Abstract
A neo-Aristotelian approach to self-control has dominated both philosophy and the sciences of the mind. This approach endorses three key theses: (1) that self-control is a form of self-regulation aimed at desires that conflict with one’s evaluative judgments, (2) that high trait self-control is continence, which is distinguished from temperance by (a significant amount of) motivational conflict (which the continent person is good at resisting), and (3) that self-control is broad, in that such resistance can be not only direct (inhibiting or overriding conflicting desires) but also indirect (e.g., preventing conflicting desires from arising). There is an obvious tension between (1) and (3). I argue that the equally obvious resolution of this tension—allowing that self-control does not require occurrent conflicting desires but can instead be aimed at foreseeable conflicting desires—reveals a surprisingly unnoticed tension between (2) and (3). To resolve this tension, we are forced to either deny that high trait self-control is continence or deny that self-control is broad. If self-control is narrow, recent empirical evidence suggests that it may not be a good candidate for a human excellence concerning self-regulation. Thus, if we want to make room for such an excellence, we may need to deny that high trait self-control is continence. However we resolve these tensions, the Aristotelian status quo regarding self-control cannot stand.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Availability of Data and Material
n/a
Code Availability
n/a
Notes
I follow Mele in using the term ‘desire’ to pick out a “very common, generic motivation-constituting attitude” (see (2016, 173) and the references therein). In a recent paper that I discuss below, Sripada argues that a kind of state he calls a “response pulse” is “the proximal [target] of all self-control actions” (2021, 804). I intend my use of “desire” to include response pulses. As Sripada notes, the “psychological functional role of a response pulse is broadly akin to what philosophers call an ‘action-desire’, a desire to perform some action straightaway” (Sripada 2021, 804).
The parenthetical phrases allow for a less demanding account of temperance than Aristotle’s, according to which temperate people can have some motivational conflict. On this more moderate account, continent people will be distinguished from the temperate by having significantly more motivational conflict. See Sect. 1 for further discussion.
I adopt the direct/indirect contrast from Levy (2017, 201).
Roy Baumeister and colleagues’ influential “strength” or “resource” model of self-control adopts this definition, noting that: “Self-control involves overriding or inhibiting competing urges, behaviors, or desires. … Many.
behaviors (such as solving math problems) may be difficult and effortful but require minimal overriding or inhibiting of urges, behaviors, desires, or emotions. Hence, not all effortful behaviors are self-control behaviors” (Muraven and Baumeister 2000, 247).
Mele calls direct resistance “brute resistance”: “what we have in mind when we speak, in ordinary parlance, of someone’s resisting temptation by sheer effort of will” (1987, 26, italics in original). It is what Duckworth, Gendler, and Gross call “response modulation” —“the most straightforward” way of exercising self-control, in which individuals “voluntarily suppress undesirable impulses or amplify desirable ones … [i]n the heat of the moment” (2016, 42).
Even though the tension between these theses is obvious, it is rarely acknowledged. The only discussion I am aware of that comes close to acknowledging it is Fujita, Carnevale, and Trope’s paper, which notes that: “although self-control is often described in conflictual terms” (as they do themselves earlier in their paper; see the quotation above), “successful self-control may at times paradoxically be marked by the absence of such conflict” (2018, 293), i.e., when indirect strategies are used to prevent motivational conflict, as allowed by a broad conception of self-control. I suspect that this tension goes unremarked on because the resolution (as I discuss below) is itself so obvious that it is often tacitly assumed in the literature.
See Bartlett (2018) for a helpful discussion of occurrent and standing mental states. Bartlett argues against both the claim that occurrent states just are conscious states (since some occurrent states may be unconscious) and the claim that occurrent states just are manifestations of dispositional mental states.
Miller (2017, 147) provides the only discussion I know of that explicitly refers to occurrent conflicting desires in the context of the distinction between virtue and continence. Miller claims that on an Aristotelian account, virtue requires “that consistently and reliably across all situations relevant to virtue, there be no opposing occurrent desires” (Miller 2017, 417, italics in original).
Similarly, the language that authors sometimes use to describe temperance and continence implies that the conflicting desires that distinguish them are occurrent—e.g., Hursthouse writes that temperate individuals enjoy themselves “without more than the most transient twinges of temptation” (1999, 246, italics added).
This response may also be motivated by the idea that continence is not a “trait to be avoided” but rather an “excellent” or “good and admirable” state of character (see Callard 2017), together with the idea that occurrent motivational conflict cannot be part of an excellent character trait (see, e.g., Annas 1993, 54). More on the claim that continence is an excellence in Sect. 4.
Rorty recognizes this when she allows that exercising forethought (i.e., using indirect self-control strategies) is also compatible with temperance. As she writes: “Sometimes, [the phronimos’ (i.e., the practically wise person’s) acting from his pathe [roughly, emotions or appetites] is acting in accordance with reason; but there might also be times when even the phronimos might have to act as if he were an enkrates, exercising forethought as a form of enkrateia…” (1980, 274, italics in original). Assuming that the virtues are unified, the phronimos will also be temperate. Assuming, as the traditional view does, that temperance and continence are mutually exclusive, the phronimos will not be continent.
