This paper argues against the intuition that willpower and so called ‘tying to the mast’ strategies are fundamentally different types of mental actions to achieve self control. The argument for this surprising claim is that at least on the most plausible account of willpower an act of willpower consists in an intentional mental action that disables the mental agent and thereby creates a mental tie. The paper then defends this claim against the objection that tying to the mast strategies do (...) not have the same phenomenology as real willpower and that they do not preserve reason responsiveness. (shrink)

The belief that obese people ought to lose weight and keep it off is widespread, and has a profound negative impact on the lives of the obese. I argue in this paper that most obese people have no such obligation, even if obesity is bad, and caused by calorie input exceeding output. Obese people do not have an obligation to achieve long-term weight loss if this is impossible for them, is worse than the alternative, or requires such an enormous effort (...) in relation to what stands to be gained that this option is supererogatory rather than obligatory. It is highly plausible that most obese people fall into one of these three groups. Politicians may still have obligations to fight obesity, but they ought to do so through progressive politics rather than blaming and shaming. (shrink)

We enjoy first-person authority with respect to a certain class of actions: for these actions, we know what we are doing just because we are doing it. This paper first formulates an epistemological principle that captures this authority in terms of trying to act in a way that one has the capacity to act. It then considers a case of effortful action – running a middle distance race – that threatens this principle. And proposes the solution of changing the metaphysics (...) of action: one can keep hold of the idea that we have first-person authority over what we are doing by adopting a disjunctive account of action. (shrink)

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 (...) are largely outside the control of the addict. But this does not mean that addicts are bound to act on such cravings, since they typically retain their faculty of self-control. The issue is one of difficulty not impossibility. Controlling an addictive craving is exceedingly demanding. (shrink)

With the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971, John Rawls not only rejuvenated contemporary political philosophy but also defended a Kantian form of Enlightenment liberalism called “justice as fairness.” Enlightenment liberalism stresses the development and exercise of our capacity for autonomy, while Reformation liberalism emphasizes diversity and the toleration that encourages it. These two strands of liberalism are often mutually supporting, but they conflict in a surprising number of cases, whether over the accommodation of group difference, the design (...) of civic education, or the promotion of liberal values internationally. During the 1980’s, however, Rawls began to jettison key Kantian characteristics of his theory, a process culminating in the 1993 release of Political Liberalism and completing the transformation of justice as fairness into a Reformation liberalism. -/- Reconstructing Rawls argues that this transformation was a tragic mistake because it jeopardized the most important features of his theory, viz. the lexical priorities of right, liberty, and fair equality of opportunity as well as the difference principle. Controversially, this book contends that Rawls’s so-called “political turn,” motivated by a newfound interest in diversity and the accommodation of difference, has been unhealthy for autonomy-based liberalism and has pushed liberalism more broadly towards cultural relativism, be it in the guise of liberal multiculturalism or critiques of cosmopolitan distributive-justice theories. The book then demonstrates that the central elements of justice as fairness can only be defended within the context of a Kantian Enlightenment liberalism and that Rawls’s hope for a more pluralistic grounding for his theory, endorsed by a wide variety of belief systems present in modern democratic societies, is illusory. -/- Reconstructing Rawls is the first book to systematically compare Rawls’s and Kant’s theories and the first to offer an internal critique and reconstruction of justice as fairness, reconceiving it as a comprehensive, universalistic Kantian liberalism. By doing so, it gives us both the vision of a liberal world order—“a republicanism of all states, together and separately,” as Kant put it—and a mode of justification addressed to all men and women, not as members of particular nations, races, and faiths, but as human beings, as citizens of the world. In short, it reclaims Rawls for the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Non-cognitive dispositions have recently become psychological constructs of interest in the education, economics, philosophy, sociology, and psychology literature. In this article, I draw the distinction between property-first and measurement-first approaches to understanding the meaning of a particular non-cognitive disposition theoretical term, ‘grit’, as well as the relationship between this term and its corresponding measurement procedure. I argue that, depending on which approach one takes, one is confronted with different norms for judging the success of any disposition-measurement procedure pair, meaning that (...) the difference in philosophical approaches may have practical import. I argue that the measurement-first approach is the one educators and educational policy-makers ought to adopt towards grit as it is less likely to lead to over-valuing grit in situations where a gritty disposition may be harmful, better respects scientific virtues and values, and provides a clearer understanding of grit than the property-first approach. (shrink)

