such capacities would not enable one to resist. (shrink)
At least since the middle of the twentieth century, philosophers have tended to identify weakness of will with akrasia—i.e. acting, or having a disposition to act, contrary to one‘s judgments about what is best for one to do. However, there has been some recent debate about whether this captures the ordinary notion of weakness of will. Richard Holton (1999, 2009) claims that it doesn’t, while Alfred Mele (2010) argues that, to a certain extent, it does. As (...) Mele recognizes, the question about an ordinary concept here is one apt for empirical investigation. We evaluate Mele’s studies and report some experiments of our own in order to investigate what in the world the ordinary concept of weakness of will is. We conclude that neither Mele nor Holton (previously) was quite right and offer a tentative proposal of our own: the ordinary notion is more like a prototype or cluster concept whose application is affected by a variety of factors. (shrink)
My chief aim is to explain how someone can act freely against her own best judgment. But I also have a second aim: to defend a conception of practical rationality according to which someone cannot do something freely if she believes it would be better to do something else. These aims may appear incompatible. But I argue that practical reason has the capacity to undermine itself in such a way that it produces reasons for behaving irrationally. Weakness of (...) class='Hi'>will is possible because it is possible to conclude that one has sufficient reason to reject the verdicts of one's own reason. (shrink)
In this paper we present an account of practical rationality and weakness of will in terms of rational capacities. We show how our account rectifies various shortcomings in Michael Smith’s related theory. In particular, our account is capable of accommodating cases of weak-willed behaviour that are not ‘akratic’, or otherwise contrary to the agent’s better judgement. Our account differs from Smith’s primarily by incorporating resolve: a third rational capacity for resolute maintenance of one’s intentions. We discuss further two (...) ways to explain the importance of resolve to practical rationality: one based on Richard Holton’s recent work, and an alternative, non-consequentialist account. (shrink)
Weakness of will is a common phenomenon of human experience. But what is it? It has proved highly resistant to analysis, and even the accounts that seem to capture our intuitions about what weakness of will is raise problems about how it is possible. This is because these accounts seem inconsistent with some highly plausible principles about action. My aim here is to propose a new account of weakness of will and its relation to (...) practical judgment, and to explain how weakness of will so conceived is possible. (shrink)
I think that clear sense can be made of weakness of will in terms of agents' acting against the dictates of their reason; and that this can be done without becoming enmeshed in the faculties of the mind, and without denying what is right about Humean views about reason and desire. My starting point is, in fact, a Humean position about reason and desire.
Can absolute freedom of will be defended by arguing that apparent cases of diminished freedom when we act out of passion are cases of weakness of will? Rogers Albritton thought so. What is intriguing about Albritton's view is that he thought when we act from desire we are making choices, yet our desires are not functioning as reasons for those choices. So our desires must be influencing our choices in some other unspecified way that does not diminish (...) our freedom. I challenge the coherence of this position. My strategy is to examine the views of leading theorists of the will – Descartes, Aquinas and Reid – to argue that the only clear way in which passions can influence our choices so that we can accurately be described as weak-willed and yet nevertheless free is that our passions influence our choices by providing reasons for them. (shrink)
This essay applies John Searle’s account of weakness of will to explore the classical Chinese problem of weak-willed action. Searle’s discussion focuses on the shortcomings of the Western classical model of rationality in explaining weakness of will, so he naturally says little about the practical ethical problem of overcoming weak-willed action, the focus of the relevant Chinese texts. Yet his theory of action, specifically his notion of the Background, suggests a compelling approach to the practical issue, (...) one that converges with a plausible account of the classical Chinese conception of agency. On this approach, the practical problem is due to weaknesses of the self in carrying out intentions. The key to overcoming the problem lies not in restructuring the agent’s affective states, as suggested by prominent interpreters of Chinese thought such as David Nivison, but in strengthening the agent’s Background capacities, much as we do when mastering new skills. (shrink)
'Backsliding', 'weakness of, will', ' moral weakness', '"lack of self-restraint', 'lack of self-control'. Do all these have the same meaning ? Is there a philosophical problem here, and if so, what precisely is it? How is an account of what happens in cases to which these terms apply related to the meaning of the words, and to the philosophical problem? These are the questions which I shall try to discuss in this paper.
