Akrasia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article or section includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations.
You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations.
"Acrasia" redirects here. For other uses, see Acrasia (disambiguation).

Akrasia (ancient Greek ἀκρασία, "lacking command (over oneself)"), occasionally transliterated as acrasia, is the state of acting against one's better judgment. [1]

Contents

[edit] History

Portrait of Socrates in marble. Socrates was an early investigator of the concept of akrasia.
Portrait of Socrates in marble. Socrates was an early investigator of the concept of akrasia.

The problem goes back at least as far as Plato. Socrates (in Plato's Protagoras) asks precisely how this is possible - if one judges action A to be the best course of action, why would one do anything other than A?

In the dialogue, Socrates attests that akrasia is an illogical moral concept, claiming “No one goes willingly toward the bad” (358d). If a person examines a situation and decides to act in the way he determines to be best, he will actively pursue this action, as the best course is also the good course, i.e. man's natural goal. An all-things-considered assessment of the situation will bring full knowledge of a decision's outcome and worth linked to well-developed principles of the good. A person, according to Socrates, never chooses to act poorly or against his better judgment; actions that go against what is best are only a product of being ignorant of facts or knowledge of what is best or good.

Aristotle on the other hand took a more empirical approach to the question, acknowledging that we intuitively believe in akrasia. He distances himself from the Socratic position by locating the breakdown of reasoning in an agent’s opinion, not appetite. Now, without recourse to appetitive desires, Aristotle reasons that akrasia occurs as a result of opinion. Opinion is formulated mentally in a way that may or may not imitate truth, while appetites are merely desires of the body. Thus opinion is only incidentally aligned with or opposed to the good, making an akratic action the product of opinion instead of reason.

Donald Davidson took his stab at the problem[2] by first criticizing earlier thinkers who wanted to limit the scope of akrasia to agents who despite having reached a rational decision were somehow swerved off their “desired” tracks. Indeed, Davidson expands akrasia to include any judgment that is reached but not fulfilled, whether it be as a result of an opinion, a real or imagined good, or a moral belief. “[T]he puzzle I shall discuss depends only on the attitude or belief of the agent…my subject concerns evaluative judgments, whether they are analyzed cognitively, prescriptively, or otherwise.” Thus he expands akrasia to include cases in which the agent seeks to fulfill desires, for example, but ends up denying himself the pleasure he has deemed most choice-worthy.

He sees the problem as one of reconciling the following apparently inconsistent triad:

  • If an agent believes A to be better than B, then he wants to do A more than B.
  • If an agent wants to do A more than B, then he will do A rather than B if he only does one.
  • Sometimes an agent acts against his better judgment.

Davidson solves the problem by saying that, when people act in this way, they temporarily believe that the worse course of action is better, because they have not made an all-things-considered judgment, but only a judgment based on a subset of possible considerations.

One modern philosopher, Amélie Rorty, has tackled the problem by distilling out akrasia's many forms. In her article, "Where does the akratic break take place," she contends that akrasia is manifested in different stages of the practical reasoning process. She enumerates four types of akrasia: akrasia of direction or aim, of interpretation, of irrationality, and of character. She separates the practical reasoning process into four steps, showing the breakdown that may occur between each step and how each constitutes an akratic state.

Another explanation is that there are different forms of motivation which can conflict with each other. Throughout the ages, many have identified a conflict between reason and emotion, which might make it possible to believe that one should do A rather than B, but still end up wanting to do B more than A.

The word ἀκρασία occurs twice in the koine greek New Testament. In Matthew 23:25 Jesus uses it describing hypocritical religious leaders. The Apostle Paul also gives akrasia as a reason for a husband and wife to not deprive each other of sex (1 Corinthians 7:5).

[edit] Views on akrasia

Much of the philosophical literature takes akrasia to be the same thing as weakness of the will. So, for example, a smoker who wants to quit - yet cannot - acts against her/his better judgment (that quitting smoking is best) due to a weak will.

