Weakness of Will

Weakness of Will
Author: William Charlton
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1988-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780631157595

Weakness of Will and Practical Irrationality

Weakness of Will and Practical Irrationality
Author: Sarah Stroud
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2003-09-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191531456

Among the many practical failures that threaten us, weakness of will or akrasia is often considered to be a paradigm of irrationality. The eleven new essays in this collection, written by an excellent international team of philosophers, some well-established, some younger scholars, give a rich overview of the current debate over weakness of will and practical irrationality more generally. Issues covered include classical questions such as the distinction between weakness and compulsion, the connection between evaluative judgement and motivation, the role of emotions in akrasia, rational agency, and the existence of the will. The also include new topics, such as group akrasia, strength of will, the nature of correct choice, the structure of decision theory, the temporality of prudential reasons, and emotional rationality. Because these questions cut across philosophy of mind and ethics, the collection will be essential reading for scholars, postgraduates, and upper-level undergraduates in both these fields.

The Weakness of the Will

The Weakness of the Will
Author: Justin Gosling
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2002-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134966814

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Weakness of Will in Renaissance and Reformation Thought

Weakness of Will in Renaissance and Reformation Thought
Author: Risto Saarinen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2011-06-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199606811

The question of why people act against their better judgment has always been prominent in philosophy. Risto Saarinen presents the first study of ideas about weakness of the will between 1350 and 1650. He shows how the understanding of human conduct and free will changed in this formative period between medieval times and modernity.

Akrasia in Greek Philosophy

Akrasia in Greek Philosophy
Author: Christopher Bobonich
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2007
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004156704

The 13 contributions of this collective offer new and challenging ways of reading well-known and more neglected texts on akrasia (lack of control, or weakness of will) in Greek philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus).

The Paradox of Power and Weakness

The Paradox of Power and Weakness
Author: George Kunz
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 1998-01-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780791438893

Offers an alternative paradigm for psychology, one that reflects Levinas's criticism of a self-centered notion of identity. Reveals the secret of an "authentic" altruism through a phenomenology of both power and weakness, and of the paradoxes of the weakness of power and the power of weakness.

Willing, Wanting, Waiting

Willing, Wanting, Waiting
Author: Richard Holton
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2009-04-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191607541

Richard Holton provides a unified account of intention, choice, weakness of will, strength of will, temptation, addiction, and freedom of the will. Drawing on recent psychological research, he argues that, rather than being the pinnacle of rationality, the central components of the will are there to compensate for our inability to make or maintain sound judgments. Choice is understood as the capacity to form intentions even in the absence of judgments of what action is best. Weakness of will is understood as the failure to maintain an intention, or more specifically, a resolution, in the face of temptation—where temptation typically involves a shift in judgment as to what is best, or in the case of addiction, a disconnection between what is judged best and what is desired. Strength of will is the corresponding ability to maintain a resolution, an ability that requires the employment of a particular faculty or skill. Finally, the experience of freedom of the will is traced to the experiences of forming intentions, and of maintaining resolutions, both of which require effortful activity from the agent.

Reasonably Vicious

Reasonably Vicious
Author: Candace VOGLER
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674044703

Is unethical conduct necessarily irrational? Answering this question requires giving an account of practical reason, of practical good, and of the source or point of wrongdoing. By the time most contemporary philosophers have done the first two, they have lost sight of the third, chalking up bad action to rashness, weakness of will, or ignorance. In this book, Candace Vogler does all three, taking as her guides scholars who contemplated why some people perform evil deeds. In doing so, she sets out to at once engage and redirect contemporary debates about ethics, practical reason, and normativity. Staged as a limited defense of a standard view of practical reason (an ancestor of contemporary instrumentalist views), Vogler's essay develops Aquinas's remark about three ways an action might be desirable into an exhaustive system for categorizing reasons for acting. Drawing on Elizabeth Anscombe's pioneering work on intention, Vogler argues that one sort (means/end or calculative reasons for acting) sets the terms for all sound work on practical rationality. She takes up Aquinas's work on evil throughout, arguing that he provides us with a systematic theory of immorality that takes seriously the goods at issue in wrongdoing and the reasons for unethical conduct. Vogler argues that, shorn of its theological context, this theory leaves us with no systematic, uncontroversial way of arguing that wrongdoing is necessarily contrary to reason.