Kennett, Jeanette & Smith, Michael - Synchronic self-control is always non-actional

04/03/2009

Analysis Vol 57 No 2 April 1997

This is a reply to Mele's previous article 'Underestimating self-control...' where authors lay out a strong case for the unintelligiblity of synchronic actional self-control. One of Mele's arguments was that it was very difficult to formulate exactly what the 'truism' of intentional aciton is: is it really that 'whenever people do something intentionall, they want to do that thing more than they want to do anything else the believe they can do at that time'? Mele argued against it, using the example of non-conflicting desires being mixed together into one action but at least some component desires perhaps not being intrinsically stronger than other desires that weren't being acted upon (e.g. drinking tea while reading article A, even though drinking tea was less strong than the desire to read article B). Authors re-write this counterexample to say that really, one doesn't have the desire to drink tea, read article A, or read article B, but instead to read A & drink tea, read B & drink tea, read A, or read B, or drink tea. Thus the truism is preserved. (pg125)

The next thing authors do is take up the case Mele describes about trying to use a second-order desire to reduce the strength of your first order desire as a case of synchronic actional self-control. (pg126) Authors argue that what happens here is either a case of losing control (e.g. eating a sweet while reducing the desire's strength) or diachronic self-control (e.g. eventually reducing the strength of your desire for sweets so that, eventually, you won't eat them). (pg126-7) And diachronic self-control can be actional and isn't a contradiction of the truism. The authors generalized that all synchronic self-control is non-actional. 'They are non-actional because there is no suitable strongest desire to cause an exercise of actional synchronic self-control'. (pg128)

The last part of the paper deals with the logical possibility of actional synchronic self-control. The possibility for such an action, authors claim, lies in the fact that the connection between desires and actions is a causal connection that happens over time, and it might be possible for a stronger cause-effect event to take place in between an earlier cause and its characteristic effect. (e.g., you desire sweets but before it causes you to take action to eat one, an faster desire for health intervenes and causes you to refrain.) Authors reply by further discussing what a desire-cause must do: not only must it initiate the action-effect, but if the action takes place over time (as most do), then the desire also has to sustain the action. (pg129) Authors consider this mechanic to set up a dilemma: either you prepare to defend yourself from your desire for sweets, or as soon as the desire for sweets arises, your previous desire can't 'causally sustain' itself. (pg130) Either the self-control is diachronic, or it isn't self-control. Authors comment that if you agree that thoughts last longer than 'an instant', you might have to believe that actional synchronic self-control is logically impossible.