See Haug (2021) for further discussion of indirect harmony as a trait distinct from continence and temperance.
Briefly, even if results views of self-control are false and all exercises of self-control are effortful, it is not clear to me that no instances of pure diachronic self-control are genuine. For, it seems that effortful cases of pure diachronic self-control are possible—cases of self-control with respect to action φ in which indirect strategies are effortfully used to prevent a foreseeable conflicting desire to φ from becoming active (and in which the subject does not have an occurrent desire to φ when those indirect strategies are used). For example, someone may judge that he should not eat another candy bar, not have an occurrent desire to eat a candy bar, and yet know that he would have such an occurrent desire if he paid too much attention to the candy bar on his kitchen counter. It seems that he may exercise self-control by effortfully keeping his attention away from the candy bar in his kitchen (by instead, say, focusing on fixing a tasty, healthy snack) or by effortfully construing the candy bar as a “calorie bomb” (when in the past, but not currently, he had thought of it as a decadent treat). One might ask, as an anonymous referee did, why it should require effort to keep one’s attention away from the candy bar if one does not, at the time, have the slightest occurrent desire to eat it. In response, I suggest that effort can be required to avoid defaulting to a habitual response (e.g., paying attention to candy when it’s around) even when an instance of that habitual response is not active. Further, effort may be required to regulate one’s attention in the face of the mere thought of the candy bar (rather than in the face of an occurrent desire to eat it). However, fully defending this line of response seems to require arguing against Sripada’s “Limit – Self-Control” thesis, which asserts that self-control can directly regulate only response pulses associated with emotion-type states (2021, 814-5). This is a larger project that I cannot undertake in this paper.
Agnes Callard has recently argued that, contrary to an influential “purist” interpretation, Aristotle himself claims that self-control (enkrateia) is not a “trait to be avoided” but rather an “excellent” or “good and admirable” state of character and that “Aristotle’s enkratēs not only can, but must, have phronesis” (2017, 32 ff.). Whether or not Aristotle thought that continence is an “excellence” with respect to self-regulation, decades of empirical work support the claim that high trait self-control is positively correlated with a number of beneficial life outcomes, such as better health, greater wealth, and greater levels of subjective happiness, even when controlling for potential confounding variables, like socioeconomic status Mischel et al. 1989; Tangney et al. 2004; Moffitt et al. 2011; de Ridder et al. 2012; Hofmann et al. 2014). This provides some evidence that trait self-control is positively correlated with individual well-being.
What Grund and Carstens call “cognitive well-being” was assessed using a German version of the Satisfaction with Life Scale, which includes items like “In most ways my life is close to ideal,” and affective well-being was assessed with the German version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, which consists of “ten items measuring positive affect (e.g., interested, excited) and ten items measuring negative affect (e.g., scared, nervous)” (Grund and Carstens 2019, 68).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this point.
The authors also suggest that direct inhibition may be less reliable (than indirect strategies) at “facilitating goal progress,” which has been found to be associated with well-being (Nielsen et al. 2019, 4). If this were the case, then even individuals with excellent inhibitory abilities might not succeed at self-control tasks very often, providing further support for the idea that the benefits of successful inhibition may, in the long run, be outweighed by the costs of inhibition. However, although Nielsen et al. cite a few studies in support of inhibition’s “unstable effectiveness,” whether a self-control strategy is effective or not is likely determined by interactions between that strategy, the situation, and the individual’s other psychological features, so further work is needed to show that inhibition is less effective, across all contexts, than other strategies. Thus, I hesitate to put too much weight on this second suggestion.
However, this study did not find that individuals who scored high on measures of trait self-control used reappraisal and distraction strategies significantly more often than suppression strategies, although this correlation did hold for individuals who scored high on a measure of “state self-control capacity” (the ability to regulate oneself in a particular moment) (Wenzel et al. 2021, 458).
Another recent study that casts doubt on this claim is Von Gunten et al. (2020). The authors found no significant correlation, in a sample of 463 undergraduates, between the inhibitory factor of cognitive control (commonly thought to underlie direct, synchronic self-control) and measures of “psychological adjustment” (including things like life satisfaction (measured by the Satisfaction with Life Scale) and finding meaning in life (measured by the Meaning in Life Questionnaire)) and of “relationship adjustment” (for those who reported being in a serious relationship) (Von Gunten et al. 2020, 420-2).
An anonymous referee suggested that Lorraine Besser’s (2017) work on self-regulation as a virtue may be relevant here. However, I take Besser to be offering self-regulation as a supplement, rather than a replacement, for the traditional distinction between temperance and self-control. As she writes: “I do not mean to suggest that self-regulation is a specific character trait along the lines of generosity, temperance, and courage. Rather, the sense in which self-regulation is a virtue is simply in terms of its being an excellent use of our cognitive capacity” (Besser 2017, 510, italics in original). Further, Besser’s notion of self-control is narrower than mine, as she claims that “self-control essentially involves the experience of unwanted desires [i.e., occurrent conflicting desires]” (Besser 2017, 511). The trait of indirect harmony is plausibly one way to manifest self-regulation—one way to make excellent use of our cognitive capacities. However, I am not committed to Besser’s particular account of self-regulation and its relation to executive function (cognitive control).
