Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2053
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: book
Ainslie G.
Breakdown of Will
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001
http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521596947
Abstract:
Ainslie argues that our responses to the threat of our own inconsistency determine the basic fabric of human culture. He suggests that individuals are more like populations of bargaining agents than like the hierarchical command structures envisaged by cognitive psychologists. The forces that create and constrain these populations help us understand so much that is puzzling in human action and interaction: from addictions and other self-defeating behaviors to the experience of willfulness, from pathological over-control and self-deception to subtler forms of behavior such as altruism, sadism, gambling, and the ‘social construction’ of belief. This book uniquely integrates approaches from experimental psychology, philosophy of mind, microeconomics, and decision science to present one of the most profound and expert accounts of human irrationality available. It will be of great interest to philosophers and an important resource for professionals and students in psychology, economics and political science.
• Ainslie’s work, especially his earlier work for Cambridge, received a lot of attention from psychologists and philosophers
• This new book is more accessible and offers treatment on a wider range of topics
• Like Elster – much interdisciplinary appeal: philosophy, psychology, economics, health sciences, political science
Contents
Part I. Breakdowns of Will: The Puzzle of Akrasia: 1. Introduction; 2. The dichotomy at the root of decision science: do we make choices by weights or by judgments?; 3. The warp in how we weigh the future: the basis of conflicting interests within the person; Part II. A Breakdown of the Will: The Components of Intertemporal Bargaining: 4. The warp can create involuntary behaviors: pains, hungers, emotions; 5. The elementary interaction of interests; 6. Sophisticated bargaining among internal interests; 7. The subjective experience of intertemporal bargaining; 8. Getting evidence about a non-linear motivational system; Part III. The Ultimate Breakdown of Will: Nothing Fails Like Success: 9. The downside of willpower; 10. An efficient will undermines appetite; 11. The need to maintain appetite eclipses the will; 12. Conclusions.
Review
‘This book is definitely worth reading and food for thought. It raises and sheds light on difficult issues that should be of interest to anybody concerned with human behaviour …’. Practical Philosophy
