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Weakness of will and akrasia

Philosophical Studies 150 (3):391–404 (2010)

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  1. Weakness of will. The limitations of revealed preference theory.Aleksander Ostapiuk - 2022 - Acta Oeconomica 1 (72):1-23.
    The phenomenon of weakness of will – not doing what we perceive as the best action – is not recognized by neoclassical economics due to the axiomatic assumptions of the revealed preference theory (RPT) that people do what is best for them. However, present bias shows that people have different preferences over time. As they cannot be compared by the utility measurements, economists need to normatively decide between selves (short- versus long-term preferences). A problem is that neoclassical economists perceive RPT (...)
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  • The Nature of Temptation and its Role in the Development of Moral Virtue.Kevin Snider - 2021 - Dissertation, Middlesex University
    In the last 70 years there has been an explosion of philosophical and theological work on the nature of virtue and the process of virtue formation. Yet philosophers and theologians have paid little attention to the phenomenon of temptation and its role in developing virtue. Indeed, little analytic work has been done on the nature of temptation. This study aims to fill this gap in moral philosophy and theology by offering an analytic moral conception of temptation and explicating its connection (...)
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  • 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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  • The Eclipse of Value-Free Economics. The concept of multiple self versus homo economicus.Aleksander Ostapiuk - 2020 - Wrocław, Polska: Publishing House of Wroclaw University of Economics and Business.
    The books’ goal is to answer the question: Do the weaknesses of value-free economics imply the need for a paradigm shift? The author synthesizes criticisms from different perspectives (descriptive and methodological). Special attention is paid to choices over time, because in this area value-free economics has the most problems. In that context, the enriched concept of multiple self is proposed and investigated. However, it is not enough to present the criticisms towards value-free economics. For scientists, a bad paradigm is better (...)
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  • Bridging the Gap Between Ethical Theory and Practice in Medicine: A Constructivist Grounded Theory Study.Mansure Madani, AbouAli Vedadhir, Bagher Larijani, Zahra Khazaei & Ahad Faramarz Gharamaleki - 2020 - Science and Engineering Ethics 26 (2):2255-2275.
    Physicians try hard to alleviate mental and physical ailments of their patients. Thus, they are heavily burdened by observing ethics and staying well-informed while improving health of their patients. A major ethical concern or dilemma in medication is that some physicians know their behavior is unethical, yet act against their moral compass. This study develops models of theory–practice gap, offering optimal solutions for the gap. These solutions would enhance self-motivation or remove external obstacles to stimulate ethical practices in medicine. The (...)
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  • Mulla Sadra on Virtue and Action.Zahra Khazaei - 2018 - Religious Inquiries 7 (13).
    This paper sheds light on the views of Mulla Sadra about virtue and action. The main question is how he explains the relationship, if any, between virtue and action. Mulla Sadra defines moral virtue as a settled inner disposition by which one acts morally, without need for any reflection or deliberation. This study seeks to explain how, according to Mulla Sadra, a virtue motivates the agent and leads him to do the right action easily. Is virtue the reason for or (...)
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  • I knew I Shouldn’t Do It; But I Did It: Davidson on Causal Strength and Weakness of Will.Rafael Martins - 2019 - Investigação Filosófica 10 (2):05-20.
    Reasons for action is a widely employed methodology in practical philosophy, and especially in moral philosophy. Reasons are facts that explain and justify actions. But, conceptually, if reasons were causes, incontinent actions would be impossible. When an agent ranks an evaluation about what to do as his best judgement, it entails that he has a reason for acting as that judgement prescribes. But when an agent acts incontinently, he acts in accordance to an intention that is not aligned with his (...)
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  • Hegel on Addiction.Katerina Deligiorgi - 2019 - Hegel Bulletin 40 (3):398-424.
    The aim of this paper is to show how certain distinctive elements of Hegel's theory of action can provide a fresh philosophical perspective on the phenomenon of addiction. What motivates the turn to Hegel is a set of puzzles that arise out of contemporary medical and philosophical discussions of addiction. Starting with questions concerning ongoing attempts to define addiction, the paper examines the resources needed for addiction to be classed as a disorder, as it commonly is. Provisionally settling with the (...)