However, some have challenged the link. Richard Holton, for example, sees weakness of the will as a tendency to revise one's judgment about what is best too easily. So the smoker might one moment feel that she should give up, but at another that the joy of smoking outweighs the risks, oscillating back and forth between judgments. Such a person has a weak will but is not acting akratically.

Under this view, it is also possible to act against one's better judgment, but without weakness of will. One might, for example, decide that taking revenge upon a murderer is both immoral and imprudent, but decide to take revenge anyway, and never flinch from this decision. Such a person behaves akratically but does not show weakness of will. However, this view on akrasia falls victim to a normative view on ethics that does not account for someone's judgment leading him to pursue a "bad" course of action. Although the person holds certain "moral stances" (meaning normative ethical views based on western systems of belief) in high esteem--as, say, murder is wrong or revenge is wrong--at base the person holds other beliefs more strongly, such as doling out moral deserts or staying true to one's friends. With this in mind, the moral conceptual framework of the individual must be evaluated to determine the nature of the act. To show strength of will implies a pre-determined decision-making process that may or may not seem to be in conflict with generally accepted moral beliefs.

[edit] See also

Look up Akrasia in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Although this philosopher's technical term is usually employed in its Greek form (i.e., akrasia/akratic) in English texts, it was once the philosophers' English language convention to use the precise English equivalent of akrasia/akratic, incontinence/incontinent. However, it now seems that the correct, widely established convention is to use the term akrasia.
  2. ^ In his "How Is Weakness Of the Will Possible?"

