Akrasia

‘A weak incontinent fails fully to know that it is best (e.g.) not to eat this sweet.’ Is this Aristotle’s view? Is it a plausible account of incontinence? (2000 Q5)

• Yes, this is Aristotle’s view, although he has a comprehensive conception of what full knowledge involves, including a desiderative/motivational component. It’s a reasonably compelling account of incontinence, when understood in this way.
• Context
  • Protagoras / Socrates, denial of akrasia
  • Aristotle’s goal to vindicate the view that akrasia does exist, but also support Socrates’s view that knowledge isn’t something to be dragged around, a slave to the passions
  • Book VII discusses akrasia, builds on discussion of voluntariness in III.
• Aristotle’s view
  • Two kinds of incontinent: the weak and the impetuous.
    • The weak incontinent is the one who deliberates, reaches a decision, but fails to abide by it, because of their appetites.
  • To explain the failure of the akratic, he makes three distinctions:
    • Universals v particulars
    • Having vs using
    • Not using qua drunk vs not using qua sober
  • So, the akratic agent properly possesses knowledge of universals, but doesn’t have full knowledge of particulars. Specifically, they don’t attend to the conclusion in the practical syllogism along the lines of:
    • (P1) Unhealthy things ought not to be eaten
    • (P2) This sweet is unhealthy
    • (C) I ought not to eat this sweet
  • The reason they fail to attend to this conclusion, says Charles, is that the weak akratic doesn’t have the right desiderative attitude (in this case, adequate temperance): they say it but don’t really know it.
• Price takes a different interpretation of Aristotle, arguing that the akrates fails to attend to (P2), attending instead to an alternative minor premiss along the lines of “This sweet is pleasant, and pleasant things are worth eating”
  • On this view, you’d say instead that the weak incontinent fails to know that the sweet is unhealthy – and as a consequence (but not as the locus of the failure) doesn’t fully know that it’s best to not eat it.
• In either case, Aristotle’s view is that perceptual knowledge is what’s dragged about, and made a slave to the passions.
• What makes for a plausible account of akrasia?
  • (1) Explaining how it’s possible (contra Socrates)
  • (2) Distinguishing from vice (which it’s less bad than) and continence (which it’s worse than)
  • (3) Explain the blameworthiness and voluntariness of it
• Aristotle’s account does well on all three.
  • Intuitively, there is a kind of hard akrasia where people act against a firm deliberation. That’s what the weak akratic is doing, because they don’t have the appropriate desires to provide motivational impetus behind their decision.
    • Note that this isn’t the purest case of hard akrasia – the cognitive grasp of the weak incontinent is degraded. But it’s as close as you could get with plausible moral psychology.
    • If we take Price’s exegesis, though, the weak incontinent doesn’t really reach a conclusion at all. So there’s no space for hard akrasia.
  • It’s less bad than vice because the agent feels regret, but worse than continence since they ultimately fail to take the correct action.
  • Because the agent has the right principle, they can be habituated into virtue. So while blameworthy (since their appetites mean they act in ignorance but not from ignorance, like the drunk), it is curable.
• Two lingering doubts about the account
  • We could quibble whether the failure is in “full knowledge” or rather some desiderative component that’s not really knowledge. This doesn’t matter much substantively, though.
  • It’s unclear how the impetuous agent acts against a decision, if they fail to deliberate entirely – but that’s not a problem for the weak incontinent.
• Conclusion

Evaluate the extent to which Aristotle’s idea that we can speak of knowledge in different senses helps in explaining incontinence. (2017 Q9)

