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)

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, (...) we review such recent attempts from the perspective of situated accounts of cognition and argue that even though these accounts integrate situational features, they ultimately still rely on an orthodox, neurocentric view of self-control. Instead, we will argue that in order to develop a really situated account it is necessary to radically rethink what self-control is. Building on recent work on extended skill, we will develop an outline of a really situated account of self-control. (shrink)

A restrictive view of self-control identifies exercises of self-control with synchronic intrapsychic processes, and pictures diachronic and externally-scaffolded strategies not as proper instances of self-control, but as clever ways of avoiding the need to exercise that ability. In turn, defenders of an inclusive view of self-control typically argue that we should construe self-control as more than effortful inhibition, and that, on grounds of functional equivalence, all these diverse strategies might be properly described as instances of self-control. In this paper, I (...) take a fresh look at this debate by focusing on cases of addiction. I argue that addicted agents face a paradigmatic sort of self-control challenge, which makes addiction an important test case for theories of self-control. And I discuss evidence that highlights both the unreliability of synchronic intrapsychic strategies and the crucial role that is played by diachronic and externally-scaffolded strategies in successful attempts at achieving abstinence by addicted individuals. Abstaining addicts are a paradigmatic case of agents who successfully exercise self-control, and they mostly do so by relying on diachronic and externally-scaffolded strategies. This, I argue, lends further support to an inclusive view of self-control. (shrink)

Technological artefacts have, in recent years, invited increasingly intimate ways of interaction. But surprisingly little attention has been devoted to how such interactions, like with wearable devices or household robots, shape our minds, cognitive capacities, and moral character. In this thesis, I develop an embodied, enactive account of mind--technology interaction that takes the reciprocal influence of artefacts on minds seriously. First, I examine how recent developments in philosophy of technology can inform the phenomenology of mind--technology interaction as seen through an (...) enactivist lens. Second, I show how an enactive account of remembering can improve operationalizations of the memory palace mnemonic through virtual reality devices. Third, I draw on virtue ethics to argue that an enactivist approach allows us to better grasp the morally shaping aspects of artefacts by looking at social robots. Fourth, I fend off an underlying metaphysical concern about enactivism by arguing that an embodied, enactive account is compatible with the multiple realization of cognitive processes. This principle is often seen as a crucial test favouring accounts such as extended functionalism over enactivism and I argue that some forms of enactivism pass this test as well. Finally, I conclude by considering what the future relationship between enactivism and functionalism may have in store for the study of mind--technology interaction. (shrink)

A paedophile is a person with a sexual attraction to children; some paedophiles commit child sex abuse offences. For such acts, they hold moral and legal responsibility, which presupposes that paedophiles are moral agents who can distinguish right from wrong and are capable of self-control. Like any other moral agents, paedophiles have moral duties. Some moral duties are universal, e.g., the duty not to steal. Whether there are any specific moral duties related to paedophilia is the topic of this paper. (...) I argue that the moral duty not to commit child sex abuse is universal, and the duty to reduce the individual risk of child sex abuse is specific to paedophiles. I further argue that any society has a moral duty to help paedophiles reduce the risk. Both duties provide grounds for moral judgement. Paedophiles should be judged not for their sexual interest but for their efforts to avoid child sex abuse. If a paedophile has an opportunity to reduce the risk of child sex abuse, he is obliged to do so. Unfortunately, societies rarely provide such opportunities and hence fail in their moral duty to paedophiles and children. (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)