Weakness of the Will

Come join us for an informal philosophical discussion. No prior knowledge or research is required, but an open mind is.

• Why do we so often fail to do what we ourselves think we should do? The most banal example of weakness of the will is probably eating a bit too many cookies. A more consequential one is endless procrastination: knowing perfectly well that a task matters, that delay will make everything worse, and yet continuing to drift from one distraction to another.
• Many ancient Greek philosophers, and many thinkers after them, found this puzzling. If you truly know what is good for you, why would you not do it? On this view, weakness of the will (often called by its Greek name akrasia) must be some kind of intellectual error: not so different from miscalculation, confusion, or failing to attend to what one really knows.
• Weakness of the will seems to be one of the core sources of human irrationality. A person may be impeccably rational in one sense: they may know the facts, understand the consequences, and correctly judge what the best course of action is. And yet their overmastering passions, appetites, fears, resentments, or cravings may still drag them toward something profoundly stupid. The mind sees the road; the rest of the person refuses to walk it.
• But perhaps the accusation of irrationality is too quick. Maybe procrastination is not always a failure of reason, but sometimes a perfectly reasonable rebellion of your body against entrapment. Maybe our "lower" impulses sometimes know something that our official plans refuse to admit.

Some possible discussion questions:

• If you could get "root access" to your brain and bypass weakness of the will completely, would you do it?
• When should weakness of the will be treated as a moral failing?
• Is addiction just an extreme form of weakness of the will, or is it something categorically different?
• Can shame help overcome weakness of the will, or does it usually make it worse?
• Can "discipline" be merely internalized obedience to someone else's values?