Addiction as defect of the will: Some philosophical reflections

Law and Philosophy

Volumn 18, Issue 6, 1999, Pages 621-654

  Jay Wallace, R ^a  

^a HUMBOLDT UNIVERSITY   (Germany)

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EID: 0347092162     PISSN: 01675249     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3505095     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. See, for example, Stephen J. Morse, "Causation, Compulsion, and Involuntariness," Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 22 (1994), pp. 159-180.
2. For a helpful overview of current approaches, see Jerome H. Jaffe, "Current Concepts of Addiction," in Charles P. O'Brien and Jerome H. Jaffe, eds., Addictive States (New York: Raven Press, 1992), pp. 1-22.
3. My conclusions here are broadly in agreement with the characterization of addiction as an acquired appetite offered by Gary Watson, in "Disordered Appetites" (forthcoming).
4. I use the word craving here in a non-technical sense, to designate desires of particular intensity; I do not mean the technical use sometimes found in discussions of addiction, according to which cravings are literally irresistible impulses that overwhelm all ordinary capacities for deliberate self-control. For criticism of the technical use, see Herbert Fingarette, Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alchoholism as a Disease (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 41-43.
5. Compare George Ainslee, "A Research-Based Theory of Addiction Motivation," this volume.
6. Compare Rogers Albritton's discussion of alcoholism, in "Freedom of Will and Freedom of Action," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 59 (1985-1986), pp. 239-251.
7. For a sensible discussion of some actual cases of this kind, see Graham Oddie, "Addiction and the Value of Freedom," Bioethics 7 (1993), pp. 373-401.
8. In "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person," as reprinted in Harry G. Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care about (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 11-25.
9. Compare G. F. Schueler's discussion of the "pro-attitude" conception of desire, in his Desire (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), chap. 1.
10. Compare the formulation and interpretation of the "motivational perspective" on action offered by Philip Pettit and Michael Smith, in "Backgrounding Desire," Philosophical Review 99 (1990), pp. 565-592 and "Practical Unreason," Mind 102 (1993), pp. 53-79; see also Alfred R. Mele, Autonomous Agents (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), chap. 2.
11. Compare the formulation and interpretation of the "motivational perspective" on action offered by Philip Pettit and Michael Smith, in "Backgrounding Desire," Philosophical Review 99 (1990), pp. 565-592 and "Practical Unreason," Mind 102 (1993), pp. 53-79; see also Alfred R. Mele, Autonomous Agents (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), chap. 2.
12. Compare the formulation and interpretation of the "motivational perspective" on action offered by Philip Pettit and Michael Smith, in "Backgrounding Desire," Philosophical Review 99 (1990), pp. 565-592 and "Practical Unreason," Mind 102 (1993), pp. 53-79; see also Alfred R. Mele, Autonomous Agents (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), chap. 2.
13. Compare Philip Pettit and Michael Smith, "Freedom in Belief and Desire," Journal of Philosophy 93 (1996), pp. 429-449. See also Jeanette Kennett and Michael Smith, "Frog and Toad Lose Control," Analysis 56 (1996), pp. 63-73.
14. Compare Philip Pettit and Michael Smith, "Freedom in Belief and Desire," Journal of Philosophy 93 (1996), pp. 429-449. See also Jeanette Kennett and Michael Smith, "Frog and Toad Lose Control," Analysis 56 (1996), pp. 63-73.
15. See Alfred R. Mele, Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-Deception, and Self-Control (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); see also his Autonomous Agents, chap. 3.
16. See Alfred R. Mele, Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-Deception, and Self-Control (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); see also his Autonomous Agents, chap. 3.
17. On this point, see J. David Velleman, "What Happens When Someone Acts?" Mind 101 (1992), pp. 461-481. (Velleman's presentation of this problem is exemplary, though I do not agree with the reductionist solution he proposes.)
18. These remarks may seem to have a libertarian cast that fits poorly with my other published views about responsibility and agency (in Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994]). So to set the record straight: I take the emphasis on the capacity to rise above one's given desires to be an appealing feature of libertarian and agent-causation theories, something that they get right. Unlike the proponents of such theories, however, I do not believe that this important capacity must be incompatible with determinism in every form (though it is irreconcileable with the kind of psychological determinism I have attributed to the hydraulic conception). For more on these matters,
19. see my "Moral Responsibility and the Practical Point of View," in Ton van den Beld, ed., Moral Responsibility and Ontology (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, forthcoming).
20. Some versions of the hydraulic model tend to collapse this distinction, treating practical judgments in noncognitivist terms, as themselves expressions of our given desires. This variant gives us a nonaccidental connection between practical judgment and motivation, but at the considerable cost of depriving practical judgment of its potential autonomy from given desire.
21. Compare the ideal of orthonomy advocated by Pettit and Smith in "Practical Unreason," p. 77: "The important thing is not to assume control . . . [but] to be someone in whom desires are neither too strong nor too weak."
22. There are more sophisticated versions of the hydraulic approach that better capture our sense of ourselves as agents, though they remain inadequate in other respects; Velleman's favored reductionist account of agency in "What Happens When Someone Acts?" might be an example. For discussion, see the remarks about "meta-internalism" in my paper "Three Conceptions of Rational Agency," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 2 (1999), pp. 217-242.