• Yes, it’s very helpful. It allows us to locate the failure of the akrates, and vindicate the endoxon that they do indeed act against their better judgement in knowledge of doing so, while preserving Socrates’s view that knowledge cannot be dragged about by the passions.
• Three distinctions
  • Universals vs particulars
  • Having vs using
  • Having-without-using qua asleep/drunk vs qua awake/sober
• The akrates does have and use knowledge of universals; but they have-without-using knowledge of the particulars.
  • The specific mechanism is the practical syllogism.
    • (U) Sweet things are unhealthy and ought to be avoided
    • (P) This cake is sweet
    • (C) I ought not to eat this cake <- the correct conclusion, the prohairesis
    • (P’) This cake is pleasant
    • (C’) I ought to eat this cake <- the action they end up taking
  • Disagreement about whether “the last term” that the akratic fails to grasp is the conclusion, or the particular premiss.
    • Price’s account (?) is that there’s only one syllogism, and the akratic fails to grasp the conclusion.
    • Charles thinks we have the two syllogisms as above, and they fail to properly grasp the minor premiss, which means their appetitive part which generates C’ wins out.
• It’s not merely verbal and us “speaking” of these different senses – these really do seem like metaphysically different types of knowledge / ways of interacting with it / of possessing it.
  • Give a few examples to illustrate; eg a priori vs a posteriori; possessing vs actively recalling; etc
• Some apparent difficulties but many can be addressed.
  • How does the akratic act voluntarily, if they lack knowledge of particulars?
    • Resolution: like how the drunk pays a double penalty, for their bad action and their drunkenness, which is in ignorance but not from ignorance.
    • Similarly akratic’s ignorance comes from their character, which Aristotle believes we have responsibility for by habituation.
• There are some parts left unexplained.
  • What happens with the impetuous akratic?
    • They don’t deliberate at all. So which parts of the syllogism do/n’t they grasp?

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• The question is flagging that they’re perhaps not differences in sense.
  • Universal vs particular is a difference in the object known. But both are knowing in the same sense.
  • Having vs using is a difference in the state of knowledge (dispositional vs occurrent). But the knowledge itself is the same.
  • This matters, because it determines whether Socrates’s view is actually saved.
    • If the difference really is one of sense, and the akratic knows only in a degraded sense, then Socrates is right.
    • But if the akratic has the knowledge and acts against it, then they do know and act against knowledge.
  • Arguably it’s the third distinction which saves Socrates, because it’s what lets Aristotle say that the overcome knowledge was never episteme in the full sense.
• [Hmm, I doubt this a bit. Either way we have an equivocation / ambiguity about the type of knowledge, etc. And either way the way to rescue Socrates is saying that one type of knowledge is dragged about, but not the full type. Whether that’s knowledge “about universals” or knowledge “in the universal sense” seems irrelevant?]
• Recall that on Charles’s account, there actually is a different universal-like premiss in the faulty practical syllogism.
  • E.g., (U’) Everything sweet is pleasant
    • And then the weak akratic mouths the conclusion (C) without properly grasping it.
  • For Price, we only have the first practical syllogism and replace the minor premiss with (P’) Everything sweet is pleasant and this is sweet
    • Price doesn’t have any space for hard akrasia – where you act against a fully-intact judgement – because the akrates doesn’t get to the “right” conclusion ever.

Do impetuous incontinents act contrary to their decision? If yes, how? If no, why are they acratic? (2019 Q8)

• Yes, they act contrary to a decision they have made at a previous point, about their general behaviour. This is the sense in which they’re akratic.
• Aristotle’s account of akrasia comes in Book VII.
  • The akratic is someone who takes an action against their better judgement, knowing (in some way) that it is suboptimal, and feeling regret after doing so.
  • He distinguishes between the weak and impetuous akratics. The former reach a decision (prohairesis) but it lacks motivational force, and appetitive desires overcome them, so they end up taking another action. The latter do not deliberate at all at the moment of acting, and instead rush headstrong into an action.
  • Example contrasting them: cake available.
    • The weak will decide: I’m not going to have any. But then eats it anyway
    • The impetuous will rush for the cake and eat it without really thinking at all.
• So the question is, how does the impetuous akratic meet our conditions for akrasia? Indeed, if they haven’t deliberated at all, are they even responsible for their actions?
  • One resolution could be to say that they never decide, but are acting contrary to a decision / judgement they would have were they to deliberate.
    • But this now dissolves the essential character of the akratic that they do have some actual knowledge, not merely counterfactually might.
    • Also, in that case it’s unclear how they would feel pain/regret afterwards – but for Aristotle this is what distinguishes them from the vicious person, and makes them apt for self-improvement.
  • A better solution: the impetuous akratic has at a prior point reached a decision.
    • We surely don’t think they’re someone wholly incapable of making any decisions; then they’d be more like an infant or non-human animal lacking in rationality.
    • In the cake example, maybe they had resolved before the party not to eat the cake. Or, they might have a general standing resolution to eat healthily.
  • [any difficulties with this / etc?]
  • [other solutions? Incl explaining why akratic without decision, or using the practical syll]

