Akrasia and Perceptual Illusion

de Anima III.10 characterizesakrasia as a conflict between phantasia (“imagination”) on one side and rational cognition on the other: the akratic agent is torn between an appetite for what appears good to her phantasia and a rational desire for what her intellect believes good. This entails that akrasia is parallel to certain cases of perceptual illusion. Drawing on Aristotle’s discussion of such cases in the de Anima and de Insomniis, I use this parallel to illuminate the difficult discussion of akrasia in NicomacheanEthics VII.3, arguingthat its accountof akrasia as involving ignoranceis compatible with, and in fact crucially supplements, the more straightforward account we find elsewhere in the corpus of akrasia as a struggle between desires. Discussions of Aristotle’s view of akrasia (incontinence, weakness of will, lack of self-control) usually center on Book VII of theNicomachean Ethics, and in particular on the notoriously difficult third chapter of that book. Here Aristotle argues that Socrates was in some sense right to maintain that akrasia involves ignorance. This much is clear. As to the details, however, the text is so dense and so thorny as to leave little of Aristotle’s view beyond doubt. What is the akratic agent ignorant of: the minor premise of the practical syllogism forbidding her action, or only the conclusion?1 And what is the nature of her ignorance? Does she lack the relevant knowledge altogether, or merely neglect to combine it with her other beliefs? Or does she know it some sense but not in the crucial sense of having integrated it into her character?2 Underlying these questions is a much broader worry about EN VII.3’s account: How does an account of akrasia as involving ignorance of any kind fit with the more straightforward account we find elsewhere in the corpus, on which akrasia involves a struggle between opposing desires? 1 The former view has been predominant. For the latter, see Kenny 1966; Santas 1969; Charles 1984 and 2009; the view dates back to the medieval commentator Walter Burleigh. 2 For the view that the akratic agent knows the relevant informationbut fails to combine it with her other beliefs see Joachim1951, 224–9; Irwin 1999, 261. Dahl argues that the akratic agent has the relevant knowledgebut has failed to “integrate it into her character” (1984, see especially 188, 213); I think McDowell’s and Wiggins’ views (discussed below) can be understood as versions of this one (see McDowell, e.g. 1998; Wiggins 1975); compare also Charles 2009. Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philosophie, 91. Bd., S. 119–156 © Walter de Gruyter 2009 ISSN 0003-9101 DOI 10.1515/AGPH.2009.06 “AGPh 2/09” — 2009/7/16 — 11:51 — page 120 — #6