References
Annas J (1993) The morality of happiness. Oxford University Press, New York
Aristotle (1984) Nichomachean Ethics. In: Barnes J (ed) The complete works of Aristotle, vol 2. Princeton University Press, Princeton, pp 1729–1867
Bartlett G (2018) Occurrent states. Can J Philos 48:1–17
Besser L (2017) Virtue of self-regulation. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 20:505–517
De Ridder DTD, Lensvelt-Mulders G, Finkenauer C, Stok FM, Baumeister RF (2012) Taking stock of self-control: A meta-analysis of how trait self-control relates to a wide range of behaviors. Personal Social Psychol Rev 16:76–99
Dreisbach G, Fischer F (2015) Conflicts as aversive signals for control adaptation. Curr Dir in Psychol Sci 24:255–260
Duckworth AL, Gendler TS, Gross JJ (2016) Situational strategies for self-control. Perspect on Psychol Sci 11:35–55
Fujita K, Carnevale JJ, Trope V (2018) Understanding self-control as a whole vs. part dynamic. Neuroethics 11:283–296
Grund A, Carstens C-A (2019) Self-control motivationally reconsidered: ‘Acting’ self-controlled is different to ‘being good’ at self-control. Motiv Emot 43:63–68
Henden E (2008) What is self-control? Philos Psychol 21:69–90
Haug MC (2021) Trait self-control, inhibition, and executive functions: Rethinking some traditional assumptions. Neuroethics 14:303–314
Hofmann W, Luhmann M, Fisher RR, Vohs KD, Baumeister RF (2014) Yes, but are they happy? Effects of trait self-control on affective well-being and life satisfaction. J Personal 82:265–277
Hursthouse R (1999) On virtue ethics. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Kennett J, Smith M (1996) Frog and Toad lose control. Analysis 56:63–73
Kool W, McGuire JT, Rosen ZB, Botvinick MM (2010) Decision making and the avoidance of cognitive demand. J of Exp Psychol: Gen 139:665–682
Levy N (2011) Resisting ‘weakness of the will’. Philos Phenomenol Res 82:134–155
Levy N (2017) Of marshmallows and moderation. In: Sinnott-Armstrong W, Miller C (eds) Moral Psychology, Vol. 5: Virtue and character. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 197–213
Mele A (1987) Irrationality. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Mele A (2003) Motivation and agency. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Mele A (2016) Character in action. In: Fileva I (ed) Questions of character. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 169–180
Miller CB (2017) Categorizing character: Moving beyond the Aristotelian framework. In: Carr D (ed) Varieties of virtue ethics. Palgrave MacMillan, London, pp 143–162
Mischel W, Shoda Y, Rodriguez ML (1989) Delay of gratification in children. Science 244:933–938
Moffitt TE, Arseneault L, Belsky D et al (2011) A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. Proc Natl Acad Sci 108:2693–2698
Muraven M, Baumeister RF (2000) Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources: Does self-control resemble a muscle? Psychol Bull 126:247–259
Nielsen KS, Gwozdz W, de Ridder D (2019) Unraveling the relationship between trait self-control and subjective well-being: The mediating role of four self-control strategies.Front in Psychol10:Article 706
Rorty AO (1980) Akrasia and pleasure: Nichomachean Ethics Book 7. In: Rorty AO (ed) Essays on Aristotle’s ethics. U. of California Press, Berkeley, pp 267–284
Sripada CS (2014) How is willpower possible? The puzzle of synchronic self-control and the divided mind. Nous 48:41–74
Sripada C (2021) The atoms of self-control. Nous 55:800–824
Saunders B, Milyavskaya M, Inzlicht M (2015) What does cognitive control feel like? Effective and ineffective cognitive control is associated with divergent phenomenology. Psychophysiol 52:1205–1217
Tangney JP, Baumeister RF, Boone AL (2004) High self-control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success. J Personal 72:271–322
Von Gunten CD, Bartholow BD, Martins JS (2020) Inhibition tasks are not associated with a variety of behaviours in college students. Eur J Personal 34:412–430
Wenzel M, Rowland Z, Kubiak T (2021) Examining five pathways on how self-control is associated with emotion regulation and affective well-being in daily life. J Personal 89:451–467
Acknowledgements
I am thankful for financial support from a Scheduled Semester Research Leave from William & Mary during Fall 2020. Thanks also to Jonah Goldwater, Laura Guerrero, Philip Swenson, and Chris Tucker for discussion of, and comments on, a previous version of this paper. I am also grateful to two anonymous referees whose comments improved the paper.
Funding
[See acknowledgements].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of Interest
n/a.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Haug, M. Resolving two tensions in (Neo-)Aristotelian approaches to self-control. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 25, 685–700 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-022-10289-6
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-022-10289-6