What is wrong with weakness of will?

Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 103, Issue 6, 2006, Pages 284-311

  Mcintyre, Alison ^a  

^a WELLESLEY COLLEGE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950188336     PISSN: 0022362X     EISSN: 19398549     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/jphil2006103619     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (39)

1. Philip Pettit and Michael Smith emphasize the importance of identifying adistinctively practical form of rational failure in "Practical Unreason, " Mind, C11 (1993): 53-79.
2. R.Jay Wallace, "Three Conceptions of Rational Agency, " Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 11 (1999): 217-42.
3. Robert Audi observes that one reason for taking incontinent actions to beirrational is that "they seem to manifest a malfunction: the will is notcarrying out its proper function - to produce conformity between action andpractical reason" - "Weakness of Will and Rational Action, "chapter 12 of Action, Intention, and Reason (Ithaca: Cornell, 1993), p. 324.
4. Similar accounts have been provided by Thomas Hill, "Weakness of Will and Character, " in Autonomy and Self-respect (New York: Cambridge, 1991), pp. 118-37;
5. and Richard Holton, "Intention and Weakness of Will, " this JOURNAL, XCVI, 5 (May 1999): 241-62.
6. Broome, "Reason and Motivation, " Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume LXXI (1997): 131-46.
7. See Nomy Arpaly, "On Acting Rationally against One's Better Judgment, " Ethics, CX (April 2000): 488-513;
8. Audi, "Weakness of Will and Rational Action"; and my paper"Is Weakness of Will Always Irrational?" in Owen Flanagan and Amelie Rorty, eds., Identity, Character, and Morality (Cambridge: MIT, 1990), pp.379-400.
9. Hill provides a refreshingly broad characterization of weakness of willin "Weakness of Will and Character" which would includerationalization as a manifestation of it, but his account of the defect inweakness of will makes it depend upon the irrationality of making or breakingthe resolutions involved. A somewhat similar distinction between procedural andsubstantive dimensions of rationality is drawn by Derek Parfit in "Reasonsand Motivation, " Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume LXXI (1997): 98-130.
10. This contrasts sharply with Allan Gibbard's use of the term"rational" in Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (Cambridge: Harvard, 1990) as a term of art to express the sense inwhich "what it is rational to do settles what to do" (p. 49). Gibbardacknowledges that other phrases, like "the best thing to do" or"the thing to do" might capture this notion better when it is appliedto questions of action (p. 49).
11. Simon Blackburn asks: "Isn't it more plausible to say that when weare weak-willed we change our mind, perhaps for bad reasons, about what we oughtto do? In fact, the better the grounds we have for calling an episode ofweakness of will voluntary and non-compulsive, the more it looks like a changeof mind" - Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning (New York:Oxford, 1998), p. 191.
12. Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge: Harvard, 1987).
13. Holton, "How Is Strength of Will Possible?" in Sarah Stroud and Christine Tappolet, eds., Weakness of Will and Practical Irrationality (New York: Oxford, 2003), pp. 39-67.
14. Scanlon (What We Owe to Each Other, chapter 1) characterizes theinfluence of desires on deliberation by describing them as tendencies to takeoneself to have reason to act in a certain way or tendencies to view certainconsiderations as reasons to act. I doubt that the motivational role of desiresis constituted by such tendencies, but it is certainly true that desirestypically give rise to them.
15. Intention and Weakness of Will, " p. 251.
16. In "How Is Strength of Will Possible?" Holton calls thecontrary inclination defeating intentions resolutions. Hill also counts afailure to carry out a resolution as a form of weakness of will, even if theagent has revised her judgment, observing that "resolutions (in contrast tomere plans and policies) would be pointless if they did not direct one not toreconsider or deviate from the resolve for certain anticipated reasons (forexample, the arrival of an expected temptation or pressure)" -"Weakness of Will and Character, " pp. 131-32.
17. Thomas Schelling describes a variety of "techniques ofself-management, " including the forming of resolutions in "The Intimate Contest for Self-Command, " chapter 3 of Choice and Consequence(Cambridge: Harvard, 1984), pp. 57-82.
18. The sort of higher order volitions discussed by Harry Frankfurt in"Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person, " this JOURNAL, LXVIII, 1 (January 1971): 5-20, as a necessary condition of freedom of the willseem to be more plausibly characterized as specific remedies for anticipatedmotivational conflicts: expressions of self-doubt rather than indicators of thedepth of an agent's commitments.
19. Bratman discusses the possibility of a similar kind of higher-orderakrasia concerning judgments that endorse acting on a certain kind of desire:one may fail to endorse the desires that one judges worthy of endorsement. See"A Desire of One's Own, " this JOURNAL, C, 5 (May 2003): 221-42, p.236.
20. See Audi, "Weakness of Will and Rational Action, " p. 329;
21. and also Arpaly, "On Acting Rationally against One's Best Judgment, " p. 491.
