Rational Irrational

Donald Davidson initiated the heated debate on weakness of will in contemporary western philosophy.He argues that agent's acting against his better judgment freely and intentionally is not in accordance with the practical rationality.But his all-things-considered better judgment is.Hence,the akratic action is possible.And the argument revives the traditional akratic problem in a new way.It is Socrates who firstly pays attention to akrasia in philosophy."No one willingly do anything wrong,when they know something else is better" he argues,and therefore he denies the possibility of weakness of will.Aristotle takes a different way to deal with the problem even though he shares the same position with Socrates in the end.He reconsiders the relation of passion and rationality,thinking of incontinence as a characteristic trait of the agent.Taking the judgment as the premises and action the conclusion,he attempts to use syllogism to meet the gap between the rational judgment and the practical action,which lays the foundation for further discussion about the weakness of will.After Davidson's argument,philosophers extend the akratic problem to varied dimensions which are always revolving around the possibility of akrasia.From the point of Davidson,the weakness of will is definitely existent but displaying the practical irrationality.Someone in the same spot with him still need to cope with many intricate problems.Those who disagree with him think there's more to say about the incontinent action other than practical irrationality.They manage to offer a rational explanation to the subjective irrationality.The subject of this research paper,Alfred R.Mele,is one of them.In Irrationality:an essay on akrasia,self-conception and self-control,Mele takes use of many brilliant cases and the achievements of current psychological experiments,justifying that akratic action is possible.The strict akratic action is the core conception.He tries to revise the traditional desire-belief explanation model into a new one which can provide the sufficient explanation for akratic action.Because he thinks the traditional one fails to explain the akratic cases in which the agent has competing motivations.Therefore,he comes up with the Strict Akratic Action Theory,which is the revised desire-belief explanation model for strict akratic action.When the cases involves competing motivations,the problem is that why the agent acts for the reasons as he did,rather than acting another action for the competing reasons.That's what Mele tries to solve through his revised model.Reconsidering the basic concepts like self-control and its opposite,the decisive better judgment,intention,reason,he adds four more elements into the model,which includes overall motivational strength,attentional condition,the proximity of the perceived reward,and the failure of self-control.Meanwhile,the new model has no need to deny the Causal Theory of Action and uses the Mental Partition Hypothesis which Davidson insists.In addition,while analyzing the paradoxes of irrationality and self-control,Mele deepens our understanding to the nature of incontinent action and continent action.And many theoretical confusions and errors of common sense defuses.Still even for him,there are many problems unsolved.Fundamentally speaking,he fails to meet the gap between agent's desire and evaluation in a traditional way.But his justification for akratic action and akratic belief means a lot to the akratic problem,and further research will also benefit from his clear argument.The critical interpretation on him will definitely contribute to take irrationality more rationally,and deepen our understanding for akratic actions.