Pub Date : 2020-09-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0006
A. Sel, Joshua Shepherd
This chapter first considers what it would take to offer a scientific account of self-control. It then focuses on one aspect of this larger project, by focusing on a capacity central to many exercises of self-control, namely, inhibitory control. The chapter discusses recent research on inhibitory control, as well as how this research bears on the continued study of the sensitivity of inhibitory control mechanisms to an agent’s intentions.
{"title":"Inhibitory Control and Self-Control","authors":"A. Sel, Joshua Shepherd","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter first considers what it would take to offer a scientific account of self-control. It then focuses on one aspect of this larger project, by focusing on a capacity central to many exercises of self-control, namely, inhibitory control. The chapter discusses recent research on inhibitory control, as well as how this research bears on the continued study of the sensitivity of inhibitory control mechanisms to an agent’s intentions.","PeriodicalId":413819,"journal":{"name":"Surrounding Self-Control","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121564234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0015
K. Hawley
When one is struggling to get motivated, one sometimes turns to social accountability strategies: telling others about one’s plans, or even promising to stick to them, in the hope that publicity will help achieve one’s goals. In this chapter, the author distinguishes four different strategies for social accountability, which vary in the content and strength of the commitments they involve. The chapter then explores different ways these strategies put one’s own interests, and those of others, on the line. When other people’s interests are at stake, this raises ethical questions about whether it is permissible to risk harm to others in order to achieve one’s own goals. The chapter shows how this can fruitfully be thought of as a problem within the morality of risk imposition. But, finally, it also argues that thinking in terms of risk imposition does not capture everything one cares about in the ethics of social accountability.
{"title":"Achieving Goals by Imposing Risk","authors":"K. Hawley","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0015","url":null,"abstract":"When one is struggling to get motivated, one sometimes turns to social accountability strategies: telling others about one’s plans, or even promising to stick to them, in the hope that publicity will help achieve one’s goals. In this chapter, the author distinguishes four different strategies for social accountability, which vary in the content and strength of the commitments they involve. The chapter then explores different ways these strategies put one’s own interests, and those of others, on the line. When other people’s interests are at stake, this raises ethical questions about whether it is permissible to risk harm to others in order to achieve one’s own goals. The chapter shows how this can fruitfully be thought of as a problem within the morality of risk imposition. But, finally, it also argues that thinking in terms of risk imposition does not capture everything one cares about in the ethics of social accountability.","PeriodicalId":413819,"journal":{"name":"Surrounding Self-Control","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125348192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0002
R. Baumeister, Andrew J. Vonasch, Hallgeir Sjåstad
Abundant evidence suggests that people exert self-control as if the exertions consumed a limited energy resource, akin to the folk notion of willpower. After exerting self-control, subsequent efforts at self-control are often relatively feeble and unsuccessful. The state of low willpower is called ego depletion. Studies on ego depletion have shown effects on intelligent thought (which is impaired during ego depletion), decision-making (depleted persons shift to more superficial ways of choosing, or prefer to avoid making choices), and passivity (depleted people become more passive). The psychological processes of self-regulation and ego depletion are linked to physical energy, as indicated by evidence that hunger makes people more short-sighted, and that food intake tends to counteract ego depletion. Depletion increases in response to interpersonal conflict, poor sleep, and confronting uncertainty. In daily life, good self-control is linked to avoiding problems and temptations, low stress, and higher happiness.
{"title":"The Long Reach of Self-Control","authors":"R. Baumeister, Andrew J. Vonasch, Hallgeir Sjåstad","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abundant evidence suggests that people exert self-control as if the exertions consumed a limited energy resource, akin to the folk notion of willpower. After exerting self-control, subsequent efforts at self-control are often relatively feeble and unsuccessful. The state of low willpower is called ego depletion. Studies on ego depletion have shown effects on intelligent thought (which is impaired during ego depletion), decision-making (depleted persons shift to more superficial ways of choosing, or prefer to avoid making choices), and passivity (depleted people become more passive). The psychological processes of self-regulation and ego depletion are linked to physical energy, as indicated by evidence that hunger makes people more short-sighted, and that food intake tends to counteract ego depletion. Depletion increases in response to interpersonal conflict, poor sleep, and confronting uncertainty. In daily life, good self-control is linked to avoiding problems and temptations, low stress, and higher happiness.","PeriodicalId":413819,"journal":{"name":"Surrounding Self-Control","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116261380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0007
Andrea Scarantino
Self-control has been understood since Ancient Greece as reason winning in the battle with emotion. This is an idea that contemporary “divided mind” accounts of self-control take for granted, assuming that emotions are a threat to one’s ability to do what one judges best, all things considered. This historically influential picture neglects the emotions’ potential as tools for self-control. This chapter argues that emotions can help self-control by virtue of how they motivate, by virtue of how they feel, and by virtue of how they evaluate the self. At the same time, each of these three channels can also lead emotions to undermine self-control. Thus, whereas a “divided mind” account recommends fostering self-control by preventing emotions from interfering, the author recommends fostering self-control by developing affective strategies that harness the distinctive powers of emotions to work for self-control rather than against it.