This essay applies John Searle’s account of weakness of will to explore the classical Chinese problem of weak-willed action. Searle’s discussion focuses on the shortcomings of the Western classical model of rationality in explaining weakness of will, so he naturally says little about the practical ethical problem of overcoming weak-willed action, the focus of the relevant Chinese texts. Yet his theory of action, specifically his notion of the Background, suggests a compelling approach to the practical issue, (...) one that converges with a plausible account of the classical Chinese conception of agency. On this approach, the practical problem is due to weaknesses of the self in carrying out intentions. The key to overcoming the problem lies not in restructuring the agent’s affective states, as suggested by prominent interpreters of Chinese thought such as David Nivison, but in strengthening the agent’s Background capacities, much as we do when mastering new skills. (shrink)
Aquinas’s admirers, reacting against Donald Davidson’s criticisms of hirn, commonly argue (a) that the will does play a role in Aquinas’s account of incontinence, and (b) that his explanation of incontinent action turns on the weakness of the will. The first part of this paper argues that they are correct about (a) but wholly mistaken about (b). Aquinas rarely even mentions the weakness of the will, and he neverinvokes it to explain why someone acts counter (...) to her own better judgment. In his view, such a person has the capacity for self-control but fails to exercise it. The second part of the paper considers Gary Watson’s account of incontinence, including and especially his objections to analyzing it as the failure to exercise one’s capacity for self-control. Here I argue that Aquinas’s account better serves the purposesof moral discourse and that it should not be expected to provide the kind of causal explanation Watson seeks. (shrink)
Weakness of the Will can impose a problem for most theories of rationality, since they try to assess rationality in the framework of one theory. Here, Akrasia is divides in three different types and each analyzed separately. First, someone changes her mind on her action. Second, someone “forced” to change her action without changing her mind. This force is alien to the will and can be a psychological cause. Finally, third, the same alien force is working upon (...) the agent, but theagent thinks it to be her will. (shrink)
I develop an account of weakness of the will that is driven by experimental evidence from cognitive and social psychology. I will argue that this account demonstrates that there is no such thing as weakness of the will: no psychological kind corresponds to it. Instead, weakness of the will ought to be understood as depletion of System II resources. Neither the explanatory purposes of psychology nor our practical purposes as agents are well-served by (...) retaining the concept. I therefore suggest that we ought to jettison it, in favour of the vocabulary and concepts of cognitive psychology. (shrink)
The problem of weakness of the will is often thought to arise because of an assumption that freely, deliberately and intentionally doing something must correspond to the agent's positive evaluation of doing that thing. In contemporary philosophy, a very common response to the problem of weakness has been to adopt the view that free, deliberate action does not need to correspond to any positive evaluation at all. Much of the support for this view has come from the (...) difficulties the denial of it has been thought togive rise to, both with respect to giving an account of weakness, as well as explaining the future-directed nature of intentions. In this paper I argue that most of these difficulties only arise for one particular version of the view that free, deliberate action must correspond to a positive evaluation, a version associated with Donald Davidson's account of weakness.However, another version of this view is possible, and I argue that it escapes the standard objections to the Davidsonian account. (shrink)
Chrisoula Andreou says procrastination qua imprudent delay is modeled by Warren Quinn’s self-torturer, who supposedly has intransitive preferences that rank each indulgence in something that delays his global goals over working toward those goals and who finds it vague where best to stop indulging. His pair-wise choices to indulge result in his failing the goals, which he then regrets. This chapter argues, contra the money-pump argument, that it is not irrational to have or choose from intransitive preferences; so the agent’s (...) delays are not imprudent, not instances of procrastination. Moreover, the self-torturer case is intelligible only if there is no vagueness and if the agent’s preferences are transitive. But then he would delay only from ordinary weakness of will. And when it is vague where best to stop indulging, rational agents would use symmetry-breaking techniques; so, again, any procrastination would be explained by standard weakness of will, not vagueness. (shrink)
I reject three theories of practical reason according to which a rational agent's ultimate reasons for acting must be unchanging: that one is rationally obliged in each choice (1) to be prudent--to advance all the desires one foresees ever having (the self-interest theory), rather than just those one has at the time of choice, or (2) to cause states of affairs that are good by some timeless, impersonal measure (Thomas Nagel), or (3) to obey permanent, universalizable deontic principles (Kant). Whether (...) a rational agent's reasons consist in her desires, in the goodness of certain states, or in deontic principles, her reasons now can ask her to take different, conflicting things as reasons later; and contradiction results of rationally obliging her not to take the new things for reasons. (shrink)
This book explores classic philosophical questions regarding the phenomenon of weakness of will or ‘akrasia’: doing A, even though all things considered, you judge it best to do B. Does this phenomenon really exist and if so, how should it be explained? Nacht van Descartes -/- The author provides a historical overview of some traditional answers to these questions and addresses the main question: how does the phenomenon of 'going against your own judgment' relate to the idea that (...) we are rational beings? She elaborates on the notion of rational agency and shows how different types of behaviour express or fail to express our rational agency. This leads to the speculation of what is needed for akratic action to be free action. -/- A novel position is developed, stating that certain widespread philosophical accounts of free action must conclude that 'going against your own judgment' is necessarily unfree. This also requires a reflection on possible implications for moral responsibility. Would it mean that people cannot be held accountable for irrational behaviour? -/- Kalis offers insight on whether everyday irrational behaviour differs from irrational behaviour occurring in the context of psychiatric dysfunction, and develops a view on how we should understand ourselves when we do something other than what we judge best. -/- Written for philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists interested in issues of irrationality and philosophy of action, this is an indispensable book for both professionals and students interested in interdisciplinary endeavours in the science of mind and behaviour. (shrink)
In Chapter 2 of Escape from Leviathan, Jan Lester defends two hypotheses: that instrumental rationality requires agents to maximise the satisfaction of their wants and that all agents actually meet this requirement. In addition, he argues that all agents are self-interested (though not necessarily egoistic) and he offers an account of categorical moral desires which entails that no agent ever does what he genuinely feels to be morally wrong. I show that Lester’s two hypotheses are false because they cannot accommodate (...)weakness of will, because they are inconsistent with agency, which requires free will, because ends, obligations and values cannot be reduced to desires, and because maximisation is often not possible. Further, Lester’s claim that agents are self-interested is vacuous, his attempted reduction of moral behaviour to want-satisfaction fails, and his contention, that agents always do what they genuinely think to be morally required, seems untenable. A defence of freedom that depends on homo economicus is far from promising. (shrink)
In addition to considering the work of a broad range of Renaissance authors (including Petrarch, Donato Acciaiuoli, John Mair, and Francesco Piccolomini), Risto ...
