222
individual agency via increasing agents’ abilities to deal with akrasia is valuable. In
the next paragraphs I will consider what I think is a strong reason why cognitive
enhancement and self-control are not enough.
Recall that according to Aristotle, enkrateia involves having inclinations that are
not
conducive to the good, but doing good nevertheless while exercising self-
control. This involves what I have previously called effective online control.
However, our ability for effective online control to change the course of action is
limited. This ability is limited by various constraints, including time constraints
(many of the decisions for actions are and need to be made quickly), by the
efficiency trade-offs (even if I had time to reflectively
consider whether to give
money to a panhandler every time, spending two hours giving it deep consideration
means I am not doing other valuable things), the limited degree to which we can
exercise self-control over specific desires (for example, a dieting person may be
able to overcome her craving for chocolate on most but not all occasions, we might
be able to inhibit acting on a craving for chocolate more than the craving for crisps,
etc.) and the limited amount self-control resources. For the purpose of this
argument it is sufficient to consider the latter limitation.
A line of research pursued by Baumeister and colleagues indicates that the type of
self-control involved in resisting temptation requires effort, and that exerting such
effort diminishes the ability to resist further temptations. For example, Muraven,
Tice, and Baumeister (1998) demonstrated that that when a situation demands two
consecutive
acts of self-control, performance on the second act is frequently
impaired. The impairment is present even if quite different spheres of self-control
are involved (e.g., an initial act of stifling or amplifying one's emotional response
led to a subsequent reduction in ability to work through pain and fatigue while
squeezing
a hand grip, and a brief thought suppression task weakened subsequent
persistence on a task involving solving a puzzle). Such research suggests that many
widely different forms of self-control draw on a common resource and that such a
resource might be depleted. Researchers suggest that the metaphor of a muscle well
describes the effects demonstrated in research on self-control; although repeated
practice increases the available self-control resources,
effort diminishes the
resources available.
223
The conclusions from Baumeister et al’s (1998) research also apply to moral
agency. Andrew, the doctor with implicit racist attitudes from Douglas’ paper,
might in principle be able to control his racist inclinations by noticing when his
behaviour is impacted and inhibiting acting on them. However, spending his self-
control resources on mitigating this bias means that he cannot allocate his self-
control to other pursuits, including moral deliberation and action. Exercising online
all-things-considered judgement is a very resource-demanding
way of making
decisions. Similarly, action guidance that relies on self-control is also effortful and
depletes the scarce self-control resources. Even if acting enkratically is otherwise as
morally good as acting virtuously, the limited self-control resources mean that we
would always have strong reasons to adjust fast heuristic processes that give rise to
inclinations to act (such as habits, and emotions) in a way that is most often aligned
with moral outcomes. This is not to say that moral review and the ability to adjust
our actions online is unimportant. Rather, the limited nature of self-control
resources means that adjusting automatic reactions is a necessary part of effective
agency.
The point I am making is not philosophically sophisticated. However, if we are
interested in agents that are able to act according to
their assessment of what is
good and have more cognitive resources to spend on deliberating about the good,
we have a strong
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
