Volume 10, Number 2
July 2016
ARTICLE

Reconsidering Resolutions

Volume 10, Number 2, July 2016, Pages 1–27
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v10i2.98
PDFPDF

Abstract

In Willing, Wanting, Waiting, Richard Holton lays out a detailed account of resolutions, arguing that they enable agents to resist temptation. Holton claims that temptation often leads to inappropriate shifts in judgment, and that resolutions are a special kind of first- and second-order intention pair that blocks such judgment shift. In this paper, I elaborate upon an intuitive but underdeveloped objection to Holton’s view—namely, that his view does not enable agents to successfully block the transmission of temptation in the way that he claims, because the second-order intention is as equally susceptible to temptation as the first-order intention alone would be. I appeal to independently compelling principles—principles that Holton should accept, because they help fill an important explanatory gap in his account—to demonstrate why this objection succeeds. This argument both shows us where Holton’s view goes wrong and points us to the kind of solu-tion we need. In conclusion, I sketch an alternative account of resolutions as a first-order intention paired with a second-order desire. I argue that my account is not susceptible to the same objection because a temptation that cannot be blocked by an intention can be blocked by a desire.
Copyright © 2016 Alida Liberman
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
|

Resolution and Resolve: Rationally Resisting Temptation

Abigail Bruxvoort

Attraction, Aversion, and Meaning in Life

Alisabeth Ayars

How Temptation Works

John Schwenkler

The Essence of Structural Irrationality: The Impossibility of Attitudinal Success

Julian Fink

Contextualizing, Clarifying, and Defending the Doctrine of Double Effect

Melissa Moschella

Radical Cognitivism About Practical Reason

William Ratoff

Uncertainty and Intention

Benjamin Lennertz

On an Analytic Definition of Love

Tyler J. VanderWeele

Action and Production

Stephen J. White

All Reasons Are Fundamentally for Attitudes

Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way

Blaming for Unreasonableness: Accountability Without Ill Will

Alisabeth Ayars

Planning on a Prior Intention

Facundo M. Alonso

Portico