Does weakness of will, what the ancient Greeks termed akrasia, exist? That sounds like an absurd question. Surely everyone has momentary lapses of willpower? We know we ought to do something – cleaning up our room, going to the gym, eating our vegetables – but choose to do something else. Among the ancient Greeks, however, some thought the idea incoherent. Plato, via Socrates in Protagoras, forcefully denied the idea. To Socrates, if you decide to binge watch Netflix instead of cleaning up your apartment, you are not having a failure of willpower. You judge that watching an entire season of CSI is more important than cleaning your place (though you may not want to admit that out loud). That argument may sound like splitting hairs, or uncompelling. Before you discard it out of hand, let us dig in a little bit.
Not all of antiquity thought akrasia, where you act against your better judgment, was a figment of the imagination. If you have a specific term for the problem, at least some people must think that it is real. Aristotle, ever the empiricist, took it for granted that most people thought you could act against your better judgment. His workaround was to say that weakness of will is an opinion which may only tangentially relate to the truth. I know that eating vegetables is good for me, and the right decision. However, I also know that a hot fudge sundae would hit the spot, and is just a better choice, thank you very much. Note, however, that Aristotle’s argument does not solve the problem Socrates points out – I am just being ignorant, not acting against my better judgment.
Is there a point to this distinction, or is it yet another example of philosophers’ being hopelessly pedantic? I believe it matters on two levels – firstly, how you go about overcoming weakness of will (perceived or otherwise). If weakness of will does not exist, defeating it is simply a matter of increasing your knowledge and reasoning. If it does exist, just knowing what is in your best interests may not be enough.
Secondly, and more importantly, there can be a significant moral component. If we move away from more mundane examples like cleaning your room or going to the gym, we can see why. Imagine you are a German citizen in World War 2, with a good understanding of the kind of atrocities occurring in a concentration camp. The regime gives you the option of working in a clerical capacity or being a prisoner. If weakness of will exists, there is an argument or at least some understanding why you might opt for the administrative job. If, however, Socrates is correct, you are committing a grave moral injustice. You are not having a temporary lapse of judgment; you have a broken moral compass.
The argument over weakness of will continues into modern times. The philosopher R.M. Hare (1919-2002) argues that if you truly hold that one action is correct above all else, it is impossible for you to choose another option. The one exception he makes is if you are unable to do the action. For example, you know that a balanced diet good for you, but if you are stuck on a life raft in the middle of the ocean, you take what you can get. Other philosophers were more amenable to Aristotle’s argument for akrasia. Donald Davidson (1917-2003) argued that where weakness of will happens, it is because you do not consider everything. You look at a specific subset of possible outcomes and/or actions. From there you make your decision, even if that decision is strictly worse.
There are also more modern interpretations that work along Davidson’s arguments. We are notoriously bad at probabilities. As a species, we suffer from hyperbolic discounting, any pain or discomfort that is even just a little in our future falls by the wayside. But the important thing to observe here is that none of these arguments contradict Socrates’ original claim – weakness of will does not exist, we are not wise or knowledgeable enough and blame lack of willpower.
One idea that at first glance sounds like a cop-out is to say that Socrates and company had unrealistic expectations of humanity. It is important to consider that a poor decision given imperfect knowledge does not constitute weakness of will. What is weakness of will is time constraints and limited mental bandwidth leading us to act against our better “ judgment”. This is a continuation of Davidson’s original line of thought, but it extends it further – we are incapable of being the saints and demigods that Socrates expects us to be. Weakness of will does not exist for Homo philosopher but is reality for Homo sapiens.
So what are some possible answers or tricks we can use to mitigate akrasia? One solution is to transcend our humanity, but until the singularity rolls in, that does not sound like a workable answer. Knowing what is important and what is frivolous is a good start, but that presupposes wisdom. Wisdom comes from good judgment, which in turn comes from experience. And experience comes from bad judgment. Still, reading and observing seem to be as good a way as any to see the bad judgment of others. Reflecting is a fantastic way to examine your own mistakes. I suspect there are also several smaller tricks you can exploit in human psychology to move towards a more disciplined life. In my next blog post, I will list out some things that I am going to try to teach myself guitar. I have no idea if they will work, and its something that will take time to manifest, but it will be a fun experiment.