ABSTRACT
Passionate akrasia was discussed because I think that while it displays the structure of the more general case of choosing to take the worse course, it has features of interest peculiar to it. Similarly, while that more general structure is exemplified in the special case of moral weakness, there are features of this which deserve separate discussion. Although the discussion of moral weakness has received impetus in this century from R.M.Hare’s prescriptivism (see Hare 1952: p. 169; 1963: Chapter 5), I do not propose to discuss that doctrine in detail. Briefly, prescriptivism is the doctrine that certain terms have both a descriptive and prescriptive element in their meaning; and among these some, such as ‘good’ and ‘ought’, are primarily prescriptive. There are secondary
uses of these expressions where the prescriptive element is moribund, but if someone sincerely asserts a non-conditional sentence such as ‘It is good to take a holiday from time to time’, or ‘One ought not to irritate one’s elders’, using the words ‘good’ and ‘ought’ in their primary senses, then they are committing themselves to prescriptions in favour of or against holidays or irritating one’s elders. If the sentence bears on some actions immediately doable by the agent and appropriate to do, then the agent will proceed to act, unless prevented. This seems to give rise to the old Socratic paradox, but as Hare points out, since there are many gradations from using the terms with their full primary meaning, it is possible to accommodate a range of cases where the agent in some sense does something other than what they think they ought
This view obviously involves theses about meaning, and ones which are very complex. For present purposes, however, it seems not to matter whether or not Hare is right. Suppose he is. Then someone who asserts ‘One ought to pay one’s debts’ with its full primary meaning, and sees that it applies to a current situation where they are being asked to repay, must on Hare’s thesis be taking the obligation of debt repayment as their reason for deciding what to do. ‘I ought to pay this debt now’ becomes in effect the expression of a decision to pay it now, and failure to do so would give us an example of just the puzzlement discussed in Chapters VIII and IX. Suppose he is wrong. It remains that whether or not such cases are examples of using such expressions in their primary sense, we do on occasion use expressions of the form ‘It would be best to x’ or ‘I ought to y’ to declare our decision in favour of x or y. It is such occasions that give rise to the puzzlement discussed in Chapters VIII and IX. It seems to me, therefore, that the shape of one’s disquiet about akrasia retains the same form whether or not the prescriptivist thesis is right. (For an extended discussion of prescriptivism, see Dunn 1987.)
Purposivism
Matters are somewhat similar, I think, with Charlton’s purposivism (Charlton 1988), which he puts forward to take the place of prescriptivism or emotivism. The basic idea is to see thinking it good to do x as taking the doing of x as an objective in a fairly weak sense which need involve doing no more than indulging in some exploratory thinking about doing x. To think that it would be better to do x than not to do it, however, is to take the doing of x as an object of pursuit, the
not doing it as an object of aversion; and so the deliberate refusal to do x becomes, to put it mildly, problematic. It becomes problematic precisely because the agent is being supposed to take the doing of x as their objective in doing what they do. Thinking that it would, all things considered, be better to do x, or that it would be pleasanter not to do x, both fall short of thinking that it would be better to do x than not to do it, and so no problem arises here. It is therefore perfectly possible for us to think one course, on the whole, better, but deliberately choose another; but impossible for us to choose a course which we think it would be better not to take. (See Charlton 1988: pp. 87-91.)
Clearly the impossibility of akrasia comes from the fact of the connection between thinking it better to do x than not and taking x as one’s objective. Pseudo-akratic cases of acting contrary to what one thinks it, all things considered, better to do can be allowed for, but there does not seem to be any room for what Hare allows: not quite genuine or full-blooded uses. Charlton can, indeed, allow for apparently sincere declarations that something is best; but the test of whether the agent really thinks that best seems just to be whether, if they act intentionally, they act in accordance with the judgment. If purposivism is right, therefore, the problem for akrasia arises where I have claimed that it should: it is a question of how close a subject can come to thinking it better to do x than not to do it, so as to seem to think it, without actually taking x as their objective. There will be the allied question of whether an agent can think that they think it better to do x than not, while being mistaken. If purposivism is wrong, it remains that sometimes people use declarations that it is better to do x than not, to signal that they are decided in favour of doing x rather than not. The structure of the problem remains the same, therefore, whether or not purposivism is true.