{"title":"Exploring the Roles of Emotions in Self-Control","authors":"Andrea Scarantino","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Self-control has been understood since Ancient Greece as reason winning in the battle with emotion. This is an idea that contemporary “divided mind” accounts of self-control take for granted, assuming that emotions are a threat to one’s ability to do what one judges best, all things considered. This historically influential picture neglects the emotions’ potential as tools for self-control. This chapter argues that emotions can help self-control by virtue of how they motivate, by virtue of how they feel, and by virtue of how they evaluate the self. At the same time, each of these three channels can also lead emotions to undermine self-control. Thus, whereas a “divided mind” account recommends fostering self-control by preventing emotions from interfering, the author recommends fostering self-control by developing affective strategies that harness the distinctive powers of emotions to work for self-control rather than against it.","PeriodicalId":413819,"journal":{"name":"Surrounding Self-Control","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126228573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0013
Bence Nanay
An important recent distinction in the empirical literature about self-control is between resisting and avoiding temptations. While there is evidence that avoiding temptations is the more efficient method of the two, philosophers have focused almost exclusively on resisting temptations. The aim of this chapter is to examine what the ability to avoid temptations depends on and to argue that it depends primarily on how fragmented one’s mind is: on the inconsistencies in one’s mental setup. The fragmentation of mind requires a significant amount of mental effort to conceal from oneself and this leads to a weakened ability to resist temptations.
{"title":"Resist or Yield?","authors":"Bence Nanay","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"An important recent distinction in the empirical literature about self-control is between resisting and avoiding temptations. While there is evidence that avoiding temptations is the more efficient method of the two, philosophers have focused almost exclusively on resisting temptations. The aim of this chapter is to examine what the ability to avoid temptations depends on and to argue that it depends primarily on how fragmented one’s mind is: on the inconsistencies in one’s mental setup. The fragmentation of mind requires a significant amount of mental effort to conceal from oneself and this leads to a weakened ability to resist temptations.","PeriodicalId":413819,"journal":{"name":"Surrounding Self-Control","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129729707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0012
D. Debus
This chapter considers the value of one’s ability to “shape one’s own mental life”; more specifically, it considers axiological implications of the claim that subjects sometimes can and do engage in “mental self-regulation,” that is, that subjects sometimes can be, and sometimes are, actively involved with their own mental lives in a goal-directed way. The phenomenon of mental self-regulation is interesting from a philosophical perspective because it seems crucial to understand this phenomenon in any attempt to understand the nature of one’s mental life fully. However, one’s ability to engage in mental self-regulation is also of great interest from an axiological perspective, and the chapter considers the phenomenon from this latter perspective. It asks in which respects a subject’s ability of mental self-regulation might be of value.
{"title":"Shaping Our Mental Lives","authors":"D. Debus","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers the value of one’s ability to “shape one’s own mental life”; more specifically, it considers axiological implications of the claim that subjects sometimes can and do engage in “mental self-regulation,” that is, that subjects sometimes can be, and sometimes are, actively involved with their own mental lives in a goal-directed way. The phenomenon of mental self-regulation is interesting from a philosophical perspective because it seems crucial to understand this phenomenon in any attempt to understand the nature of one’s mental life fully. However, one’s ability to engage in mental self-regulation is also of great interest from an axiological perspective, and the chapter considers the phenomenon from this latter perspective. It asks in which respects a subject’s ability of mental self-regulation might be of value.","PeriodicalId":413819,"journal":{"name":"Surrounding Self-Control","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129739309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0021
Manuel Vargas
Self-control can involve more than just impulse inhibition. For some notions of self-control, especially those concerned with moral responsibility, sensitivity to reasons is the idea central to self-control. For these accounts, it is not obvious how to capture the idea that people are responsible for negligence and other instances of apparently non-volitional culpability. One blames people for failing to take into account some important moral consideration in deciding what to do, for failing to remember some commitment, and for failing to recognize situationally relevant things. This chapter proposes an account of this broader notion of self-control, one that solves the problem of control in non-volitional culpability cases, and that retains the idea that people in such cases could have complied with the demands of morality.
{"title":"Negligence and Social Self-Governance","authors":"Manuel Vargas","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0021","url":null,"abstract":"Self-control can involve more than just impulse inhibition. For some notions of self-control, especially those concerned with moral responsibility, sensitivity to reasons is the idea central to self-control. For these accounts, it is not obvious how to capture the idea that people are responsible for negligence and other instances of apparently non-volitional culpability. One blames people for failing to take into account some important moral consideration in deciding what to do, for failing to remember some commitment, and for failing to recognize situationally relevant things. This chapter proposes an account of this broader notion of self-control, one that solves the problem of control in non-volitional culpability cases, and that retains the idea that people in such cases could have complied with the demands of morality.","PeriodicalId":413819,"journal":{"name":"Surrounding Self-Control","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128818755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0003
Adrienne O Wente, Xin Zhao, A. Gopnik, C. Kang, T. Kushnir
Self-control is quite difficult—sometimes people are successful, but frequently they are not. So why do people believe that they can choose, by their own free will, to exercise self-control? This chapter summarizes recent research exploring the cultural and developmental origins of beliefs about self-control and free will. It discusses how two factors contribute to the development of children’s beliefs about self-control: culture and first-person experiences. The authors’ studies of four- to eight-year-old children (N = 441; mean age = 5.96 years; range = 3.92–8.90 years) from China, Singapore, Peru, and the United States indicate that self-control beliefs differ across cultures, and that, comparatively, US children hold intuitions that they can freely choose to exercise self-control. Additionally, evidence indicates that the experience of self-control failure impacts beliefs about free will in US children, but that these experience effects are not culturally universal.
