Holton, Richard Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Print publication date: 2009 (this edition)
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2009
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-921457-0
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199214570.003.0007
Richard Holton
Empirical findings suggest that temptation causes agents not only to change their desires, but also to revise their beliefs, in ways that are not necessarily irrational. But if this is so, how can it be rational to maintain a resolution to resist? For in maintaining a resolution it appears that one will be acting against what one now believes to be best. This chapter proposes a two-tier account according to which it can be rational neither to reconsider the question of what one is going to do nor the question of what it is best to do. Hence, in the resolute agent the change in belief is not actual but merely potential. Various reasons are given for thinking that the resulting account is preferable to an alternative given by Bratman.
Keywords: resolution, reconsideration, Bratman, temptation,
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199214570.003.0007
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