Episode 130: Jessica Tizzard discusses weakness of the will

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What is the focus of this episode on weakness of the will?

Dominic Rio 0:00

Hello, I am Dominic Rio, and welcome to the Elucidations podcast. Today's guest, Jessica Tizard, overviews the concept of weakness of the will within the context of morality. Are people immoral because they are unaware of the ethical course of action, or do our desires play a bigger role? Jessica argues that a weakness of one's willpower arises out of an interplay between reason and desire. We intuitively have a sense of what we should and should not do, but sometimes our desires can dominate us. Yet, if we are always controlled by desire, wouldn't that mean that we lack the freedom to choose? Does one's freedom lie within one's ability to exercise the power of one's will? Stay tuned to see how Jessica addresses these issues and more on the Elucidations podcast.

Matt Teichman 1:02

Hello and welcome to Elucidations. I'm Matt Teichman. And I'm Long. With us today is Jessica Tizard, Assistant Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. And she is here to discuss weakness of the will. Jessica Tizard, welcome.

Jessica Tizzard 1:28

Thank you for having me.

Matt Teichman 1:30

So weakness of the will is a classic philosophical topic slash puzzle that's really fun to think about. And I would say it corresponds more or less to what we talk about in everyday contexts as like, well, this is a situation where I need to have a lot of willpower. I have to really be strong-willed in this situation and try to do the right thing. One kind of simple example of that might be I'm thinking about do I want to go to a party tonight? And on the one hand, it would be a lot of fun and I get to hang out with my friends, maybe even engage in some libations. But I have a big job interview coming up tomorrow morning. I have a big exam coming up tomorrow morning. And in some sense, it would be irresponsible for me to go to this party tonight.

Matt Teichman 2:17

And I kind of like, no, I shouldn't, but I do it anyway. And that's like we talk about that as a lack of willpower. Is that a good way to think of the phenomenon of weakness of the will, like these situations where you need a lot of willpower, but then it doesn't work out and you sort of, you know that X is the right thing to do, but instead you do Y?

Jessica Tizzard 2:33

Right, yeah. I think that is a good way to think about it. I should say up front that as a philosopher, my work is mainly on the philosopher Immanuel Kant. So when I'm thinking about weakness of will in my job as a philosopher, I'm thinking about how to properly interpret Kant's understanding of what weakness of will is. And when he introduces the phenomenon in He quotes St. Paul in Romans as saying, what I would do that I do not do. So that is, you know, the basic idea. I want to do something. I think there's a principled reason to do that. I view that thing as the right thing to do. And yet I do not do it. Right. So and I think, yeah, as you said, that seems to capture our everyday sense of weakness of will when we talk about it.

Matt Teichman 3:18

What about cases involving bravery or like overcoming your fear? So, you know, maybe I'm on the street and I see someone attacking somebody else. And I know that what I should do is defend them. But like, I'm scared, you know, I'm scared I'm gonna get hurt. So this is like some sort of moment of truth for me, where being doing the courageous thing would be overcoming my fear and defending the person who's getting attacked. And let's say that I don't do that. Let's say that I chicken out and I don't help the person. And I'm really ashamed of it afterwards.

How does Jessica define weakness of the will in everyday situations?

Matt Teichman 3:45

Is that also a case of weakness of the will?

Jessica Tizzard 3:48

Yeah, I think it makes sense to think of it as yet another case of weakness of the will. And I like that you use the term afterwards, right? I was ashamed afterwards. I think on Kant's view, and I think this should be our general view, it's a much broader phenomenon than the really puzzling type of case where even in the moment I know that I'm doing something wrong and acting as I do. So I think we can apply the term weakness to any case where I act against my established moral commitments or principles and then come to regret my action once I have reflective clarity on the fact that I did act against those principles.

