Akrasia (/əˈkreɪziə/; Greek ἀκρασία, "lacking command" or "weakness", occasionally transliterated as acrasia or Anglicised as acrasy or acracy) is a lack of mental strength or willpower, or the tendency to act against one's better judgment. It is sometimes translated into English as incontinence ("a want of continence or self-restraint"). Beginning with Plato, a variety of philosophers have attempted to determine whether or not akrasia exists and how best to define it.
History
In Plato's Protagoras dialogue, Socrates asks precisely how it is possible that, if one judges action A to be the best course of action, why would one do anything other than A?
Classical answers
Plato's Socrates attests that akrasia does not exist, claiming "No one goes willingly toward the bad" (Protagoras 358d). If a person examines a situation and decides to act in the way he determines to be best, he will 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 and, therefore, actions that go against what is best are simply a product of being ignorant of facts or knowledge of what is best or good.
Aristotle, acknowledging that we intuitively believe in akrasia, devoted book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics to a more empirical approach to the question. He distanced himself from the Socratic position by arguing that akrasia occurs as a result of an agent's opinion, not of their desire. Since opinion is formulated mentally in a way that may or may not imitate truth, while appetites are merely desires of the body, opinion is only incidentally aligned with or opposed to the good, making an akratic action the product of opinion instead of reason. For Aristotle, the opposite of akrasia is enkrateia, a state where an agent has power over their desires. Aristotle considered one could be in a state of akrasia with respect to money or temper or glory, but that its core relation was to bodily enjoyment. Its causes could be weakness of will, or an impetuous refusal to think. At the same time he did not consider it a vice because it is not so much a product of moral choice but a failure to act on one's better knowledge.
For Augustine of Hippo, incontinence was not so much a problem of knowledge (knowing but not acting) but of the will; he considered it a matter of everyday experience that men incontinently choose lesser over greater goods.
Contemporary approaches
Donald Davidson (1917–2003) attempted to answer the question 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 end up denying themselves the pleasure they have deemed most choice-worthy.
Davidson sees the problem as one of reconciling the following apparently inconsistent triad:
- If an agent believes A to be better than B, then they want to do A more than B.
- If an agent wants to do A more than B, then they will do A rather than B if they only do one.
- Sometimes an agent acts against their 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.
Another contemporary philosopher, Amélie Rorty (1980) has tackled the problem by distilling out akrasia's many forms. 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.
Psychologist George Ainslie argues that akrasia results from the empirically verified phenomenon of hyperbolic discounting, which causes us to make different judgements close to a reward than we will when further from it.
Weakness of will
Richard Holton (1999), argues that weakness of the will involves revising one's resolutions too easily. Under this view, it is possible to act against one's better judgment (that is, be akratic), but without being weak-willed. Suppose, for example, Sarah judges that taking revenge upon a murderer is not the best course of action but makes the resolution to take revenge anyway and sticks to that resolution. According to Holton, Sarah behaves akratically but does not show weakness of will.
Legacy
In the structural division of Dante's Inferno, incontinence is the sin punished in the second through fifth circles. The mutual incontinence of lust was for Dante the lightest of the deadly sins, even if its lack of self-control would open the road to deeper layers of Hell.
Akrasia appeared later as a character in Spenser's The Faerie Queene, representing the incontinence of lust, followed in the next canto by a study of that of anger; and as late as Jane Austen the sensibility of such figures as Marianne Dashwood would be treated as a form of (spiritual) incontinence.
With the triumph of Romanticism, however, the incontinent choice of feeling over reason became increasingly valorised in Western culture.Blake wrote that "those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained". Encouraged by Rousseau, there was a rise of what Arnold J. Toynbee would describe as "an abandon (ακρατεια)...a state of mind in which antinomianism is accepted – consciously or unconsciously, in theory or in practice – as a substitute for creativeness".
A peak of such acrasia was perhaps reached in the 1960s cult of letting it all hang out – of breakdown, acting out and emotional self-indulgence and drama. Partly in reaction, the proponents of emotional intelligence would look back to Aristotle in the search for impulse control and delayed gratification – to his dictum that "a person is called continent or incontinent according as his reason is or is not in control".
See also
- Aboulia
- Acedia
- Categorical imperative
- Disorders of diminished motivation
- Ego depletion
- Executive functions
- Marshmallow test
- Higher-order volition
- Procrastination
- Self control
- Velleity
Notes
- Frank, Thomas (22 January 2015). "How to Study Effectively: 8 Advanced Tips - College Info Geek". YouTube. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021. Retrieved 30 April 2020.