[edit] References

  • Adler, J.E., "Akratic Believing?", Philosophical Studies, Vol.110, No.1, (July 2002), pp.1-27.
  • Arpaly, N., "On Acting Rationally against One’s Best Judgement", Ethics, Vol.110, No.3, (April 2000), pp.488-513.
  • Arpaly, N. & Schroeder, T., "Praise, Blame and the Whole Self", Philosophical Studies, Vol.93, No.2, (February 1999), pp.161-188.
  • Audi, R., "Weakness of Will and Practical Judgment", Noûs, Vol.13, No.2, (May 1979), pp.173-196.
  • Bovens, L., "The Two Faces of Akratics Anonymous", Analysis, Vol.59, No.4, (October 1999), pp.230-236.
  • Cameron, M.E., "Akrasia, AIDS, and Virtue Ethics", Journal of Nursing Law, Vol.4, No.1, (1997), pp.21-33.
  • Campbell, P.G., "Diagnosing Agency", Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, Vol.7, No.2, (June 2000), pp.107-119.
  • Chan, D.K., "Non-Intentional Actions ", American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol.32, No.2, (April 1995), pp.139-151.
  • Davidson, D. (Donald Davidson), "How is Weakness of the Will Possible?", reprinted at pp.21-42 in Davidson, D., Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford University Press, (Oxford), 1980. (Essay originally published in 1969.)
  • Gilead, A., "How is Akrasia Possible After All?", Ratio, Vol.12, No.3, (September 1999), pp.257-270.
  • Haggard, P., Cartledge, P., Dafydd, M. & Oakley, D.A., "Anomalous Control: When ‘Free-Will’ is not Conscious", Consciousness and Cognition, Vol.13, No.3, (September 2004), pp.646-654.
  • Haji, I., "Moral Responsibility and the Problem of Induced Pro-Attitudes", Dialogue, Vol.35, No.4, (Fall 1996), pp.703-720.
  • Hardcastle, V.G., "Life at the Borders: Habits, Addictions and Self-Control", Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, Vol.15, No.2, (2003), pp.243-253.
  • Hartmann, D., "Neurophysiology and Freedom of the Will", Poiesis & Praxis: International Journal of Technology Assessment and Ethics of Science, Vol.2, No.4, (May 2004), pp.275-284.
  • Harwood, Sterling, "For an Amoral, Dispositional Account of Weakness of Will," 27 Auslegung 38 (1992), reprinted in Sterling Harwood, ed., Business as Ethical and Business as Usual (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1996), pp. 378-384.
  • Henry, D., "Aristotle on Pleasure and the Worst Form of Akrasia", Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Vol.5, No.3, (September 2002), pp.255-270.
  • Hodgson, D., "Plain Person's Free Will", Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol.12, No.1, (January 2005), pp.3-19.
  • Holton, R., "Intention and Weakness of Will", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.96, No.5, (May 1999), pp.241-262.[1]
  • Hookway, C., "Epistemic Akrasia and Epistemic Virtue", pp.178-199 in Fairweather, A. & Zagzebski, L. (eds.), Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, Oxford University Press, (Oxford), 2001.
  • Jiang, X.-Y., "What Kind of Knowledge Does a Weak-Willed Person Have? — A Comparative Study of Aristotle and the Ch’eng-Chu School", Philosophy East & West, Vol.50, No.2, (April 2000), pp.242-253.
  • Joyce, R., "Early Stoicism and Akrasia", Phronesis: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy, Vol.40, No.3, (1995), pp.315-335.
  • Martin, M.W., "Alcoholism as Sickness and Wrongdoing", Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, Vol.29, No.2, (June 1999), pp.109-131.
  • Mele, A.R., "Akrasia, Self-Control, and Second-Order Desires", Noûs, Vol.26, No.3, (September 1992), pp.281-302.
  • Mele, A.R., "Akratic Feelings", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol.50, No.2, (December 1989), pp.277-288.
  • Mele, A.R., "Incontinent Believing", Philosophical Quarterly, Vol.36, No.143, (April 1986), pp.212-222.
  • Mele, A.R., "Is Akratic Action Unfree?", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol.46, No.4, (June 1986), pp.673-679.
  • Mele, A.R., "Real Self-Deception", Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol.20, No.1, (March 1997), pp.91-102.
  • Metcalfe, J. & Mischel, W., "A Hot/Cool-System Analysis of Delay of Gratification: Dynamics of Willpower", Psychological Review, Vol.106, No.1, (January 1999), pp.3-19.
  • Owens, D., "Epistemic Akrasia", The Monist, Vol.85, No.3, (July 2002), pp.381-397.
  • Peijnenburg, J., "Akrasia, Dispositions and Degrees", Erkenntnis, Vol.53, No.3, (2000), pp.285-308.
  • Rorty, A.O., "Political Sources of Emotions: Greed and Anger", Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 22, (1998), pp. 21-33.
  • Rorty, A.O., "The Social and Political Sources of Akrasia", Ethics, Vol.107, No.4, (July 1997), pp.644-657.
  • Santas, G., "Aristotle on Practical Inference, the Explanation of Action, and Akrasia", Phronesis, Vol.14, (1969), pp.162-189.
  • Santas, G., "Plato's Protagoras and Explanations of Weakness", The Philosophical Review, Vol.75, No.1, (January 1966), pp.3-33.
  • Searle, J.R., Rationality in Action, MIT Press, (Cambridge), 2001.
  • Shand, A.F., "Attention and Will: A Study in Involuntary Action", Mind, Vol.4, No.16, (October 1895), pp.450-471.
  • Valverde, M., Diseases of the Will: Alcohol and the Dilemmas of Freedom, Cambridge University Press, (Cambridge), 1998.
  • Walker, A.F., "The Problem of Weakness of Will", Noûs, Vol.23, No.5, (December 1989), pp.653-676.
  • Wallace, R.J., "Three Conceptions of Rational Agency", Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Vol.2, No.3, (1999), pp.217-242.
  • Wegner, D.M., "Ironic Processes of Mental Control", Psychological Review, Vol.101, No.1, (1994), pp.44–52.
  • Wegner, D.M., The Illusion of Conscious Will, Bradford Books, MIT Press, (Cambridge), 2002.
  • Wegner, D.M. & Wheatley, T., "Apparent Mental Causation: Sources of the Experience of Will", American Psychologist, Vol.54, No.7, (July 1999), pp.480-492.
  • Williams, B., "Voluntary Acts and Responsible Agents", Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol.10, No.1, (1990), pp.1-10.
  • Zheng, Y., "Akrasia, Picoeconomics, and a Rational Reconstruction of Judgement Formation in Dynamic Choice", Philosophical Studies, Vol.104, No.3, (June 2001), pp.227-251.

[edit] External links