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History/traditions: Weakness of Will

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  1. Temptation and Apathy.Juan Pablo Bermúdez, Samantha Berthelette, Gabriela Fernández, Alfonso Anaya & Diego Rodríguez - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility.
    Self-control is deemed crucial for reasons-responsive agency and a key contributor to long-term wellbeing. But recent studies suggest that effortfully resisting one’s temptations does not contribute to long-term goal attainment, and can even be harmful. So how does self-control improve our lives? Finding an answer requires revising the role that overcoming temptation plays in self-control. This paper distinguishes two forms of self-control problems: temptation (the presence of a strong wayward motivation) and apathy (the lack of commitment-advancing motivation). This distinction makes (...)
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  2. Weakness of Political Will.Camila Hernandez Flowerman - forthcoming - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy.
    In this paper I provide a preliminary account of weakness of political will (political akrasia). My aim is to use theories from the weakness of will literature as a guide to develop a model of the same phenomenon as it occurs in collective agents. Though the account will parallel the traditional view of weakness of will in individuals, weakness of political will is a distinctly political concept that will apply to group agents such as governments, institutional actors, and other political (...)
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  3. Evaluative Illusion in Plato's Protagoras.Suzanne Obdrzalek - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy.
    In the Protagoras, Socrates argues that what appears to be akrasia is, in fact, the result of a hedonic illusion: proximate pleasures appear greater than distant ones. On the face of it, his account is puzzling: why should proximate pleasures appear greater than distant ones? Certain interpreters argue that Socrates must be assuming the existence of non-rational desires that cause proximate pleasures to appear inflated. In this paper, I argue that positing non-rational desires fails to explain the hedonic error. However, (...)
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  4. Proust and Schopenhauer.David Bather Woods - forthcoming - In Anna Elsner & Tom Stern (eds.), The Proustian Mind. London, UK:
    This chapter is divided into three sections. In the first, I identify the mentions of Schopenhauer in À la recherche du temps perdu. I use an implicit reference to Schopenhauer by Swann to open a discussion of Schopenhauer’s theory of music. I attempt to downplay its identification, suggested by some commentators, with both the views about music expressed in the novel and the form of the novel itself. In the second section, I discuss Proust’s references to Schopenhauer in his essay (...)
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  5. What’s inside is all that counts? The contours of everyday thinking about self-control.Juan Pablo Bermúdez, Samuel Murray, Louis Chartrand & Sergio Barbosa - 2023 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 14 (1):33-55.
    Does self-control require willpower? The question cuts to the heart of a debate about whether self-control is identical with some psychological process internal to the agents or not. Noticeably absent from these debates is systematic evidence about the folk-psychological category of self-control. Here, we present the results of two behavioral studies (N = 296) that indicate the structure of everyday use of the concept. In Study 1, participants rated the degree to which different strategies to respond to motivational conflict exemplify (...)
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  6. Diachronic and Externally-Scaffolded Self-Control in Addiction.Federico Burdman - 2023 - Manuscrito 46 (1):77-116.
    A restrictive view of self-control identifies exercises of self-control with synchronic intrapsychic processes, and pictures diachronic and externally-scaffolded strategies not as proper instances of self-control, but as clever ways of avoiding the need to exercise that ability. In turn, defenders of an inclusive view of self-control typically argue that we should construe self-control as more than effortful inhibition, and that, on grounds of functional equivalence, all these diverse strategies might be properly described as instances of self-control. In this paper, I (...)
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  7. Virtues of willpower.Eugene Chislenko - 2023 - Synthese 202 (5):1-21.
    Drawing on recent work in psychology, I argue that there are not one but several distinct virtues pertaining to willpower or strength of will: (1) the disposition to exercise willpower; (2) a distinctively volitional kind of modesty, or moderation in exposing oneself to volitional strain; and (3) a distinctively volitional kind of confidence, or proper inattention to the possibility of volitional failure. A multiple-virtue conception of willpower, I argue, provides a useful framework for cultivating a good relationship to one’s own (...)
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  8. What is the Difference between Weakness of Will and Compulsion?August Gorman - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (1):37-52.
    Orthodoxy holds that the difference between weakness of will and compulsion is a matter of the resistibility of an agent's effective motivation, which makes control-based views of agency especially well equipped to distinguish blameworthy weak-willed acts from non-blameworthy compulsive acts. I defend an alternative view that the difference between weakness and compulsion instead lies in the fact that agents would upon reflection give some conative weight to acting on their weak-willed desires for some aim other than to extinguish them, but (...)
