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Hierarchical Analyses of Unfree Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Irving Thalberg
Irving Thalberg*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago Circle
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Extract

Metaphysicians, ethical theorists and philosophers of law squabble endlessly about what it is for a person to act — or perhaps even to ‘will’ — more or less freely. A vital issue in this controversy is how we should analyse two obvious but surprisingly problematical contrasts. The first antithesis is between things we do because we are forced, and deeds we perform because we want to — sometimes after having discovered preponderant reasons in their favour. The other polarity is more general. In most situations, if I act on my desire, I act more freely than if I had not had the desire. But what if my attitude is the product of childhood conditioning — or later brainwashing, brain surgery, hypnosis, behaviour modification, alcoholisim, narcotics addiction, neurosis, psychosis or worse? Then isn't my autonomy diminished? What is it about these latter desires, or their origin, that differentiates them from their unthreatening congeners?

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 211 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1978

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Footnotes

*

This paper is based to some extent upon my earlier attempt to understand how so-called mental illness may diminish a person's control over his behaviour: “Motivational Disturbances and Free Will,” forthcoming in H.T. Engelhardt, Jr., and S. Spicker, eds., Mental Health: Philosophical Perspectives (Dordrecht: Reidel). I thank the editors and publishers of that volume for allowing me to use some of that material here. l am also grateful to several participants in the conference on mental health at the University of Texas Medical Branch, during May 1976, where I read the parent essay. My commentator, Professor Caroline Whitbeck, gave me numerous helpful criticisms.

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