ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we first discuss the nature of agential control and its types and degrees. We present an austere account whereby an agent controls something if this thing is a certain way because it's its being that way figures in the agents’ plans. We then turn to the nature of self-control more specifically. We discuss three prominent accounts of self-control. First, we might understand self-control as control of the self by the self. One fruitful way of spelling this out is that one exercises self-control if a certain (rational, reasonable) part of one's self controls a different (emotional, passionate) part of one's self (we also mention some historic and contemporary accounts that understand self-control this way). Second, we might understand self-control as one's acting on one's best judgment in the face of temptation (this enkratic conception of self-control arguably find its roots in Aristotle). Lastly, we present the idea that self-control is our means of combatting our tendency to irrationally discount future goods (George Ainslie's work on hyperbolic discounting is especially pertinent to this conception of self-control). We suggest that these different accounts may not be mutually exclusive and could be unified into one theory of self-control. We conclude this chapter by introducing further distinctions in our thinking about self-control. One such distinction is between self-control exercised against present temptation (synchronic self-control) and self-control exercised against (potential) future temptation (diachronic self-control). Another is between self-control as something that we do (i.e., we exercise self-control) and self-control understood as a character trait or a virtue (this is trait self-control).