23. For these two options, see the following debate: Alfred R. Mele, "Understanding Self-Control: Kennett and Smith on Frog and Toad," Analysis 57 (1997), pp. 119-123, and Jeanette Kennett and Michael Smith, "Synchronic Self-control is Always Non-actional," Analysis 57 (1997), pp. 123-131.
24. For these two options, see the following debate: Alfred R. Mele, "Understanding Self-Control: Kennett and Smith on Frog and Toad," Analysis 57 (1997), pp. 119-123, and Jeanette Kennett and Michael Smith, "Synchronic Self-control is Always Non-actional," Analysis 57 (1997), pp. 123-131.
25. I should stress here that many motivational states seem to straddle this distinction in ways that make them difficult to classify. Most salient among these are states of being attracted to a course of action precisely because one judges that it would be good to perform. The involvement of evaluative judgment in these states makes it misleading to describe them as states with respect to which we are merely passive (as Angela Smith has helped me to see). And yet, being attracted to a course of action is not under our direct control in the way our intentions, choices, and decisions seem to be.
26. For further development of these points, see my "Three Conceptions of Rational Agency."
27. See, most influentially, Bernard Williams, "Internal and External Reasons," as reprinted in Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 101-113.
28. I am indebted here to Warren Quinn, "Putting Rationality in its Place," as reprinted in Quinn, Morality and Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 228-255.
29. Thus my preference that a long-lost friend should be thriving may be satisfied, in this sense of formal fulfillment, even if I never find out what has become of him.
30. Our reasons in these cases have what T. M. Scanlon calls "subjective conditions"; see his What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), chap. 1.
31. For some suggestive remarks in a similar vein, see Dennis W. Stampe, "The Authority of Desire," The Philosophical Review 96 (1987), pp. 341-381. (I would reject, however, the conclusions Stampe draws from the perceptual analogy concerning the role of desire in practical reasoning.) I should also stress in this context that the points I shall make about desires for pleasure are not meant to apply to all states that are referred to as desires in philosophical parlance (which include, among other things, the distinctive kind of "pro-attitudes" I have referred to as volitions). The phenomenological account I shall develop is an account of that sub-class of desires, of which A-desires are an example, that can present an agent with temptations in contexts of deliberation and decision.
32. Compare Scanlon's remarks about desire in the "directed attention" sense, in What We Owe to Each Other, chap. 1, and Watson's discussion of the ways in which desires can be compelling, in "Disordered Appetites," sec. 3.
33. Compare Scanlon's remarks about desire in the "directed attention" sense, in What We Owe to Each Other, chap. 1, and Watson's discussion of the ways in which desires can be compelling, in "Disordered Appetites," sec. 3.
34. For a general account of the conditions that excuse persons from blame, see my Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, chap. 5.
35. Compare Morse, "Causation, Compulsion, and Involuntariness," and Herbert Fingarette, "Addiction and Criminal Responsibility," Yale Law Journal 84 (1975), pp. 413-444, at pp. 437-438. See also Gary Watson's paper in this volume, "Addiction and Duress."
36. Compare Morse, "Causation, Compulsion, and Involuntariness," and Herbert Fingarette, "Addiction and Criminal Responsibility," Yale Law Journal 84 (1975), pp. 413-444, at pp. 437-438. See also Gary Watson's paper in this volume, "Addiction and Duress."
37. Compare Morse, "Causation, Compulsion, and Involuntariness," and Herbert Fingarette, "Addiction and Criminal Responsibility," Yale Law Journal 84 (1975), pp. 413-444, at pp. 437-438. See also Gary Watson's paper in this volume, "Addiction and Duress."
38. The effects of strong A-desires on the rationality of the agent subject to them are emphasized in Stephen Morse's contribution to the present volume, "Hooked on Hype."
39. That is, from reflection about what one has most reason to do. It is compatible with resiliance in this sense that A-desires are connected to thoughts about the prospective pleasure to be gained through action, in the ways outlined in sec. 3 above.
40. In fact, the two scenarios I have described here are really two instances of the same basic kind of case. In the first scenario, we must suppose that the literal presence of the forbidden foodstuffs incites in us a desire to consume them, since chocolate and ice cream would not make us "vividly aware" of pleasant possibilities for action if they did not give rise to such a desire. The difference between the scenarios is simply that in the first, an intense desire is caused by the literal perception of the substance that is to be consumed, while this is not so in the second case. On the general role of situational cues in giving rise to A-desires, see George Loewenstein, "Willpower: A Decision-theorist's Perspective," this volume.
41. They are treated this way, for instance, by Michael Stocker, in Valuing Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), chap. 1.
42. This is one version of the thesis referred to as internalism in discussions of normative reasons for action; see, for example, Christine M. Korsgaard, "Skepticism about Practical Reason," as reprinted in her Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 311-334.
43. Compare my Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, chaps. 6-8.
44. Compare Morse, "Causation, Compulsion, and Involuntariness."
45. Questions about the justifiability of legislation proscribing addictive drugs, and their connection with the issue of whether addiction can function as a defense under the criminal law, are explored by Douglas Husak in "Addiction and Criminal Liability" (this volume).
46. I received much helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper from the other participants in the Carolina Workshop in Law and Philosophy in September 1998, as well as from audiences at the Universities of Oxford and Reading in March 1999. I owe a special debt to Karin Boxer, Kirsten Petzold, and Angela Smith for detailed and probing comments; and to my "Hilfskräfte" Ninja Kaiser and Jacob Klingner for excellent research support.