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  • (1 other version)Akrasia and Ordinary Weakness of Will.Lubomira Radoilska - 2012 - Tópicos: Revista de Filosofía 43:25-50.
    This article offers an account of akrasia as a primary failure of intentional agency in contrast to a recent account of weakness of will, developed by Richard Holton, that also points to a kind of failure of intentional agency but presents this as both separate from akrasia and more fundamental than it. Drawing on Aristotle’s work, it is argued that the failure of intentional agency articulated by the concept of akrasia is the central case, whereas the phenomenon Holton’s account is (...)
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  • Addiction as a Disorder of Self-Control.Edmund Henden - 2018 - In Hanna Pickard & Serge H. Ahmed (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction. Routledge.
    Impairment of self-control is often said to be a defining feature of addiction. Yet many addicts display what appears to be a considerable amount of control over their drug-oriented actions. Not only are their actions clearly intentional and frequently carried out in a conscious and deliberate manner, there is evidence that many addicts are responsive to a wide range of ordinary incentives and counter-incentives. Moreover, addicts have a wide variety of reasons for using drugs, reasons which often seem to go (...)
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  • Weakness of will and motivational internalism.Voin Milevski - 2017 - Philosophical Psychology 30 (1-2):44-57.
    The unconditional version of motivational internalism says that if an agent sincerely judges that to φ in circumstances C is the best option available to her, then, as a matter of conceptual necessity, she will be motivated to φ in C. This position faces a powerful counterargument according to which it is possible for various cases of practical irrationality to completely defeat an agent’s moral motivation while, at the same time, leaving her appreciation of her moral reasons intact. In this (...)
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  • Addiction, compulsion, and weakness of the will: A dual process perspective.Edmund Henden - 2016 - In Nick Heather & Gabriel Segal (eds.), 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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  • Akrasia and Irrationality.Sergio Tenenbaum - 2010 - In Timothy O'Connor & Constantine Sandis (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 274-282.
    This chapter contains sections titled: References.
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  • Non-psychological weakness of will: self-control, stereotypes, and consequences.Mathieu Doucet & John Turri - 2014 - Synthese 191 (16):3935-3954.
    Prior work on weakness of will has assumed that it is a thoroughly psychological phenomenon. At least, it has assumed that ordinary attributions of weakness of will are purely psychological attributions, keyed to the violation of practical commitments by the weak-willed agent. Debate has recently focused on which sort of practical commitment, intention or normative judgment, is more central to the ordinary concept of weakness of will. We report five experiments that significantly advance our understanding of weakness of will attributions (...)
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  • 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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  • The evaluative nature of the folk concepts of weakness and strength of will.Paulo Sousa & Carlos Mauro - 2015 - Philosophical Psychology 28 (4):487-509.
    This article examines the evaluative nature of the folk concepts of weakness and strength of will and hypothesizes that their evaluative nature is strongly connected to the folk concepts of blame and credit. We probed how people apply the concepts of weakness and strength of will to prototypical and non-prototypical scenarios. While regarding prototypical scenarios the great majority applied these concepts according to the predictions following from traditional philosophical analyses. When presented with non-prototypical scenarios, people were divided. Some, against traditional (...)
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  • Risk and trust.Philip J. Nickel & Krist Vaesen - 2012 - In Sabine Roeser (ed.), Handbook of Risk Theory: Epistemology, Decision Theory, Ethics, and Social Implications of Risk. Springer Science & Business Media.
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  • What in the World is Weakness of Will?Joshua May & Richard Holton - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 157 (3):341–360.
    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 (...)
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  • Temptation and Apathy.Juan Pablo Bermúdez, Samantha Berthelette, Gabriela Fernández, Alfonso Anaya & Diego Rodríguez - 2024 - Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility 8:10–32.
    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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  • The Aesthetic Enkratic Principle.Irene Martínez Marín - 2023 - British Journal of Aesthetics 63 (2):251–268.
    There is a dimension of rationality, known as structural rationality, according to which a paradigmatic example of what it means to be rational is not to be akratic. Although some philosophers claim that aesthetics falls within the scope of rationality, a non-akrasia constraint prohibiting certain combinations of attitudes is yet to be developed in this domain. This essay is concerned with the question of whether such a requirement is plausible and, if so, whether it is an actual requirement of aesthetic (...)