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  9. Weakness of will and delay discounting.Nora Heinzelmann - 2023 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Breaking one's dieting rule or resolution to quit smoking, procrastination, convenient lies, even the failure of entire nations to follow through with plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions or keep a pandemic in check - these phenomena have been discussed by philosophers and behavioural scientists as examples of weakness of will and delay discounting. Despite the common subject matter both fields have to date rarely worked together for mutual benefit. For the empirical literature is hardly accessible to a reader not (...)
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  10. Will-powered: Synchronic regulation is the difference maker for self-control.Zachary C. Irving, Jordan Bridges, Aaron Glasser, Juan Pablo Bermúdez & Chandra Sripada - 2022 - Cognition 225 (C):105154.
    Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have reached the consensus that one can use two different kinds of regulation to achieve self-control. Synchronic regulation uses willpower to resist current temptation. Diachronic regulation implements a plan to avoid future temptation. Yet this consensus may rest on contaminated intuitions. Specifically, agents typically use willpower (synchronic regulation) to achieve their plans to avoid temptation (diachronic regulation). So even if cases of diachronic regulation seem to involve self-control, this may be because they are contaminated by synchronic (...)
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  11. Epistemic Akrasia and Belief‐Credence Dualism.Elizabeth Jackson & Peter Tan - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (3):717–727.
    We call attention to certain cases of epistemic akrasia, arguing that they support belief-credence dualism. Belief-credence dualism is the view that belief and credence are irreducible, equally fundamental attitudes. Consider the case of an agent who believes p, has low credence in p, and thus believes that they shouldn’t believe p. We argue that dualists, as opposed to belief-firsters (who say credence reduces to belief) and credence-firsters (who say belief reduces to credence) can best explain features of akratic cases, including (...)
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  12. Ignorance in Plato’s Protagoras.Wenjin Liu - 2022 - Phronesis 67 (3):309-337.
    Ignorance is commonly assumed to be a lack of knowledge in Plato’s Socratic dialogues. I challenge that assumption. In the Protagoras, ignorance is conceived to be a substantive, structural psychic flaw—the soul’s domination by inferior elements that are by nature fit to be ruled. Ignorant people are characterized by both false beliefs about evaluative matters in specific situations and an enduring deception about their own psychic conditions. On my interpretation, akrasia, moral vices, and epistemic vices are products or forms of (...)
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  13. Steering Clear of Trouble.John Schwenkler - 2022 - Philosophic Exchange 2022.
    Often we make decisions whose purpose is to reduce the likelihood of our making bad decisions in the future—for example, by turning off my phone to make it more difficult for me to go on Tik Tok during the work day, or staying at home on a Friday instead of going to a party where I know my friends will be drinking to excess. These decisions seem essential, but they raise some philosophical questions. Here is one of them: What is (...)
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  14. Review of Constructing Practical Reasons, by Andreas Müller. [REVIEW]Matthew Silverstein - 2022 - Mind (526):531-539.
  15. Willpower with and without effort.George Ainslie - 2021 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44:e30.
    Most authors who discuss willpower assume that everyone knows what it is, but our assumptions differ to such an extent that we talk past each other. We agree that willpower is the psychological function that resists temptations – variously known as impulses, addictions, or bad habits; that it operates simultaneously with temptations, without prior commitment; and that use of it is limited by its cost, commonly called effort, as well as by the person's skill at executive functioning. However, accounts are (...)
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  16. Deliberative Agency, Self‐Control, and the Divided Mind.Hannah Altehenger - 2021 - Theoria 87 (3):542-558.
    According to a widely endorsed claim, intentional action is brought about by an agent’s desires in accordance with these desires’ respective motivational strength. As Jay Wallace has argued, though, this “hydraulic model” of the aetiology of intentional action has a serious flaw: it fails to leave room for genuine deliberative agency. Drawing on recent developments in the debate on self-control, the article argues that Wallace’s criticism can be addressed once we combine the hydraulic model with a so-called “divided mind” account (...)
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  17. The Mismatch Problem: Why Mele's Approach to the Puzzle of Synchronic Self‐control Does Not Succeed.Hannah Altehenger - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 102 (2):243-266.