- dictionary.com – incontinence
- Protagoras at Project Gutenberg
- Plato, Protagoras, 358d, Plato in Twelve Volumes, volume 3, translated by W. R. M. Lamb, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967., accessed on 1 September 2024
- "Akrasia and the divided will: The crisis of moral choice and the goal of human existence - 3 Quarks Daily". 26 July 2024. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
- J. A. K. Thompson trans, The Ethics of Aristotle (1976) pp. 142, 66, and 89
- Kraut, Richard (14 July 2017). "Aristotle's Ethics". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Thompson, pp. 235–9
- Thompson, p. 244
- Thompson, pp. 244–6
- Carl Mitcham, Thinking Through Technology (1994) pp. 263–4
- Ainslie, George. "Picoeconomics". Archived from the original on 27 April 2009. Retrieved 27 March 2009.
- Durling, Robert M.; Martinez, Ronald L. (1996). Inferno. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 178. ISBN 9780195087444.
- Dante, pp. 101–2
- Edmund Spenser, The Fairie Queen (1978) p. lxiv
- Claire Harman, Jane's Fame (2007) p. 126
- Mitcham, pp. 265–66
- Quoted in M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (1971) p. 251
- Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History (1939) v5 p. 377 and p. 399
- Jenny Diski, The Sixties (2009) pp. 120–1
- Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (1996) pp. 80–83 and p. xiv
- Thompson, p. 302
References
- Davidson, D. (1980) [Essay first published 1969]. "How is Weakness of the Will Possible?". Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 21–42. ISBN 978-0-19-924626-7.
Further reading
- Dahl, N.O. 1984. Practical Reason, Aristotle, and the Weakness of Will. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Wedin, M. 1988. Mind and Imagination in Aristotle. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Hookway, C. (2001). "Epistemic Akrasia and Epistemic Virtue". In Fairweather, A.; Zagzebski, L. (eds.). Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 178–199. ISBN 978-0-19-514077-4.
- Schorsch, A.J. (1992). Housing Policy and Common Sense: An Inquiry and a Method (PDF) (Thesis/Dissertation ed.). University of Illinois at Chicago. pp. 85–90.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Searle, J.R. (2001). Rationality in Action. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-19463-1.
- Stroud, Sarah (2008). "Weakness of Will". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
- Valverde, M. (1998). Diseases of the Will: Alcohol and the Dilemmas of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-62300-1.
- Wegner, D.M. (2002). The Illusion of Conscious Will. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-23222-7.
External links
- "Akrasia" by Seth J. Chandler, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project, 2007: An interactive computer model of akrasia based on Cooter, R.; Ulen, T. (2007). Law and Economics (5th ed.). Boston: Addison Wesley.
- Akrasia and Self-Binding.
- Daniel Wegner's site containing links to papers on conscious will and on thought suppression.
- Aristotle: Ethics and the Virtues (Weakness of the Will)
- Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII
Akrasia e ˈ k r eɪ z i e Greek ἀkrasia lacking command or weakness occasionally transliterated as acrasia or Anglicised as acrasy or acracy is a lack of mental strength or willpower or the tendency to act against one s better judgment It is sometimes translated into English as incontinence a want of continence or self restraint Beginning with Plato a variety of philosophers have attempted to determine whether or not akrasia exists and how best to define it HistoryPortrait in marble of Socrates In the Protagoras Plato has Socrates examine the concept of akrasia In Plato s Protagoras dialogue Socrates asks precisely how it is possible that if one judges action A to be the best course of action why would one do anything other than A Classical answers Plato s Socrates attests that akrasia does not exist claiming No one goes willingly toward the bad Protagoras 358d If a person examines a situation and decides to act in the way he determines to be best he will 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 and therefore actions that go against what is best are simply a product of being ignorant of facts or knowledge of what is best or good Aristotle acknowledging that we intuitively believe in akrasia devoted book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics to a more empirical approach to the question He distanced himself from the Socratic position by arguing that akrasia occurs as a result of an agent s opinion not of their desire Since opinion is formulated mentally in a way that may or may not imitate truth while appetites are merely desires of the body opinion is only incidentally aligned with or opposed to the good making an akratic action the product of opinion instead of reason For Aristotle the opposite of akrasia is enkrateia a state where an agent has power over their desires Aristotle considered one could be in a state of akrasia with respect to money or temper or glory but that its core relation was to bodily enjoyment Its causes could be weakness of will or an impetuous refusal to think At the same time he did not consider it a vice because it is not so much a product of moral choice but a failure to act on one s better knowledge For Augustine of Hippo incontinence was not so much a problem of knowledge knowing but not acting but of the will he considered it a matter of everyday experience that men incontinently choose lesser over greater goods Contemporary approaches Donald Davidson 1917 2003 attempted to answer the question 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 end up denying themselves the pleasure they have deemed most choice worthy Davidson sees the problem as one of reconciling the following apparently inconsistent triad If an agent believes A to be better than B then they want to do A more than B If an agent wants to do A more than