Fraqueza da Vontade e Liberdade

Weakness of the will (incontinence) is thought to be paradoxical. There is at least a tension between such cases and the psychological law that relates evaluations and volitions: if we judge that doing x is better than doing y, then we want to do x; however, we sometimes think that doing x is better than doing y, and yet we want to do y instead of x. As in other proposals, I argue that the incompatibility is apparent. However, I do not reject that there are true cases of weakness of the will. I propose that in such cases there is a split between the psychological force and the axiological content of the evaluations: what the agent represents as more valuable is not what is most represented as valuable in the agent and therefore what has causal efficacy. I also propose that the volitional system has developed a mechanism to repair such anomalies, by which the agent has the capability to determine volitions according to the evaluation of the best.