    Most of us have had the experience of resisting our currently strongest desire, for example, resisting the desire to eat another cookie when eating another cookie is what we most want to do. The puzzle of synchronic self‐control, however, says that this is impossible: an agent cannot ever resist her currently strongest desire. The paper argues that one prominent solution to this puzzle – the solution offered by Al Mele – faces a serious ‘mismatch problem’, which ultimately undermines its plausibility. (...)
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  18. Resolutions provide reasons or: “how the Cookie Monster quit cookies”.Adam Bales & Toby Handfield - 2021 - Synthese 199 (1-2):4829-4840.
    Why should we typically act in accordance with our resolutions when faced with the temptation to do otherwise? A much-maligned view suggests that we should do so because resolutions themselves provide us with reasons for action. We defend a version of this view, on which resolutions provide second-order reasons. This account avoids the objections typically taken to be fatal for the view that resolutions are reasons, including the prominent bootstrapping objections.
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  19. The skill of self-control.Juan Pablo Bermúdez - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):6251-6273.
    Researchers often claim that self-control is a skill. It is also often stated that self-control exertions are intentional actions. However, no account has yet been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible, so our understanding of self-control remains incomplete. Here I propose the skill model of self-control, which accounts for skillful agency by tackling the guidance problem: how can agents transform their abstract and coarse-grained intentions into the highly context-sensitive, fine-grained control processes required to select, revise and (...)
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  20. Willpower needs tactical skill.Juan Pablo Bermúdez - 2021 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44 (e32):17–18.
    In “Willpower with and without effort”, G. Ainslie advances our understanding of selfcontrol by theoretically unifying multiple forms of willpower. But one crucial question remains unanswered: How do agents pick the right forms of willpower in each situation? I argue that willpower requires tactical skill, which detects willpower-demanding contexts, selects context-appropriate tactics, and monitors their implementation. Research on tactical skill will significantly advance our understanding of willpower.
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  21. Practical cognition as volition.Jeremy David Fix - 2021 - European Journal of Philosophy 30 (3):1077-1091.
    Practical cognitivism is the view that practical reason is the self-conscious will and that practical cognition is self-conscious volition. This essay addresses two puzzles for practical cognitivism. In akratic action, I act as I understand is illegitimate and not as I understand is legitimate. In permissible action, I act as I understand is legitimate and also do not act as I understand is legitimate. In both types of action, practical cognition seems to come apart from volition. How, then, can practical (...)
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  22. Trait Self-Control, Inhibition, and Executive Functions: Rethinking some Traditional Assumptions.Matthew C. Haug - 2021 - Neuroethics 14 (2):303-314.
    This paper draws on work in the sciences of the mind to cast doubt on some assumptions that have often been made in the study of self-control. Contra a long, Aristotelian tradition, recent evidence suggests that highly self-controlled individuals do not have a trait very similar to continence: they experience relatively few desires that conflict with their evaluative judgments and are not especially good at directly and effortfully inhibiting such desires. Similarly, several recent studies have failed to support the view (...)
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  23. Feeling Like It: A Theory of Inclination and Will.Tamar Schapiro - 2021 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Feeling like doing something is not the same as deciding to do it. When you feel like doing something, you are still free to decide to do it or not. You are having an inclination to do it, but you are not thereby determined to do it. I call this the moment of drama. This book is about what you are faced with, in this moment. How should you relate to the inclinations you “have,” given that you are free to (...)
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  24. Self-control and the self.Hannah Altehenger - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):2183-2198.
    Prima facie, it seems highly plausible to suppose that there is some kind of constitutive relationship between self-control and the self, i.e., that self-control is “control at the service of the self” or even “control by the self.” This belief is not only attractive from a pre-theoretical standpoint, but it also seems to be supported by theoretical reasons. In particular, there is a natural fit between a certain attractive approach to self-control—the so-called “divided mind approach”—and a certain well-established approach to (...)
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  25. Fraqueza da Vontade e Liberdade.Ricardo Tavares Da Silva - 2020 - Dissertatio 1 (51):313-337.
    Os casos de fraqueza da vontade (incontinência) são tidos como paradoxais. Há, pelo menos, uma tensão entre tais casos e a lei psicológica que relaciona avaliações e volições: se julgamos que fazer x é melhor do que fazer y, então queremos fazer x; porém, por vezes, julgamos que fazer x é melhor do que fazer y e, ainda assim, queremos fazer y em vez de x. Como noutras propostas, defendo que a incompatibilidade é aparente. Porém, não rejeito que haja verdadeiros (...)
