NDLI: Non-psychological weakness of will: self-control, stereotypes, and consequences

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Doucet, Mathieu Turri, John
Copyright Year	2014
Abstract	Prior work on weakness of will has assumed that it is a thoroughly psychological phenomenon. At least, it has assumed that ordinary attributions of weakness of will are purely psychological attributions, keyed to the violation of practical commitments by the weak-willed agent. Debate has recently focused on which sort of practical commitment, intention or normative judgment, is more central to the ordinary concept of weakness of will. We report five experiments that significantly advance our understanding of weakness of will attributions by showing that the ordinary concept of weakness of will is less thoroughly psychological than the philosophical debate has assumed. We begin by showing that a sizable minority of people attribute weakness of will even in the absence of a violated commitment (Experiment 1). We then show that weakness of will attributions are sensitive to two important non-psychological factors. First, for actions stereotypically associated with weakness of will, the absence of certain commitments often triggers weakness of will attributions (Experiments 2–4). Second, the quality of an action’s outcome affects the extent to which an agent is viewed as weak-willed: actions with bad consequences are more likely to be viewed as weak-willed (Experiment 5). Our most important finding is that the ordinary concept of weakness of will is sensitive to two non-psychological factors and is thus much broader than philosophers have thus far imagined. We conclude by suggesting a two-tier model that unites our findings with traditional philosophical theorizing about weakness of will.
Starting Page	3935
Ending Page	3954
Page Count	20
File Format	PDF
ISSN	00397857
Journal	Synthese
Volume Number	191
Issue Number	16
e-ISSN	15730964
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2014-06-28
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Weakness of will Akrasia Self-control Resolution Intention Commitment violation experimental philosophy Folk psychology Philosophy of Science Epistemology Logic Philosophy of Language Metaphysics
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Philosophy Social Sciences

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
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4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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