Abstract
Traditionally, weakness of will (WOW) has been identified with an agent acting contrary to her better judgment, or akrasia. Recent empirical findings, however, have led many to conclude that the folk concept of WOW is not amenable to necessary and sufficient conditions. To this end, it has been argued that WOW attributions point to a cluster concept (May and Holton in Philos Stud 157(3):341–360, 2012), a disjunctive account of WOW as either judgment or resolution violation (Mele in Philos Stud 150(3):391–404, 2010), and a two-tiered account including both failures to adhere to commitments as well as failures to commit (Doucet and Turri in Synthese 191(16):3935–3954, 2014). Contrary to these views, I argue that there is indeed an underlying unifying feature of the folk concept of WOW. In particular, I argue that WOW is a matter of violating one’s salient reasons for action. I develop and defend this account in three stages. First, I introduce the theory philosophically, by critiquing the traditional view, i.e. judgment violation, as well as its initial competitor, Holton’s (J Philos 96(5):241–262, 1999; Willing, wanting, waiting, Oxford University Press, New York, 2009) view of resolution violation. I then turn to the empirical case for Salient Reasons Violation, arguing that the view best fits the data concerning folk attributions of WOW. Importantly, I argue that folk attributions unsurprisingly include violations of reasons that the attributor finds salient, even when the agent in the case may not. Finally, I turn to an explanatory account of Salient Reasons Violation, which moves beyond establishing the contours of our concept, by providing an explanation as to why the concept functions as it does.
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Notes
Throughout the paper, I will use “acts against one’s better judgment” and “akrasia” interchangeably. Following Davidson (1970), I use “better judgment” rather than the traditional “best judgment” to capture cases in which a best judgment may not have been made, e.g. an agent may have only judged that a given action is better than some alternative.
See Sect. 2 for a discussion of the empirical results and attempts at capturing the data.
Throughout the paper, to distinguish between a particular theory, such as “Judgment Violation”, and a particular instance of a judgment violation (or an intention, resolution, or salient reasons violation) I will use the convention of capitalizing the theory.
A case Holton attributes to Rae Langton, adapted from Byatt’s (1990) novel Possession. It should be noted that Byatt’s Christabel does not lose her nerve.
Holton (2003) changed his terminology from contrary inclination defeating intentions to resolutions. I will follow him in this here.
I say Holton’s view may be sufficient insofar as some details will need to be settled. Insofar as I depart from Holton as to when revising a resolution is reasonable, Holton and I may likewise diverge as to when such a case is WOW.
See May and Holton (2012).
Note that Dezerie did form a future-directed intention in this case. At this point in the dialectic, I am simply aiming to show that there are cases of WOW without full-blown resolutions. I turn next to the question as to whether intentions of any kind must be present for an agent to be considered weak-willed.
I intentionally did not completely fill out the cases in which we might find Dezerie or Tegh weak-willed. That will be my goal when I turn to a new view of WOW. What is important at this point is to grant that our concept allows at least some description of the cases under which Dezerie and Tegh seem to behave weakly without ever having made a resolution; moreover, when it actually would have been inappropriate for either to resolve. Resolutions may indeed be important for certain agents in certain situations, but as we just saw, agents are not immune from weakness whenever resolution is not apt.
Holton allows that an agent might have an intention without having formed it (perhaps an agent was born with an intention or is implanted with one). I’ll grant that Intention Violation should be thought of as including the violation of these intentions as well, despite the agent not strictly deciding to perform the action. However, for simplicity, I will largely speak in terms of intentions that the agent indeed formed.
I am grateful to Tim Schroeder for pushing me on this case.
My thanks to two anonymous referees for pushing me to clarify my aims here.
I say “may behave weakly” as I will argue below some cases of revision may be due to a fault in practical reasoning, rather than a weakness of the will. See Sect. 1.4.
My thanks to an anonymous referee for pushing me on this point.
Or, as just argued, if one considers that Devin has indeed formed a judgment, it will remain the case that not all judgment violations are instances of WOW. In that case, we need a way of picking out which judgment violations are instances of WOW, something that the forthcoming view will capture.
My thanks to an anonymous referee for pushing me on this point.
My thanks to two anonymous referees for pushing me on this point.
This again, is not to deny that there are times in which reconsidering whether to run or write is not a case of motivated reasoning. I might remember another more pressing task, or the weather may be non-ideal. In this cases, the reasoning is not motivated nor weak-willed.
And the same point can be made with respect to Judgment Violation. Some judgment violations will indeed be matters of WOW, especially if one considers salient reasons to track some kind of judgment in the end. But what Salient Reasons Violation gets that Judgment Violations doesn’t is a clear distinction concerning which judgment violations are matters of WOW.
Though I will continue to grant that one may argue that Devin’s salient reasons classify as a kind of judgment.
Even if one argues that Devin’s salient reasons constitute a judgment, Judgment Violation still fails insofar as it remains unclear which judgments will constitute WOW. In Christabel’s case, both her salient reasons and her expressed settled judgment would be considered her “better judgment” of the case. Salient Reasons Violation is able to separate these purported judgments in order to establish which violation counts as WOW in a simple and principled way.
I say resolution and intention violations may be sufficient insofar as some details will need to be settled. Insofar as I depart from Holton as to when revising a resolution is reasonable, Holton and I may diverge when such a case is WOW. See also foot note 7.
Beebe also found that participants were willing to attribute WOW in cases of addiction, contrary to common philosophical thought. I set aside the issue of addiction for now, but I will briefly return to the issue in the following section.
At this point, questions arise as to which issue we should concern ourselves with: instances of weakness of will or attributions thereof. I return to this issue below.
For helpful background and studies on the true self, see especially Strohminger et al. (2017). My thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting this connection.
See Buckwalker (2014) for empirical studies defending Protagonist Projection. My thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting this connection.
My thanks to an anonymous referee for pushing me on this point.
Beebe (2013) has found otherwise. I will return to this issue shortly.
Here again, making a case for Salient Reasons Violation in particular, as opposed to Holton’s narrower view.
Thanks to Tim Schroeder for many helpful discussions when the view was in its infancy. Thanks also to the journal referees for very useful suggestions.
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Johnson, C.M. Resolutions, salient reasons, and weakness of will. Synthese 198, 5115–5138 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02393-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02393-5