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Chapters

8 chapters

1 What is the focus of this episode on weakness of the will? 0:00–3:45 2 How does Jessica define weakness of the will in everyday situations? 3:45–7:25 3 What is Kant’s interpretation of moral dilemmas related to weakness of the will? 7:25–11:41 4 How do perfect and imperfect duties influence moral weakness according to Kant? 11:41–16:27 5 Why do we feel guilt after acting against our better judgment? 16:27–21:44 6 How does Kant view desires as reasons rather than overpowering forces? 21:44–25:46 7 What role does cultivated judgment play in overcoming weakness of the will? 25:46–30:41 8 What practical steps does the podcast suggest for strengthening willpower? 30:41–36:01

Speakers

2 identified

Jessica Tizzard 25 min Matt Teichman 5 min

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Topics in this episode

Twitter 1 Immanuel Kant 3 Elucidations 3 Matt Teichman 2 University of Connecticut 1 Dominic Rio 2 Jessica Tizard 4

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Recorded22 Nov 2020

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Show notes

This month, Long Dang and I sit down to talk to Jessica Tizzard (University of Connecticut, Storrs) about weakness of the will.You’re at a party hosted by a close friend. It’s been three hours since you got there, and the evening thus far has been chock full of scintillating conversation, a fun round of Charades followed by Assassins, first rate cocktails, and a dessert to die for. You’ve just now been invited to play one of your favorite games, which usually takes about 90 minutes to complete—when out of nowhere, the onset of a yawn yanks you back into reality. Suddenly, you remember you’d promised yourself that you weren’t going to stay out late, because you’ve got to get up early tomorrow for an important meeting. You realize that now is the time to go home and get a good night’s sleep. And yet, the allure of the game pulls you in. Against your better judgment, you play the game deep into the night, future consequences be damned.Since the time of the ancient Greeks, some of the sharpest thinkers in philosophy have tried to figure out what is happening in that scenario. Obviously, we frequently decide that X is the best course of action, and yet our willpower falters and we decide to do Y, even though we know full well that doing Y is counterproductive or self-destructive. But why? In what world does that make any logical sense? Surely, if you decided that X was the thing to do, the natural next move is to do X. Not do the thing you convinced yourself was going to be bad for you. Right?The trouble is that every obvious answer to this puzzle feels unsatisfactory. You could be like: well if I did Y, then I must have really decided Y was best. But if that’s the case, why do you feel so terrible when you do it? Why do you feel guilty staying at the party until deep into the night, if you’ve supposedly decided that staying at the party is for the best? Taking that stance is effectively saying: no one ever has a crisis of willpower. Whenever you do anything, that is definitive proof that you believed it was the best possible thing to do. But insisting that everyone always has the willpower to do everything they think they should just seems to fly in the face of what we know about the human experience.Another option might be to say: well, ok, I did decide that X was the best thing to do, but when the moment to suck it up and actually do X came, I was overcome with desire. The feeling of pleasure at the prospect of partying hard swept over me and signal jammed my rational faculty, blocking me from doing what I knew I should. So I stayed, and had to suffer the consequences the next morning. But then that feels unsatisfactory as well, because if I really was overcome by the pleasure instinct, blocked from doing what I thought I should do, then what I did was really involuntary. Like a muscle spasm. Or a brain tumor that made me do it. That just seems wrong: clearly, in these types of situations, I actively chose to e.g. stay at the party and suffer the consequences. Staying at the party didn’t just happen to me, like a headache.Jessica Tizzard thinks that the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant offered an interesting and novel way to understand what’s going on in these moments when you’re weak-willed. Step one in his approach is to take cases like the one described above and assimilate them all to what is often thought of as a different situation: the moral dilemma. A moral dilemma, as standardly construed, is a situation where you really can’t decide which of several options is the best to take. The idea here is that what look like situations where you knew you should do X but instead did Y are often, upon closer examination, really situations where you genuinely couldn’t tell which of those two things you should do. Sometimes, perhaps, when I thought I was having a crisis of willpower, I was in fact just torn and couldn’t decide.Number two in Immanuel Kant’s bag of tricks is to accept a version of the ‘I wanted to go home, but the desire to stay swept over me and made me stay at the party’ explanation, with one key difference: namely, he has a different take on what a desire is. Maybe a desire isn’t some physical pleasure sensation seizing control of your body like a puppet and forcing you to do something other than what you really want to do. Maybe a desire is really more like another set of factors to consider in your reasoning—it may come with a feeling, and present itself to you with a certain urgency, but really what it is is a set of reasons that you’re weighing up like any other. Understanding desire on those lines puts Kant in a nice position to say that lacking the willpower to do what you think is right is actually just a case of being racked by indecision.Tune in to hear Jessica Tizzard lay out the Kantian story about what happens when we act against our better judgment!Matt Teichman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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