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• The problems with the prior-point-decision account:
  • It seems like it might conflate prohairesis with boulesis. A standing resolution to eat healthily is more like a wish for an end, rather than a decision.
    • Wanting to eat healthily isn’t really a deliberated desire about particulars up to us. So arguably there’s no decision at all, in that case.
    • However, Price thinks this interpretation works; the prohairesis signifies aiming at an end.
  • If there was a prior specific deliberation, then this solves the issue, but in many cases we wouldn’t have expected the impetuous agent to have done so.
    • Aristotle’s point is that they’re led on by feeling “because they have not deliberated” (VII.7, 1150b19-28)
  • Observe that it’s definitely not the case that the weak akratic decides after the fact, upon feeling regret, that they shouldn’t have taken the action
    • Aristotle says very clearly in III.2-3 and also VI.1 that deliberation and decision come before the action.
• Consider the possibility that the VII treatment is meant to only cover weak akrasia.
  • Aristotle’s description of the akratic having knowledge but not using it fits the weak akratic, but unclear how it would apply to the impetuous.
    • However, he does say that akratics act contrary to their prohairesis after he’s introduced the weak/impetuous contrast. So there’s textual support for it covering both.
  • The Charles/Price debate about single or dual practical syllogism weighs on this.
    • For Charles, “does not have it” → impetuous; “has it and says it but does not know it” → weak.
    • For Price, there’s just a single faulty syllogism, but then the weak akratic isn’t really explained.
• We could still explain why the weak akratic is akratic without them having decision:
  • They have a defect in the rationally-calculating part of the soul
    • The weak akratic deliberates but doesn’t act on it. The impetuous fails to deliberate at all.
    • Both share a failure of practical rationality, i.e. lack phronesis due to cognitive failures
  • They feel regret, so their conception of the good was sound; they have the right arche.

Could Aristotle provide a good account of how the incontinent can become virtuous? (2020 Q3)

• Yes, Aristotle’s theory of habituation can provide a reasonable account of how the incontinent might acquire virtue, although one substantial difficulty is explaining how following this path is within their power.
  • It would tell against Aristotle’s theory if he weren’t able to do this, since we do in reality sometimes observe incontinents becoming virtuous, and moreover it would be a rather unattractive feature if this moral development were deemed impossible.
• Book VII about the incontinent. Aristotle builds a taxonomy of akrasia, distinguishing between weak and impetuous subtypes, where the former reaches a decision but fails to heed it and the latter simply acts without deliberation.
  • Failure of the akrates is one of perceptual knowledge, due to bad appetites and insufficient power of their rational part of the soul to take control.
  • Contrasts the akrates with the self-controlled agent (enkrates), who takes the right action in spite of appetites.
  • And then there is the phronimos, who both takes the right action and desires to do so.
• This sets up a clear spectrum from less to more virtuous.
  • The phronimos is virtuous, and possesses full ethical virtue as well as the intellectual virtue of phronesis, by Aristotle’s unity of the virtues.
  • The enkratic agent lacks full virtue, because they do not possess prudence, and virtue is a state which decides by reference to reason. Their failure is not taking pleasure in the fineness of right action (Coope).
• The theory of habituation, introduced in II, can partially explain how an incontinent agent might arrive at virtue.
  • Aristotle thinks the incontinent is more redeemable than the vicious agent, because the former at least has the right principle in him. Aristotle is sceptical of the capacity of rational argument to change people’s views about the good, whereas he thinks that habituation can cultivate our appetitive desires in the correct way.
  • Following Burnyeat’s three-stage account of the acquisition of virtue:
    • (1) The incontinent agent could use the morally-neutral capacity for cleverness to arrive at the right action (which indeed they already do).
    • (2) They would take that right action, and in doing so gradually develop a disposition towards that (and enjoy doing so)
    • (3) They acquire full virtue, taking the right action and understanding why it is good.
• The primary difficulty lies at stage (2). We’ve already established that the defining feature of the akratic is that they fail to take the right action despite knowing what it is. So it’s unclear what enables the akratic to suddenly begin taking the right actions.
  • One story: they’re only occasionally akratic, e.g. fail with probability p. So the rest of the time they can follow through on their decision, and this allows for positive reinforcement.
    • Similarly for the impetuous akratic, though I won’t focus on them here: how do they ever deliberate?
  • But this is unsatisfactory in that it isn’t up to the akrates whether or not they develop virtue – and we want virtue to be within our control, so that Aristotle’s arguments based on responsibility, praiseworthiness, and endoxa work.
  • Another approach could be that the akratic exercises their willpower in such a way to allow their rational part of the soul to overpower the appetitive part. But this just punts the problem to why they’re able to exercise their willpower then, but not ordinarily.
• One resolution might come from looking to the real world. When our willpower fails, we often set up systems to help us not need to rely on it later, in a moment of strength. So the alternative approach does work as a descriptive account, but still doesn’t really explain how it’s in our control whether or not we enter that high-willpower moment to seize.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Remember to flag explicitly that the incontinent feels regret, and this distinguishes them from the vicious agent.
  • So that’s what enables the possibility of self-improvement.
• Could mention the “brought up in fine habits” point
  • Although imo this isn’t super relevant here – the akratic agent at least has the right conception of the end, which is the place where Aristotle seems most pessimistic about moral change.
  • Perhaps the window of opportunity has closed for the akrates, but Aristotle says they’re capable of improvement, so that doesn’t seem like a very important point to litigate.
• Could break up the two-stage path: akratic → enkratic seems like more challenging to explain than enkratic → virtuous; the second transition is the usual Burnyeat story.
• Can note the lawgiver: they reduce willpower demands so that taking the right action is the path of least resistance.
  • But obviously the law doesn’t pervade into all aspects of personal life, so it can’t help e.g. with how you start being generous, etc.
• Other ways the akrates could start taking right actions:
  • The influence of virtuous friends
  • Partial successes get reinforced (the akratic does sometimes follow through on their decisions)
  • Pre-commitment / situational engineering, as mentioned
  • Spirit could be an ally of reason: it’s more amenable to it than appetite, since it “hears reason but mishears”
    • By cultivating the right emotional reactions of e.g. shame, indignation, they can recruit spirit to reason’s side
    • Then they’ll have a non-appetitive motivational source against the appetitive pull

