Abstract
Prima facie, it seems highly plausible to suppose that there is some kind of constitutive relationship between self-control and the self, i.e., that self-control is “control at the service of the self” or even “control by the self.” This belief is not only attractive from a pre-theoretical standpoint, but it also seems to be supported by theoretical reasons. In particular, there is a natural fit between a certain attractive approach to self-control—the so-called “divided mind approach”—and a certain well-established approach to the self—the so-called “deep self” approach. I argue, however, that this initial impression is misleading: on closer inspection, the combination of the divided mind approach to self-control with the deep self approach fails to provide us with a theoretical foundation for the claim that self-control is constitutively linked to the self. I show that, in an interesting twist, combining these two approaches actually supports the opposite claim, leading us to the view that self-control and the self can come apart, and, more specifically, that we sometimes exercise self-control without our self or even against our self.
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Notes
For an attempt to vindicate the pre-theoretical belief that self-control is constitutively linked to the self in a different manner, see Henden (2008) (see, in particular, his argument on p. 73).
See Plato, Republic 436a–443b.
The term “proprietary action” is Sripada’s (2014).
One important source of support for this assumption is the empirical finding that subjects can employ certain self-control strategies or refrain from doing so when being instructed to do so (see Zhu 2005; Sripada 2014). Further support is provided by the distinctive “actional” phenomenology of self-control (on this, see, e.g., Mele 1997, 2014; Zhu 2005; Henden 2008; Holton 2009; Sripada 2014, 2020).
The terminology “control actions” is taken from Sripada (2020).
Claim (3) is most clearly endorsed by Sripada in his 2014 (p. 67, pp. 49–55); however, Alston (1977, pp. 88–89) would accept a very similar claim, and Dill and Holton (2014, pp. 8–9) appear to endorse a related claim as well. (It is somewhat unclear, though, whether Sripada (2020) would still accept claim (3).).
To clarify, claim (3) is compatible with the assumption that, although the agent currently judges option A to be most valuable (although her current best judgment favors option A), control actions in support of A may fail to occur. This may be so for various reasons. To mention just two: not only may there be no motivational conflict and hence no need for self-control; but extant motivational conflicts may also have failed to be detected by relevant monitoring mechanisms.
Sripada (2020) argues that there is another important source of empirical support for a divided mind approach to self-control, namely, the literature on cognitive control.
This approach has another merit: it can easily solve the so-called puzzle of synchronic self-control (see Alston 1977; Mele 1987). This puzzle raises the question of how it is even possible that we sometimes restrain ourselves when facing presently occurring temptations, such as a sudden urge for a cigarette, given that what we seemingly most want to do in such situations, is to satisfy the urge. For careful discussion and defense of a divided mind solution to this puzzle, see Alston (1977) and Sripada (2010, 2014).
For ease of exposition, I will usually omit the term “attitudes” in the following.
Both Sripada (2016) and Shoemaker (2017) argue that causal dependence (thus understood) is merely a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for self-expression. However, since the further conditions they have suggested are, as far as I can see, irrelevant for our purposes, I will not discuss them.
Furthermore, many proponents of the deep self approach also take self-expression as a necessary and sometimes sufficient condition for (a certain type of) moral responsibility (e.g., Shoemaker 2015, 2017; Sripada 2016; see also Watson 1996). Whether attempts to use the deep self to build a theory of moral responsibility ultimately succeed, however, is an issue on which I can remain neutral for the purposes of this paper.
Many thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting that I put things in this way.
As I already noted (see Sect. 2.1), BEST is also supported by common sense thinking about self-control.
Note that the puzzlement we feel here is different from the puzzlement we (may) feel regarding (ordinary) cases of akrasia. This is because (ordinary) akratic behavior has the opposite features than those commonly attributed to exercises of self-control: it is often pleasant and rarely (if ever) effortful.
Or at least, this assumption seems highly plausible if one presupposes the picture of human motivational architecture suggested by the divided mind approach to self-control (see Sect. 2.1)—which, for the purposes of this paper, I do.
For alternative “non-etiological” conceptions of (biological) function which could be employed here as well, see Garson (2016).
Importantly, this also follows if we rely instead on one of the various “non-etiological” conceptions of (biological) function which have been put forward in the literature (on this, see Garson 2016).
