ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out the case for the existence and importance of such self-control. It begins by sketching an influential but now suspect account of synchronic self-control. Whatever its merits, we suggest that it is unable to account for the full range of behaviors that ordinary people describe as exercises of self-control. It does not account, in particular, for the self-control successes of agents who seem to possess the trait of self-control. We argue that these agents succeed by organizing their physical and social environment so that they do not need to call upon synchronic self-control. Instead, they self-bind, alter the costs of giving in to temptation, or avoid temptations. We noted in chapter 3 that there were grounds for denying that such maneuvers amount to exercises of self-control. In response, we point to the functional identity of these ways of behaving: like the exercise of synchronic self-control, these techniques enable agents to secure delayed rewards when they conflict with highly tempting but less valuable more immediate rewards. We suggest that this fact provides a strong reason for calling the deployment of these techniques exercises of self-control.
