Epistemic Akrasia and Mental Agency

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 827-842 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Borgoni
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
Mental Agency

Bodies and Minds: Heavier Weight Targets Are De-Mentalized as Lacking in Mental Agency

2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722110399
Author(s):  
Mattea Sim ◽  
Steven M. Almaraz ◽  
Kurt Hugenberg
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Weight Stigma ◽  
Average Weight ◽  
Target Weight ◽  
Past Work ◽  
Mental Agency

Five experiments investigate the hypothesis that heavier weight individuals are denied mental agency (i.e., higher order cognitive and intentional capacities), but not experience (e.g., emotional and sensory capacities), relative to average weight individuals. Across studies, we find that as targets increase in weight, they are denied mental agency; however, target weight has no reliable influence on ascriptions of experience (Studies 1a–2b). Furthermore, the de-mentalization of heavier weight targets was associated with both disgust and beliefs about targets’ physical agency (Study 3). Finally, de-mentalization affected role assignments. Heavier weight targets were rated as helpful for roles requiring experiential but not mentally agentic faculties (Study 4). Heavier weight targets were also less likely than chance to be categorized into a career when it was described as requiring mental agency (versus experience; Study 5). These findings suggest novel insights into past work on weight stigma, wherein discrimination often occurs in domains requiring mental agency.

Higher-Order Evidence

2019 ◽  
pp. 312-344
Author(s):  
Declan Smithies
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Total Evidence ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
Level Splitting ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

Chapter 10 explores a puzzle about epistemic akrasia: if you can have misleading higher-order evidence about what your evidence supports, then your total evidence can make it rationally permissible to be epistemically akratic. Section 10.1 presents the puzzle and three options for solving it: Level Splitting, Downward Push, and Upward Push. Section 10.2 argues that we should opt for Upward Push: you cannot have misleading higher-order evidence about what your evidence is or what it supports. Sections 10.3 and 10.4 defend Upward Push against David Christensen’s objection that it licenses irrational forms of dogmatism in ideal and nonideal agents alike. Section 10.5 responds to his argument that misleading higher-order evidence generates rational dilemmas in which you’re guaranteed to violate one of the ideals of epistemic rationality. Section 10.6 concludes with some general reflections on the nature of epistemic rationality and the role of epistemic idealization.

scholarly journals DISAGREEMENT AND EASY BOOTSTRAPPING

Episteme ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Eyal Tal
Keyword(s):  
Irrational Belief ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Rational Beliefs ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
First Response ◽  
The One

ABSTRACTShould conciliating with disagreeing peers be considered sufficient for reaching rational beliefs? Thomas Kelly argues that when taken this way, Conciliationism lets those who enter into a disagreement with an irrational belief reach a rational belief all too easily. Three kinds of responses defending Conciliationism are found in the literature. One response has it that conciliation is required only of agents who have a rational belief as they enter into a disagreement. This response yields a requirement that no one should follow. If the need to conciliate applies only to already rational agents, then an agent must conciliate only when her peer is the one irrational. A second response views conciliation as merely necessary for having a rational belief. This alone does little to address the central question of what is rational to believe when facing a disagreeing peer. Attempts to develop the response either reduce to the first response, or deem necessary an unnecessary doxastic revision, or imply that rational dilemmas obtain in cases where intuitively there are none. A third response tells us to weigh what our pre-disagreement evidence supports against the evidence from the disagreement itself. This invites epistemic akrasia.

Mental Agency as Self-Regulation

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 815-825 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leon de Bruin ◽  
Fleur Jongepier ◽  
Derek Strijbos
Keyword(s):  
Self Regulation ◽  
Mental Agency

scholarly journals Sobre a akrasia e o vínculo entre epistemologia e ética

2020 ◽  
pp. 82-102
Author(s):  
Ian Salles Botti
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Virtue ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia

Este artigo aborda a incontinência, ou akrasia, sob a perspectiva da epistemologia da virtude de Christopher Hookway a fim de estabelecer uma relação entre epistemologia e ética. A tese é que o fenômeno em questão possui uma contraparte epistêmica, que permite a aproximação entre as disciplinas e promove o debate acerca da validade da distinção entre áreas teóricas e práticas, descritivas e normativas. Pretende-se com isso enfatizar a centralidade do aspecto normativo da epistemologia. Os textos usados são a Ética a Nicômaco, de Aristóteles, no qual a incontinência comum é exposta no contexto de uma ética da virtude; e o artigo “Epistemic akrasia and epistemic virtue”, de Hookway, no qual é defendida a possibilidade da incontinência epistêmica e de uma epistemologia da virtude.

Epistemic akrasia and higher-order beliefs

2019 ◽  
Vol 177 (9) ◽  
pp. 2501-2515
Author(s):  
Timothy Kearl
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia

Drifting and Directed Minds: The Significance of Mind-Wandering for Mental Agency

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (11) ◽  
pp. 614-644
Author(s):  
Zachary C. Irving ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Action Theory ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Mental Action ◽  
Attentional Guidance ◽  
Analogous Question ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Mental Agency ◽  
Directed Thought

Perhaps the central question in action theory is this: what ingredient of bodily action is missing in mere behavior? But what is an analogous question for mental action? I ask this: what ingredient of active, goal-directed thought is missing in mind-wandering? My answer: attentional guidance. Attention is guided when you would feel pulled back from distractions. In contrast, mind-wandering drifts between topics unchecked. My unique starting point motivates new accounts of four central topics about mental action. First, its causal basis. Mind-wandering is a case study that allows us to tease apart two causes of mental action––guidance and motivation. Second, its experiential character. Goals are rarely the objects of awareness; rather, goals are “phenomenological frames” that carve experience into felt distractions and relevant information. Third, its scope. Intentional mind-wandering is a limit case of action where one actively cultivates passivity. Fourth, my theory offers a novel response to mental action skeptics like Strawson.

Epistemic Akrasia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Owens
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
First Order

In a case of practical akrasia, we freely do something even though we judge that we ought not to do it. This chapter discusses the possibility of epistemic akrasia. Epistemic akrasia is possible only if (a) a person’s (first-order) beliefs can diverge from their higher-order judgements about what it would be reasonable for them to believe, and (b) these divergent (first-order) beliefs are freely and deliberately formed. Several recent authors deny the possibility of epistemic akrasia because they doubt that (a) can be true. I argue that though (a) can indeed be true, (b) cannot. On this point, believing is contrasted with guessing.

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