Weakness of the will

How is it conceivable or even psychologically possible that rational agents sometimes appear to act against their own acknowledged self-interest? This issue, commonly known as “weakness of the will”, has contributed to much of our individual and collective failure to address pressing problems even if solutions are well-known and readily available. It has fascinated philosophers since ancient times.

Recent advances in psychology, behavioural economics and neuroscience have allowed us to approach the phenomenon from a new perspective. A novel account that draws on empirical research characterises weakness of will as a failure to persist in an intention in the face of temptation. However, contemporary work finds it dicult to determine whether this account should replace or supplement orthodox views. This is partially due to a larger problem: philosophers struggle to understand and conceptually connect the various independent strands of empirical research into self-control, willpower, delay of gratification, ego depletion, implementation intentions, delay discounting, etc.

Targeting both issues, the present work advances current research into weakness of will in two ways: first, it raises a novel challenge specific for orthodox accounts in phi- losophy. More precisely, I argue that they yield absurd results in dilemmas, and I show that this puzzle has repercussions for decision theory and epistemology. Second, my the- sis renders econometric and psychological research into delay discounting intelligible to a philosophical readership. More specifically, I explain why standard discounting models fail to capture core cases of weakness of will that are also the object of research in de- velopmental psychology. I thereby rectify rampant myths about preference reversals and discount functions in the philosophical and scientific literature.

In short, my dissertation connects empirical and philosophical work into weakness of will conceptually in order to tackle issues in current research and advance our joint understanding of a longstanding and problematic phenomenon.