Davidson on Weakness of Will (Part 2)

In my previous post, I suggested that Davidson's bipartite account of practical reasoning is able to preserve the consistency of (P1)-(P3). However, there is a worry that Davidson’s solution leaves it unclear how the weak-willed agent can be said to be motivated by her reasons. This is the objection I wish to consider in the present post.

According to Davidson, the akrates acts for a reason, but not from her all-thing-considered judgement. Recall that in our example, Mr. Smith has three prima facie judgements—(c), (d) and (e)—each of which is relative to some set of reasons:

(c) Prima facie, having a third glass of wine is better than not having a third glass of wine, given r1.

(d) Prima facie, not having a third glass of wine is better than having a third glass of wine, given r2.

(e) Prima facie, not having a third glass of wine is better than having a third glass of wine, given R.

However, Mr. Smith (being weak-willed) ultimately decides to have a third glass of wine, against his all-things-considered judgement.

In the case of the continent agent, the action generating sans phrase judgement corresponds with the agent’s all-things-considered prima facie judgement. That is, the continent agent acts from her total set of reasons. However, in the case of Mr. Smith, his sans phrase judgement corresponds with (c) rather than (e). Hence, Mr. Smith (i.e., the incontinent agent) acts from a subset of his reasons, r1, instead of his total set of reasons, R. Herein, according to Davidson, lies the irrationality of the incontinent agent; she fails to perform the action judged best on the basis of all her reasons.

However, as limned above, there seems to remain a gap in Davidson’s account. On his picture, an agent’s prima facie judgement is always relative to some reason. However, an agent’s sans phrase judgement is not. This opens up a lacuna between one’s reasoned-based evaluations and one’s action generating judgements. Davidson attempts to fill this gap via what he refers to as the “principle of continence”:

(POC) Perform the action judged best on the basis of all available relevant reasons.

Davidson insists that (POC) is a principle that is binding on every rational agent, the violation of which constitutes the fundamental shortcoming of the akrates. Hence, Davidson believes that there is a normative imperative to always act from one’s total reasons. Strictly speaking, as worded by Davidson, (POC) is unable to bridge the logical gap between an agent’s prima facie judgements and her sans phrase judgements. However, we can equip it for this purpose by rephrasing it as follows:

(POC*) Do what is prima facie better, given R.

With the revised version of the principle of continence in place, the logical gap between an agent’s prima facie and sans phrase judgments has been bridged.

However, there still remains a motivational gap; a fact which the possibility of incontinence illustrates. If the principle of continence were sufficient to bridge the motivational gap between an agent’s prima facie and sans phrase judgements then any agent who was rationally committed to the principle of continence would be immune to weakness of will. However, such a conclusion seems implausible since it would imply that the akrates suffered from an extreme intellectual defect. Recall, Davidson invokes the principle of continence as a rule that every rational agent should accept as such. Consequently, to suggest that the akrates believes that she is not rationally obliged to act in accordance with the principle of continence is, by Davidson’s lights, to drum her out of the ranks of rational agents altogether

Davidson’s distinction between prima facie and sans phrase judgements drives a wedge between an agent’s reason-based practical assessments and desire-based motivations. On the one hand, one’s prima facie judgements are always relative to a set of reasons while one’s sans phrase judgements are not. On the other hand, only sans phrase judgements, according to Davidson, are expressive of one’s wants and therefore only sans phrase judgements can be said to motivate. The upshot seems to be that, on Davidson’s account of practical reasoning, one cannot be directly motivated by one’s reasons.

Another way to make this problem vivid is by posing the question: is (POC*) a prima facie or sans phrase judgement? There two considerations that tell against it being the former. First, it is not of the right logical form. (Although (POC*) represents a judgement about an agent’s prima facie judgements, it is not itself a prima facie judgement.) Second, if it were a prima facie judgement (assuming we were able to reformulate it somehow), it would be unable to bridge the motivational gap between Davidson's two stages of practical reasoning. (POC*) must implicate the desires of the agent if it is to serve the motivational role necessary. However, as we noted above, prima facie judgements fail to implicate the desires of an agent. On the other hand, (POC*) cannot be a sans phrase judgement since it does not consistently generate action (as the possibility of incontinence illustrates).

The suggestion that there is a motivational gap between an agent's prima facie and sans phrase judgements seems problematic since it seems to fly in the face of Davidson’s foursquare insistence that one is caused to act by one’s reasons.

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Ayer on Frege and Russell (Cont'd)

Part 3:



Part 4:



Part 5:

Ayer on Frege and Russell (Video Clip)

Part 1:




Part 2:

Davidson on Weakness of Will (Part 1)

According to Davidson, some agent a acts incontinently in performing some action x iff:

(D1) a does x intentionally;
(D2) a believes there is an alternative action y open to him; and
(D3) a judges that, all things considered, it would be better to do y than to do x.