* ‘And since the last term does not seem to be universal, or expressive of knowledge in the same way as the universal term, the result Socrates was looking for would seem to come about.’ If akratic action involves ignorance, can Aristotle explain why it is voluntary? (2021 Q8)

‘Akratic action is compatible with knowledge, but not with prudence. Therefore, prudence is not a form of knowledge.’ Discuss. (2022 Q9)

• The argument is not generally valid, and neither does its conclusion hold in this particular case. Although it’s true that akratic action is compatible with knowledge but not with prudence, it does not follow that prudence isn’t a form of knowledge. There are multiple types (and degrees) of knowledge, and the key feature of akratic action is that it does not involve full knowledge of the sort required for prudence.
• First, observe that the argument is of the form “A can be K, but A cannot be P. So P cannot be K.” But this isn’t valid! Compare: “Being curved is compatible with being a shape, but not with being a polygon. Therefore polygons are not a form of shape.”
  • This helps us see where the argument goes wrong: the states of akrasia and prudence can both be compatible with knowledge but not each other, if they’re non-overlapping regions of the space of knowledge.
• But let us investigate the premises.
• The first claim, that akratic action is compatible with knowledge, is a rejection of Socrates’s view in favour of Aristotle’s position, that the akratic can possess (limited) knowledge.
  • Socrates, in Protagoras, makes the case that the akratic is simply ignorant of the good – at some level, it is hard to explain how someone could make a decision that they know to be suboptimal. Specifically, Socrates’s objection that knowledge is not a “slave dragged around by the passions”
  • Yet intuitively, it certainly seems like there are cases of akrasia where we have knowledge and awareness of the fact that we’re acting against our better judgement, and we’d like for our theory to be able to handle these.
    • Example: Oscar is overweight and has resolved to exercise more often. It’s Tuesday, at the time he designated for going to the gym, but he stays at home on the sofa, feeling guilty and regretful about this.
  • In Book VII of NE, Aristotle discusses akrasia, and his view is that it is compatible with a kind of knowledge. Three distinctions.
    • Having vs using
    • Universals vs particulars
    • Having qua drunk vs having qua sober
  • So we can say precisely what is the type of knowledge the akratic has: a degraded sort where they have, but do not use, their knowledge of particulars, like a drunk. It’s a failure of perceptual knowledge, but they do have knowledge of the good (hence Oscar’s regret).
    • Sketch out minor and major premises for Oscar, e.g. “exercise is good”, “it’s unpleasant, and staying on the sofa is pleasant”, “I’ll stay on the sofa”
• But akratic action is not compatible with prudence, certainly. Aristotle explicitly says that the prudent agent cannot be an akratic.
  • The prudent agent possesses phronesis – the intellectual virtue of practical reason. That is, they’re able to reason well towards good ends.
  • The akratic agent’s reasoning does proceed (at least for weak akrates) but it doesn’t deliver.
  • The akratic agent is worse than the prudent agent, because they don’t take the right actions.
• Prudence is a form of knowledge – it’s knowledge about universals and particulars.
  • As Aristotle says, prudence aims at a kind of “practical truth” – i.e. knowledge about what actions will be (and promote the) good and fine.
  • [What type of object does Aristotle say prudence is? ]

