Last Modified

• March 21, 2019

Creator

• Yao, Vida
  • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Philosophy

Abstract

• We tend to think that it is better that one loves what one believes good, and hates what one believes bad. Similarly, we tend to think that it is a mark of virtue or rationality that one does what she judges she ought to do, and refrains from doing what she judges she ought not do. I argue that these “akratic disharmonies”, which occur between one’s evaluative judgments and one’s emotional or motivational responses, need not indicate her irrationality or a defect in her character, and that in fact, that her mind is disharmonious may be a sign that she is fully sensitive to the features of her situation. Moreover, her willingness or ability to sustain certain kinds of akratic disharmony can be the basis of underappreciated virtues such as graciousness, humility, self-esteem, and solidarity with her fellow human beings. Not only, then, is it possible for one’s mind to be akratic in the ways that I have described, there may be goodness in knowingly desiring, loving, or intending the bad.

Date of publication

• May 2016

Keyword

• guise of the good
• grace
• boredom
• Philosophy
• moral psychology
• value
• Ethics
• akrasia

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.17615/tgez-w093

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright

Advisor

• Wolf, Susan
• Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey
• MacLean, Douglas
• Hill, Thomas E.
• Preston-Roedder, Ryan

Degree

• Doctor of Philosophy

Degree granting institution

• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School

Graduation year

• 2016

Language

• English

Parents:

This work has no parents.

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