Empirical findings suggest that temptation causes agents not only to change their desires, but also to revise their beliefs, in ways that are not necessarily irrational. But if this is so, how can it be rational to maintain a resolution to resist? For in maintaining a resolution it appears that one will be acting against what one now believes to be best. This paper proposes a two-tier account according to which it can be rational neither to reconsider the question of (...) what one is going to do nor the question of what it is best to do; hence in the resolute agent the change in belief is not actual but merely potential. Various reasons are given for thinking that the resulting account is preferable to an alternative given by Bratman. (shrink)

Holding content explicitly requires a form of self knowledge. But what does the relevant self knowledge look like? Using theory of mind as an example, this paper argues that the correct answer to this question will have to take into account the crucial role of language based deliberation, but warns against the standard assumption that explicitness is necessary for ascribing awareness. It argues in line with Bayne that intentional action is at least an equally valid criterion for awareness. This leads (...) to a distinction between different levels of implicitness. Postulating these different levels, it is argued, allows us to make better sense of the empirical literature on early false belief task abilities. (shrink)

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 (...) a tendency to change one's judgment so that one values the tempting option as the best -- weak willed action will typically be akratic. But conversely, strong willed action now looks as though it will be akratic. I argue though that it need not be, once we distinguish between actual judgment, and dispositions to judge. Within this framework, the issue of inverse akrasia looks rather different. I argue that whilst Huckleberry Finn plausibly does show weakness of will in abandoning his resolve to turn Jim in, it is far from clear that he is akratic: a point brought out well in Twain's later additions to the text. Whilst cases of inverse akrasia are clearly theoretically possible, I suggest that, given cognitive dissonance mechanisms, they are unlikely to be very common. (shrink)

First, we discuss issues raised with respect to the Theory of Event Coding (TEC)'s scope, that is, its limitations and possible extensions. Then, we address the issue of specificity, that is, the widespread concern that TEC is too unspecified and, therefore, too vague in a number of important respects. Finally, we elaborate on our views about TEC's relations to other important frameworks and approaches in the field like stages models, ecological approaches, and the two-visual-pathways model. Footnotes1 We acknowledge the precedence (...) of both Freud¹s Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915) and Neisser¹s Stimulus Information and Its Vicissitudes (a term Neisser borrowed from Freud for his monograph “Cognitive psychology,” 1967). (shrink)

Much has been written about the self, yet its evolution and functioning are matters of controversy in evolutionary psychology. The article argues that it is an evolved capacity, essential for co-evolutionary processes, including cultural development, to occur. A model of self-regulation is offered to explain its adaptive functioning, elaborating William James’ I-me distinction, and drawing upon contemporary analyses in social psychology and neuroscience. The model is used to illustrate how adaptive behavior is facilitated by the exercise of self-control, to defer (...) and re-order goals, revise perceptions of the world, modify conceptions of the self, and alter repertoires of learned action sequences, heuristics, and habits. It also identifies potential areas of dysfunction, mediated by self-deception and misperception. Through this lens one can see how leadership is a historically co-evolving function of social systems, changing to meet altered circumstances. The recursive relationship involves interaction between changing leader–follower relationships, within which leaders’ self-regulation is a central process. Individual differences in leaders as agents are thus also critical. The article concludes by considering the need for insight in order to steer these co-evolving functions in directions that help us as a species to master the global challenges and threats we face in our times. (shrink)