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Explain more about why akratic action is not compatible with prudence.
  • Unity of the virtues: each ethical virtue requires prudence, and moreover one cannot have prudence without full ethical virtue.
    • And specifically it’s worth talking about temperance – we can see that the akratic lacks temperance since they are overly affected by bodily pleasures, so then they cannot have prudence.
  • Coope move that it’s about failing to take the correct pleasure in fineness of right action.
  • Practical truth is truth agreeing with correct desire, i.e. needs to have motivational efficacy. But that fails in the case of the akratic, so they can’t have it.
• You could interpret the question in one of two ways: action-level or state-level
  • i.e. the prudent person never acts akratically vs the prudent state and akratic state are mutually exclusive.
  • Both are true. For the first one, you’d argue that the prudent person always deliberates well and they desire to do the right thing, so harmony among parts of their soul → they always do what they decide on (although sometimes change decision for the right reason, as Aristotle discusses – e.g. fineness of being honest is not akrasia, cf Neoptolemus)

How, if at all, does Aristotle’s distinction between impetuosity and weakness fit with his claim that the incontinent does not, properly speaking, have knowledge but is ‘[merely] saying the words, as the drunk says the words of Empedocles’ (VII.3, 1147b12)? (2024 Q10)

• First half of VII about akrasia.
• What is akrasia: take an action against your better judgement, etc.
  • Impetuous vs weak akratic: rushing into action vs going against a decision.
• Overall goal is to vindicate Socrates while preserving phenomena that there does exist akrasia.
  • Strategy: three distinctions when speaking of knowledge.
    • Universals vs particulars; having vs using; * qua drunk vs * qua awake.
    • The akrates is meant to have universal knowledge, but degraded perceptual knowledge, in the manner of the drunk (disrupted by the passions)
  • Present practical syllogism account.
• The challenge – weak akrasia works well, they fail to grasp conclusion fully, but impetuous is more difficult.
  • Aristotle actually [I think…] has a bit more to say in this passage: the akratic “either does not have, or has but mouths without knowing”.
  • So the impetuous might fall into the first category (cf Charles interpretation).
    • But without that, it’s hard to say how the impetuous is mouthing anything at all, nor what decision they’re really acting against if they’ve not deliberated.
• Alternative Price interpretation – but soft akrasia only.
  • Here, there’s only one practical syllogism and “the final proposition” that the incontinent fails to grasp is the minor premiss, replacing it with a faulty one.
  • Again, this is richest for the weak akratic; it’s possible that Aristotle wasn’t dealing with the impetuous one at all.
• Drunkenness connects to earlier discussion in III about blame – actions done in but not from ignorance.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Could go further still and use Charles’s two subtypes of impetuous akratic
  • The melancholic, who doesn’t deliberate at all – like someone asleep or mad.
    • Their reason is completely shut down.
  • The swift, who begins deliberating but is dragged away before arriving near the conclusion.
    • This is perhaps like a drunk.
• Or, you might take the weak akratic to be like someone who’s tipsy, while the impetuous akratic is blind-drunk, because their knowledge isn’t even operative enough to be mouthed
• To be more precise about the Price vs Charles debate: if the final proposition is the conclusion (per Charles) then the text maps directly onto the two types
  • i.e. “does not have” → impetuous; “has but mouths without knowing” → weak
  • But if the final proposition is the minor premiss, the mapping is less clean.