Enkratic Rationality Is Instrumental Rationality *

Abstract

You are irrational in a distinctive way if you fail to intend to do what you believe you ought to do, such as when you believe that you ought to work on your paper but end up watching your favorite TV show, or when you believe you ought not to drink and yet pick up another tempting glass of wine: you are akratic. It seems as if two different parts of your mind fail to cohere with each other: one part tells you (not) to do something, but the other part resists. Since being in such a state of mind seems to be a distinctive form of rational failure, it has been widely held that there is a principle of rationality, “Enkrasia”, which requires you not to be akratic. However, the nature of Enkrasia yet remains unclear. Although akratic irrationality intuitively involves incoherence of some sort, Enkrasia seems importantly dissimilar from other principles of coherence, as a number of writers point out (Broome 2013, Reisner 2013, Worsnip 2018). Broome (2013: 174) writes, for example, “[intending] what you believe you ought seems very different from not having contradictory beliefs, or intending what you believe is a means implied by an end that you intend, or satisfying other requirements of rationality.” My aim in this paper is to offer a novel view of the nature of Enkrasia, according to which it is not an independent principle of rationality. Properly understood, Enkrasia is simply an instance of instrumental rationality, which is a matter of intending what you believe to be the necessary means to an end you intend. I argue that believing, all-things-considered, that you ought to φ implies intending that you do what you ought to do out of a set of alternatives, of which φ-ing is an element. If so, the content of your belief that you ought to φ (out of those alternatives) can be seen as specifying the means to your end, i.e., doing what you ought to do. If so, when you intend to φ in accordance with your belief that you ought to φ, it can be seen as intending what you believe to be the means to your end.