In a case of weak-willed action the agent acts-freely, deliberately, and for a reason-in a way contrary to his best judgment, even though he thinks he could act in accordance with his best judgment. The possibility of such actions has posed one problem in moral philosophy, the exact nature of the problem it poses another. In this essay I offer an answer to the latter problem: an explanation of why a plausible account of free, deliberate and purposive action seems to (...) preclude the possibility of weak-willed action. I then try to resolve the first problem by developing this account in a way which allows for this possibility. The possibility of weak-willed action is made problematic by an account which sees free, deliberate and purposive action as involving the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning. Solving the problem does not require us to abandon this conception but, rather, to notice certain special features of the relation between premises and conclusion in such reasoning. (shrink)
The authors argue, against Frank Jackson, that weakness (and strength) of will involves higher-order mental states. The authors hold that this is compatible with a decision-theoretic belief-desire psychology of human action.
Philosophical discussions of akrasia over the last fifteen years have focused on certain skeptical arguments which purport to question the possibility of a kind of akratic action which, following Pears, I call 'last ditch akrasia' (Pears [38]). An agent, succumbing to last ditch akrasia, freely, knowingly, and intentionally performs an action A against his better judgment that an incompatible action B is the better thing to do. (See Audi [1] for a detailed analysis.) Last ditch akrasia is not the only (...) kind that has been discussed. Some philosophers (Mele [32], Scaltas [48]) have been concerned with a more extreme form of akratic action, viz. one in which the agent not only judges that action B is best, but in addition intends (chooses, decides) to B. Some have even questioned whether freely acting against one's better judgment is sufficient for akratic action (Schiffer [49]: 201-3).1 Weaker types of akratic action have been discussed, though to a much lesser extent, since they are thought less problematic. Pears distinguishes last ditch akrasia from what he calls, "motivated irrational action" ([38]: 160). In cases of the latter, the akrates' rebellious desire infects his prior reasoning and thinking in such a way that his contemplated action seems to him warranted, and he acts accordingly. (For a taxonomy of cases of akratic action, see Rorty ([44])). Nor has the discussion of akrasia been restricted to akratic action. Philosophers have discussed whether akrasia can be exhibited in the formation of intentions, wants (See Audi [1]: 181-185), and beliefs (Mele [32]: ch. 8; Heil [19]). The primary focus in this paper is on last ditch akratic action. (shrink)
Can there be a state which is both a belief and a desire? More exactly, a state which is a belief that p and a desire that q, where p and q may be the same proposition or a different one? Such a state would be a ‘besire’ (following Altham 1986). So a first question is the general question whether besires are possible. Normative attitudes would be good candidates for besires. For example, if Sandra has the normative attitude that it (...) would be best for her to leave the country, this seems to be a propositional state of hers which may be both a belief and a desire. Or, for another example, suppose that Michael has the normative attitude that one should not lie without good reason. Then he seems to hold a belief about lying, namely, that lying without good reason is normatively forbidden, and, at the same time, he also seems to have a desire with respect to lying, namely, the desire not to lie without good reason. A second question is whether normative attitudes are besires.1 There are other good candidates for besires. A ‘simple’ state like the state of the young chicken expressed by its cry may be a case in point. Even though the chicken’s state is probably not a full-blooded propositional state, it seems to be ‘Janus-faced’ as well. Does it descriptively represent the chicken’s hunger? Or is it a desire for food? Maybe both – and then it could be a besire, or something like that.2 Ruth Garrett Millikan mentions another candidate, namely, intentions. Intentions clearly have a desire-like nature. And arguably, they.. (shrink)
Weakness of will has perplexed philosophers since Plato's time. This chapter places some of the literature on volitional disorders and addictions in a philosophical context dating back to Plato and Aristotle in an attempt to shed light on issues that a theorist who wishes to analyze the idea of a volitional disorder will face. Key here is the notion of the irresistability and resistability of pertinent desires, which is explored in relation to George Ainslie's work on the (...) ability to make and adhere to personal rules. (shrink)
D. In doing x an agent acts incontinently if and only if: 1) the agent does x intentionally; 2) the agent believes there is an alternative action y open to him; and 3) the agent judges that, all things considered, it would be better to do y than to do x.