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  26. Conflicting Judgments and Weakness of Will.Nora Heinzelmann - 2020 - Philosophia 1 (1):255-269.
    This paper shows that our popular account of weakness of will is inconsistent with dilemmas. In dilemmas, agents judge that they ought to do one thing, that they ought to do something else, and that they cannot do both. They must act against either of their two judgments. But such action is commonly understood as weakness of will. An agent is weak-willed in doing something if she judges that she ought to and could do something else instead. Thus, it seems (...)
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  27. Self-control as hybrid skill.Myrto Mylopoulos & Elisabeth Pacherie - 2020 - In Surrounding self-control. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 81-100.
    One of the main obstacles to the realization of intentions for future actions and to the successful pursuit of long-term goals is lack of self-control. But, what does it mean to engage in self-controlled behaviour? On a motivational construal of self-control, self-control involves resisting our competing temptations, impulses, and urges in order to do what we deem to be best. The conflict we face is between our better judgments or intentions and “hot” motivational forces that drive or compel us to (...)
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  28. Akrasia in Epictetus: A Comparison with Aristotle.Michael Tremblay - 2020 - Apeiron 53 (4):397-417.
    This paper argues that Epictetus’ ethics involves three features which are also present in Aristotle’s discussion of akrasia in the Nicomachean Ethics: 1) A major problem for agents is when they fail to render a universal premise effective at motivating a particular action in accordance with that premise. 2) There are two reasons this occurs: Precipitancy and Weakness. 3) Precipitancy and Weakness can be prevented by gaining a fuller understanding of our beliefs and commitments. This comparison should make clear that (...)
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  29. The Minimal Approval View of Attributability.August Gorman - 2019 - In David Shoemaker (ed.), Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility 6. Oxford University Press.
    This paper advances a new agentially undemanding account of the conditions of attributability, the Minimal Approval account, and argues that it has a number of advantages over traditional Deep Self theories, including the way in which it handles agents with conditions like addiction, Tourette syndrome, and misophonia. It is argued that in order for an agent to be attributionally responsible, the mental process that leads to her action must dispose her to be such that she would, upon reflec-tion, approve to (...)
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  30. Habitual Weakness.Kenneth Silver - 2019 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 8 (4):270-277.
    The standard case of weakness of will involves a strong temptation leading us to reconsider or act against our judgments. Here, however, I consider cases of what I call ‘habitual weakness', where we resolve to do one thing yet do another not to satisfy any grand desire, but out of habit. After giving several examples, I suggest that habitual weakness has been under-discussed in the literature and explore why. These cases are worth highlighting for their ubiquity, and I show three (...)
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  31. Embodied Akrasia: James on Motivation and Weakness of Will.Kyle Bromhall - 2018 - William James Studies 14 (1):26-53.
    This paper presents an account of akrasia, drawn from the work of William James, that sees akrasia as neither a rational failing (as with most philosophical accounts) nor a moral failing (as with early Christian accounts), but rather a necessary by-product of our status as biological beings. By examining James’s related accounts of motivation and action, I argue that akratic actions occur when an agent attempts to act against her settled habits, but fails to do so. This makes akrasia a (...)
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  32. Intellectual Isolation.Jeremy David Fix - 2018 - Mind 127 (506):491-520.
    Intellectualism is the widespread view that practical reason is a species of theoretical reason, distinguished from others by its objects: reasons to act. I argue that if practical reason is a species of theoretical reason, practical judgments by nature have nothing to do with action. If they have nothing to do with action, I cannot act from my representation of reasons for me to act. If I cannot act from those representations, those reasons cannot exist. If they cannot exist, neither (...)
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  33. An empirical solution to the puzzle of weakness of will.Julia Haas - 2018 - Synthese (12):1-21.
    This paper presents an empirical solution to the puzzle of weakness of will. Specifically, it presents a theory of action, grounded in contemporary cognitive neuroscientific accounts of decision making, that explains the phenomenon of weakness of will without resulting in a puzzle.
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  34. Is a bad will a weak will? Cognitive dispositions modulate folk attributions of weakness of will.Alejandro Rosas, Juan Pablo Bermúdez & Jesús Antonio Gutiérrez Cabrera - 2018 - Philosophical Explorations 21 (3):350–363.
    In line with recent efforts to empirically study the folk concept of weakness of will, we examine two issues in this paper: (1) How is weakness of will attribution [WWA] influenced by an agent’s violations of best judgment and/or resolution, and by the moral valence of the agent’s action? (2) Do any of these influences depend on the cognitive dispositions of the judging individual? We implemented a factorial 2x2x2 between–subjects design with judgment violation, resolution violation, and action valence as independent (...)
