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Fear and Integrity1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Frederick Kroon
Frederick Kroon*
Affiliation:
University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand
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Extract

I'll begin this paper with an autobiographical example — an instance of a common enough kind of case involving agents who are faced with making a choice they strongly care about, but who have tendencies that incline them towards choosing an option they prefer not to choose. Later in the paper, I apply some of the general lessons learned from this case to a philosophically more familiar example of a hard-to-make choice, and to the well-known problem the example generates for the idea of rational agency: Gregory Kavka's toxin puzzle (Kavka 1983).

Some time ago I did a bungy jump. Nothing remarkable in that (nor in the fact that I have, or had, a great fear of heights; the desire to overcome a fear of heights is common among bungy jumpers).

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 31 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2008

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Footnotes

1

I am grateful for helpful critical comments from an audience at a conference of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, held at the University of Waikato. Special thanks to three referees for the Journal, as well as to David Braddon-Mitchell, Stewart Candlish, and Richard L Epstein.

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