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  • The varying rationality of weakness of the will: an empirical investigation and its challenges for a unified theory of rationality.Michael Https://Orcidorg Messerli, Julian Fink & Kevin Https://Orcidorg Reuter - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-23.
    Weakness of the will remains a perplexing issue. Though philosophers have made substantial progress in homing in on what counts as a weak will, there is little agreement on whether weakness of the will is irrational, and if so, why. In this paper, we take an empirical approach towards the rationality of weakness of the will. After introducing the philosophical debate, we present the results of an empirical study that reveals that people take a “dual sensitivity”, as we shall put (...)
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  • The fragility of rationality: George Eliot on akrasia and the law of consequences.Patrick Fessenbecker - 2021 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 29 (2):275-291.
    George Eliot often uses the language of determinism in her novels, but we do not understand her view very well by treating such phrasing as addressing debates about the freedom of will directly. Instead she uses seemingly deterministic terms, like the ‘law of consequences', to depict and analyse a particular problem in moral psychology: those instances where we ourselves make it impossible to act on our own best judgements. When we fail to act on our best judgement, this has downstream (...)
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  • Agency and Virtues.Zahra Khazaei - 2019 - Journal of Philosophical Theological Research 21 (3):119-140.
    In the philosophy of action, agency manifests the capacity of the agent to act. An agent is one who acts voluntarily, consciously and intentionally. This article studies the relationship between virtues and agency to learn to what extent agency is conceptually and metaphysically dependent on moral or epistemic virtues; whether virtue is a necessary condition for action and agency, besides the belief, desire and intention? Or are virtues necessary merely for the moral or epistemic character of the agent and not (...)
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  • Resolutions, salient reasons, and weakness of will.Christa M. Johnson - 2019 - Synthese 198 (6):5115-5138.
    Traditionally, weakness of will 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 :341–360, 2012), a disjunctive account of WOW as either judgment or resolution violation :391–404, 2010), and a two-tiered account including both failures to adhere to (...)
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  • Making sense of akrasia.Matthew Burch - 2018 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 17 (5):939-971.
    There are two extreme poles in the literature on akrasia. Internalists hold that it's impossible to act intentionally against your better judgment, because there's a necessary internal relation between judgment and intentional action. To the contrary, externalists maintain that we can act intentionally against our better judgment, because the will operates independently of judgment. Critics of internalism argue that it fails a realism test—most people seem to think that we can and do act intentionally against our better judgment. And critics (...)
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  • Weakness of will, reasonability, and compulsion.James Beebe - 2013 - Synthese 190 (18):4077-4093.
    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 (...)
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  • Inverse akrasia and weakness of will.Richard Holton - manuscript
    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 (...)
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  • Can commitments cause counterpreferential choices?Michael Https://Orcidorg Messerli & Kevin Https://Orcidorg Reuter - 2022 - Journal of Economic Methodology 30 (2):94-106.
    Commitments are crucial for our lives but there is no consensus on how commitments and preferences relate to each other. In this paper, we present three empirical studies that provide evidence that people sometimes choose a less preferred option when they have made a commitment.
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  • Weakness of Will and Practical Identity.Kevin Jung - 2020 - Studies in Christian Ethics 33 (4):463-478.
    In this article, I develop an Augustinian response to some contemporary philosophical proposals concerning the problem of weakness of will. I argue that many philosophers tend to cast the problem in terms of irrationality, focusing on psychological components such as judgment, desire, and resolution. In contrast, I contend that weakness of will has more to do with the absence of a coherent conception of practical identity and with a misleading conception of practical identity that overestimates the agent’s normative and motivational (...)
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  • Corporate Weakness of Will.Kenneth Silver - forthcoming - Journal of Business Ethics:1-17.
    Proponents of corporate moral responsibility take certain corporations to be capable of being responsible in ways that do not reduce to the responsibility of their members. If correct, one follow-up question concerns what leads corporations to fail to meet their obligations. We often fail morally when we know what we should do and yet fail to do it, perhaps out of incontinence, akrasia, or weakness of will. However, this kind of failure is much less discussed in the corporate case. And, (...)
