Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'fragments/reports' and 'The Emotions'

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2 ideas

20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / a. Will to Act
Earlier Stoics speak of assent, but not of choice, let alone of a will [Stoic school, by Frede,M]
     Full Idea: Stoics [before Epictetus] have a notion of assent, and hence the appropriate notion of a willing, but we do not yet have a notion of a choice [prohairesis], let alone of a will.
     From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 3
     A reaction: The assent is just giving in to a desire, which is either rational or irrational. Choice implies a second-level thinking, of weighing the two desires. The will would then be a faculty which can do this (which seems to be the invention of Epictetus).
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / d. Weakness of will
Akrasia can be either overruling our deliberation, or failing to deliberate [Goldie]
     Full Idea: I call it 'last ditch' akrasia when we deliberately decide to do something, and then don't do it, and 'impetuous' akrasia when we rush into doing something which, if we had deliberated, we would not have done.
     From: Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 4 'Education')
     A reaction: I'm not convinced that his impetuous version counts as akrasia, which seems to be vice of people who deliberate. [But he cites Aristotle 1150b19-].