| dc.description.abstract | In our thinking on practical reasoning, we generally assume that to deliberate means to ponder one’s situation in order to select the most rational course of action, and importantly, to take the time to do so. It is an intellectualist exercise. In this thesis, it is argued that this might not always be so; that we can imagine agents who act rationally on the basis of reasons that were discovered through a deliberative process, but who at the same time may not be fully aware of this deliberative process going on.
This conclusion is reached through a study of ‘inverse akrasia’ cases as brought forth by Alison McIntyre and Nomy Arpaly: cases of weakness of will in which the ‘weak-willed’ course of action appears to be more rational than the course of action that would have aligned with an agent’s best judgment, or so they conclude.
Their conclusion is tested via the work of Bernard Williams on internal and external reasons. McIntyre and Arpaly follow Williams in his conclusion that internal reasons are the only intelligible reasons for action. However, Williams is also found to put great emphasis on the presence of a deliberative process in internal reasons generation. This deliberative aspect seems, at first glance, not to be present in inverse akrasia cases.
The final part suggests that, in order to be able to include inverse akrasia cases in the scope of what we may call ‘rational action’, we may have to accommodate for a kind of deliberation that happens despite the agents involved not being explicitly aware of it. There is substantial evidence for this happening, but moving deliberation outside the realm of ‘intellectualism’ brings with it problems of its own. In further discussion on practical reasoning, the constraints of intellectualist deliberation need to be acknowledged and addressed. | |