B then they will do A rather than B if they only do one Sometimes an agent acts against their 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 Another contemporary philosopher Amelie Rorty 1980 has tackled the problem by distilling out akrasia s many forms 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 Psychologist George Ainslie argues that akrasia results from the empirically verified phenomenon of hyperbolic discounting which causes us to make different judgements close to a reward than we will when further from it Weakness of will Richard Holton 1999 argues that weakness of the will involves revising one s resolutions too easily Under this view it is possible to act against one s better judgment that is be akratic but without being weak willed Suppose for example Sarah judges that taking revenge upon a murderer is not the best course of action but makes the resolution to take revenge anyway and sticks to that resolution According to Holton Sarah behaves akratically but does not show weakness of will LegacyIn the structural division of Dante s Inferno incontinence is the sin punished in the second through fifth circles The mutual incontinence of lust was for Dante the lightest of the deadly sins even if its lack of self control would open the road to deeper layers of Hell Akrasia appeared later as a character in Spenser s The Faerie Queene representing the incontinence of lust followed in the next canto by a study of that of anger and as late as Jane Austen the sensibility of such figures as Marianne Dashwood would be treated as a form of spiritual incontinence With the triumph of Romanticism however the incontinent choice of feeling over reason became increasingly valorised in Western culture Blake wrote that those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained Encouraged by Rousseau there was a rise of what Arnold J Toynbee would describe as an abandon akrateia a state of mind in which antinomianism is accepted consciously or unconsciously in theory or in practice as a substitute for creativeness A peak of such acrasia was perhaps reached in the 1960s cult of letting it all hang out of breakdown acting out and emotional self indulgence and drama Partly in reaction the proponents of emotional intelligence would look back to Aristotle in the search for impulse control and delayed gratification to his dictum that a person is called continent or incontinent according as his reason is or is not in control See alsoAboulia Acedia Categorical imperative Disorders of diminished motivation Ego depletion Executive functions Marshmallow test Higher order volition Procrastination Self control VelleityNotesFrank Thomas 22 January 2015 How to Study Effectively 8 Advanced Tips College Info Geek YouTube Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 Retrieved 30 April 2020 dictionary com incontinence Protagoras at Project Gutenberg Plato Protagoras 358d Plato in Twelve Volumes volume 3 translated by W R M Lamb Cambridge MA Harvard University Press London William Heinemann Ltd 1967 accessed on 1 September 2024 Akrasia and the divided will The crisis of moral choice and the goal of human existence 3 Quarks Daily 26 July 2024 Retrieved 15 September 2024 J A K Thompson trans The Ethics of Aristotle 1976 pp 142 66 and 89 Kraut Richard 14 July 2017 Aristotle s Ethics In Zalta Edward N ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Thompson pp 235 9 Thompson p 244 Thompson pp 244 6 Carl Mitcham Thinking Through Technology 1994 pp 263 4 Ainslie George Picoeconomics Archived from the original on 27 April 2009 Retrieved 27 March 2009 Durling Robert M Martinez Ronald L 1996 Inferno The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri Vol 1 Oxford Oxford University Press p 178 ISBN 9780195087444 Dante pp 101 2 Edmund Spenser The Fairie Queen 1978 p lxiv Claire Harman Jane s Fame 2007 p 126 Mitcham pp 265 66 Quoted in M H Abrams The Mirror and the Lamp 1971 p 251 Arnold J Toynbee A Study of History 1939 v5 p 377 and p 399 Jenny Diski The Sixties 2009 pp 120 1 Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence 1996 pp 80 83 and p xiv Thompson p 302ReferencesDavidson D 1980 Essay first published 1969 How is Weakness of the Will Possible Essays on Actions and Events Oxford Oxford University Press pp 21 42 ISBN 978 0 19 924626 7 Further readingDahl N O 1984 Practical Reason Aristotle and the Weakness of Will Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press Wedin M 1988 Mind and Imagination in Aristotle New Haven Yale University Press Hookway C 2001 Epistemic Akrasia and Epistemic Virtue In Fairweather A Zagzebski L eds Virtue Epistemology Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility Oxford Oxford University Press pp 178 199 ISBN 978 0 19 514077 4 Schorsch A J 1992 Housing Policy and Common Sense An Inquiry and a Method PDF Thesis Dissertation ed University of Illinois at Chicago pp 85 90 a href wiki Template Cite book title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Searle J R 2001 Rationality in Action Cambridge MIT Press ISBN 978 0 262 19463 1 Stroud Sarah 2008 Weakness of Will In Zalta Edward N ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Fall ed Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University Valverde M 1998 Diseases of the Will Alcohol and the Dilemmas of Freedom Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 62300 1 Wegner D M 2002 The Illusion of Conscious Will Cambridge MIT Press ISBN 978 0 262 23222 7 External linksWikiquote has quotations related to Akrasia Look up akrasia or ἀkrasia in Wiktionary the free dictionary Akrasia by Seth J Chandler The Wolfram Demonstrations Project 2007 An interactive computer model of akrasia based on Cooter R Ulen T 2007 Law and Economics 5th ed Boston Addison Wesley Akrasia and Self Binding Daniel Wegner s site containing links to papers on conscious will and on thought suppression Aristotle Ethics and the Virtues Weakness of the Will Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics Book VII