One might raise the question of what might cause such malfunctioning. Now, every answer we give to this will necessarily be somewhat speculative. There is, however, one thing we could say which does not seem too far-fetched. To see this, let me point out that the Young Bruce case—and I suspect that this will hold for other examples of unorthodox self-control as well—has two notable features. First, unlike in standard cases of self-control, it is easy to imagine that Bruce finds the option in support of which he exercises self-control—breaking into the neighbor’s house—somewhat tempting. After all, there is something immediately to be gained from going through with it, namely, being accepted by his peers, and we may assume that Bruce has a strong desire for peer acceptance. Secondly, since proceeding with the break-in also frightens him, this desire, unlike standard temptation-directed desires, can only be satisfied by an exercise of self-control. Now, my conjecture is that the presence of this specific constellation, i.e., the presence of a temptation-directed desire whose satisfaction requires an exercise of self-control, may cause Bruce’s M2 to malfunction (maybe by biasing his attention in favor of the tempting option), leading to the production of control actions in support of an option which, though being regarded by him as somewhat valuable, conflicts with the option he regards as the best option. I defend these claims in more detail in my unpublished manuscript “Unorthodox Self-Control and the Divided Mind”.
To clarify, the term “normally” is used here not in the sense of “statistically”, but in the sense of “under biologically normal conditions”, i.e., as describing what happens if the psychological mechanisms which underlie self-control fulfill their biological function and thus do the job they are supposed to do.
Thanks to Peter Schulte for suggesting I put this point in this manner.
To clarify, the point is not that best judgments which originate in one of these ways can never belong to an agent’s self, but rather that they sometimes do not. This weaker claim is all one needs to show that the self is not co-extensive with an agent’s best judgments.
This example draws on a case described by Watson (1975).
This is also stressed by Shoemaker (2015, pp. 131–132).
One way to go would be to supplement the Platonic deep self with a Humean component or, more specifically, to claim that the self consists both of an agent’s evaluative commitments (a certain subset of her evaluative judgments) and her cares (a certain class of conative states) (see Shoemaker 2015, 2017, chap.1). Another would be to endorse a purely Humean self, i.e., to claim that the self is constituted exclusively by a certain class of conative states (see Arpaly and Schroeder 2014; Sripada 2016).
The following example draws loosely on a case introduced by Henden (2018) for different purposes.
More precisely, on the divided mind approach to self-control which I am presupposing, the source of Ann’s control action is her M2 which, in turn, is constitutively linked to her best judgments (on this, see Sect. 2.1). However, since this qualification is irrelevant for present purposes, I will ignore it going forward.
Another intriguing issue is the question of whether there are cases in which self-control is exercised in the service of one part of the self against another. For a possible example of (what could be called) “self-control in cases of a disunified self”, see Schechtman’s (2004) case of the 1950s housewife who is deeply committed to fulfilling her duties as a housewife and mother, but at the same time has recurrent desires for activities which would interfere with her fulfillment of these duties (e.g. taking classes at a local college, getting involved in political causes, etc.)—desires which she then struggles hard to resist. Schechtman herself uses this example to clarify the notion of the self, though, rather than to clarify the relationship between self-control and the self.
Deep self views can account for this claim in different ways. One straightforward way would be to contend that the self, though not being co-extensive with an agent’s best judgments, still includes a privileged subset of an agent’s best judgments (see, e.g., Shoemaker 2015, 2017). Another would be to claim that the self consists of a certain class of conative states which, however, dispose an agent to form congruent best judgments (see, e.g., Sripada 2016). On this view, too, the self would be constitutively tied to some of the agent’s best judgments.
Note that this is a point on which proponent of different versions of the deep self approach all agree on.
Special thanks go to Edmund Henden, Leonhard Menges, Peter Schulte, and Chandra Sripada for very valuable feedback and invaluable encouragement, as well as to Juan Pablo Bermúdez, Dorothea Debus, Olivier Massin, Robert McGee, and an anonymous reviewer for further very helpful comments. I would also like to thank the audiences at the conference “The Depth of the Self. Implicit Motives and Human Flourishing”, Wuerzburg 2019, the workshop “Agency and Moral Responsibility”, Salzburg 2019, and the “Colloque de recherche de l’Institut de Philosophie”, Neuchâtel 2020 for very helpful discussion.
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Altehenger, H. Self-control and the self. Synthese 199, 2183–2198 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02877-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02877-9