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  35. The Guise of the Guise of the Bad.Sergio Tenenbaum - 2018 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (1):5-20.
    It is undeniable that human agents sometimes act badly, and it seems that they sometimes pursue bad things simply because they are bad. This latter phenomenon has often been taken to provide counterexamples to views according to which we always act under the guise of the good. This paper identifies several distinct arguments in favour of the possibility that one can act under the guise of the bad. GG seems to face more serious difficulties when trying to answer three different, (...)
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  36. A dual systems theory of incontinent action.Aliya R. Dewey - 2017 - Philosophical Psychology 30 (7):925-944.
    In philosophy of action, we typically aim to explain action by appealing to conative attitudes whose contents are either logically consistent propositions or can be rendered as such. Call this “the logical criterion.” This is especially difficult to do with clear-minded, intentional incontinence since we have to explain how two judgments can have non-contradicting contents yet still aim at contradictory outcomes. Davidson devises an innovative way of doing this but compromises his ability to explain how our better judgments can cause (...)
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  37. Akratic Believing, Psychological Trauma, and Somatic Representations.Karyn L. Freedman - 2017 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 24 (4):337-346.
    Akrasia is a classical Greek term that is typically translated as “incontinence,” although it is sometimes translated as “weakness of the will”. Someone who displays practical akrasia exhibits a failure of control, but not an absence of control. In the practical case, the akratic individual intentionally and voluntarily acts in a way that is contrary to what she judges she ought to do. I tuck into a large piece of cheesecake even though I know I ought not to, or I (...)
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  38. Weakness of the will.Nora Heinzelmann - 2017 - Dissertation, Cambridge University
    How is it conceivable or even psychologically possible that rational agents sometimes appear to act against their own acknowledged self-interest? This issue, commonly known as “weakness of the will”, has contributed to much of our individual and collective failure to address pressing problems even if solutions are well-known and readily available. It has fascinated philosophers since ancient times. Recent advances in psychology, behavioural economics and neuroscience have allowed us to approach the phenomenon from a new perspective. A novel account that (...)
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  39. Addiction, compulsion, and weakness of the will: A dual process perspective.Edmund Henden - 2017 - In Nick Heather Gabriel Segal (ed.), Addiction and Choice. Rethinking the Relationship. Oxford University Press. pp. 116-132.
    How should addictive behavior be explained? In terms of neurobiological illness and compulsion, or as a choice made freely, even rationally, in the face of harmful social or psychological circumstances? Some of the disagreement between proponents of the prevailing medical models and choice models in the science of addiction centres on the notion of “loss of control” as a normative characterization of addiction. In this article I examine two of the standard interpretations of loss of control in addiction, one according (...)
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  40. Strong-willed Akrasia.Vida Yao - 2017 - In David Shoemaker (ed.), Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 4. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 06-27.
    To act akratically is to act, knowingly, against what you judge is best for you to do, and it is traditionally assumed that to do this is to be weak-willed. Some have rejected this identification of akrasia and weakness of will, arguing that the latter is instead best understood as a matter of abandoning one's reasonable resolutions. This paper also rejects the identification of akrasia and weakness of will, but argues that this alternative conception is too broad, and that weakness (...)
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  41. Moore's Paradox and Akratic Belief.Eugene Chislenko - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (3):669-690.
    G.E. Moore noticed the oddity of statements like: “It's raining, but I don't believe it.” This oddity is often seen as analogous to the oddity of believing akratically, or believing what one believes one should not believe, and has been appealed to in denying the possibility of akratic belief. I describe a Belief Akratic's Paradox, analogous to Moore's paradox and centered on sentences such as: “I believe it's raining, but I shouldn't believe it.” I then defend the possibility of akratic (...)
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  42. What is the link between regret and weakness of will?Mathieu Doucet - 2016 - Philosophical Psychology 29 (3):448-461.
    This paper argues that most contemporary accounts of weakness of will either implicitly or explicitly assume that regret is a typical or even necessary element of standard cases of weakness of will and that this assumption is mistaken. I draw on empirical and philosophical work on self-assessment to show that regret need not accompany typical weak-willed behavior, and that we should therefore revise the dominant account of the difference between weakness of will and changes of mind.
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  43. Reconsidering Resolutions.Alida Liberman - 2016 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (2):1-27.