For example, we can imagine an agent, let us call him Mr. Smith, who has the all-things-considered judgement that it would be better not to have a third glass of wine, and yet—freely, deliberately, and for a reason—proceeds to have a third glass of wine. Thus described, Mr. Smith would constitute an incontinent agent. Given the above definition of incontinence, the following three principles seem to be in conflict:

(P1) If some agent a wants to do x more that she wants to do y and she believes herself free to do either x or y, then she will intentionally do x if she does either x or y intentionally.

(P2) If a judges that it would be better to do x than to do y, then she wants to do x more than she wants to do y.

(P3) There are incontinent actions.

Davidson’s goal is to show that (P1)-(P3) do not contradict one another, and that we therefore do not need to give any of them up. He maintains that (P1)-(P3) only seem inconsistent because of a tacit assumption that moral principles take the form of universalised conditionals. The first step towards loosening the grip of this idea, according to Davidson, is to observe that judgements of the form ‘x is better than y’ that we make when deliberating about an action are always prima facie judgements. In the Mr. Smith example, the relevant prima facie judgements may be put as follows:

(a) Prima Facie, having a third glass of wine is better than not having a third glass of wine.

(b) Prima Facie, not having a third glass of wine is better than having a third glass of wine.

These judgements are prima facie in the sense that they fall short of the full-blown practical judgements that culminate in action. According to Davidson, prima facie judgements are always relative to some set of reasons in the same manner in which judgements of probability are always relative to a certain body of evidence. Weakness of will only arises in cases in which an agent has reasons for two mutually exclusive courses of action; what Davidson refers to as “cases of moral conflict”:

By a case of moral conflict I mean a case where there are good reasons both for performing an action and for performing one that rules it out (perhaps refraining from the action). There is conflict in this minimal sense whenever the agent is aware of considerations that, taken alone, would lead to mutually incompatible actions. . . Clearly enough, incontinence can exist only when there is conflict in this sense, for the incontinent man holds one course to be better (for a reason) and yet does something else (also for a reason). [Davidson [1969], p. 105, Italics mine]

Thus, by Davidson’s lights, Mr. Smith has reasons in support of both (a) and (b). For example, Mr. Smith’s reasons in support of (a) may include the fact that having a third glass of wine would be pleasant and it would ameliorate his depression. Thus, Mr. Smith thinks that in certain respects having a third glass of wine would be, prima facie, best. Let us call whatever reasons Mr. Smith may have in favour of (a) as r1. However, there are certain other respects in which Mr. Smith thinks that refraining from having a third glass of wine would, prima facie, be best. For example, we may suppose that Mr. Smith believes that having a third glass of wine would leave him feeling hung over and would jeopardise his job interview in the morning. Let us refer to the reasons that Mr. Smith has in favour of (b) as r2. Making good on the idea that both of Mr. Smith’s prima facie judgements are based on reasons we may restate (a) and (b) as follows:

(c) Prima facie, having a third glass of wine is better than not having a third glass of wine, given r1.

(d) Prima facie, not having a third glass of wine is better than having a third glass of wine, given r2.

To say that Mr. Smith has an all-things-considered judgement that it would be best not to have a third glass of wine means that when r1 and r2 are both considered, along with any other relevant factors, Mr. Smith arrives at the conclusion that not having a third glass of wine is best, given all the available reasons. We may express Mr. Smith’s all-things-considered judgement, where “R” represents the total set of reasons Mr. Smith possesses, as follows:

(e) Prima facie, not having a third glass of wine is better than having a third glass of wine, given R.

Since prima facie judgements are conditional, they are not of the right logical form to feature in a universal conditional. However, if we are to maintain that there are intentional actions (something Davidson takes as a truism) then there must also be unconditional judgements which culminate in actions. This leads to what may be described as a bipartite account of practical reasoning. According to Davidson, there are two categories of judgements that fall under the umbrella of practical reasoning: (1) conditional prima facie judgements and (2) unconditional sans phrase judgements. Only the latter implicates the wants and desires of an agent and thus, from a motivational point of view, only the latter can generate action. Since (P1) and (P2) both make reference to the wants of an agent, they must both implicate unconditional sans phrase judgements. The all-things-considered judgement of the incontinent agent (which figures in (P3)) are not connected to the agent’s wants or desires and is therefore an example of a conditional prima facie judgement. Such judgements do not culminate in action. Since the types of judgements that figure in (P1) and (P2) on the one hand, are different from the types of judgements that figure in (P3), on the other, there is no inconsistency in (P1)-(P3).

The 69th Philosopher's Carnival

is here.