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  • The Normative Connection Between Paternalism and Belief.Stephanie Sheintul - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (1):97-114.
    This paper aims to answer the following question: what is the normative connection between paternalism and the paternalist’s belief about the recipient’s agency? I consider the following two views. _The Robust View_ says that paternalism is _pro tanto_ wrong insofar as the paternalist’s belief about the recipient’s agency is always disrespectful. _The Less Robust View_ says that whenever the paternalist’s belief about the recipient’s agency is disrespectful, paternalism is _pro tanto_ wrong. I interpret the major motive-based theories of paternalism as (...)
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  • Akratic Action under the Guise of the Good.Eugene Chislenko - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (5):606-621.
    Many philosophers have thought that human beings do or pursue only what we see as good. These “guise-of-the-good” views face powerful challenges and counterexamples, such as akratic action, in which we do what we ourselves believe we ought not do. I propose a new way for guise-of-the-good views to address this central counterexample by appealing to conflicting beliefs. I then answer concerns that this appeal is insufficiently explanatory, attributes too much conflict, leaves out an essential asymmetry in action against one’s (...)
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  • 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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  • From reflex to reflection: Moving from the space of causes to the space of reasons and back.Ariel Furstenberg - 2020 - Open Philosophy 3 (1):681-693.
    This article proposes to narrow the gap between the space of reasons and the space of causes. By articulating the standard phenomenology of reasons and causes, we investigate the cases in which the clear-cut divide between reasons and causes starts to break down. Thus, substituting the simple picture of the relationship between the space of reasons and the space of causes with an inverted and complex one, in which reasons can have a causal-like phenomenology and causes can have a reason-like (...)
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  • (1 other version)The ordinary concept of weakness of will.Ali Yousefi Heris - 2020 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 19 (1):123-139.
    Recently, a number of experimental philosophers have converged on the position that the ordinary concept of weakness of will does not solely consist in “judgment” or “intention” violation but is more like a cluster concept in which each factor plays contributory roles in the application of the concept. This, however, raises the question as to which factor is more central or plays a more significant role in folk’s understanding of the concept. I contend that the ordinary concept of weakness of (...)
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  • De verantwoordelijkheid van de overheid ten aanzien van gedragssturende beleidsinstrumenten voor verduurzaming.Luc Bovens - 2013 - Duurzame Gedragspatronen. Essays. Ethische Aspecten van Gedragsbeinvloeding Door de Overheid Voor Verduurzaming van de Samenleving.
    I discuss ethical aspects of behavioural policies in domestic energy usage, recycling, food waste and transportation.
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  • Really situated self-control: self-control as a set of situated skills.Annemarie Kalis, Josephine Pascoe & Miguel Segundo Ortin - forthcoming - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences:1-19.
    Traditionally, self-control is conceptualized in terms of internal processes such as willpower or motivational mechanisms. These processes supposedly explain how agents manage to exercise self-control or, in other words, how they act on the basis of their best judgment in the face of conflicting motivation. Against the mainstream view that self-control is a mechanism or set of mechanisms realized in the brain, several authors have recently argued for the inclusion of situated factors in our understanding of self-control. In this paper, (...)
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  • Bibliography.Richard Holton - 2000 - Philosophical Inquiry 22 (4):112-112.
    We aim to find a middle path between disease models of addiction, and those that treat addictive choices as choices like any other. We develop an account of the disease element by focussing on the idea that dopamine works primarily to lay down dispositional intrinsic desires. Addictive substances artifically boost the dopamine signal, and thereby lay down intrinsic desires for the substances that persist through withdrawal, and in the face of beliefs that they are worthless. The result is cravings that (...)
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  • (1 other version)The ordinary concept of weakness of will.Ali Yousefi Heris - 2019 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8 (1):123-139.
    Recently, a number of experimental philosophers have converged on the position that the ordinary concept of weakness of will does not solely consist in “judgment” or “intention” violation but is more like a cluster concept in which each factor plays contributory roles in the application of the concept. This, however, raises the question as to which factor is more central or plays a more significant role in folk’s understanding of the concept. I contend that the ordinary concept of weakness of (...)
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