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An individual suffers from akrasia when they form an all-thing-considered judgment that they should do one thing (i.e. that they have strongest reason to do that thing) and then without changing their mind do something else instead. Sartre uses the example of an akratic gambler that cannot stop gambling even though they judged that they should stop gambling, and then say they cannot help themselves to highlight this feature of human nature.
How is it possible for you actions to come apart from you self-conscious commitment (e.g. I will no longer smoke, but smoke a cigarette anyway)?
This question goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. According to Socrates, it is not possible to do something that you didn't believe is the best thing for you to do, because you must not have believed it in the first place. According to Aristotle it is possible, but only when one's thinking is distorted.
A better form of the question may be, how is it possible for your self-reports to come apart from what you really believe?
An individual suffers from akrasia ...
How is it possible for you actions to come apart from you self-conscious commitment (e.g. I will no longer smoke, but smoke a cigarette anyway)?
'Akrasia' my a$$! There is no 'free-will', there are no 'choices'. There are satisfying 'feelings' of such, though...
When the egoic illusion ('belief') is threatened, it demonizes the threat (nothing new here, a common symptom of a threatened 'belief') with a definition of 'illness' or 'syndrome' or 'heresy'!
Pffft!
'Akrasia' my a$$! There is no 'free-will', there are no 'choices'. There are satisfying 'feelings' of such, though...
When the egoic illusion ('belief') is threatened, it demonizes the threat (nothing new here, a common symptom of a threatened 'belief') with a definition of 'illness' or 'syndrome' or 'heresy'!
Pffft!
So what you are saying is that you did not exercise your 'free-will' to write incoherently when you had the 'choice' to do otherwise. So who or what determined that you must respond with the words that you apparently did not choose?
So what you are saying is that you did not exercise your 'free-will' to write incoherently when you had the 'choice' to do otherwise.
So who or what determined that you must respond with the words that you apparently did not choose?
Who determines that the rain falls down onto the Earth?
The universe is as it is. I am an inherent feature. What is, is. Every moment.
No one 'determines' anything. It's all a done deal.
A better form of the question may be, how is it possible for your self-reports to come apart from what you really believe?
You may be a feature of the universe as it is, but you are a rational agent capable of making choices pertaining to your actions.
The fact that you typed a response means that you made the choice to do so.
You could have yelled out your window instead. You could have taken a walk.
You had the choice to do anything within your abilities.
You say you write what you must, but you chose to write it.
You cannot compare your existence to rain. Rain is not aware of its surroundings.
Rain does not have the choice to not accelerate towards the ground.
It is an object that must be acted upon. You have the capability to act on other things.
Not that that really has anything to do with akrasia...
Science refutes it.
Unless our arithmetic is to remain without application to life, we must somehow make more numerical continuity than we spontaneously find. Accordingly Lavoisier discovers his weight-units which remain the same in compounds and elements, though volume-units and quality-units all have changed. A great discovery! And modern science outdoes it by denying that compounds exist at all. There is no such thing as 'water' for 'science;' that is only a handy name for H2 and O when they have got into the position H-O-H, and then affect our senses in a novel way. The modern theories of atoms, of heat, and of gases are, in fact, only intensely artificial devices for gaining that constancy in the numbers of things which sensible experience will not show. "Sensible things are not the things for me," says Science, "because in their changes they will not keep their numbers the same. Sensible qualities are not the qualities for me, because they can with difficulty be numbered at all. These hypothetic atoms, however, are the things, these hypothetic masses and velocities are the qualities for me; they will stay numbered all the time." By such elaborate inventions, and at such a cost to the imagination, do men succeed in making for themselves a world in which real things shall be coerced per fas aut nefas under arithmetical law.
That is an unsupportable speculative assumption. You can never know if one could do anything other than what one does. All the evidence supports what 'is', and there is NO evidence that anything else could ever have been done. It's irrational.
... and what is such a refutation really worth?
(William James in "The Principles of Psychology")
Logical Positivism is the name we give to the stance that the only valid form of knowledge is scientific knowledge ...
So, if I have taken a half mile walk every morning for the past 4 years, and I did yesterday, and I did the day before, etc. and I decide to take a half mile walk again this morning, and I feel fine, and nothing is different, I don't know that I can do it until I actually do it? It is irrational to think I can?
Next time you eat, and you are about to pick up a spoon, and you think you will be able to do so, remember, it is irrational for you to think you will be able to do so.
If you are a man who credits science, you will find science tends to support no possibility of 'free-will/choice'.
I hate to jump in late, but this claim seemed easy to accept. On top of being easy to accept, the claim, to my knowledge, is untrue.
I don't want to pick a debate where there isn't one, so perhaps you could expand on this?
A scientist who is not a philosopher/mystic, or a philosopher who is not a scientist is a poor lowly technician at best. A very limited and stunted understanding, a very limited and stunted life.
That is not what I am saying. But philosophy without the grounding of science is, colloquially, crap! All the 'free-will/choice' philosophy, all the philosophy based on 'time', all the philosophy based on 'causality' is crap. Pure and simple. No matter how much it sounds intelligent, it is still 'intellishit'! It is based on base 'belief'.