    In Willing, Wanting, Waiting, Richard Holton lays out a detailed account of resolutions, arguing that they enable agents to resist temptation. Holton claims that temptation often leads to inappropriate shifts in judgment, and that resolutions are a special kind of first- and second-order intention pair that blocks such judgment shift. In this paper, I elaborate upon an intuitive but underdeveloped objection to Holton’s view – namely, that his view does not enable agents to successfully block the transmission of temptation in (...)
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  44. Akrasia and the Constitution of Agency.Kieran Setiya - 2016 - In Practical Knowledge: Selected Essays. Oxford University Press.
    Argues that we do not act intentionally ‘under the guise of the good.’ This makes it hard to explain why akrasia is distinctively irrational; but this is no objection, since it is just as hard to explain on the opposing view. Ends with a problem of akrasia for ethical rationalists.
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  45. Akrasia and the Problem of the Unity of Reason.Derek Baker - 2015 - Ratio 28 (1):65-80.
    Joseph Raz and Sergio Tenenbaum argue that the Guise of the Good thesis explains both the possibility of practical reason and its unity with theoretical reason, something Humean psychological theories may be unable to do. This paper will argue, however, that Raz and Tenenbaum face a dilemma: either the version of the Guise of the Good they offer is too strong to allow for weakness of will, or it will lose its theoretical advantage in preserving the unity of reason.
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  46. Willensschwäche. Eine handlungstheoretische und moralphilosophische Untersuchung.Richard Paul Hofmann - 2015 - De Gruyter.
    Die aus dem Alltag bekannte Charaktereigenschaft stellt die Handlungstheorie und Moralphilosophie seit der Antike an vor zahlreiche Rätsel. Von verschiedener Seite wurde bezweifelt, dass eine kohärente Konzeption von Willensschwäche, die sowohl dem alltäglichen Begriff als auch reflektierten handlungstheoretischen wie moralphilosophischen Grundsätzen gerecht wird, überhaupt möglich ist. Dabei taucht das Phänomen in unterschiedlicher Gestalt in verschiedenen Wissenschaften auf: als Problem irrationaler Weisen der Diskontierung (Ökonomie), als mangelnde motivationale Kraft (Psychologie) und schließlich in seiner Reinform als Handeln wider das eigene, bessere Urteil (...)
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  47. Dispersing the Clouds of Temptation: Turning Away From Weakness of Will and Turning Towards the Sun.Brian Lightbody - 2015 - Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock.
    In Romans 7:14-25, Paul declares, "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want, is what I do" (KJV). St. Paul's statement is a universal truth for all human beings; humans--whether Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or atheists--are prone to committing free actions that are not "good." Furthermore, and irrespective of how we might construe the notion of "good" (whether as acting in accordance with some religious or spiritual precept or simply doing what (...)
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  48. This paper took too long to write: A puzzle about overcoming weakness of will.Rachel McKinnon & Mathieu Doucet - 2015 - Philosophical Psychology 28 (1):49-69.
    The most discussed puzzle about weakness of will (WoW) is how it is possible: how can a person freely and intentionally perform actions that she judges she ought not perform, or that she has resolved not to perform? In this paper, we are concerned with a much less discussed puzzle about WoW?how is overcoming it possible? We explain some of the ways in which previously weak-willed agents manage to overcome their weakness. Some of these are relatively straightforward?as agents learn of (...)
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  49. Aristotle on Actions from Lack of Control.Jozef Müller - 2015 - Philosophers' Imprint 15.
    The paper defends three claims about Aristotle’s theory of uncontrolled actions (akrasia) in NE 7.3. First, I argue that the first part of NE 7.3 contains the description of the overall state of mind of the agent while she acts without control. Aristotle’s solution to the problem of uncontrolled action lies in the analogy between the uncontrolled agent and people who are drunk, mad, or asleep. This analogy is interpreted as meaning that the uncontrolled agent, while acting without control, is (...)
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  50. Beliefs About the True Self Explain Asymmetries Based on Moral Judgment.George E. Newman, Julian De Freitas & Joshua Knobe - 2015 - Cognitive Science 39 (1):96-125.
    Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about what a person values, whether a person is happy, whether a person has shown weakness of will, and whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend critically on whether participants themselves find the agent's behavior to be morally good or bad. To date, however, the origins of these asymmetries remain unknown. The present studies examine whether beliefs about an agent's “true self” explain these observed (...)
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