Agency, Akrasia, and the Normative Environment

I. Agency and Akrasia

Practical Akrasia – cases where an agent acts contrary to her considered judgments about what she
has most practical reason to do

Epistemic Akrasia – cases where an agent believes contrary to her considered judgments about what
she has most epistemic reason to believe

The ‘akrasia-agency’ connection principle: we can be akratic with respect to a class of acts/attitudes if and
only if we are agents with respect to that class of acts/attitudes

The Positive Argument The Skeptical Argument

P1. Agents sometimes act akratically P1. Agents never believe akratically

P2. [P1] only if we exercise some form of P2. [P1] only if we do not exercise some form
practical agency in acting for reasons. of epistemic agency in believing for reasons

Conclusion: we exercise some form of Conclusion: we lack an analogous form of

practical agency when acting for reasons epistemic agency when believing for reasons

Much recent discussion of epistemic akrasia focuses on the truth of P1 of the skeptical argument.
Goal of this talk: reject premise 2 (i.e. the ‘only if’ direction of the connection principle)

II. Agency and the Environment

Two potential kinds of sources for the absence of an activity:

Internal restrictions: The object might fail to exhibit certain activity because it lacks some of the
internal structure required for the activity in question.

Environmental restrictions: An object might fail to exhibit certain activity because something about its
external environment prevents the exercise of the capacity from resulting in the relevant activity.

Sample Case: The Unswerving Car

Internal diagnosis: the car lacks the structural steering mechanisms required for turning

Environmental diagnosis: the car is located on a track with no side-streets on which it would be
possible to turn

Notice: if we know there is an environmental explanation in play, the absence of an activity no

longer provides strong abductive evidence for the absence of a steering mechanism.
Question: what is the analogue of environmental restrictions for attitudes like belief and intention?

Hypothesis: For attitudes such as belief and intention involving evaluative commitments, the relevant
environment is the normative subject matter that the attitude is an evaluation of

Intention: restrictions stemming from the nature of the options being evaluating as good/bad

Belief: restrictions stemming from the nature of the propositions being evaluated as true/false

Sample Cases:

• Raz’s Sophocles Enthusiast

• Schroeder’s Surprise Party
III. The Environment and Akrasia
Epistemic Akrasia and the Environment
With the internal/environmental distinction in hand, in this section I want to defend 2 claims

(1) The arguments offered for skepticism about epistemic akrasia are better understood as relying on
environmental, rather than internal, sources

(2) Since the arguments offered rely on environmental sources, the abductive step from the absence
of epistemic akrasia to the absence of epistemic agency in the skeptical argument is ill-founded

Three categories of argument against the possibility of epistemic akrasia

• The Moore’s Paradox Argument

• The ‘Unity of Reasons’ Argument
• The ‘Evidential Nullification’ Argument
All three arguments rely on differences between the way propositions can be true and the way
options can be good, not on differences between the internal structure of believing and intending
Practical Akrasia and the Environment
A final worry: what if the lack of epistemic agency consists in the environmental restrictions on belief?
Moral Twin Earth: Imagine a world where the goodness of actions happens to be structured in the
same way that the truth of propositions is structured in the actual world. (i.e. where options good in
some respect are good in all respects, and no alternative to the best option is good in any respect.
Imagine we pluck a full-blooded practical agent from our world and place her in this new world.
Two important points:

• Akratic action is (plausibly) impossible for an individual embedded in such an environment

• An individual embedded in such an environment would not have lost her practical agency
Some Representative Arguments for Skepticism about Epistemic Akrasia

Argument from Moore’s Paradox

“Imagine that your beliefs run counter to what evidence and fact require. In such a case, your beliefs
will not allow those requirements to remain visible because the offending beliefs themselves give
you your sense of what is and your sense of what appears to be. Your re therefore denied an
experience whose content is that you are believing such-and-such in defiance of the requirement of
fact and evidence. That is why, as G. E. Moore observed, you cannot simultaneously think that while
you believe that p, yet it is not the case that p.” Pettit and Smith (1996)

Argument from the ‘Unity of Reasons’ Thesis

“In the case of what should be done there may be conflict within an agent. There may be competing
reasons conflicting for authority. But in the case of what should be believed, truth alone governs and
it can’t be divided against itself or harbour conflicts. It makes sense that something is, ultimately,
good in some respects but not in others…in a way it does not even make sense to suppose that
something is, ultimately, true in some respects but not in others.” Hurley (1993)

Argument form the ‘Evidence Nullification Thesis’

“When beliefs conflict, they weaken one another, since both cannot be true. When one belief is
favored by the evidence, the disfavored belief evaporates, since it has been determined to be false.
But when desires conflict, as with desires to pursue careers both in medicine and in ballet, the
conflict need not, and typically does not, weaken either. When one desire is acted upon, the other
retains a hold, experienced as regret…let us extend [this] observation from beliefs to the evidence or
reasons for them. When evidence is adequate… then we accept or fully believe it. Consequently, and
this is the crucial claim, previously conflicting evidence (i.e., evidence that supported a contrary of h)
is nullified as undermining h.” Adler (2002)

“Epistemic reasons can conflict, but all of them are about the truth of the propositions for or
against belief in which they are reasons. The weaker reasons are just less reliable guides to one and
the same end. …Because there is no possibility that the lesser reason for belief serves a concern
which is not served better by the better reason there is no possibility of preferring to follow what
one takes to be the lesser reason rather than the better one. The possibility of [practical] akrasia
depends on the fact that the belief that a practical reason is defeated by a better conflicting reason is
consistent with belief that it serves a concern which the better reason does not, and which can
motivate one to follow it.” Raz (2007)

“If one thinks the evidence establishes p, one must think that apparently countervailing evidence e’
can be explained on the hypothesis that p and so provides no grounds for thinking not-p to be true.
Should one nevertheless be swayed by the appearance of e’, one is being swayed by a consideration
whose probative force one can’t acknowledge in judgment.” Owens (2017)