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Acrasia, Human Agency and Normative Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Michael Kubara
Michael Kubara*
Affiliation:
University of Lethbridge
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Extract

Is acrasia possible? Can you do wrong knowingly? Opinion divides. Each, to the other side, is a paradox monger.

At issue is the most felicitous set of concepts and principles to bring to descriptions and evaluations of human action. So to speak, such a set is an outline of a script for reality to play: it provides identities and relations in which individuals and events or whatever may be cast. Deniers typically begin with a set that rules acrasia out of court, recasting alleged examples in a different explanatory mold. Affirmers typically begin with plausible examples and look for a theoretical framework to place them in, taking those that disallow it to be absurd. But any denier, on legitimate dialectical grounds, can point out that such a reductio is a petitio. So it is a resilient issue, still with us after being bounced around so much in history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , October 1975 , pp. 215 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1975

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References

1 Protagoras, 358c-d.

2 Nicomachean Ethics, 1147a-b.

3 Romans, 7:17; see also Augustine, The City of God, Book XIV, Chap. 9.

4 Freedom and Reason (Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 79f.

5 “Plato's Protagoras and Explanations of Weakness,” Philosophical Review, 75, 1966.

6 A Treatise of Human Nature, Selby-Bigge, ed., (Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 416f, 609.Google Scholar

7 Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, passim.

8 Freedom and Reason, p. 79.

9 In the Symposium, where, ironically, Plato has him confess that Socrates has him persuaded that he ought not act as he does.

10 Nicomachean Ethics, 1095a.

11 “The Socratic Paradoxes,” Philosophical Review, 73, 1964; see Meno,77b-78c.

12 Broad, C. D. “Egoism as a Theory of Human Motives,” Hibbert Journal, 1950.Google Scholar

13 Op. cit.

14 Op. cit.

15 Treatise, Book II, Section Ill.

16 See Szasz, T. “The Myth of Mental Illness”, in Ideology and Insanity (Doubleday, 1970).Google Scholar

17 Hart, H.L.A. and Honore, A.M. Causation in the Law (Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 27Google Scholar; see also their criticisms of Mill, Collingwood and others.

18 “Action and Responsibility,” in White, A. ed., Philosophy of Action (Oxford University Press, 1966).Google Scholar

19 A Theory of Human Action (Prentice-Hall, 1971), Chapter 2.

20 I thank John Baker for this example.

21 Op. cit., P. 116.

22 Lately by Chisholm, R. “Freedom and Action,” in Freedom and Determinism, Lehrer, K. ed. (Random House, 1966)Google Scholar; he uses ‘immanent causation’ to entail the absence of prior transeunt causation. My usage however is that of Johnson, J. E. Logic, Part III (Cambridge University Press, 1924; Dover Publication, 1964) p. 141Google Scholar :“When we conceive of a plurality of continuants as in some way constituting a single continuant, then, although certain causal processes are correctly conceived as immanent relative to this unitary whole, yet they must be conceived as transeunt relative to the several constituents.” Chisholm says we are prime movers because we are immanent causes. I say we are immanent causes because we count ourselves as wholes and as first causes of causal chains — ceteris paribus.

23 “How is Weakness of Will Possible,” in Feinberg, J. ed., Moral Concepts (Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 99.Google Scholar

24 “Sexual Perversion,” in Rachels, J. ed., Moral Problems (Harper and Row, 1971), p. 78.Google Scholar

25 Philosophical Papers (Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 1446n.

26 For their criticism of earlier drafts, I thank Nate Brett, Steve Patten, and the editors of CJP.