Self-Control, Decision Theory, and Rationality: New Essays

Cambridge University Press, 12/6/2018
EAN 9781108420099, ISBN10: 1108420095

Hardcover, 280 pages, 22.6 x 16 x 1.8 cm
Language: English

Thinking about self-control takes us to the heart of practical decision-making, human agency, motivation, and rational choice. Psychologists, philosophers, and decision theorists have all brought valuable insights and perspectives on how to model self-control, on different mechanisms for achieving and strengthening self-control, and on how self-control fits into the overall cognitive and affective economy. Yet these different literatures have remained relatively insulated from each other. Self-Control, Decision Theory, and Rationality brings them into dialog by focusing on the theme of rationality. It contains eleven newly written essays by a distinguished group of philosophers, psychologists, and decision theorists, together with a substantial introduction, collectively offering state-of-the-art perspectives on the rationality of self-control and the different mechanisms for achieving it.

General introduction José Luis Bermúdez
1. Temptation and preference-based rationality Johanna Thoma
2. Self-prediction and self-control Martin Peterson and Peter Vallentyne
3. Rational plans Paul Weirich
4. Self-control and hyperbolic discounting Arif Ahmed
5. Preference reversals, delay discounting, rational choice, and the brain Leonard Green and Joel Myerson
6. In what sense are addicts irrational? Howard Rachlin
7. Why temptation? Chrisoula Andreou
8. Frames, rationality, and self-control José Luis Bermúdez
9. Exercising self-control
an apparent problem resolved Alfred R. Mele
10. Putting willpower into decision theory
the person as a team over time Natalie Gold
11. The many ways to achieve diachronic unity Kenny Easwaran and Reuben Stern.