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weakness of will

New Year resolutions and tripartite human nature

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Written by Charles Foster

‘I do not understand my own actions’, grumbled St. Paul. ‘For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do….’1

That’s a fair summary of the evidence about the fate of New Year’s resolutions. The University of Hertfordshire psychologist, Richard Wiseman, found that only 10% of New Year’s resolutions succeed. Most of them are abandoned by 23 January.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/why-we-make-and-break-our-new-years-resolutions-and-how-to-stick-to-them-9951829.htmlRead More »New Year resolutions and tripartite human nature

Neil Levy on Addiction

In a fascinating paper presented at the St Cross Ethics Seminar in Oxford, on 27 March 2014, Professor Neil Levy (Oxford and Melbourne) sought to solve the following puzzle about addicts: on the one hand, addicts are thought to lack control, but on the other they appear to engage in the kind of reason-responsive behaviour typical of rational agents (for example, many addicts for a small financial incentive will avoid the objects to which they are addicted).

Levy’s central claim was that addicts do lack control, but that this lack of control consists in a lack of control over belief-formation, leading to a change of mind – or ‘judgement-shift’. So addicts are rational in so far as they are acting on the basis of their current beliefs about what is best for them. Read More »Neil Levy on Addiction