The Space of Reasons 2008-06-13

Davidson on Weakness of Will (Part 2)

In my previous post, I suggested that Davidson's bipartite account of practical reasoning is able to preserve the consistency of (P1)-(P3). However, there is a worry that Davidson’s solution leaves it unclear how the weak-willed agent can be said to be motivated by her reasons. This is the objection I wish to consider in the present post. According to Davidson, the akrates acts for a reason, but not from her all-thing-considered judgement. Recall that in our example, Mr. Smith has three prima facie judgements—(c), (d) and (e)—each of which is relative to some set of reasons: (c) Prima facie, having a third glass of wine is better than not having a third glass of wine, given r1. (d) Prima facie, not having a third glass of wine is better than having a third glass of wine, given r2. (e) Prima ...

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