‘My Name is Joe and I'm an Alcoholic’: Addiction, Self-knowledge and the Dangers of Rationalism

Mind and Language 31 (3):265-276 (2016)
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Abstract

Rationalist accounts of self-knowledge are motivated in important part by the claim that only by looking to our reasons to discover our beliefs and desires are we active in relation to them and only thereby do we take responsibility for them. These kinds of account seem to predict that self-knowledge generated using third-personal methods or analogues of these methods will tend to undermine the capacity to exercise self-control. In this light, the insistence by treatment programs that addicts acknowledge that they are addicts seems puzzling. I argue that because addicts—and perhaps ordinary akratics, to some extent at least, too—are vulnerable to losing control of their actions via losing control over their beliefs, advising them to look to their reasons for actions is counterproductive and facilitates loss of control. In contrast, an insistence on what I call impersonal self-knowledge, knowledge of some of one's states and dispositions generated by third-personal means, may help to reestablish control.

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Neil Levy
Macquarie University

Citations of this work

Denial in Addiction.Hanna Pickard - 2016 - Mind and Language 31 (3):277-299.
Rational Agency and the Struggle to Believe What Your Reasons Dictate.Brie Gertler - 2021 - In Cristina Borgoni, Dirk Kindermann & Andrea Onofri (eds.), The Fragmented Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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References found in this work

Implicit Bias and Moral Responsibility: Probing the Data.Neil Levy - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (3):3-26.
Self-Knowledge and the Transparency of Belief.Brie Gertler - 2008 - In Anthony Hatzimoysis (ed.), Self-Knowledge. Oxford University Press.
Précis of Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self‐Knowledge.Richard Moran - 2004 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (2):423-426.
Resisting 'Weakness of the Will'.Neil Levy - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 82 (1):134 - 155.

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