22. Some have argued that weak-willed actions must be distinguished fromcompulsive actions by considering the agent's capacity to act in accordance withher judgments; for example, Jeanette Kennett and Smith in "Philosophy and Commonsense: The Case of Weakness of Will, " in Michaelis Michael and John O'Leary-Hawthorne, eds., Philosophy in Mind (Boston: Kluwer, 1994), pp. 141-57.It seems plausible to say that powerful inclinations that ensure the defeat of aresolution do not keep the episode from being a failure to be resolute, butmight keep it from being criticizable, and as a result, might keep it fromcounting as weakness of will. Since resolutions are ineffective techniques forachieving self-control in the presence of powerful compulsive desires, agentswho experience inner compulsion might not form such resolutions; in such cases, they might be akratic, without being eligible to be weak-willed.
23. Such policies are similar to what George Ainslie has called personalrules: rules adopted in order to limit and restrain one's more impulsive desiresfor short-term rewards in order to gain some greater long-term reward. See Picoeconomics: The Strategic Interaction of Successive Motivational Stateswithin the Person (New York: Cambridge, 1992).
24. Ainslie, Breakdown of Will (New York: Cambridge, 2001), p. 87.
25. For further discussion of Ainslie's stronger claim that past compliancegives us a reason to comply in the future, see Bratman, "Planning and Temptation, " in Larry May, Marilyn Friedman, and Andy Clark, eds., Mind and Morals (Cambridge: MIT, 1996), pp. 293-310;
26. and Alfred Mele, "Addiction and Self-control, " Behavior and Philosophy, XXIV, 2 (Fall 1996): 99-117.
27. I say "incoherence" not "inconsistency" because, as Donald Davidson points out, the akratic agent's conditional all thingsconsidered judgment about what would be best is not logically inconsistent withthe "all-out" unconditional judgment about what would be best that isactually carried out. He observes that "pure internal inconsistency"enters if one holds, as he supposes that we all do, "that one ought to acton what one judges best or obligatory, everything considered." Becauseweak-willed agents go against their own second order principles favoringcontinence, Davidson argues, though they have a reason for acting as they do, they have no reason for ignoring this second order principle. See"Paradoxes of Irrationality, " in Paul Moser, ed., Rationality in Action: Contemporary Approaches (New York: Cambridge, 1990), pp. 456-57. On theview I have defended, the procedural support favoring resoluteness is adefeasible presumption, not a universal second order principle, so it isrational incoherence, and not pure internal inconsistency that is demonstratedin akratic weakness of will.
28. Scanlon argues that agents' motivations may fail to align with theirjudgments about what they have reason to do and with their judgments about whatthey have reason to believe, so that the kind of irrationality involved canarise regarding belief as well as action - What We Owe to Each Other, pp. 35-40.
29. This symmetry is questioned by Wallace in "Scanlon's Contractualism, " Ethics, CXII (April 2002): 429-70; pp. 438-41.
30. Broome, "Normative Requirements, " in Jonathan Dancy, ed., Normativity (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 78-99, on p. 85.
31. "Normative Requirements, " p. 89,
32. "Normative Practical Reasoning, " Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplemental Volume LXXV (2001): 175-93.
33. This is a case in which the agent's incapacity to comply with a rationalrequirement does not provide any reason to think that the requirement does notapply, but it does provide a reason to think that the failure to comply shouldnot count as irrationality. See Wallace, "Three Conceptions of Rational Agency, " p. 231, for a sustained discussion of possible grounds formaintaining the existence of rational requirements even in the face of suchapparent "rational incapacities" as weakness of will.
34. In a similar spirit, Gilbert Harman argues in "Rationality" (chapter 1 of Reasoning, Meaning and Mind (New York: Oxford, 1999), pp. 9-45)that "even if you notice that A, B, C are inconsistent, there may still bereasons to accept each and it may be quite unclear which should be given up. Youmay not have the time or the ability to work out which should be given up oryou may have more urgent matters to attend to before trying to figure out whichto give up of A, B, C. In the meantime, it may very well be rational for you tocontinue to believe all three" (p. 19).
35. This is all that is required by Scanlon's claim in "Reasons, Responsibility, and Reliance: Replies to Wallace, Dworkin, and Deigh, "Ethics, CII (April 2002): 507-28, that "irrationality occurs when a personholds a judgment-sensitive attitude that is incompatible with his or her ownassessment of the reasons that bear on having that attitude. This happens, forexample, when a person...judges there to be compelling reason to abandon anintention but continues to have that intention" (p. 508).
36. See also his discussion of "structural irrationality" in"Metaphysics and Morals, " Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, LXXVII, 2 (November 2003): 7-22.
37. For discussions of the difference between pro tanto and prima faciereasons, see Susan Hurley, Natural Reasons: Personality and Polity (New York:Oxford, 1989), pp. 130-34;
38. and Shelly Kagan, The Limits of Morality (New York: Oxford, 1989), pp.17-18.
39. In response to Cardinal Newman's comment "It is almost a definitionof a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain" (in The Idea of a University), the additional qualification "unintentionally" has beenattributed to Wilde, but also to G.K. Chesterton, Oliver Herford, and to Osbert Sitwell, Edith Sitwell's brother.