Philosophy, et cetera 2008-05-23

Doing/Allowing and Effortful Willing

In 'Natural Baselines' I discuss a way to ground (a revisionary version of) the doing/allowing distinction in modal facts. Another suggestion I've heard is to consider the ratio of possible physical movements that are open to you: if most ways of moving lead to X, and fewer to not-X, then this means that you would be 'making' not-X true, and merely 'allowing' X to happen. Neither of these distinctions seems to have much ethical import, though. So in this post I'd like to suggest a more morally relevant distinction in this vicinity, based on the idea of willpower or ego-depletion:Humans have limited executive cognitive control or 'willpower' (cf. the psychological literature on ego-depletion). Decision-making and conscious action is draining. It's hard work. The immediate concerns of everyday life can be burdensome enough without adding all the world's ills to one's ...

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