Abstracts
The following papers have been accepted for presentation at AAP 2013. If you've just submitted an abstract, it may take a few days to appear.
| Name: Dr Gregory Strom |
| Institution: University of Sydney |
| Title: Deviant Causal Chains, De Re Knowledge and Weakness of the Will |
| Abstract: I develop an account of akrasia on which akrasia afflicts an agent who has de dicto knowledge that there is some decisive practical reason for her to act in a certain way, but who also lacks de re knowledge of what that reason is. So however exactly her conduct accords with what the reason is a reason to do, it cannot be a response to that reason. So the agent can be caused by that reason to do what it is a reason to do only by way of a causal chain that deviates from the conditions under which the reason can inform the action, or under which the action can manifest the reason. Agents balk from doing what they know they should when they merely have such de dicto knowledge precisely because an action that fails to manifest this reason would lack value of a sort that they know such an action should but in their case cannot have. The phenomenon of akrasia thus represents practical rational excellence not just as a matter of doing what one has reason to do, but rather as a matter of safely transporting and transforming a practical reason into a doing of it. |
| Keywords: akrasia, moral psychology, practical rationality |