{"title":"The Developmental and Cultural Origins of Our Beliefs about Self-Control","authors":"Adrienne O Wente, Xin Zhao, A. Gopnik, C. Kang, T. Kushnir","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Self-control is quite difficult—sometimes people are successful, but frequently they are not. So why do people believe that they can choose, by their own free will, to exercise self-control? This chapter summarizes recent research exploring the cultural and developmental origins of beliefs about self-control and free will. It discusses how two factors contribute to the development of children’s beliefs about self-control: culture and first-person experiences. The authors’ studies of four- to eight-year-old children (N = 441; mean age = 5.96 years; range = 3.92–8.90 years) from China, Singapore, Peru, and the United States indicate that self-control beliefs differ across cultures, and that, comparatively, US children hold intuitions that they can freely choose to exercise self-control. Additionally, evidence indicates that the experience of self-control failure impacts beliefs about free will in US children, but that these experience effects are not culturally universal.","PeriodicalId":413819,"journal":{"name":"Surrounding Self-Control","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128301586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0022
Ryan Cummings, A. Roskies
Frankfurt’s compatibilist account of free will considers an individual to be free when her first- and second-order volitions align. This structural account of the will, this chapter argues, fails to engage with the dynamics of will, resulting in two shortcomings: (1) the problem of directionality, or that Frankfurtian freedom obtains whenever first- and second-order volitions align, regardless of which desire was made to change, and (2) the potential for infinite regress of higher-order desires. The authors propose that a satisfying account of the genesis of second-order volitions can resolve these issues. To provide this they draw from George Ainslie’s mechanistic account of self-control, which relies on intertemporal bargaining wherein an individual’s self-predictions about future decisions affect the value of her current choices. They suggest that second-order volitions emerge from precisely this sort of process, and that a Frankfurt-Ainslie account of free will avoids the objections previously raised.
{"title":"Frankfurt and the Problem of Self-Control","authors":"Ryan Cummings, A. Roskies","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0022","url":null,"abstract":"Frankfurt’s compatibilist account of free will considers an individual to be free when her first- and second-order volitions align. This structural account of the will, this chapter argues, fails to engage with the dynamics of will, resulting in two shortcomings: (1) the problem of directionality, or that Frankfurtian freedom obtains whenever first- and second-order volitions align, regardless of which desire was made to change, and (2) the potential for infinite regress of higher-order desires. The authors propose that a satisfying account of the genesis of second-order volitions can resolve these issues. To provide this they draw from George Ainslie’s mechanistic account of self-control, which relies on intertemporal bargaining wherein an individual’s self-predictions about future decisions affect the value of her current choices. They suggest that second-order volitions emerge from precisely this sort of process, and that a Frankfurt-Ainslie account of free will avoids the objections previously raised.","PeriodicalId":413819,"journal":{"name":"Surrounding Self-Control","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114518094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0023
Erica Cosentino
Intertemporal choice scenarios are scenarios in which someone must make a choice whose consequences play out over time. In those scenarios, the capacity to exercise self-control involves making a choice that does not provide an immediate advantage for the present self and instead benefits the future self. In this chapter, the author argues that the extent to which one can resist temptation in those scenarios is a function of the extent to which one cares about one’s future self. Caring about one’s future self entails having a temporally extended self. Given that mental time travel is crucially involved in the coming about of the temporally extended self, the author acknowledges its importance in self-control. After clarifying what this hypothesis does not imply about the relation between mental time travel and self-control, she discusses two puzzles concerning the phenomenology of resisting temptation and, respectively, the explanatory power of the temporally extended self and a possible solution.
{"title":"Self-Control, Mental Time Travel, and the Temporally Extended Self","authors":"Erica Cosentino","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0023","url":null,"abstract":"Intertemporal choice scenarios are scenarios in which someone must make a choice whose consequences play out over time. In those scenarios, the capacity to exercise self-control involves making a choice that does not provide an immediate advantage for the present self and instead benefits the future self. In this chapter, the author argues that the extent to which one can resist temptation in those scenarios is a function of the extent to which one cares about one’s future self. Caring about one’s future self entails having a temporally extended self. Given that mental time travel is crucially involved in the coming about of the temporally extended self, the author acknowledges its importance in self-control. After clarifying what this hypothesis does not imply about the relation between mental time travel and self-control, she discusses two puzzles concerning the phenomenology of resisting temptation and, respectively, the explanatory power of the temporally extended self and a possible solution.","PeriodicalId":413819,"journal":{"name":"Surrounding Self-Control","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126779197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：